Troll Lord Games

I was thinking of re-tooling my house rules (again) and was thinking of not requiring spell casters to prepare spells. They would still only be able to cast a maximum number of spells per their level according to the PHB. However, wizards and illusionists would still need to keep a spellbook.

Does anyone have experience with running thir games this way? How did it work out for you?

R-
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Rigon o' the Lakelands, Baron of The Castles & Crusades Society
The Book of the Mind

It sounds like you're trying to make a C&C version of the v3.x Sorcerer class. They're fun characters to play. Are you looking at just arcane spells?

Rigon wrote:
Does anyone have experience with running thir games this way? How did it work out for you?

R-

Been doing it that way since 1984. Nary a problem.

Course, we used spell points as well.
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Peter Bradley

Sir Osis of Liver wrote:
It sounds like you're trying to make a C&C version of the v3.x Sorcerer class. They're fun characters to play. Are you looking at just arcane spells?

No both classes. Wizards and illusionist would keep and acquire their spells just as described in the PHB, but have more options when it comes to casting. The same with clerics and druids. I've used this before for clerics and druids and it seemed to work out fine, but wasn't sure how it would work with arcane csaters. They still have to go by the charts for how many spells they can cast per day, much like spell points, but I think this will be easier to track.

Examples:

A 5th level wizard/illusionist with an 18 Int would have 5 0 level spells, 5 1st level spells, 3 2nd level spells, and 2 3rd level spells to cast per day, but would be able to cast any spell that is in his spellbook.

A 5th level cleric/druid with an 18 Wis would have 4 0 level spells, 4 1st level spells, 3 2nd level spells, and 2 3rd level spells to cast per day, but would be able to cast any spell from his class spell list.

They would still need to rest and meditate/pray for 8hours perday to regain any spent slots.

R-
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Rigon o' the Lakelands, Baron of The Castles & Crusades Society
The Book of the Mind

Rigon wrote:
They would still need to rest and meditate/pray for 8hours perday to regain any spent slots.

So, you could say the arcane casters are spending the time studying their entire spellbook rather than a day's chosen specific spells. Then they could cast whatever they "know", as long as there is an unused slot.

Of course, if they lose their book they can't study, same as always.

DougP wrote:
So, you could say the arcane casters are spending the time studying their entire spellbook rather than a day's chosen specific spells. Then they could cast whatever they "know", as long as there is an unused slot.

Of course, if they lose their book they can't study, same as always.

That's it. I was also thinking of making them have some kind of focus required to use their spells. Wizards would need a staff, clerics need their holy symbols, etc. Without which, they couldn't cast spells.

R-
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Rigon o' the Lakelands, Baron of The Castles & Crusades Society
The Book of the Mind

It makes spellcasters very flexible, but only as regards what they already know... so, there is some control still.
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Serl's Corner

Thanks guys, I think I'm gonna go a head and incorporate this into my new house rules changes.

R-
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Rigon o' the Lakelands, Baron of The Castles & Crusades Society
The Book of the Mind

There was a thread recently about "unlimited spells" that I quite liked.

...

of course I can't find it.

sorry

I would suggest, as briefly mentioned, that control over what spells become available is maintained... with this amount of pick-and-choose, it can quickly devolve into spellcasters being much too effective in every situation; one of their only limitations is they have to (under the normal rules), decide what they will adventure with and if they happen to have the wrong spell at the wrong time, then they are "screwed." In some ways, this removes that... so, I would caution that you do not also allow them complete access to the entire spell list. And, you have not.
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Serl's Corner

One way to place some limits on the spells, would be allowing them to cast any spell they have time to study. So if it takes 15 minutes per lvl of a spell to memorize and they have a large amount of spells in their book, it might take them most of a day to place each into their memory. This way if the player is being chased, or otherwise cannot find time to study their number of spontaneously cast spells would drop, but if they have a day to spend lounging at the local inn, they'll have their full complement of spells available.

Not sure how this would work in practice, but it would open up the arcane casters options as you are thinking of, but still place some interesting gameplay limits so the arcane casters can't get too powerful.
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Rigon wrote:
I was thinking of re-tooling my house rules (again) and was thinking of not requiring spell casters to prepare spells. They would still only be able to cast a maximum number of spells per their level according to the PHB. However, wizards and illusionists would still need to keep a spellbook.

Does anyone have experience with running thir games this way? How did it work out for you?

R-

Here is a potential issue, Rigon

One way to think of mage spells is that some are useful in many general dungeoneering occasions (sleep, invisibility, fireball) while others only seem to be really valuable in certain situations(feather fall, or protection from arrows). Quite logically, this leads mages to concentrate their memorizations in the former group. Often, they find themselves "making do" in various unforeseen situations with these generally applicable spells.

But under the proposed rule, those "valuable on rare occasion" spells come more to the fore. These are valuable spells, but few wizards will choose those for a day of dungeon delving in preference of sleep and invisibility, or shield and mirror image, or other more regularly used spells in the 9-5 horror we call dungeon delving

Your wizards can comfortably know they have the sleeps and invisibilities to protect their hide on most occasions _and_ if the vagaries of dungeon exploration prove other than they expected, they can pull out that life saving feather fall, or protection from arrows, or comprehend languages that they might not normally memorize

As others have mentioned, the DM still has some control, since he controls what spells they can add to their spellbooks, but over time it will probably lead to a power up for mages

None of it sounds wildly out of whack, by any means, but it probably will make mages' effectiveness increase noticeably.

I guess it all rests on how smart the players are who play mages in your game
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Aramis wrote:
Here is a potential issue, Rigon

One way to think of mage spells is that some are useful in many general dungeoneering occasions (sleep, invisibility, fireball) while others only seem to be really valuable in certain situations(feather fall, or protection from arrows). Quite logically, this leads mages to concentrate their memorizations in the former group. Often, they find themselves "making do" in various unforeseen situations with these generally applicable spells.

But under the proposed rule, those "valuable on rare occasion" spells come more to the fore. These are valuable spells, but few wizards will choose those for a day of dungeon delving in preference of sleep and invisibility, or shield and mirror image, or other more regularly used spells in the 9-5 horror we call dungeon delving

Your wizards can comfortably know they have the sleeps and invisibilities to protect their hide on most occasions _and_ if the vagaries of dungeon exploration prove other than they expected, they can pull out that life saving feather fall, or protection from arrows, or comprehend languages that they might not normally memorize

As others have mentioned, the DM still has some control, since he controls what spells they can add to their spellbooks, but over time it will probably lead to a power up for mages

None of it sounds wildly out of whack, by any means, but it probably will make mages' effectiveness increase noticeably.

I guess it all rests on how smart the players are who play mages in your game

I'm not to worried about you Aramis.
Seriously, with a little tighter control over what spells are available for arcane casters, I don't see this becoming a big problem. As for divine casters, it wasn't a problem as I recall.

And, yes I am trying to make arcane casters a bit more effective, especially at lower levels.

R-
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Rigon o' the Lakelands, Baron of The Castles & Crusades Society
The Book of the Mind

Wasn't another similar idea to allow any spell within their spellbook be cast as a 'ritual' with a much longer casting time? Any caster can replace a memorized spell with a "from the book" or ritually cast spell, with a casting time of ???? (15 minutes + 5 minutes/spell level?) Or 'ritual' casting doesn't replace a memorized spell, but takes a LONG time to cast.... And needs a SIEGE check....

HMb has a spell-point system where 'prepared' spells have a lower Spell-Point cost relative to non-prepared spells.

here is what i do as regards to arcane casters

Pretty much just as you described. Arcane casters can cast any spell in their spellbook as long as they have the spell slot ie spells per day. They are limited to that spells per day list and what is in their spellbook. In the end does it power creep arcane casters a bit? probably but so far I have never seen it or allowed it to get out of hand. I also allow slot trading for all casters two for one down three for one up so if they just HAVE to have that last big hit spell they can get it. Or they need that first level spell to get a job done they can get that too. What this has done is allow the casters to have an impact in dramatic situations and has allowed them to save the day on more than one occasion.

Not every will agree with allowing that but I have never had a problem with overpowered casters since I started using it in the late 80s.

Thanks everyone, you've all been a big help in allaying my worries over insituting this new house rule.

R-
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Rigon o' the Lakelands, Baron of The Castles & Crusades Society
The Book of the Mind

*presto* Thread resurrection!

How has your decision to allow casters to choose to cast whatever spells they know worked out, Rigon?

I'm toying with doing something similar.

I recently gave a player in my game a set of magic earrings which allow him to use any spell in the PHB without needing to prepare it, assuming he is capable of casting the spell. He is a cleric, and a wizard, so there is considerable potential for abuse. However, I have discovered that it really does not matter. He still has his maximum slots available and he has to know when to use what... it is powerful as hell, but so far, he has not been unstoppable. That may change if he ever gets the highest level spells (currently, he only has up to 3rd level.) I figure I do the same thing with the NPCs. Also, I no longer have to care what spells are on a scroll. I hate that time consuming boring roll three million times.

Geleg wrote:*presto* Thread resurrection!

How has your decision to allow casters to choose to cast whatever spells they know worked out, Rigon?

I'm toying with doing something similar.

I actually never used it. But I still don't think it would be too much of a hassle with tighter control of spell selection.
R-

maybe... give the arcane casters the flexibility you describe but use the cleric spell progression...
?
otherwise, sounds fine. IMO

We used spell slots for several years in AD&D, and it's my preferred approach (although I never came up with a good in-game reason why magic works that way). I like seeing those rarely memorized spells get used, and it allows the clerics to avoid evil looks for not loading up on healing.

We had two mages who worked together in acquiring spells, so even with spells being closely guarded secrets, a limit on the number of spells a character can know, and a relatively high chance of failing to learn a given spell, they had pretty impressive spellbooks. And of course the druid had full access to his lists. Despite that, they didn't seem to overwhelm things. It made them handier, but not necessarily more powerful. Think of it this way: every time they do something handy, that's one less slot that can be used to do something powerful. (And if you have a character with "Ooh, I have a spell for that syndrome," he's sure to be chronically short on mojo.)

Here's what I think I'm going to do:

New House Rule: Wizard Spell Substitution
A Wizard or Illusionist must still prepare spells each day per the Player’s Handbook. But such characters may attempt to substitute a known, but unprepared spell, for one of the prepared ones according to the following system: the character must make an INT check, modified positively by the caster’s level and negatively by the level of the spell. If the check fails, the substitution is impossible at that moment. Characters may only try to substitute for a specific spell once per hour.

Example: Cleopatra the Enchanter (3rd level, 17 INT) has memorized Rope Trick as her sole 2nd level spell when her party comes across an invisible enemy. Since she has See Invisibility in her spell book, she attempts to substitute See Invisibility for the prepared Rope Trick. She must make an INT check to see if it is possible (d20+2[INT]+3[character level]-2[spell level]). If successful, Rope Trick is wiped from her memory and See Invisibility goes off. If she fails, she cannot try to substitute for Rope Trick for another hour. She could also have tried to substitute a lower level spell if she so wished. For example, if she tried to substitute Magic Missile (level 1 spell) for the Rope Trick, her modifiers would have looked like this: d20+2+3-1. She thus has a better chance of substituting with a lower-level spell.

Ooh, now at first blush, I really like this approach. While not as flexible as straight spell slots it still allows a chance to pull the rabbit out of the hat - say, when being pursued and a Hold Portal would be really, really handy...

What about tweaking it by allowing repeated attempts, but with an additional -1 penalty for each substitution attempt (failed or otherwise) within some time period?

nice suggestions, CKdad.

I agree with you that the weak link in this house rule so far is how to adjudge repeated efforts to substitute for a spell. I'll confess I haven't thought this through fully. Part of me would like to impose different restrictions for different contexts: i.e., in combat one can only make one effort to recall a particular spell per combat; but outside of combat, maybe a pure spell slot system makes more sense.

I dunno. I'm still thinking about it ...

jaguar451 wrote:
Wasn't another similar idea to allow any spell within their spellbook be cast as a 'ritual' with a much longer casting time? Any caster can replace a memorized spell with a "from the book" or ritually cast spell, with a casting time of ???? (15 minutes + 5 minutes/spell level?) Or 'ritual' casting doesn't replace a memorized spell, but takes a LONG time to cast.... And needs a SIEGE check....

HMb has a spell-point system where 'prepared' spells have a lower Spell-Point cost relative to non-prepared spells.

I'm kind of with Jaguar451 on this one. A wizard/illusionist type chooses which spell they'll study for that day based on how many spell slots they have. If, in the middle of a situation, they absolutely decided they need to cast another spell they haven't memorized, they can always pull out their trusty spell book and use that, by reading from it. It will take twice as long for the casting time, in addition to a round to access their backpack/bag for their spell book and find the spell. So right off the bat that's 3 rounds just to get a spell off.

Besides the time of casting/getting the spell book the other secondary effect is to treat that casting of a spell from a spell book like a scroll. Yeah they use it, but the spell disappears. So yeah, the can do it, but do they really, really want to do that? If the situation is that dire it can be quite heroic, but at a cost.

Of course you could always be a bit more gentle and say, that it simply costs two spell slots or none at all and the time in casting is the only penalty.