Spells as weapons.

[User3]

Everyone knows that there are very few feats that make a wizards or Sorc a more meaningful caster.

But what if we let the fighting feats apply to spellcasting?

For example:
--Spring attack for the the cast and hide caster(any spell).
--Power Attack for the Ray caster(attack roll spells)
--Whirlwind Attacks for the Cone blaster?(caster source blasting spells)

[MrWaeseL]

Meh. Casters need to qualify first (which is a pain for whirlwind attack), and then you have a crappy feat. (Power attack with low bab? Spring attack period?)

[Sma]

I could see Spring attack having a certain appeal (leave Prismatic Sphere Blast, return to safety), but as Waesel said Power attack and low BAB don´t mix, and while a whirlwind cone of cold might be impressive once in a while the fact that you´re party is probably going to eat it too, makes this useful in too few situations to waste a couple of feats on it.

So this probably won´t break the game, but would in all probability take it´s place on the high shelf where toughness and skill focus get banished.

There is a distinct lack of interesting caster feats IMHO. The Metamagic feats are mostly useless, and Spell Focus/Penetration is about as interesting as Weapon Focus.

Feats like Energy Subsutitution which actually do something to your spells are few and far between.

Sma

[Username17]

People seem comfortable with a different power level for feats and spells. And the power level people get all crazy if you don't have is that spells are bigger and feats are smaller.

Which is straight up bullshit. But as long as people are going to be like that, I suggest that we give up on feats altogether as a noble experiment and simply give everyone access to spells. "Spells" where you can attack everyone around you with your sword, "spells" where you get bonuses to attacks all day, the whole thing.

The only way we seem to be able to get a balance between spels and feats is to simply fold one into the other. As is people throw an absolute fit if you even begin to suggest that maybe getting Power Critical should be nearly as good as having three fifth level spell slots just because both of them are available as a single level's worth of class features.

-Username17

[Sma]

Let´s not call them spells at all. We could call the Abilities (innovative, eh ?). Group them into a couple off different ranked lists, where you have to take a certain amount of low level ranks before you can access the higher ones.

Taking your point about costs and drain form another thread, what kind of of drain system would be most appropriate for D20 ?

Hitpoint damage akin to Earthdawns strain ?
Probably good for the combat abilities, low hitpoints would encourage the careful use by weakened or low HP characters.

Status effects ?
Use fireball power and end up dazed ?

A combination thereof ?
And most importantly, would there be away to quicky implement this without throwing most of the existing material overboard ?

Sma

[Username17]

Let´s not call them spells at all. We could call the Abilities (innovative, eh ?). Group them into a couple off different ranked lists, where you have to take a certain amount of low level ranks before you can access the higher ones.

That's a good start. A thing I'm working on with Paul S. involves going completely skill based, and then having abilities of all types be learnable kind of like D&D wizard spells if you meet the skill prereqs and either gain access to them in play (such as by finding a teacher or a spellbook), or by taking extra time to research them yourself.

The major dividing line, therefore, is between permanent changes to yourself and the acquisition of new available actions. Permanent changes don't cause drain and are on all the time - and take longer to learn and have higher skill requirements than actions.

So you can learn the spell "Fire Aura", or you can just "learn" having a Fire Aura all the time. The first drains you and has a limited duration when used, the second is more annoying when wandering through caligraphy shops, has higher prereqs, and takes longer to master.

It's a magical world, I don't see why gaining a couple extra arms isn't something that you could just learn.

---

From a game balance standpoint, game balance is never ever going to work if some people only ever gain new abilties when they go up in level and some people gain new abilties just by visiting a library for a few days. The only solution is either to have noone gain abilities except through level gain, or to switch everything over to the model presented by Wizardous Spell Acquisition.

So then we note that only one of those allows us to model people being able to be taught how to prepare the nardoo fern without death by beri beri, and then we make Whirlwind Attack by gainable in the same way as Fireball is - assuming you meet the prereqs for it.

Taking your point about costs and drain form another thread, what kind of of drain system would be most appropriate for D20 ?

We are switching damage over to static damage levels with soak rolls, and drain is going to cause fatigue - a separate tally of damage levels which cause penalties to accumulate and eventually make you pass out (but don't kill you under any circumstances).

With straight D&D you'd probably want to make it special stacking penalty that applied to most things you were going to do - including your spell penetration and save DCs.

And most importantly, would there be away to quicky implement this without throwing most of the existing material overboard ?

You could do it something like this:

After casting any spell, make a Will Save with a DC of 13 + 2x Spell level (or some such number). For every two points you fail the Will Save by, you take a -1 penalty to all attack rolls, skill rolls, spell penetration checks, and save DCs for 1 minute per level of the spell (minimum five rounds).

Or you could just Daze people for one round if they use a spell which wasn't available 4 levels ago - but that involves believing that a 7th level spell is powerful and a 5th level spell isn't - and that's absurd.

Then you'd need to dump all the spells that give long duration benefits and rework them so that they have the same cost/benefit ratio as class based benefits - but you have to do that anyway. Then you'd have to switch Druids, Clerics, and Bards over to a Wizard-like spell acquisition system (you have to do that anyway), and then the spontanaity of the new Wizard would leave the Sorcerer completely redundant and you could drop it altogether.

-Username17

[MrWaeseL]

I like the idea, but combined with making every possible class combination balanced is a heck of a lot of work.

[Naar]

Your ideas remind me of Talislanta's system, Frank. Are you using that as inspiration?

[Sir Neil]

Then you'd have to switch Druids, Clerics, and Bards over to a Wizard-like spell acquisition system (you have to do that anyway), and then the spontanaity of the new Wizard would leave the Sorcerer completely redundant and you could drop it altogether.

I did that. I switched Paladins and Rangers, too. They don't have a lot of spells to choose from, so I also let 'em pick from the cleric or druid list, respectively.

Clerics are a bit weaker, since on odd levels they only get their domain spells automatically, while Wizards and Bards can select from the Clr, Drd, and Wiz lists.

Just tinkering while I'm between campaigns...

[Username17]

Your ideas remind me of Talislanta's system, Frank. Are you using that as inspiration?

Nope. Maybe I should read it. Actually, this is a combination of D20, Shadowrun, and Champions.

Shadowrun's damage system is absolutely brilliant, but their basic resolution system is intractible. D&D's basic resolution system is genius, but their damage system is retarded. By taking the D20 resolution and slapping it onto the Shadowrun damage engine, you can have something which is simple to use and allows an easy scaling all the way from chipmunks to walking mountains.

You roll to hit, adding an attack bonus and looking for a DC. Then if you hit, you add +1 to your damage DC for every 2 points you hit by. Then your victim rolls a damage soak against your damage value, and takes more damage the more they fail by. Thus you can stab someone with a sword, cast an evil spell on them, whatever, and do it all with two rolls of a d20, instead of rolling various attack rolls, piles of polyhedral dice, spell resistance rolls, and saving throws. Further, since each player involved rolls one of the dice, it "feels" more involving than a D&D attack roll, where you either get your head cut off or not based on some dice rolls which you may not even see.

This way everyone gets to have the same number of hit points, and people are still variously tough. Since the D20 can be scaled infinitely in both directions, a couple of chipmunks fighting can use the same mechanic and not be at all weird - both the chipmunk soak and the chipmunk damage value are at heavy penalties - and when the chipmunk gets a -17 when looking for a -12 that's the same relative effect as when the unicorn gets hit by a lance and gets a 21 looking for a 26. And so on forever in both directions, so you don't need funky rules for very small or very big things (as both Shadowrun and D&D do).

The basic idea of setting all abilities to the same scale and just worrying about them in the abstract before you even care what the special effects are is all Champions. A wonderful game, but while they try to claim that it's applicable to Sword and Sorcery stuff - they are either confused or lying, because it totally isn't. The game completely breaks down outside the superhero genre for a number of reasons (most notably because human strength is lumped into one number which is "human strength" - but also because damage is basically only appliccable in the comic book scale). By retooling the abilities onto the human scale, and then allowing the damage to be variant across all scales, then the game can hopefully so fantasy better.

-Username17