Treat Wounds fixed daily healing... what about the same for spell slots?


Playing the Game


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I am a mad woman proposing mad things, because this is a playtest and the best place to talk about them.

I don't know who really likes the idea of heroes that, after fighting two rooms of minions, want to sleep for 8 hours. Rest, catch their breath, really prepare to push on, maybe have to run and hide while they do that, sure. But downright sleep? That should be a big deal that you're retreating so hard.

Paizo did a 10/10 job acknowledging that players don't enjoy risking their characters needlessly. If people had low HP and no healing resources, they usually refused to push on. The other main reason players have their characters run is if the caster's don't have anything to cast.

Letting the caster's go 'full nova' 24/7 is probably a bad idea, but a limited recovery option might solve two issues:

1) Caster adventuring days can be very short
2) There's a general sentiment that caster's don't feel great

Paizo's already got all the framework for this! There's the idea of a 10-minute 'fix up' period for repairs and treating wounds. Here's a proposed Action to implement the change:

Refresh Spells
Duration: 10 Minutes
Select an expended spell slot at least 2 levels lower than the highest spell you can cast. Attempt an appropriate check based on your spellcasting tradition (Arcane for Arcane, Occult for Occult, Nature for Primal, Religion for Divine). The DC is equal to <Paizo please enter DC>.
Success: The spell slot is refreshed and can be used again.
Critical Failure: You cannot use this action again today.


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This... is actually kind of an interesting idea.

I'd say you have to be careful with setting the DC, especially since having a crit fail should be a realistic possibility on such a powerful ability. Perhaps by having the DC scale with the level of spell you are trying to reprepare? And/or increasing the DC for each time you use it?

But as long as there is a limit on the max spell level you can refresh and failing is something that can't be min/maxed away, I could see this being workable.


Considering that the capstones that give "1/encounter spell" are at -5 max spell level.

Gaining a max-2 slot for 10mins seems extreme.

I mean "short rest for an hour" is 6 spells...

At higher levels (9+) our casters almost always had stuff to cast. The "Cantrip till you get bored" issue is usually only for lower than 5 level, and to be frank, that's actually better than "xbow till you get bored" of PF1 early casters.

But I find the whole "early levels are repetitive" to be uniform across classes.

Yes, casters spam cantrips after their 3-8 spells/day in early levels. But all martial just spam stride-strike at those levels as well, since most of their interesting feats come later on.

That is true for almost all pnp games, across most classes. And it's a reason most of our home campaigns start at 3-5 rather than 1.

1-3 is dull for everyone.

Personally, I would rather paizo slew that holy cow that we should start as peasants wielding kitchen knifes and drastically increase the curve.

I mean, keep levels 1-3 as a tutorial of sorts for new players and for narrative reasons (you just left your house and decided to be an adventurer) but make it like 1000 xp to get to level 3 and be barely competent at combat before you really start your real adventures.

Mmorpg and Japanese light novels have it right at that: new adventurers don't even fight goblins before they venture out. They do gathering, collection and miscellaneous task at first. Only after a while and a encounters and battles do they get "approved" as adventurers.

In PF and dnd your years and years as mage apprentice or fighting academies make you "slightly better peasant" and you're supposed to go all gun ho somehow.


Well, the Leyline Conduit & friends are once-per-minute, which is something like 20x as often as this, and also doesn't require uninterrupted time, while this one requires a big rest for only a chance at getting that spell back. Frankly, I feel they could be buffed anyway.

Short resting for an hour giving you 3 'minor' spell slots back seems fair? That's a big time investment. Enemies could easily refortify an area in an hour, having barricades, a messenger sent off, etc.

The early levels stuff feels off topic. I agree though. It feels like starting at level 4 or so will be a common preference.


Lyee wrote:

Well, the Leyline Conduit & friends are once-per-minute, which is something like 20x as often as this, and also doesn't require uninterrupted time, while this one requires a big rest for only a chance at getting that spell back. Frankly, I feel they could be buffed anyway.

Short resting for an hour giving you 3 'minor' spell slots back seems fair? That's a big time investment. Enemies could easily refortify an area in an hour, having barricades, a messenger sent off, etc.

The early levels stuff feels off topic. I agree though. It feels like starting at level 4 or so will be a common preference.

you aren't asking for "minor spells" though.

you're asking for max-2.

that's the bulk of your spells right there.

that's max spells -(6-7)

i mean, at 13 getting back 5th level spells is far from minor, at 9th getting back 3rd level spells is far from minor and etc.

the low level issue is exactly what this is about, because, as i said before, after a few levels, there are 0 issues with the amount of spells you have. In between spells, powers and staffs, you're covered for the majority of fights with only using cantrips as sporadic fillers.

so, your issue is ONLY for the low levels, and this exact issue you have, every class, not only spellcasters, have: lack of things to do on low levels.


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Not saying anything about the idea either way right now, but I imagine the DC would be a hard DC of 2x Spell Level. If you wanted to bound off excessive higher level spells then probably 3x Spell level or
Charon Onozuka's recall-knowledge-spam-like idea.

I'd be wary of making it more tempting than things like identify magic or treat wounds though. On the upside, it would probably grant a considerable advantage to spontaneous casters.


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If they opted for something along those lines. chances are it'd be a static roll rather than a skill roll.


again, after a few levels, you have plenty of stuff to do that aren't cantrips, so the "solution" (if a solution is needed at all) needs to be focused on lower levels rather than on higher levels.

up until 5th level, i agree it can feel limited, but afterwards

looking at something like 6th level and upwards, you have around 4/4/4 spells, add another 4 or so "3rd level spells" from your powers, add another 3 spell levels (another 2nd and another 1st as an example) from a staff and you're already at something like 5/5/4 +4 powers. That's 18 spells per day at 6th level. Which is about the time i say you're comfortable starting slinging spells more easily in each and every encounter you'll face in a typical day.

at 10th level you're looking at something like 4/4/4/4/4 plus another 2nd from your spell duelist, plus another 4th and another 1st from your staff, plus another 2 2nd and 1 st from a ring of wizardry, plus another 5-6 from your powers and you're looking at 6/7/4/5/4 +5-6 from powers, for around 31-32 spells/day. Those are enough to rarely if ever using cantrips at this point.

the way DCs work now, even at higher levels, your low level spells can still be quite effective if you focus on non-blasting ones like charms, commands, fears, true strikes, rays of enfeblement, sleep, color spray, and etc condition imposing spells


It's not the heroes who want to do it. It's the players of the Heroes who don't look at it like a story, but like a video game they're trying to win.


I understand the idea here, as a primary caster player. That said, the limiter on spells is that you can run out of them. If you can't, they would likely need to be nerfed even more.

The bigger issue I have is when I have the wrong spells prepared and can't do anything about it. Like, in dd3 a couple days ago, a party member got drained three times in one turn. They're currently very drained.

Fixing that requires Restoration heightened to 4. I had no idea what this scenario was going to be about when I picked spells for it, so I didn't take that. I'm currently completely incapable of fixing that condition because of that decision made before we even started playing, and it looks like I won't get the chance during the scenario to change it.

For the player who is drained, that's lousy. For me as their healer, that's also lousy. I've got the daily spell castings to do it, I'm just not allowed to because I didn't know to prepare for this ahead of time.

So what I'd rather see is an option to take some time to forget a prepared spell and replace it with another prepared spell, which would let me fix the other player's drain, which would make both of us happy.


Tridus wrote:

I understand the idea here, as a primary caster player. That said, the limiter on spells is that you can run out of them. If you can't, they would likely need to be nerfed even more.

The bigger issue I have is when I have the wrong spells prepared and can't do anything about it. Like, in dd3 a couple days ago, a party member got drained three times in one turn. They're currently very drained.

Fixing that requires Restoration heightened to 4. I had no idea what this scenario was going to be about when I picked spells for it, so I didn't take that. I'm currently completely incapable of fixing that condition because of that decision made before we even started playing, and it looks like I won't get the chance during the scenario to change it.

For the player who is drained, that's lousy. For me as their healer, that's also lousy. I've got the daily spell castings to do it, I'm just not allowed to because I didn't know to prepare for this ahead of time.

So what I'd rather see is an option to take some time to forget a prepared spell and replace it with another prepared spell, which would let me fix the other player's drain, which would make both of us happy.

that's the whole point of prepared casters though.

they get extremely higher versatility in their options, but they rely on picking the correct spells.

If we simply allow prepared casters to change their prepared spells in a moments notice, then what's the point of spontaneous casters?

furthermore, clerics can opt for channel succor at 8, that allows them to turn their channel to all kinds of Remove X (including restoration), and Staff of healing is also a must have that provides a lot of Remove X in it (including restoration 2nd level at 7th and restoration 4th at 11th level)


shroudb wrote:

that's the whole point of prepared casters though.

they get extremely higher versatility in their options, but they rely on picking the correct spells.

It's pretty hard to pick the correct spells when you have absolutely no information to guide what will be correct, though. That's just guessing. Inevitably it'll go wrong at some point.

Quote:
If we simply allow prepared casters to change their prepared spells in a moments notice, then what's the point of spontaneous casters?

I mean, 5e made everyone somewhat spontaneous. Maybe there is merit to that.

Quote:
furthermore, clerics can opt for channel succor at 8, that allows them to turn their channel to all kinds of Remove X (including restoration), and Staff of healing is also a must have that provides a lot of Remove X in it (including restoration 2nd level at 7th and restoration 4th at 11th level)

Yeah I wanted that staff of healing but dd3 is level 7, so I was told I couldn't get a level 7 item. Rather frustrating. Good to know it'll get better as we level though. :)

Silver Crusade

Lyee wrote:

I am a mad woman proposing mad things, because this is a playtest and the best place to talk about them.

I don't know who really likes the idea of heroes that, after fighting two rooms of minions, want to sleep for 8 hours. Rest, catch their breath, really prepare to push on, maybe have to run and hide while they do that, sure. But downright sleep? That should be a big deal that you're retreating so hard.

Paizo did a 10/10 job acknowledging that players don't enjoy risking their characters needlessly. If people had low HP and no healing resources, they usually refused to push on. The other main reason players have their characters run is if the caster's don't have anything to cast.

Letting the caster's go 'full nova' 24/7 is probably a bad idea, but a limited recovery option might solve two issues:

1) Caster adventuring days can be very short
2) There's a general sentiment that caster's don't feel great

Paizo's already got all the framework for this! There's the idea of a 10-minute 'fix up' period for repairs and treating wounds. Here's a proposed Action to implement the change:

Refresh Spells
Duration: 10 Minutes
Select an expended spell slot at least 2 levels lower than the highest spell you can cast. Attempt an appropriate check based on your spellcasting tradition (Arcane for Arcane, Occult for Occult, Nature for Primal, Religion for Divine). The DC is equal to <Paizo please enter DC>.
Success: The spell slot is refreshed and can be used again.
Critical Failure: You cannot use this action again today.

I could work, but I am a bit worried that this will make adventuring days drag on for too long - and it does not apply to classes where their "spellcasting" is just used by a spell pool which is kinda unfair.

Maybe suggest it as a class feat first.

If this was Starfinder it might work pretty well for the two caster classes when linked to a 10-minute rest where they expend resolve.


Tridus wrote:
shroudb wrote:

that's the whole point of prepared casters though.

they get extremely higher versatility in their options, but they rely on picking the correct spells.

It's pretty hard to pick the correct spells when you have absolutely no information to guide what will be correct, though. That's just guessing. Inevitably it'll go wrong at some point.

Quote:
If we simply allow prepared casters to change their prepared spells in a moments notice, then what's the point of spontaneous casters?

I mean, 5e made everyone somewhat spontaneous. Maybe there is merit to that.

Quote:
furthermore, clerics can opt for channel succor at 8, that allows them to turn their channel to all kinds of Remove X (including restoration), and Staff of healing is also a must have that provides a lot of Remove X in it (including restoration 2nd level at 7th and restoration 4th at 11th level)
Yeah I wanted that staff of healing but dd3 is level 7, so I was told I couldn't get a level 7 item. Rather frustrating. Good to know it'll get better as we level though. :)

So, your problem is that you don't like Vancian magic.

That has nothing to do with healers.

Again, prepared casters SHOULD be penaltized for not picking the correct stuff like they are advantageous when they do pick the correct stuff.

Except for the most extreme examples, with experience you're able to be mostly covered after a while.

As an example, you should almost always have a way to have a Restoration ready.

If you don't, then that's your fault.

Alternative, roll a divine sorc and have everything Spontaneous (but much less healing). That's the trade off.


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It's not mentioned anywhere in PF2, but a good trick as a PF1 prepared caster was to not prepare all your spell slots. Then, if you got into a situation you didn't prepare for, you could spend 10min to prep the needed spell.

Again, it's not mentioned anywhere in PF2... But it's also not mentioned that you have to prep all your spells either. If you have a lenient GM they may allow it.


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Zorae wrote:

It's not mentioned anywhere in PF2, but a good trick as a PF1 prepared caster was to not prepare all your spell slots. Then, if you got into a situation you didn't prepare for, you could spend 10min to prep the needed spell.

Again, it's not mentioned anywhere in PF2... But it's also not mentioned that you have to prep all your spells either. If you have a lenient GM they may allow it.

pf2 actually mentions that you have to prepare all your spells during "daily prep" which is a 1h procedure that gives you back your spell slots and stuff.

you can do this 1/day.

(p.317)

so no more open slots. (wizards do get a swap prepared spell feat though and clerics do get a "spontaneous Remove X" with a feat as well)


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Spell slots might be too open ended to use but I could see this working for power points.


H-e-double hockey sticks no.

This would cripple the spell economy. Suddenly casters will just have unlimited resources. That isn't how spells are supposed to work.

If your party is stopping after 2 rooms tell the casters to chill on the big spells and use more cantrips.


shroudb wrote:

As an example, you should almost always have a way to have a Restoration ready.

If you don't, then that's your fault.

It's my fault that I don't have an item I'm not allowed to have per the rules of character creation I was given and that I didn't know to prepare a specific spell at a specific level based on absolutely no information whatsoever?

Your faith in my divination skill is touching but misplaced.


Tridus wrote:
shroudb wrote:

As an example, you should almost always have a way to have a Restoration ready.

If you don't, then that's your fault.

It's my fault that I don't have an item I'm not allowed to have per the rules of character creation I was given and that I didn't know to prepare a specific spell at a specific level based on absolutely no information whatsoever?

Your faith in my divination skill is touching but misplaced.

No, there are some spells that they are

a) either too important
Or
B) can work in a lot of situations
Or
C) crippling if you need them and you don't have them.

Those are the best candidates for memorization.

No need for divination, just experience with prepared casting.

Alternative, for such spells, you keep scrolls of them for emergencies.

Your party has neither, that's your party being ill prepared.


Shroudb is right.

As a prepared caster you need to carry a lot of, "Oh crap" spells.

Restoration is always a spell you should memorize for the day if possible.

It's like Wizards taking Fly or Dispel Magic.

Its like a slot tax.

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