Non-Vancian Casting Method

[Chamomile]

First of all, this is probably as good a thread as any to discuss non-Vancian casting methods in editions of D&D both existent and hypothetical. A solid rant on why Vancian casting sucks to be used as a one-stop shop for "this is why I'm changing it" would also be useful. My actual purpose for making the thread, though, is that I actually have a non-Vancian casting method and I want to know what you guys think.

So I'm going to call this the Mana Charge system. Probably someone's thought it up or even used it in an actual class before, but if so, I haven't seen it (and I'd like to.

In order to cast a spell, a caster must spend mana equal to the level of the spell being cast (which, yes, means that Cantrips are something you can just do all the time). You gain one mana every time you hit someone with a spell. Also, basically every class that uses this system has Magic Missile as a cantrip, so the standard method of gaining mana in a fight is to smack people with your auto-hitting pea shooter. You can also gain mana by charging, which requires a swift, move, or standard action. Every third charge you gain one mana, so if you spend all your actions in a round charging, you gain mana instantly (shouting "power up!" is optional). The amount of mana you currently have is called your mana pool.

Mana can be released as a free action, and you want to release it because of mana rot. Mana rot sets in after about five minutes and poisons all of your existing mana, requiring you to release it all. Whenever you cast a spell or release mana, the freshest mana is always used first. Mana drain is what happens when you try to constantly release and then immediately buildup mana again, and it prevents you from casting any spells or gaining any mana for several hours. Mana drain takes about half an hour of constant buildup and release to set in.

The point of mana rot and mana drain is to try and prevent casters from walking into fights at maximum mana, so they always have to build up in combat, unless they've snuck up on the enemy and can charge up immediately before kicking down the door and attacking, in which case the nova is deserved as much as the rest of the surprise round. Since I run my dungeons as being reliant on stealth to avoid alerting the inhabitants of nearby rooms and getting an alarm sounded, rather than inhabitants of nearby rooms always being blissfully unaware of the four rounds of active combat going on in the room twenty feet down the hall, the majority of combats I run tend to have the two parties noticing each other at around the same time unless one side or the other has gone out of their way to prepare an ambush or sneak up on the enemy. Your mileage may vary depending on how the game is run.

Finally, the mana reserve is a permanent store of mana in need of a better name. A caster has mana reserve equal to four less than the highest level spell they can cast, minimum zero, so if you can cast a level five spell, you have one mana reserve, which means you can always cast level one spells and you only have to gather four mana to cast your highest level spells. The mana reserve really needs a better name, because it sounds like it's the same thing as your mana pool right now. "Permanent mana" doesn't sound quite right, though. While specific numbers are strictly mechanical, I'd like all the terms for mana to be shared between fluff and crunch, so that casters will actually talk about mana rot and mana drain and how they have to build up their mana pool to cast their most powerful spells.

Now, a brief aside: Tome errata (including Red Rob's Tome Items which I remain enamored with) assumes you can only have 8 buffs working on you at a time from any source. These rules assume that this is still true, and that this is because you have eight nodes, one of which is unlocked at each level up to eight. Magic items and spells use the pool of magical power in these nodes to sustain themselves. Though nodes can only be used for one magical effect at a time, they are nearly infinite reserves of energy; it's not the node that runs out, it's the magic that channels it. Now the reason I bring this up is because storing mana requires a spare node, not currently tied up powering another spell or magic item or what-have-you. So that's one less magic item/buff you can be benefiting from. Also it occurs to me that there's no reason you couldn't use up a second node to double your maximum mana reserve at the cost of one more magic item/buff. I don't want to allow this to scale up forever (level 8+ casters being able to cast their highest level spell 8+ times in a row given time to prepare is pretty terrible) but could use a good fluff explanation as to why.

I considered "keeping track of more than one node with mana is very hard," but that seems like the sort of thing where a player should at least be able to try and make a Concentration check or something to hang onto it, and I'm not really sure whether that's even a bad thing, if it's an INT check of something like DC 20 plus the square of the number of nodes you're trying to keep track of.

[Pulsewidth]

There's a bag of rats style problem here, where you can drop slow/immobile enemies as targets to leave a line of retreat while charging (bag of snails?). Then you can power up while charging to cover and gain some more mana in relative safety by hitting yourself with cantrips.

[Whatever]

Instead of needing an unused node, just require the players to use some kind of item focus to hold their mana. It can be whatever item they want, but it takes up 1 item slot, and has no other effects. When they hit level 5 spells, their focus item can sustain one mana indefinitely (although you might still want a better term than "sustained mana"). You can cap it at one or two focus items, but that way you don't have to particularly justify why it doesn't go to 8.

I'd say that any item can be a focus (so that if you lose the dramatic wizard staff you were holding, you can start storing mana in your hat right away), but only specially prepared items can hold sustained mana,

[hogarth]

There's a bag of rats style problem here, where you can drop slow/immobile enemies as targets to leave a line of retreat while charging (bag of snails?).

When he says "You can also gain mana by charging", he means "You can also gain mana by recharging your mana pool", not "You can also gain mana by rushing into battle".

[Kaelik]

Mana Contribution. Instant Mana.

As a non action when casting a spell, a mage can draw X mana from the universe itself solely for the purpose of casting that spell.

[Omegonthesane]

You're defining a magic system - you can just say that only one node can be converted into a mana stream at a time because technobabble and something. You could also say that different nodes of mana reserve don't stack, such that it's not a useful thing to do - unless you want there to be a synergy of some kind from doing it.

Or to put more thought into it...

"As a puella magi levels up, they inevitably attain a degree of Mana Mastery*. This isn't a magical blessing so much as a technique, allowing them to draw power from one of their nodes to make their spells easier to cast. In- and out-of-universe, a puella magi's level of Mana Mastery is measured and defined as the number of points of mana per spell they can draw from a node, which is not coincidentally equal to 4 less than the highest level spell they can cast at all. Due to the effort involved, drawing from multiple nodes does not actually allow more mana to be generated at spell-casting time."

Or alternately:

"Attempting to draw Node Mana** from multiple nodes is an arduous process, requiring a Concentration check of DC 17 + 2 for every node after the first you are trying to draw from - but it can be rewarding, as each node after the first grants an additional point of Node Mana to those already capable of using it. For example, drawing from 5 nodes would require a DC 25 check, but if successful would grant you 4 more than your base amount of Node Mana. You can take 10 on this test, but not 20, as failure causes mana drain to kick in. You must decide how many nodes you are drawing frombefore making the roll (or taking 10), and if succeeded this applies to all spells cast until you next rearrange your nodes for some reason. Many puella magi don't bother with all that nonsense, as they can draw a certain amount Node Mana from one node without any difficulty whatsoever."
(For all I know the DC is too low, or the consequences too high, or something, but it's a start.)

* Proposed name for Mana Reserve
** Other proposed name for Mana Reserve

[Red_Rob]

Some questions:

So is this designed to slot the D&D spells into? If so, doesn't the mana gain being fixed at around 1.6 mana per round mean a level 1 character casts a level appropriate spell every other round, whilst a level 9 character casts one every 3 or 4 rounds?

Does casting a spell count as "releasing" mana for Mana Drain? Even if not does this mean Wizards can cast spells continually for 25 mins and then have a 5 minute cooldown before going right back to casting?

Are Wizards supposed to enjoy plinking away with Magic Missile or skipping their turns until they can actually do something interesting? Is every fight supposed to consist of multiple rounds of "powering up" like this was Dragonball Z?

Is there a limit to your Mana pool, or can you just charge up to 100 and Nova like a boss? At maximum rate you gain 5 mana per 3 rounds, so that makes about 16 per minute. Never give a Wizard a minute to prepare I guess...

Hitting "someone" with a spell to gain mana is very bag of rats. You carry around some small furry animals, then once you know where the bad guys are you charge up to full and then run in at full power. Getting the drop is king with this system, so information gathering spells will be insane. Just sending the rogue out to scout ahead is the difference between opening a fight with Magic missile and Black Tentacles. Remember, players will always try to game your system for advantage, and they notice pretty quickly if casting Clairvoyance makes you 5x more powerful in the next fight.

[Grek]

I think you need to look at how it works in practice a bit more:
1st level spells: You never use Magic Missile, since every round you have 1 mana from hitting with your spell last round. Or from pre-charging twice and using a swift action to gain mana once you're in combat.

2nd level spells: Still no magic missile. Instead you use your move and swift on charging every round to gain 1.66 mana per round. Round one is a 1st level spell, rounds two and three are 2nd level spells. Round four is back to 1st, rinse and repeat.

3rd level spells: You now have choices: either go 1st 1st 3rd repeat with your combat routine, or you go 0th 3rd 2nd repeat or some variation on that theme. Either way, it's the first time that using magic missile is remotely reasonable as a choice.

4th level spells: You go 1st, 0th, 0th, 4th, repeat (haha yeah right) OR you forget your high level spells entirely and use one of the 3rd level spell routines. High level spells are relegated to out of combat powers and things you do during the surprise round.

5th level+ spells: Same as 4th level, since your Mana Reserve means that no spell requires you to generate more than 4 mana to cast it.

[Dean]

Ok. I get what your going for here but this has enough drastic problems to require you to rework the entire concept from scratch. The problems are as follows

Mana rot and drain make no sense and no one can know how they work. I think it's impossible to make mana drain both do what you want it to do and allow adventuring. When does mana drain go off exactly and how? If I get into several fights within a half an hour and gather mana and cast spells to drop my mana do I trigger mana drain? If not how come I can't constantly prop up my mana and then cast spells to release it cyclically, because that is exactly the same procedurally.

Is there an upper limit to the mana I can keep stored at one time? Because if the limit is like....4 minutes worth of mana at 1 a round I can keep 40 mana on hand before I walk into a fight I know about. That's not inherently a problem but it IS a problem that I have to keep track of in game minutes which sucks my whole dick. Whether it took me 3 minutes to walk down the hall or 2 should not be a game altering piece of information. Bad.

Two small things. Do AOE's gain a hundred mana if they hit a hundred people? Would a spell like Wall of Fire gain you mana every round it burns someone? Do you gain mana for hitting people with something they are resistant to? What about if they absorb that damage type as hp gain?

Finally the biggest problem is that your system is something that people ARE going to game and you need to accept that. People are gonna walk around with Ring of blades spells on and bound trolls or whatever works and game the system to get access to their high level spells. And you are the one who made them do that. Being a 10th level caster in your new magic system is BORING AS SHIT if they play it the way you want them to and the player who casts a magic missile and a scorching ray and then nothing because tenth level fights do not take more than 3 rounds to resolve will be bored and unhappy. If they game the system they will get to use the spells they would otherwise never get to use or see. The reward for not gaming the system is the players get to be bored and weak.

So back to the drawing board. What you want is a system that makes people use low level spells at will but be able to build up to high level spells swiftly within combat time, ideally multiple times within one combat.

EDIT: I have gone away and designed a system that I think does what you want. It lets you build up and change the various spell levels you use but it lets you do it in combat time and not spend 5 or 6 rounds charging up an 8th level spell. Here it is.

THE NEW MANA POOL SYSTEM

Their are 2 numbers you need for this. X and Y.
X is equal to the highest number spell you can cast. Y is 1/2 of X rounded down.
You gain a Mana Pool equal to X. Your mana pool cannot hold more than X mana. Any additional mana gained over X dissipates immediately. Your Mana Pool cannot be brought to less than Y. If it would be brought to less than Y it immediately refills itself to Y.
You may take a standard action to fill your Mana Pool to capacity.

Spells with a level greater than Y COST you mana equal to their level when cast
Spells with a level less than or equal to Y GAIN you mana equal to Y when cast

Then give every Arcane Caster this Ability

Arcane Surge: After activating this ability (a free action) your Mana Pool can hold double the amount of mana it usually can for a full minute. Any mana gained over this new total is discounted as normal. You may use Arcane Surge 3/day, plus 1 additional time for each full 5 levels you have.

So lets look at a 10th level Wizard named Jimmy.
He can cast 5th level spells so his Mana Pool is 5 and he walks around with it full, at 5 Mana. His 1st and 2nd level spells gain him 2 mana whenever he casts them. His 3rd, 4th, and 5th level spells costs him mana to cast equal to their level. Lets look at how a couple fights of his might go down.

Unprepared
Jimmy gets jumped by a Vrock but wins initiative. He is at 5 Mana and uses Dismissal (a 5th level spell) reducing him to 2 Mana (he should be at 0, but 2 is his minimum). Dismissal fails and the Vrock spends it's turn punching Jimmy in the face. On round 2 Jimmy is at 2 Mana, so can only cast 1st and 2nd level spells. He casts Invisibility and gains 2 mana bringing his total up to 4. The Vrock then summons some Dretches. On Jimmy's third turn he is at 4 mana so he casts Charm Monster (a 4th level spell) bringing him back down to 2 Mana. Charm Monster succeeds and the Vrock is now Jimmy's friend.

Prepared
The next room has a Vrock in it so Jimmy uses Arcane Surge outside the door, then a standard action to bring himself to 10 Mana. He walks into the door and starts combat by dropping a Solid Fog on the Vrock, bringing himself to 6 Mana. On his turn the Vrock Greater Teleports out of the fog and adjacent to Jimmy who regrets some of his life decisions. Jimmy then casts Hold Monster on the Vrock bringing himself to 2 mana. The spell succeeds and Jimmy performs a coup de grace.

Whaddya think?

[zugschef]

problem is however, that dnd combat rarely lasts even a full 3 rounds, once you hit 4th level spells...

[Chamomile]

So is this designed to slot the D&D spells into? If so, doesn't the mana gain being fixed at around 1.6 mana per round mean a level 1 character casts a level appropriate spell every other round, whilst a level 9 character casts one every 3 or 4 rounds?

Yes, and yes. Which is not spectacular. It's an improvement over the existing caster classes.

Does casting a spell count as "releasing" mana for Mana Drain? Even if not does this mean Wizards can cast spells continually for 25 mins and then have a 5 minute cooldown before going right back to casting?

Yes. Mana drain needs more elaboration in order to work. An idea I've just had: The strain on your mana is reduced at half the rate it's built up, so if you cast and release for 25 minutes and then wait for 5 minutes, you still have an effective 22.5 minutes of drain.

Are Wizards supposed to enjoy plinking away with Magic Missile or skipping their turns until they can actually do something interesting? Is every fight supposed to consist of multiple rounds of "powering up" like this was Dragonball Z?

The answer is yes to both. In my experience, casters are perfectly okay contributing only a little bit one round while building up a mega-attack for another round. This system is also going to encourage typically casting level 2 or 3 spells whenever they can get the job done rather than saving up for your most powerful spells possible, which is the entire point. On the other hand if two casters want to start a fight by charging to full, they can totally do that.

Is there a limit to your Mana pool, or can you just charge up to 100 and Nova like a boss? At maximum rate you gain 5 mana per 3 rounds, so that makes about 16 per minute. Never give a Wizard a minute to prepare I guess...

Your maximum mana pool is equal to the highest level spell you can cast. A caster can only build up so much. I forgot to mention this in the original post, though I alluded to it in a sentence wherein I accidentally referred to the mana pool as a mana reserve, thus proving the need to give them terms that don't sound like they're referring to the same thing.

Hitting "someone" with a spell to gain mana is very bag of rats. You carry around some small furry animals, then once you know where the bad guys are you charge up to full and then run in at full power.

Or hit yourself/allies with a useless but benign buff cantrip to gain 1.6 mana per round for so long as you don't need your move actions for anything and don't especially need to target any bad guys. The assumption is that casters will be casting one spell per round whenever they have a good reason to believe a fight is imminent. The mana drain rules are hypothetically supposed to stop them from doing that all the time forever, but need to go farther than they are to do so.

Getting the drop is king with this system, so information gathering spells will be insane.

Divination spells are nearly all banned in my game. I really, really hate that school. Stuff like Detect Poison is fine, but anything that lets the party know exactly when they need to be prepared or, worse, allows the BBEG to know that the biggest threat to his plans is eventually going to be the level 7 party he can currently crush like ants, those spells are right out.

Just sending the rogue out to scout ahead is the difference between opening a fight with Magic missile and Black Tentacles.

Yes, and I'm fine with that. My dungeon runs are like medieval shadow runs where the goal is to pick off the enemy piecemeal rather than letting someone sound an alarm so the 50+ inhabitants can all get together and gank you. My field battles usually involve one side ambushing the other, or else very large numbers on either side. Battles are indeed frequently decided by being able to get the drop on the opponent. I don't really consider it a bad thing if the Rogue is important.

Concerning Grek:

At 1st level you use Magic Missile in the opening round because, assuming mana rot gets working right, you don't always walk in with a bunch of mana already on hand. You also use Magic Missile to recover from spells that don't stick. At 2nd level you still need Magic Missile as your opener, for recovery, and also to hit level 2 in one round instead of two. At 3rd level you can fire off a single Magic Missile to get rolling and then use 1st level spells to build up a bit slower or use Magic Missile to nova. With 4th level spells and on the system works basically exactly as intended.

The only real monkey wrench here is trying to get people to walk into a fight with no mana unless they knew in advance the exact second the fight would begin. Mana rot/drain is so far not quite doing its job. I'm open to suggestions as to how to fix that.

[Grek]

No, the mana rot doesn't cover that. You walk around with 0 mana, but make sure you're at 2/3 charge actions at all times out of combat. That way you're always a single swift action away from your first mana.

At second level, your combat looks like this:
Pre-Fight: Discharge all mana (release or cast spell with it), build to 2/3 charge actions.
Round 1: Swift action charge (+1 mana), Move to charge (+1 charge), Standard to cast a 1st level spell (+0 mana). 1 mana, 1/3 charge at the end of the turn.
Round 2: Swift action charge (+1 charge), Move to charge (+1 mana), Standard to cast a 1st level spell (+0 mana). 2 mana, 0/3 charge at the end of the turn.
Round 3: Swift & move to charge (+2 charge), Standard to cast a 2nd level spell (-1 mana). 1 mana, 2/3 charge at the end of the turn.
Round 4: Swift action charge (+1 mana), Move to charge (+1 charge), Standard to cast a 2nd level spell (-1 mana). 0 mana, 1/3 charge at the end of the turn.

Third level is more complicated, but you should be able to work it out yourself.

[Red_Rob]

Actually, that doesn't work. You charge to 2/3 in the first round, but then in the next round you either finish charging and gain a mana (triggering mana rot) or you don't charge and let the charge dissipate.

So basically whenever a fight starts, the Wizard has a 50/50 chance of having 2/3 charge or no charge.

[Chamomile]

When does mana drain go off exactly and how?

Mana drain is a representation of wearing yourself out by recycling mana too often. It goes off when you cast a spell you don't have the stamina for, and it works by you being too tired to use or store mana anymore.

If I get into several fights within a half an hour and gather mana and cast spells to drop my mana do I trigger mana drain?

Yes. That is exactly the thing that triggers mana drain. Releasing mana is just a mechanic to get rid of a bunch of it without casting Cloudkill on the darkness so that you can avoid mana rot. Encounters are typically no more than five rounds long at an absolute maximum. That is 30 seconds. Assuming you don't cast outside of combat, you will spend at least five times as much time not recycling mana as recycling mana. That's enough time to stave off mana drain.

Is there an upper limit to the mana I can keep stored at one time?

Yes, it's your maximum spell level. If you know about an encounter in advance, it's entirely appropriate to just say "I charge up to max mana."

Two small things. Do AOE's gain a hundred mana if they hit a hundred people? Would a spell like Wall of Fire gain you mana every round it burns someone?

Since answering "yes" to either of these would obviously be horribly broken, the answer is obviously "no."

Do you gain mana for hitting people with something they are resistant to? What about if they absorb that damage type as hp gain?

Answer is yes to both. If a spell hits its target, even if it's something that auto-hits, you gain exactly one mana. Limit is one mana per spell, no exceptions.

People are gonna walk around with Ring of blades spells on and bound trolls or whatever works and game the system to get access to their high level spells.

So I guess you missed the part where the entire purpose of the mana rot/drain mechanic is explicitly to try and prevent this? Bizarre shenanigans with ring of blades and trolls aren't even necessary, just spam Prestidigation or Read Magic or whatever other completely benign auto-hit cantrip you happen to know.

Being a 10th level caster in your new magic system is BORING AS SHIT if they play it the way you want them to and the player who casts a magic missile and a scorching ray and then nothing because tenth level fights do not take more than 3 rounds to resolve will be bored and unhappy.

Granted, I have little experience with 10th-level gameplay. But my understanding is that 10th-level fights do not take more than 3 rounds to resolve because of powerful spells which casters are no longer capable of deploying until the fourth round.

What you want is a system that makes people use low level spells at will but be able to build up to high level spells swiftly within combat time, ideally multiple times within one combat.

Not exactly. If a caster builds up to his max-level spell, that's usually game over for the other side. There might be a few stragglers to mop up, but if they're smart they'll run and if they're not the fifth round will be about cleaning them up and then the fight is done.

The problem with the replacement system is that it doesn't even try to do what mana rot is currently failing at, namely: Prevent casters from spitting out their max-level spells in the first round as standard practice. Non-casters take a few rounds to wear opponents down. Casters need to be on the same schedule.

Here's a thought for mana drain: Recovering from mana drain can just take five times longer than the amount of time you were actually casting spells. Limit the total amount of time you can spend recycling mana to, say, ten minutes before mana drain kicks in. So here's a few examples:

Jimmy the Elementalist spends thirty seconds in combat, recycling mana every round. He now has thirty seconds of mana drain. If this reaches ten minutes, he will be unable to cast spells until the drain decreases down to zero. Since he was casting for thirty seconds, it takes two and a half minutes for his mana drain to go down to zero. If he and his party are in the field or in stealth mode (which begs the question of how they managed to fight for thirty seconds without drawing attention, but maybe the guard is a skeleton crew or they've already picked off everyone else nearby or they have some trick to block out sound), he'll be fine. If he's about to charge immediately into another battle, he'll continually build up more and more mana drain, but is unlikely to build up to the full ten minutes (one hundred straight rounds) needed to depower him. On the other hand, if he recycles his spells constantly, the most he can hope for is to be at maximum power one round out of every six on average. So while recycling when you can is still best practice, it'll only help in one out of every six fights, which I can live with.

@Red Rob: You don't dissipate mana if you're not charging. It stays there forever. That said...

@Grek: Trivial solution: 2/3 of mana is still mana and still subject to mana rot.

[Whatever]

Other people have done a good job of pointing out structural flaws, so I'll ignore those for now. This stood out, though:

Or hit yourself/allies with a useless but benign buff cantrip to gain 1.6 mana per round for so long as you don't need your move actions for anything and don't especially need to target any bad guys.

If this is going to be a core assumption of your system, then you need to make it clear to people that they should be doing it. The easiest way to do that is to have a cantrip that specifically helps people charge up, so that they know to use it when they want to charge mana:

Imma Chargin My Lazor
Level 0 spell (Cantrip, Evocation)
Casting this spell gains you the normal 1 mana for spellcasting, but it also counts as a recharge action.

That would up the recharge rate to 2/round when people just want to charge.

Also, should people be allowed to move while recharging? It might solve some problems if you had to take your 3 recharge actions consecutively (albeit potentially across 2 turns).

[Dean]

The problem with the replacement system is that it doesn't even try to do what mana rot is currently failing at, namely: Prevent casters from spitting out their max-level spells in the first round as standard practice. Non-casters take a few rounds to wear opponents down. Casters need to be on the same schedule.

It kind of does. It means in the first round you are given the tactical choice of using a top tier spell or casting a "Gain" spell and granting yourself some extra mana to use strong spells for the next 2 rounds. And you are incorrect about Casters needing to be put on a slow-as-molasses schedule of building up to doing level-relevant things over 3 or 4 rounds because unless you are going to rewrite every monster you have just made every Caster class unplayable because Team Monster doesn't deal with casting bullshit and players do. Casting Magic Missile for 4 rounds at 10th level will get you killed against any reasonable monster. A Hezrou will chew through you, a Fire Giant will beat you to death, a Mind Flayer duo will explode your brain, etc etc. Most monsters don't cast spells they have spell like abilities or titanic combat numbers to make up for a lack of spell like abilities. So under your system non-casters suck as usual, casters are newly sucky, and team monster is the new king of the universe. Every caster class becomes a strange buff-centric creature that would attempt to layer as many combat relevant buffs onto themselves as possible before they walk into combat and plink at their opponent and hope to survive long enough to make a hail-mary play every 4 or 5 rounds.

EDIT: Additionally here is another at-will spellcasting system I've made which I've playtested a lot to considerable success. I outline it within 3 or 4 posts of there.

[Kaelik]

The problem with the replacement system is that it doesn't even try to do what mana rot is currently failing at, namely: Prevent casters from spitting out their max-level spells in the first round as standard practice. Non-casters take a few rounds to wear opponents down. Casters need to be on the same schedule.

It kind of does. It means in the first round you are given the tactical choice of using a top tier spell or casting a "Gain" spell and granting yourself some extra mana to use strong spells for the next 2 rounds. And you are incorrect about Casters needing to be put on a slow-as-molasses schedule of building up to doing level-relevant things over 3 or 4 rounds because unless you are going to rewrite every monster you have just made every Caster class unplayable because Team Monster doesn't deal with casting bullshit and players do. Casting Magic Missile for 4 rounds at 10th level will get you killed against any reasonable monster. A Hezrou will chew through you, a Fire Giant will beat you to death, a Mind Flayer duo will explode your brain, etc etc. Most monsters don't cast spells they have spell like abilities or titanic combat numbers to make up for a lack of spell like abilities. So under your system non-casters suck as usual, casters are newly sucky, and team monster is the new king of the universe. Every caster class becomes a strange buff-centric creature that would attempt to layer as many combat relevant buffs onto themselves as possible before they walk into combat and plink at their opponent and hope to survive long enough to make a hail-mary play every 4 or 5 rounds.

Well actually, every caster now just makes sure to charge up a surprise ambush to Charm/Dominate a Monster, who then is their real character, because fucking being a mage in this system.

Cham, look at my elementalist class. It is designed to start at full, though you could work on that, but seriously, you need to reconsider the idea that it take 4-7 rounds before you are allowed to do something level appropriate.

[fectin]

You're all assuming each spell can only hit one target. Consider fireball instead.

[Dean]

You're all assuming each spell can only hit one target. Consider fireball instead.

Nah I covered that bro

[Grek]

Actually, that doesn't work. You charge to 2/3 in the first round, but then in the next round you either finish charging and gain a mana (triggering mana rot) or you don't charge and let the charge dissipate.

You fail at reading.

Pre-Fight: Discharge all mana (release or cast spell with it), build to 2/3 charge actions.

[infected slut princess]

I think the Warblade mechanic would be good for magic-users. Basically, you have your selection of Special Attacks, Boosts, and Counters, and they can only be used once. But you can recharge all your Special Attacks, Boosts, and Counters by making a Regular Attack.

IIRC, Koumei even made a Black Mage class that worked somewhat like this? Maybe I'm mistaken.

[shadzar]

So I'm going to call this the Mana Charge system. Probably someone's thought it up or even used it in an actual class before, but if so, I haven't seen it (and I'd like to.

sure i posted something about this around here sometime. it was spell level cost of mana and such. the problem came down to how much mana returns over how much time? discard memorization and go with what? must have spellbook? go priest-like and use any spell you know? why restrict known spells? can you cast a level 7 spell if you have 7 mana but not truly able to cast the spell under normal circumstances?

so it wasnt done as a new class, but to replace the wizard class and those are some of the questions that occurred at the time. then cantrips were altered, and some spells were reassigned levels.

3rd sorcerer was like a non-vancian with vancian tendencies caster right?

[Red_Rob]

Actually, that doesn't work. You charge to 2/3 in the first round, but then in the next round you either finish charging and gain a mana (triggering mana rot) or you don't charge and let the charge dissipate.

You fail at reading.

Pre-Fight: Discharge all mana (release or cast spell with it), build to 2/3 charge actions.

What do you mean 'pre fight'? The premise was that you round a corner and dudes are there. FIGHT! There is no 'pre-fight' action unless you get the drop on an enemy.

If you mean you do this every round all day, how? If you spend two actions charging in a given round whilst wandering around the dungeon, what do you do the next round if no enemies appear? You either don't charge, losing the charge you built up (I assumed), or you spend another action charging and BAM! You have a mana, welcome to Mana Drain in half an hour. There isn't a way to always have a 2/3 charge at the start of every round because you can't 'disharge' charging actions and then charge again in that round, you can only discharge Mana.

Of course, Chamomile pointed out that nowhere does it say that charge actions dissipate, ever. But that leads to everyone walking around at 2/3 charge forever, so I assumed it was taken as read.

[Chamomile]

Okay, question. People are saying that casters take 3-4 rounds to use level appropriate abilities under this system and that this is crippling. By level appropriate do you mean "equivalent to what Wizards can do" or "equivalent to what is needed to actually kill bad guys?" Because most of my casters have done about Rogue level in the SGT using this system. The exceptions being the Beguiler, who is a buff/debuff guy and thus basically useless without some muscle backing him up, and the Elementalist, who can clear rooms when he's at full power but needs meatshields to get him there. I don't know if these guys need buffs or not, but the Summoner and Necromancer do just fine with built-in meatshields that inevitably die by round three but last long enough to bring their caster's game-ending spells online, and the Artificer is a fairly capable combatant himself. I'm okay with certain classes being force multipliers that do poorly on their own.

[Dean]

If you posted a 10th or 15th level SGT and performed adequately I would consider your system acceptable and rescind some of my complaints. I do not believe that would happen however and I think at 10th level your Caster would lose a lot and I think at 15th level your Caster would lose even more. More importantly I think that if you did win it would not be in a way that had your class performing like what you desire them to perform like. Which is to act as a Blaster wizard who builds up to a big finish spell at the end of combat. I think they would be crazy buff piles who hacked together their buffs to let them auto-beat as many combats as possible and would auto-lose almost any combat that the opponent could participate in.

Also if your desire is to make a Wizard who builds up to big spells you might be better off modeling this as a drain mechanic rather than as a Limit Break meter.