Alternate Spell Points Plan

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 12:27 am

There have been a few threads recently in IMHO about points based casting systems and how they’re either awesome or shitty, depending on the speaker. Rather than rehash those here, I’m going to try my hand at making one that works significantly better than the setups we’ve got now. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

You have 32 spell / power / martial / whatever points. You add your relevant stat mod to that pool. There may be a feat with an ability named “The Ultimate Answer” that boosts your base to 42, but otherwise that’s it. This number does not change as you level.

You prepare spells like a wizard of your level, or like a specialist if you want to go that route. Prepared spells do not correspond to the number of spells you can cast in a day; they are only the effects that you could cast during the day with your available points. It still takes you an hour to prepare your spells, but after that you have them prepared until you feel like preparing something else.

Ok, here’s where things get different. Since I'm not scaling the size of the pool, I’m going to scale the cost of the spells as you level.

Code: Select all

Char     Cost to Cast a Spell of Level X
Level    0    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9
1        4    8
2        3    6
3        2    4    8
4        2    3    6
5        1    2    4    8
6        1    2    3    6
7        0    1    2    4    8
8        0    1    2    3    6
9        0*   0    1    2    4    8
10       0*   0    1    2    3    6
11       0*   0*   0    1    2    4    8
12       0*   0*   0    1    2    3    6
etc...

If there’s no number, you can’t cast it. If the cost is 0, you can really cast it all day long and I don’t care. If the cost is 0* you can cast it with a reduced action even: round -> standard, standard -> swift, swift -> immediate. Metamagic feats work like before (no idea how the metapsionic stuff worked, so I make no claims to its affectedness), just figure out the new spell level and pay the appropriate cost, and you don’t spend any extra time or actions doing it.

At this point I’ve got a couple of options. I’m actually pretty tempted to make spells themselves not scale at all, locking them at a CL = (2x spell level +2) effect, so that instead of paying the same cost for a slightly scaling benefit as you level like the old system, you pay less and less cost for exactly the same benefit. It helps justify the costs of higher level spells when the rules enforce different scales of spell effects, so while you could get more done with 2 castings of a lower level spell for the same cost, it would also take you twice as long. The choice between casting fewer good things or more ok things works to keep the tactical choices real, and removes the incentive to just auto-cast your big multi-purpose thing.

I could also auto-scale spell DC and make it more like an SLA, tying it to ½ CL instead of spell level, and rely on crappy effect instead of crappy saves to keep people casting their level appropriate stuff. I’m sorta inclined to do this as a way to keep the more vs. faster choice as the primary tactical concern.

I’m not totally sold on this setup, and wouldn’t be surprised if there were huge gaping issues with it. I think this gets around a couple of the old problems though. The old linear power growth is not how the game is setup, and linear costs for exponential effects do not work. Exponential costs do work, but involve subtracting larger and larger numbers, and people are bad at that. But exponentially decreasing costs from a small fixed pool for specific effects might be enough to get around those issues. It also addresses the auto-spam issues somewhat by providing the option to change your lineup, and by making the greater total effect gained by actually casting more of the lower level stuff, as long as you’ve got the time to spare for it.

I look forward to finding out where this is broken

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 12:37 am

Someone else came up with a similar system to replace spell points which I edited a bit that I think works out really well. It's really easy to read and understand and I think has a lot of desirable properties. Everybody I showed it to seemed to like it, so maybe you guys will too:

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Mana-Based ... iant_Rule)

Key differences: Your spell point pool is your base stat (not modifier), and gets an adder based on your level. Just like this system, spell cost goes down with level instead of higher-level spells just costing more. This combined with the pool of spell points that does not appreciably get larger mostly solves the problem of removing that thing where people sacrifice their low-level spell slots to cast more high-level spells.

I have not implemented any reduced casting times, as I feel that's better left to metamagic feats of the like we have seen posted 'round these parts.

I dislike the idea of capping caster levels and/or making it like psionics in any way where you have to shell out more points for more effect. Sure you get cheap lower-level spells, but that's hardly Christmas -- the regular wizard gets them alreay.

I consider myself a learned man, and I really have no idea what you're talking about with the exponential vs linear thing from a small pool...could you clarify that some more?

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 1:37 am

Sure Surgo. I'm sure lots of this will be old hat, but I'm not sure where the exact disconnect is so I'll babble for a bit.

The thing where 1 point always buys you exactly the same amount of stuff (whatever it is) is linear growth. Psionics that you have to augment have some starting point (base cost) and then grow linearly. That base + linear growth cost eventually matches up with the base cost of a higher level power that is better, in many or even all ways, than your augmented lower level power for the same cost as your linearly grown lower level power. Which is because spell / power / ability levels grow non-linearly, and a level 5 thing is better than a level 4 thing + a level 1 thing, or a level 2 thing + a level 3 thing, or any combination of things adding up to a level 5 thing. I'm aware that these costs don't exactly add up in 3.x psionics, but even if you include the extra points as augments you're still better off just doing the big one (in general, arguments that specific situations will cause you to do other things not withstanding).

In the much maligned vancian system, you're actually spending resources of decreasing value on your lower level stuff, so the fact that it doesn't keep up is less of a big deal. But it's only 2 points difference between power levels in the old points system, those 2 points come from the same pool of stuff and never decrease in value, and you can either use them to boost a lower level ability to meh or generate a good one. You're running up against an issue where 1) power level effects advance more quickly than the costs for them do and 2) augmenting costs are greater than just increasing power level costs, since you have to spend more of them to get the same level of effect. So you can either spend those 2 points for approx 50% improvement overall (next level of power), or for a couple of extra steps in the lower level ability (that probably don't add up to an approx. 50% overall improvement).

So that's what I meant by linear pricing of exponential effects. You could totally do a system where you did exponential pricing of these effects, like each power cost 2^(power level) in points or whatever, and also charged increasing costs for augmenting higher level powers (1 point per step per power level or something) so that lower level powers augmented still cost less than higher level powers. You just get really big numbers in your pool and have to ask people to subtract complicated numbers from it. But it would work and avoid the cost crossing issues.

So instead I'm doing a semi-exponentially decreasing cost setup, so that lower level things regularly cost less than their higher level counterparts. The capping wouldn't be a psionic thing where you had to shell out more points for more effect, it would be a thing where that is the effect and you had to apply metamagic to the spell if you wanted more effect. Which does cost more, but it's at least possible to make that work in a non-linear way and keep up like it's supposed to. Sucks to use blasting as an example, but it's easiest. Empower boosts numeric stuff by 50%, and would cost you some variable amount based on what you were paying for the base spell. For the lower level spells, 50% increase is just die or two, but for mid level ones it's a few more. You get more out of it based on the spell that you apply it to, for the same relative cost. Yay exponential growth!

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 2:42 am

The problem with exponential costing is that using a higher-level power requires a nova.

A warblade-style system would work better for exponentially costed spell points. If you have 9 levels of spells, non-scaling costs will get a bit out of hand (512 for 9th). So what you probably want is scaling costs as Tarkis outlined (similar to the shadowcaster).

A character might scale up to 15 power points, with max level spells costing 8. When you're casting 5th level spells, 4th level spells cost 4, 3rd cost 2, 2nd cost 1, and 1st (or lower) are free. You can recharge the pool with a full-round (or standard) action.

So you can go all-out an alternate rounds casting high-level spells and recharging, you can go down the line of s, s-1, s-2, s-3, s-4, s-4, ..., or you can cast three in a row at s-1, recharge; repeat...

[Edit] Obviously you're still heavily encouraged to pull out the max level spell in the first round. An even better system might work like Manxome's, where you need to spend time charging up before you can cast your highest level spells. Then you still go crazy on an ambush, but it's less simple in a fair fight.

So maybe you have 7 power points normally, but can spend a standard (or full-round) action to 'overchannel', which gives you 1 to 8 power points (not random; figure it out ahead of time).

Buffs are very easy to handle. They just reduce you maximum spell points be the appropriate cost for the level of the buff as long as it's in effect. The problem with scaling costs and this sort of buff is all of your low level buffs are free. A possible solution to that is 'buff slots'. You'd have at most three or four continuous effects active at any time, which is just enough to dump all of your power points on buffs (excluding overchanneling, if you use that).

[/Edit]

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 3:42 am

I understand all that you said. There's no way to get around having more high-level spells at the expense of lower-level spells and vice versa in a spell point system, though. All that can be done is minimize it to an acceptable degree, something that I think down-scaling the costs as you level does quite well. Which is way better than the trash put out by stuff like Unearthed Arcana.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 5:47 am

How about:
1 mana = 1 spell

What you accomplish with that mana improves with level, but the ratio is the same.

You'd handle 'cheaper' and 'weaker' spells by simply making them free.
To paraphrase Frank's classic lines, "They need to actually count for something."
.. which they don't. So it doesn't matter.