Designing the perfect Caster class

[RandomCasualty]

Ok, what do you think about a class built on these concepts.

Beguiler Spellcasting Style: There's a fixed list, and you can spontaneously cast anything on that list, every few levels you get adaptive learning to add a new spell to your list.

Slotless Casting: Instead of getting slots at each level, you get X energy points per day, similar to uses of turn undead. Each spell costs 1 energy point, regardless of level. This number doesn't go up as you level, but at certain class levels, you can cast various spells for free without burning up an energy point. So for instance at 5th level you may be able to cast all 1st level spells on your list for free (obviously some concession may need to be made for spells that can be abuseably repeated, like mass summons, but you get the basic idea). This saves a lot of bookkeeping and we no longer need to constantly look crap up on a table.

Multiclass Friendly: Like ToB classes, for the purposes of determining the highest level spell you can cast and your caster level, you add in 1/2 the levels of all other classes you have to your base class levels in the spellcaster class.

Class Abilities: Class abilities are a collection of Adaptive learning, energy-less casting and autoquicken on spells. These abilities grant these benefits to different levels of spells as you get more levels.

So it may look something like this:

1-
2- Energy-less casting (0-level), Adaptive Learning
3- Autoquciken (0-level)
4- Energy-less Casting (1st level), Adaptive Learning
5- Autoquicken (1st level)
etc.

You think that would work well as a base mechanical set up for a set of caster classes?

[MrWaeseL]

If all spells cost an equal amount of power players will almost never cast spells of a level lower than the max they can cast, and heighten spell becomes a pretty good feat all of a sudden.

[Username17]

Beguiler Spellcasting Style:

While thematic and potentially balanced, Beguiler Spellcasting actually suffers from the fact that you don't benefit, at all, from finding anything. Spellcasters already care basically not at all about their found equipment. Seriously the only thing a Wizard gives a fvck about is finding an enemy's spellbook. The fact that Sorcerers and Beguilers don't even care about that is a serious problem.

You'd probably want a hybrid form where characters had a Beguiler spellcasting type and a really small set of spells in a spellbook that they could add to. This would keep people from doubling their character every time they defeated an enemy Wizard while still making spellboks the valuable and engaging finds they are supposed to be.

Slotless Casting:

This is the most retarded idea I've ever heard. It's not salvageable and I'm not going to try. D&D spell levels only work at all because people have a limited number of 4th level slots and a separate tally of 2nd level slots.

Your hybrid slots are a pain in the ass (in that you end up constantly subtracting small numbers from big numbers rather than subtracting small numbers from small numbers) and it asymetrically handles combat and utility casting. Two thumbs down.

Multiclass Friendly

Any setup where multiclassing causes you to continuously fall proportionately behind in both classes is not fvcking multiclass friendly! Worse, it kind of vaguely looks like it might be multiclass friendly and people will invest levels into multiple classes and be horrified to learn that their character is completely fvcked later on.

There are ways of hybridizing characters in which multiclass characters have a number of level appropriate abilities from Column A and a number from Column B that are (potentially) balanced. But falling behind the power curve - no matter what rate you do so at - is definitionally character destroying.

Class Abilities

So your plan is to hand out flavorless accounting complexity as peoples' class features? Why not just shoot them in the face right now?

-Username17

[AlphaNerd]

Any setup where multiclassing causes you to continuously fall proportionately behind in both classes is not fvcking multiclass friendly! Worse, it kind of vaguely looks like it might be multiclass friendly and people will invest levels into multiple classes and be horrified to learn that their character is completely fvcked later on.

Isn't this a problem only if abilities don't synergize? So long as you can take actions from both classes at the same time, then it's all cool. Then you don't even need to add in +1/2 per level. Ok, it's also a problem because class benefits from pure spellcasting are highly non-linear, but if you made level 2 spells twice as good as level one spells, and half as good as fourth level spells, and let them cast spells and do other-classly-things at the same time, such a system could work out, right?

You'd probably want a hybrid form where characters had a Beguiler spellcasting type and a really small set of spells in a spellbook that they could add to. This would keep people from doubling their character every time they defeated an enemy Wizard while still making spellboks the valuable and engaging finds they are supposed to be.

So, you're saying that you should give people a list of spells they can cast all the time, then give them a (class/character-level dependent?) number of spells they can have as well, to expand their repotoire?

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

For multiclassing, the trick is to make the spellcasting immediately boss and scale it. There should be a way--and I'm not a-gonna write it--wherein a Ftr6 takes a level of wizard and can suddenly cast one 4th-level spell and 2 3rd-level spells… and then when he hits Ftr8/Wiz1, he can cast 1 5th-level spell and 2 4th-level spells.

Or whatever.

It'd probably be overly chart-heavy, but I'm sure someone could do it.

[RandomCasualty]

1162407277[/unixtime]]
While thematic and potentially balanced, Beguiler Spellcasting actually suffers from the fact that you don't benefit, at all, from finding anything. Spellcasters already care basically not at all about their found equipment. Seriously the only thing a Wizard gives a fvck about is finding an enemy's spellbook. The fact that Sorcerers and Beguilers don't even care about that is a serious problem.

You'd probably want a hybrid form where characters had a Beguiler spellcasting type and a really small set of spells in a spellbook that they could add to. This would keep people from doubling their character every time they defeated an enemy Wizard while still making spellboks the valuable and engaging finds they are supposed to be.

Well, I've never realyl bought into the idea that wizards pirating other guys spellbooks was a great idea. It means that casters can effectively stockpile on power in a way that you can't actively control. Adaptive Learning gives enough extra slots in my opinion.

Here's the thing: writing out a spellbook is a lot of work. Most DMs don't even want to bother wtih it. In fact, when you're doing anything remotely high level, it's a big enough pain in the ass to choose what spells your NPCs have prepared. Actually caring what they have in their spellbook is probably not something we want DMs to ever deal with or care about.

If we wanted more spells for whatever reason, we could have special magic items that grant access to a new spell and add it to your list while you possess that item.

This is the most retarded idea I've ever heard. It's not salvageable and I'm not going to try. D&D spell levels only work at all because people have a limited number of 4th level slots and a separate tally of 2nd level slots.

The problem is that that doesn't work. Not at high levels anyway. Everytime you gain a level you get more and more slots you've got to keep track of, and it gets to be a total pain in the ass, especially when dealing with NPC casters. I mean who honestly keeps track of how many slots the NPC wizard has for each spell level? I don't.

So I got to thinking, if our base concept is to hand out level appropriate abilities at each level, then why worry about having low level slots at all?

If we acknowledge that lower level spells become less valuable, then we can just let casters cast them for free. I mean would you seriously care if a 5th level wizard could cast infinite magic missiles and mage hands? I know I wouldn't. So why are we still tallying up those low slots? Why do we even care how many of those crap slots a guy has?

The original purpose of slots was so that you couldn't prepare every spell in your spellbook at once. The beguiler thematic has already done away with that idea. So why are we holding on to the legacy mechanic of spell slots? They're cumbersome and they don't work all that well at high levels anyway.

Your hybrid slots are a pain in the ass (in that you end up constantly subtracting small numbers from big numbers rather than subtracting small numbers from small numbers) and it asymetrically handles combat and utility casting. Two thumbs down.

How do you figure? So you have 6 energy points. And that means you cast 6 spells. This isn't psionic energy points. This is 1 energy point = 1 spell, period. That's small numbers all across the board. The only difference is that you've got only one small number to remember instead of an array of small numbers like 5/6/6/6/5/4/3/2/2. I think "6" is reasonably easier to remember than "5/6/6/6/5/4/3/2/2", and that's a good thing.

Any setup where multiclassing causes you to continuously fall proportionately behind in both classes is not fvcking multiclass friendly! Worse, it kind of vaguely looks like it might be multiclass friendly and people will invest levels into multiple classes and be horrified to learn that their character is completely fvcked later on.

There are ways of hybridizing characters in which multiclass characters have a number of level appropriate abilities from Column A and a number from Column B that are (potentially) balanced. But falling behind the power curve - no matter what rate you do so at - is definitionally character destroying.

you're probably right here, in that the model will eventually fall apart at some level, and it just delays the inevitable. However, I'm not quite sure what a great solution would be. I could hand out full casting progression, but that seems like it might be a bit over the top power wise.

So your plan is to hand out flavorless accounting complexity as peoples' class features? Why not just shoot them in the face right now?

Well honestly, yes. The abilities are useful enough and they scale well in that you can keep handing them out as class abilities. Casters tend to have enough "flavor" as it is, because their flavor comes from their spells, and not their class abilities. Caster class abilities exist so that you get something for not taking a PrC or not just getting your casting elsewhere.

And while flavorless, they're not useless. They're all good abilities that people want. Being able to autoquicken a spell is real nice. Getting adaptive learning is good and getting your lower level spells cast without paying energy is effectively getting more slots.

Obviously we can have more class abilities too if we feel the character needs them, but that's going to be totally dependant on the class being written. A necromancer's unique abiltiies will be lots different than a summoner or enchanter.

If all spells cost an equal amount of power players will almost never cast spells of a level lower than the max they can cast, and heighten spell becomes a pretty good feat all of a sudden.

Well, that's part of the purpose of the "free casting" class ability. It allows people to cast lower level spells for free. So maybe a 12th level caster can throw a fireball whenever he wants. And that means that at most your choices may be between 3 different spell levels. So for instance you might be able to cast 1st through 4th level spells for free, or you may be able to cast a 5th,6th or 7th, by expending an energy point.

While one might argue "why ever cast a lower level spell?", sometimes various spell levels have things that higher levels don't. There is after all no 6th level version of telekinesis, so obviously, if you need a TK effect you'll use a 5th level slot.

The idea is that you'll have a set of power spells, which are your best, and a set of infinite use eldritch blasts and cool effects which you can use at will. I dont' think there's anything to be gained by having various tiers of "super powerful", "powerful", "Kinda powerful", and "crap" and recording slots for each.

Effectively the goal of this project is to make casters less complex to play, and to minimize bookkeeping so instead of Writing out this:

Code: Select all

[br]Wizard Casting: Caster level 15. [br]Spellbook [br]0-level: all[br]1st: Magic Missile, Sleep, Color Spray, xxxxxx,xxxxxx,xxxxx[br]2nd: Web, Detect Thoughts, xxxxx, xxx,xx, xxxx, xxx[br]3rd: Dispel Magic, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx[br]4th: xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx, xxxxx[br]5th: xxx,xx,xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx[br]6th: xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx[br]7th: xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx[br]8th: xx,xx[br][br]Spells prepared:[br]0-level: xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx[br]1st: xxxx, xxx, xxx, xx, xx, xxx[br]2nd: xxx (2), xxx, xxx[br]3rd: xxx,x xxx, xx, xx[br]4th: xxxx(2), xxxx, xxxx[br]5th: xxxxx,xxxx xxx,xxx ,xxx[br]6th: xxxx(q), xxxx, xxxx, xxx[br]7th: xxx, xxxx,xxx[br]8th: xxx, xxx,xxx[br]

We could just write this:

Code: Select all

[br]Energy Points 6[br][br]Enchanter casting (caster level 15th, max castable level 8th)[br]Free casting: 5th level and below, autoquicken: 4th levle and below.[br][br]Adaptive Learning: Charm undead, major image, Greater Charm Monster, xxxx, xxxxx, xxxx[br]

That stat block is what we should be aspiring towards. Something that's easy to represent on paper and doesn't make creating any kind of caster a total pain in the ass.

[power_word_wedgie]

I will agree with you that it does help with the paperwork. However, all it is doing is making the arcane spellcaster go supernova in power. It's not worth the sacrifice in order to improve in bookkeeping.

As for lower level spells, I know my character has been in campaigns at 12th level where he was scrounging around for 1st and 2nd level spells to stay afloat. Really, giving them out for free definitely isn't the way to go.

But I will agree with your thread title. If this was offered as a spellcaster, I don't know why anyone would want to play anything else just on the grounds of sheer power alone.

[RandomCasualty]

1162444870[/unixtime]]
As for lower level spells, I know my character has been in campaigns at 12th level where he was scrounging around for 1st and 2nd level spells to stay afloat. Really, giving them out for free definitely isn't the way to go.

Why? We let warlocks infinite cast eldritch blast? Why would it be a bad thing to let 12th level wizards infinite cast magic missile or scorching ray (non-metamagicked of course)?

Hell, we already have a mechanic for that, they're called wands. What cleric doesn't have effectively infinite cure light wounds at that level? We've already been playing with infinite low level spells and if you think that's broken, I can see your reasoning, but it certainly isn't that much more powerful than what we have now.

[Tokorona]

Because wizards can pump out much more power than a warlock.

(And wands do require some money.)

[power_word_wedgie]

And wands do require some experience points, time to create, and if doing it on the cheap, a feat to blow on the task. If you're buying them without a feat, they're not cheap at all.

And I can tell you of a time when I had a 11th level cleric burn through his wands of CLW only for the group to get through by the skin of their teeth. I may not be a expert on mathematics (I'm an engineer), but the lat time I checked 3 time 50 plus allocated spells at a certain level is much less than infinity.

Plus, when I'm getting/crafting a wand, I selecting a spell that I want to have additional casting. It isn't like I make multiple wands to cover every spell at first level, second level, etc.

This concept is much more powerful than what we have now. IMHO, consider the magnitude of gravitational pull from the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy: that's how powerful it is to Carte Blanc low level spells.

[RandomCasualty]

What spell infinitely cast do you see causing that much trouble? I can only think of a few, like summons.

Direct damage and other combat spells obviously aren't a problem. Long term buffs probably aren't either. Short term buffs simply require house rules saying you can't cast them until combat begins and you're in initiative mode. Healing spells are semi-problematic, but since we already have wands of CLW, not a big deal. By the time you're freecasting CLW, you've already got three wands of it in your back pocket.

Divinations could get problematic I suppose if someone is repeatedly casting augury after every action, but we can throw in some kind of cooldown on that.

The only real problems I can see are the army builders, charms, summons and dominates. And those should have controls anyway to prevent people from just walking around charming everyone with a wand. We could just do em like the warlock.

Aside from that I'm not seeing anything too dangerous, and given these are beguiler style spell lists as opposed to pure wizard spells, we can cherry pick the lists sufficiently as to not allow any of the dangerous spells (at least not without restrictions).

[Username17]

Problematic spells include any buffs, conjurations, battlefield manipulations, healing, long ranged attack, divination, transportation, or utility spells. Which is to say virtually any effect that isn't essentially a spcial effect for hitting someone with an ax. D&D magic is set up to require the use of limited spell slots.

Consider Shadowrun, a game that already has potentially infinite spell casting:

• Any sustained spell causes mounting penalties to the caster until the spell ends.
  
• Healing spells are not cumulative.
  
• Conjuration is a separate skill from spellcasting and has its own set of limits.
  
• The number of spells each magician knows is really small (like 2-6 usually).

That really works with a no spell slots approach, but that's the kind of massive changes you have to make for that to be viable.

-Username17

[power_word_wedgie]

Frank has already touched on the main point. It's like saying that you have two options:

1) Have spell slots or,
2) Have points and infinite lower spells to alleviate spell slots, but in order to do it, here's a boatload of house rules to eliminate abuse.

Thus, my logic would be to stay with option 1: the savings isn't worth what needs to be paid. Besides, it still doesn't address:

A. It's still massively overpowered, especially when compared to wands. In order to pay for these wands, you're paying a king's ransom to gain the equivalent. Remember, wand prices are multiplied not only by spell level but also on caster level. Thus, having that equivalent 1st level wand at your caster level (let's say it's 11th level) isn't 750 gp, it's 8250 gp!!! Multiply that by three wands, and you're character is quickly approaching poverty just for one spell.

B. The current system makes you have to think of what you'll need, which is actually a good thing when it comes to abuse. For example, as an 11th level character, I wouldn't remember Charm Person because it's chances of success against an appropriate CR is low. However, if I can cast it any time, hell, why not - let's try it all over the place!

C. As I mentioned earlier, I've been in campaigns where I burned through my three CLW wands and my alloted spells and survived by the skin of my teeth. It happens, and thus an 11th level spellcasters allotment of spells and wands is far less than infinite. It's definitely a power up for spellcasters of huge proportions.

D. As Frank eludes to, really the proposition is just against the entire concept of Dungeons and Dragons. For example, if a designer actually proposed this for Dungeons and Dragons as the new way for spell progression, a sizable population would make him river dance while his body was supported with a rope around his neck.

That's why spell slots work. In order to compensate, it needs a truckload of rules to avoid abuse, and at the end of the day the new rules would make the game not seem like D&D any longer. I'm with Frank: two thumbs way down.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

You can't have leveled spell effects at all, really. Every spell needs to be, if not of an infinitly scaleable nature, then at least of such practical value that you could always want to take it. When you do wizards will finally be multiclass friendly because it'll all be about how versatle your magic is, instead of how powerful and versatile your magic is.

-Desdan

[RandomCasualty]

Ok how about this revision, instead of giving every spell for free, I just make it a subset of spells you can cast, and give out the safe ones for free casting, it'll just be listed on the spell list what spells can be free cast and what can't. So you can free cast fireball or silent image but not summon monster or wall of stone.

Effectively I'd like some spells to become like warlock invocations and eldritch blasts at higher levels and not have to worry about them.

[User3]

Spells are balanced on three points:

1. What the spell does when you first get it.

2. What a spell does vs similar spells at higher level.

3. What a spell does when cast over and over.

Ok, lets take a basic spell, Mage Armor. At 1st level, you don’t know this spell. The duration is too short to be useful, and even one casting is one less Sleep or Color Spray or some other champ of 1st level.

At 6th level, you do know it, and you might cast it once or twice a day. In most cases, its a spell slot you weren’t going to use anyway since you can now cast a spell ever round of every combat each day, and a small and almost free bonus to AC is small and almost free.

At 12 level, you don’t cast it at all. Probably, you use something like its 3rd level big brother Greater Mage Armor, or you just have Bracers of Protection. Regular Mage Armor is made useless by the fact that better spells exist that can be cast with bigger spell slots you weren’t going to miss, or cheap magic items replace it entirely.


OK, when giving out any spells as at-will abilities, what happens? Well, if you have a small buff spell like Haste, you can assume that a mage PC is going to cast this every turn on everyone, and this stacks. DnD is notorious for its small buffs, so much so that computer game versions of DnD reward running away from wizards until all their buffs wear off.

So, if you have a PC with 4-6 “good” spells of an appropriate level per day and many small buffs, you7 are going to see these characters with a list of small buff spells that they cast every round in any potentially dangerous situations so that in total, they have their whole free spell compliment as buffs on everyone all the time. Have you noticed that the Warlock has only as few very limited self-buffs?

Summon spamming is actually the least of your worries. I’m more worried by buff spamming.

-------------

This is not to say that an at-will spell-like caster is not doable. I actually have a model for it in Tome of Gears, if we can get the damn thing done.

[User3]

To balance the power of buffs, you need to have 'buff slots.' I think I've said this before, but even in an 'unlimited casting' system you can balance combat spells & buffs by giving a character 'spell slots' per round. A buff incurs an ongoing cost.

And the number doesn't need to be large, because unless you're playing a 'bonus whore' game (like D&D currently is), a character needs maybe three of four buffs at most to get all the effects neccesary to make a character fun.

There a lot of ways to do this. Diablo II gives paladins a bunch of "auras," but only lets one be used at a time. This is an extreme example. Arcanum limits the number of spells active on any character to that character's Int/4. Even D&D 3e has limited magic item slots.

A level-based or constant number would probably work best. You can give all spell (or abilities) a per-round cost, or you can just limit ongoing efects.

This basically doesn't work for 'story' spells (i.e. anything which isn't used in combat), but that's no different from the brokenness of putting combat skills and 'flavor skills' in the same pool.
Story spells probably work best 'per day' (or 'per some other large time frame'), which gives you a perfect excuse to keep Vacian casting and spell book use around. Or you can just give the caster a limited pool of story spells and leave it at that. There are very few story spells for which one can't imagine some useful combat application.

[Crissa]

You don't need buff slots - you need the stupid bonuses to be bonuses that last long enough for you to care about, and have typed results which crash into other buffs, themselves, and specifically not cancel armor or basic class abilities.

Big enough to care about but not big enough to be screwed to the ground because it's missing.

Long enough to last through the encounter it was meant for, or maybe most of the day. You expect to have a lamp last through the night.

And they shouldn't duplicate things like armor or class abilities because they should either complement or be smaller - you should be better for working with someone, not worse.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

On the subject of buffs, since that seems to be the big hot topic.

Honestly, I don't think buffs are that big a deal with infinite casting. There are number of controls that I feel can be put in place with buff spells.

First, this isn't a giant wizard spell list, and is in fact a limited list like the beguilers, meaning that direct control over the number of buffs is a rather easy task. Remmber, that this isn't the cleric list that grows with every new book produced, this is a fixed list that stays the same despite a few adaptive learning class abilities that let you add to it. That reduces the amount of buff stacking tremendously because the class designer has a much greater degree of control.

Second, long term buffs tend to rule the day anyway at higher levels, to the point where having them be free or having them be merely cheap (lets face it, a 3rd level slot is cheap for a 12th level wizard) doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference. Long term buffs just don't really work well anyway, and are the real danger in the game.

The true cost of buffing should always be a combat action cost. And when you balance from that perspective, slots dont' mean a thing. Really, as long as the cleric is wasting that 1 action every round (or 1 swift action) to cast divine favor, you don't have a problem with it. He could cast it all the time if he wants, so long as he can only cast it in combat. It isn't broken at all if you allow him to do that.

So you simply add a house rule that you can only cast buffs once in combat. We need that rule anyway to prevent crap like scry and die, because it's not like slots do a great job of preventing prebuffing anyway. So 1 round/level buffs can only be cast in combat and go away the moment combat ends. So the guy casting haste all the time or throwing divine power like there's no tomorrow isn't a big deal at all. He's paying a cost for it, it's not a slot, it's a combat action and that's far more valuable.

The real and only threat comes from long term buffs. Greater magic weapon on the whole party or always on death wards. This can be solved by just having one active spell at a time for each spell. So you can only have a single death ward up at a time. And if you cast another one, the previous one's duration expires. Or perhaps you can't benefit from free casting if you want more than one active at a time. The second and third ones cost you energy points as usual. Now, that does mean that a caster gets some free buffs he can throw around, but that's not a big deal since we control the buffs the guy has on his spell list. We can rather easily limit all classes to a small amount of buffs for low level slots.

Battlefield Control
The real problem that I'm seeing wtih this is actually not buffs, but battlefield control spells. A caster could theoretically just keep casting wall of force, wall of stone or whatever and force an enemy to a total standstill forever. That really is a problem and I can't forsee any way to stop it other than not letting battlefield control spells benefit from free casting. Throwing up a wall of stone must always cost you an energy point.

Healing

Healing spells I figure are going to be a relatively moot point due to the existence of CLW wands. Once you hit level 7, you'll get free CLW, but by then you've got wands anyway so it saves you a little bit of gold and that's it. The only difference is that at level 9, you're using CMW instead of CLW and healing slightly faster between combats. But I don't see why that's going to be all that big a deal.

Divinations

Divinations can be split into two groups. The ones that can be infinitely cast, namely the detect series, and the ones that can't, like future sight. It's probably ok if someone can free cast detect evil, paladins already do that after all. Detect magic is similarly ok, and probably detect undead as well. Detect thoughts we could probably allow as well, as it grants a save and requires concentration anyway. We may just need to throw in a provision that once a guy has saved agasint your detect thoughts, you can't force him to save again in the same day, he's immune to all subsequent castings from that caster.

Future sight divinations can't be free however, because you don't want someone casting augury or commune on every single problem they face. It's not particularly fun or good for the game.

Teleportation And movement spells

Infinite teleport actually isn't all that bad. First you won't see infinite dimension door until you can cast 7th level spells anyway, and by that time enemies need to have some teleport counter.

Flight, spider climb and other granted movement spells will be on the same "one spell active" rule that affects to buffs, and will be for all purposes treated as buff spells. In fact, because of this we may see less flying parties of adventurers.

Utility spells

Spells like knock or dispel magic pose an interesting problem. I'm not quite sure if we can get away with allowing those spells to be free, or what to do with them. What do you think?

[AlphaNerd]

Utility spells

Spells like knock or dispel magic pose an interesting problem. I'm not quite sure if we can get away with allowing those spells to be free, or what to do with them. What do you think?

In my personal opinion, we need to get rid of all the spells that duplicate skills or class features. Unfortunately, this will never happen, and it's the greatest problem with the magic system and party balance.

As for utility spells in general, I think they should always costs points, or maybe give 1/day free or something. Not infinite.

I'm also curious -- should spells scale for free? It seems to me that balancing spells in slots is a lot harder if they scale for free...

[Fwib]

For some abilities, perhaps only 1 use per encounter, and for others, like wall of stone as mentioned, have them always cost you an 'energy point' but once you are high enough, allow that you can recover a point by undoing the spell and letting the wall collapse into dust.

[RandomCasualty]

1162913265[/unixtime]]
In my personal opinion, we need to get rid of all the spells that duplicate skills or class features. Unfortunately, this will never happen, and it's the greatest problem with the magic system and party balance.

Yeah, I tend to agree.

As for utility spells in general, I think they should always costs points, or maybe give 1/day free or something. Not infinite.

Yeah, 1/day could work I suppose. Though it would require another spell list division for utility spells.

I'm also curious -- should spells scale for free? It seems to me that balancing spells in slots is a lot harder if they scale for free...

Well, damage spells scaling isn't that big of a deal. It's okay for people to have free magic missiles or fireballs at a certain level, because the spell damage caps out anyway, and a maximized fireball is better than a regular fireball anyway. So free 3rd level slots don't do much.

The real problem with spell scaling is scaling buffs. This doesn't really even have muhc to do with handing out free spells, but more to do with the spells in general. There is no reason for buffs to scale.

For some abilities, perhaps only 1 use per encounter, and for others, like wall of stone as mentioned, have them always cost you an 'energy point' but once you are high enough, allow that you can recover a point by undoing the spell and letting the wall collapse into dust.

Perhaps something like that could work. Really anything to prevent someone from constantly casting wall of force on a monster and preventing it from even moving and achieving permanent stunlock using readied actions like "when mosnter X detsroys my wall of force, I cast another."

[AlphaNerd]

Perhaps something like that could work. Really anything to prevent someone from constantly casting wall of force on a monster and preventing it from even moving and achieving permanent stunlock using readied actions like "when mosnter X detsroys my wall of force, I cast another."

Perhaps have a simple, 10 minute recharge time? And make them still cost a point?

[RandomCasualty]

1162932684[/unixtime]]
Perhaps have a simple, 10 minute recharge time? And make them still cost a point?

Yeah, recharge could work. Though the problem is that it adds more special rules to remember, I'd like to keep the class as simple as possible.

I'm thinking maybe if I just made two groups of spells on the spell list, basic and advanced. Basic spells benefit from free casting, advanced spells don't.

Considering you only get about 3-6 energy points, it would definitely curtail most spell abuses.

[User3]

1162896595[/unixtime]]
The true cost of buffing should always be a combat action cost.

The problem with D&D is that 'in combat' is not defined beyond the perspective of the character. It isn't a computer game.

IMO the slight cost of book keeping is worth not having the 'suspension of disbelief.'