Dan's ideas

[Kosga]

I will be implementing some modifications to Dave's original concept. Hopefully these changes will reduce the power creep while maintaining the free form magic that everyone has found to be both fun and dangerous. Here goes.


Spell Points:

I will be using a spell points system. Each character will have spell points equal to twice there total knowledge arcana skill.

There is also a feat that can be taken to further increase your spell points, I will detail that with the other new feats.

Each spell that is cast will cost a number of spell points equal to the spells level before casting time reduction. Example, if you were to cast a fortify intelligence spell for four points with a duration of one year you would have a spell point cost of 11.(10 base +16(4 points)=26+50(duration)=76-10=66/58=11) Even if you took all day to cast such a powerful spell(dc drops to 31) the total spell points needed to complete it would not change.

A full nights rest is required to recover any used spell points. Note if you get interrupted by combat etc you do not regain them based upon the amount of rest you actually got.


Arcane Spell Failure:

I will be using the normal spell failure rate for whatever armor type that each person is wearing.

Feats:

Blood Magic
Prerequisite: spell casting
Benefit: With this feat you can empower your magic with your own life force. For every three hit points that you expend the DC of the current spell you are casting is reduced by one. Note that if you spend all of your hit points you will become staggered right after your spell is cast. Secondly you can spend hit points in place of spell points. For every three hit points that you expend you reduce the cost of your current spell by one spell point. The maximum that you can reduce the dc of one of your spells is equal to our level.


Bonus Magic:
Prerequisite: none
Benefit: you gain one additional spell seed available to you. This spell can be taken as new magic or used to specialize in a spell you already have. All normal time to learn this additional spell is still needed. If you do not cast magic and take this feat if gives you the ability to cast one spell seed. Though you must still have the appropriate skills to cast with.(wording?)
This feat may be taken multiple times,

Magical Endurance:
Prerequisite: spell casting
Benefit: You gain ten additional spell points.
This feat may be taken multiple times.

Magical study
Prerequisite: wizard, cleric, druid, sorcerer
Benefit: You gain an additional one times multiplier when determining your spell points.

Scholarly study
Prerequisite: none
Benefit: You gain additional class skills equal to one plus your intelligence modifier.
This feat does not grant any additional skill points. This feat may be taken multiple times, selecting new skills each time. Note when determining your intelligence modifier any bonus that is not inherent does not apply.(wording?)

Classes:

Fighter:

Battlefield Awareness at level one the fighter gains a plus one to their awareness skill. At level two, four, six etc the fighter gains a bonus of plus one to his initiative.

Paladin

A Paladin gains all class ability's as normal.
A paladin must select a god and maintain his alignment within one step of their gods.

Ranger:

A Ranger gains all class ability's as normal.
A Rangers spell points are equal to his knowledge religion skill.
A ranger paladin gains additional spell points as his religion skill increases or by feats.

Rogue
A rogue gains all class ability's as normal
A rogue gains the assassinate ability.(see Dave for more details)

Wizard
A wizard gains all class ability's as normal.
A wizard gains one extra spell point per level
A wizard has spell points equal to twice his knowledge arcana skill.
As long as you have a magic seed available to learn when you level up as a wizard you spend only five days to learn it.


Cleric
A cleric gains all class ability's as normal.
A cleric is the only class that has access to the heal seed.
A cleric must select a god and maintain his alignment within one step of the gods.
A clerics spell points are equal to twice his knowledge religion skill.

Barbarian:
A barbarian gains all class ability's as normal.

Bard:
A bard gains all class ability's as normal.
A bards spell points are equal to his knowledge arcana skill

Monk:
A monk gains all class ability's as normal.
(suggestions)

Sorcerer:
All normal class ability's.
A sorcerer has spell points equal to three times there knowledge arcana.
A sorcerer learns their spells faster than any other class. They only spends two days time to learn a new seed.
A sorcerer's has learned how to harness the power of the weave in such a way that he suffers much less magical backlash for the use of his powers. Starting at level one the sorcerer reduces the backlash damage he would take by one. This reduction increases by one every three levels after that.




SPELLS

Heal
The heal spell will now be an exclusive spell for clerics.

Energy
Energy will grant a reflex save for half damage.

Fortify
Fortify can only be cast up to the caster level of the person casting.

The person receiving the benefit of a fortify spell cannot benefit more than there own character level.
Thus a level three fighter cannot gain a plus four to his strength from the fourth level wizard.

Inflict:
Prerequisite: Heal
Cast time: standard
Base DC: 10
Spell Resistance: yes
Save: Will for half. Special
Backlash: Special

The cleric can attempt to use there vast knowledge of healing to inflict great harm or even death upon the unsuspecting foe. The base DC for such an attempt is ten for there caster level in damage. For each additional point of damage that the caster wishes to inflict the Dc is increased by two.
Using this spell is especially dangerous. For if your designated target (or targets in case of a burst) make a successful will save, through the force of there will to live, they push back upon you part of the harmful effects that you are sending them. Half of the damage that the cast then goes to the target, the other half goes to the caster.(in case of an odd number in damage the caster takes the higher amount)
This does not impart them with the knowledge of whom is attempting to hurt them.

[DM Quietus]

On the subject of class training.. I'm not going to comment on that, as it's more complicated than I care to think about right now. I would recommend going through and asking yourself why someone would take that training, though, in many cases. I would prefer to simply have players take classes as normal, and spellcasting classes get their seeds 1/level, while mundane classes need to take feats for them. But that's just me.

Blood magic - the way it's laid out, if you put yourself into unconsciousness from using this, you *will* die unless you're stupid lucky with dice. I personally don't have a problem with that, but it depends on what sort of lethality you're going for.

Bonus magic - this seems fine. Feats, on the whole, are relatively rare. Spending one for a seed isn't unreasonable.

Magical Endurance - I assume this is 10 extra points per day?

Magical Study - At level 6 or higher, this is immeasurably more useful than Magical Endurance. The only benefit Magical Endurance has over this by mid levels is the ability to be taken more than once.

Spell points in general - at low levels this works alright, with 8 level 1 spells a day. By level 5, you're only able to cast 5 level 3 spells per day. Going this route is going to have casters burning out earlier and earlier the higher level they reach. Either you need to increase the amount of spell points they get, or... I don't know. But doing it this way means you'll never want to cast high level spells, or you'll be out of spell points almost immediately. The problem with implementing spell points on Dave's system is that his spells are much weaker than typical spells of their level, in exchange for being at-will. What exactly is your aim with these changes?

[DM-Delfon]

I partially agree with Ed on the class training. I like the simplicity of not remaking the wheel, however balance is still an issue. A great many of the classes get spells, which would normally be balanced by what spells they have access to. Bards for instance are able to cast from first level onward, so they would get 1 seed/level, but that would make them as powerful as a wizard in a game system that allows infinite casting.

The spell points system works for balance with a bit of tweaking here and there to be hammered out later after some play testing. I do like the non-caster classes having to use their cross class skill points to get spell points, and having to spend a feat to become a better caster.

Blood magic - We could simply say that you can't cast a spell in which you would bleed yourself to 0 or less HP. I can't see anyone wanting to use blood magic to drop themselves, but if they were hit in the process of casting and took damage it could lead to annoying crap.

I would say you put your blood in at the last moment, and as such the spell can go off even if you drop after. That would allow a cleric to tend to the party while dropping himself - very heroic.

So in summery, either don't allow blood magic to drop you at all, or let the spell go off even if the caster drops after casting.

Magical Endurance - yes Ed it's 10 points/day.

Magical Study - I would make this feat only available to the full casting classes, this is one of the reasons you would become a wizard in the first place.

I think the spell points system will work just fine based on the game I ran, it was rare indeed for a PC to cast a level 3+ spell. Mostly because they were constantly afraid of the dangers of casting.

This is where I talk about Over channeling. Basically, if you're out of spell points, you can continue to cast spells by making a concentration check which gets progressively harder. Base DC 15 +5/level of spell getting cast. (So 0-15, 1-20, 2-25, 3-30 etc.) If you fail the concentration check, the spell fails, and you must make a fortitude save base DC 10 + 10/level of spell getting cast. (So 0-10, 1-20, 2-30, 3-40) Both the Concentration check, and the fortitude save go up by 1 for every time the caster attempts to over channel without a full rest.

It's important to note the degree of failure on the fortitude save. For every 5 you fail by, you get progressively worse penalties, up to and including loosing the ability to cast spells at all, and potentially death.

1-5: The caster suffers from a sever headache and overwhelming fatigue. As a result, they suffer from a -1 penalty all all rolls except damage. The caster recovers after a full rest.

6-10: The caster suffers from a sever headache and overwhelming fatigue. As a result, they suffer from a -2 penalty all all rolls except damage, take 1d6 damage, and cannot attempt to over channel again until rested. The caster recovers after a full rest.

11-15: The caster suffers from a sever headache and overwhelming fatigue. As a result, they suffer from a -3 penalty all all rolls except damage, take 3d6 damage, and cannot cast spells for 24 hours. The headache, fatigue, and -3 penalty are recovered after a full rest.

16-20: The caster suffers from a sever headache and overwhelming fatigue. As a result, they suffer from a -5 penalty all all rolls except damage, take 5d6 damage, and cannot cast spells for a week. The headache, fatigue, and -5 penalty are recovered after a full rest.

21+: The caster suffers from a sever headache and overwhelming fatigue. As a result, they suffer from a -10 penalty all all rolls except damage, take 10d6 damage, and can no longer cast spells at all. The headache, fatigue, and -10 penalty are recovered after a full rest. The ability to cast spells is permanently lost to the caster.

[DM Quietus]

You could easily enough restrict Magical Study to accomplished casters, just slap a caster level requirement on it. As far as bards go, you could limit their casting by either making every other spell seed choice part of a list - possibly containing enchantment, illusion, etc - or instead, just give them a seed two out of every three levels. Say at level 2, 3, 5, 6, etc; It keeps the reduced casting, while giving primary casting classes the edge. Classes like Paladin and Ranger could get one seed every two levels, starting at 4th.

Alternative take on the Wizard - taking the above Bardic progression, you could take the levels the Bard would skip a seed at, and make all wizards specialists. Then each level the bard would skip, the Transmuter gets the Transmute seed, or a rank of specialization in it. Just throwing that out there.

[Kosga]

I have updated my origional post to reflect the changed that Dave and I have agreed upon.

[DM-Delfon]

Bonus Magic needs to be able to be taken by anyone, not just spellcasters. Otherwise, non-spellcasters can never take a new spell seed to become a spellcaster.

Fighter battle awareness should improve by level. Init bonus should improve by some multiple of levels, every 3-4 or so.

Rogue's still have training costs listed.

Redundant stuff needs removal. If something is the same as the book, it does't need to be listed here.

Do sorcerers get the same stuff as wizards? Learning a spell should take say half as long for a wizard, instead of 10 days, it's only 5.

[Kosga]

Bonus Magic needs to be able to be taken by anyone, not just spellcasters. Otherwise, non-spellcasters can never take a new spell seed to become a spellcaster.(updated)

Fighter battle awareness should improve by level. Init bonus should improve by some multiple of levels, every 3-4 or so.(updated)

Rogue's still have training costs listed.(fixed)

Redundant stuff needs removal. If something is the same as the book, it does't need to be listed here.(fixed)

Do sorcerers get the same stuff as wizards? Learning a spell should take say half as long for a wizard, instead of 10 days, it's only 5. (working on it)

[DM Quietus]

In this system you should either limit the Wizard somehow (see : Specialist wizard ideas above), or make them synonymous with Sorcerers. Alternatively, give Sorcerers some kind of class feature. If you give the Wizard a boost without limiting them in some way, then you're basically outright saying "Wizard is the superior class, Sorcerers are only special because of their name", which isn't okay from a game design perspective. Yes, I understand Wizards did this; that's largely because the person who designed Sorcerers was a Wizard fan and didn't believe in spontaneous casting, so he purposefully gimped the Sorcerer class. Don't make the same mistake.

[DM-Delfon]

Thus my: "Do sorcerers get the same stuff as wizards?"

[Kosga]

that's largely because the person who designed Sorcerers was a Wizard fan and didn't believe in spontaneous casting, so he purposefully gimped the Sorcerer class.

I completely agree. I want both classes to be completely functional independently of each other. I have added to the post some ideas for the sorcerer class. I added a new feat and altered one a little bit.

[DM-Delfon]

Me thinks Dan has given up on updating this thread. It had promise, but needs a lot of work and play testing yet.