Add Tier: No need for cantrips and powers to scale with highest spell slot


General Discussion


Currently cantrips and power scale with your highest level spells, which is half your level rounded up (except for 19th level spellcasters and 20th level ones without the feat for 10th level slots).

Counteracting afflictions also rely on half level rounded up.

They should add the keyword Tier to simplify and clarify things.

Tier: A character, item, or effect's Tier is half its level rounded up. A spells Tier is equal to its level.

A character uses cantrips and powers heightened to their Tier. Counteracting works depending on the effects Tier.


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This reminds me why In houserule spell DCs in 3rd Ed/PF to = 10 + 1/2 hit dice + spellcasting mod.

Another of 3rd Ed's blunders that PF failed to address.


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Lol, I use the same houserule. XD Though it gets messy with Metamagic if I don't add provisions for that...

Sovereign Court

I like the idea, I'm not sure about the word "Tier" due to its usage elsewhere (like PFS). But I agree, Levels and spell levels have always been confusing to newbies. I think having a generic term like Tiers to identify this specifically is a really good idea.


Vic Ferrari wrote:

This reminds me why In houserule spell DCs in 3rd Ed/PF to = 10 + 1/2 hit dice + spellcasting mod.

Another of 3rd Ed's blunders that PF failed to address.

Wow is that a weird house rule... 1) HD as opposed to caster level? What do you do with items eg wands? 2) Spell level has no impact - so the best save or lose / suck effects (eg blindness at 2nd level!) are good all game. Combined, this means casters that multiclass love it...

Grand Lodge

Vic Ferrari wrote:

This reminds me why In houserule spell DCs in 3rd Ed/PF to = 10 + 1/2 hit dice + spellcasting mod.

Another of 3rd Ed's blunders that PF failed to address.

There are good reasons to avoid giving PCs too many daily uses of abilities with DCs that high within the 3e/PF math.


in◆⃟ wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:

This reminds me why In houserule spell DCs in 3rd Ed/PF to = 10 + 1/2 hit dice + spellcasting mod.

Another of 3rd Ed's blunders that PF failed to address.

There are good reasons to avoid giving PCs too many daily uses of abilities with DCs that high within the 3e/PF math.

Yeah especially with debuffs it makes them scale too well for their spell level in comparison to other spells. I wrote about it here. With a linearly scaling amount of spell slots it really becomes too much. So they can go with the solution of making each spell suck, but that is very unsatisfying.


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pad300 wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:

This reminds me why In houserule spell DCs in 3rd Ed/PF to = 10 + 1/2 hit dice + spellcasting mod.

Another of 3rd Ed's blunders that PF failed to address.

Wow is that a weird house rule...

Not weird, rather common, and other things in the game follow that formula.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
in◆⃟ wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:

This reminds me why In houserule spell DCs in 3rd Ed/PF to = 10 + 1/2 hit dice + spellcasting mod.

Another of 3rd Ed's blunders that PF failed to address.

There are good reasons to avoid giving PCs too many daily uses of abilities with DCs that high within the 3e/PF math.

Not really, works fine.

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