Spell lists vs. the Warlock path

[JonSetanta]

Even if you radically cut the spell list down, say to 20% of what it currently is, caster power is going to be determined by what the best spells are and how easily they can switch out their spell load. Martial characters always choose their feats with the idea of what is going to be the most broadly useful in most situations; spellcasters will frequently get to choose their spells specifically around a planned encounter.

Being able to choose situationally useful powers (even sporadically) is a powerful leg-up against the competition.

To paraphrase Frank many years ago concerning Tome feats vs spell lists, "I'm not going to go through thousands of published spells",but what I've been doing is adapting the Final Fantasy Tactics d20 PDF that just outright chopped most of them out already to just d20-ize basic elements and utility effects.
We don't even need a "Create Water" and "Cone of Cold/Ray of Frost/Energy Adaptation metamagic altered Coldball" when one can just cast a "Water" spell and choose the Water or Cold/Ice tags, or even just have an ABILITY that deals ranged magic area damage, then have the element tags alter the debuff riders depending on which element it is.

Think of it as like far, far brutalist bare minimum spells, with an assortment of metamagic-like options for anyone casting any spell with no feat tax, there would just be a limit per level or every-#-of-levels meta allowed to on the fly change how you cast and what it does.

Maybe it would make everyone cast more like a 3.5e Warlock where you just have E. blast then you can slap on riders and alterations, but personally IMHO that class and it's simplicity was somehow overlooked later for, hm, two decades as all the OSR players shouted for bloated spell lists, but as one of my sisters in law said last week "I grew tired of D&D a while back because it's just lists and lists And lists. I prefer Monster of the Week now."
And she made a great point because I feel the same way.

Edit: "Upstart! That's the word!" I had more to add.

Having each element as it's own spell or set of subspells makes for easy monster design though as all one, a Storyteller or whatever, has to do is glance and see "this demon has Acid magic" and it does three things and the range/area is a universal default and the wounds it causes are the same for everyone, but ANYONE can subtract X amount of Power or spend Y extra Mana (limited by character advancement not ability choice) and pretty much have an Aang vs Zuko battle but with high fantasy flavor.

It can be approached from two different angles but achieve the same results, one being supply everyone with lists of element and function specific spells and feats, or the "Warlock path".
I'm leaning more to the latter.

[JonSetanta]

Actually deaddm could you make that comment of mine just now a new thread called "Spell lists vs. the Warlock path" before I derail this thread about Tome feats?

Although, if Tome feats granted standardized elementsl and utility spell-abilities, I guarantee some here have attempted similar...

[deaddmwalking]

I agree that spell lists can be simplified pretty extensively. It's not too hard to make various colored lasers that do damage, and apply additional modifiers (like adding an area of effect). Turning burning hands into scorching ray into fireball is relatively easy, and can potentially be intuitive enough that players could learn to do it. That said, there's a couple of major reasons NOT to do that.

First off, some spells that you really want to include in the game don't automatically lend themselves to this paradigm, even if you might be able to squeeze them in. Do you make circle of protection against evil part of the same spell as dispel magic? If you don't and you only put dispel magic and anti-magic together, does it matter that the spell doesn't have a 1st level 'antecedent'? When you start working with tweaking every spell it actually becomes more complicated to have x/10 spells than simply having x spells, each saying exactly what they do.

The other major reason is simply that you may want magic to feel magical. Things like 'wild magic' don't really lend themselves to a carefully crafted and articulated structure.

Less importantly, there are definitely times where you want a creature or caster to have a hodgepodge of generally unrelated powers. When you create a vampire and you give them ability to turn into mist, that doesn't necessarily mean you want them to have ice lance or even create water. When you have too many exceptions to your general rule, it's easier to make the exceptions the rule and just give the casters the pile of related discrete spells.

In the case of D&D, there are a ton of 'weird spells' that really don't fit with any others. There's a lot of them that I'm willing to toss out, but others may be less willing to do so. Making sure your modified system 'scratches the itch' that players have with D&D can be challenging when you take out things like Wish.

For our heartbreaker, we spent a lot of time talking about magic and we created a metaphysics of magic that observes 4 rules:
-Magic is not intelligent
-Magic does not make value judgements
-When describing a magical effect it should be clear what the spell is affecting and how (ie, an earth spell modifies existing earth or stone)
-Magic should not completely replace mundane skills

For us this means you can't use magic to summon a complex device - to create it via magic you must know how to create it without magic. It means that the spell can't selectively target evil creatures, or automatically recognize whether a creature is a dwarf or an elf.

In addition to the metamagic rules, we built up schools of spells that we thought were more thematically interesting than D&D schools (any edition). For example, blowing things up (evocation) is something that a lot of people want to do, but it shouldn't be ALL they can do. So we have schools that reflect the traditional elements (air, earth, water, fire) and they all blow shit up. Outside of those we have Astral (mostly affecting the mind of intelligent creatures), Biomancy (modifying the body [including most healing] and physically controlling living creatures like animals and plants), Necromancy (animating the dead and inflicting death and damage), Shadow (stealth, concealment, and illusion), and Thaumaturgy (many defensive wards and ability to see/modify the future). Mostly those schools tell us what the magic is affecting and how it works. Fire spells make things hot and water (ice) spells make things cold.

As a result, there are spells that have similar results, but they fit into different schools and we can describe them differently. A necromancy spell might rip out a creature's heart (killing them) while a water spell might pull all the water from a creature's body (killing them). We still have about ~700 spells, but broken down by school/level it's a fairly manageable number to consider at any one time. We also require that casters learn specific spells, rather than preparing any spell that exists - this further limits the complexity and ensures that players become familiar with their spells and don't spend table time trying to figure out what spell to prepare for the next day's adventure.

[JonSetanta]

I would be absolutely fine with 700+ options provided by around 30 elements and utility/defense/transportation/weird specifics that could be modified by meta effects, but as it stands the RAW spell lists Simply Must Go.

IMHO I keep playing spellcasters in various edition that NEVER waste a "spell slot" on Floating Disk or Magic Mouth.

[Kaelik]

It seems extremely counter productive to try to make spell lists "go away" until you have something better to replace them, which is going to take a lot of work no one is doing.

If this is about modifying 3.5

It it's instead about making a new system, I mean sure, but realize at some point you are going to need to write several hundred pages of character abilities if you want a rules heavy system where people can do even half the stuff they can do in D&D.

[JonSetanta]

It seems extremely counter productive to try to make spell lists "go away" until you have something better to replace them, which is going to take a lot of work no one is doing.

If this is about modifying 3.5

It it's instead about making a new system, I mean sure, but realize at some point you are going to need to write several hundred pages of character abilities if you want a rules heavy system where people can do even half the stuff they can do in D&D.

Excellent point about word and page count for a new system.

My postulation is about adapting a "Mage" class or similar to be a more element and/or utility version of 3e Warlock.
There wouldn't even need to be a spells list if such a thing succeeded, like Koumei's Exploits Ninja.

[Kaelik]

I mean, if this is supposed to be in addition to 3.5, I have no idea how you think you are going to write a class that does even 1/100th of what a Wizard can using that system, and also, separately, there appears to be no benefit to deleting the spells after you have written that system.

"If I just do this impossible thing we can finally delete the spells chapter that 3/4ths of the game is designed around" okay, but what did that accomplish? The spells are already written!

[JonSetanta]

Yes yes I do realize how ridiculous the concept seems but it would be more of an option for DM and players to say "ok all spellcasters are Mage for this campaign" and not use PHB spells.
I understand a lot of PHB utility Batman Wizard spells would be missing but they would gain, as to paraphrase Frank again, "options not abilities "

But also, ESPECIALLY directly inspiring the majority of core Tome writing, the Wizard was the comparison standard to which all others STILL don't come close, and the problem is yet still.. all the spells.

If one were to compare every spellcaster to 3e Warlock (hence my thread title "the Warlock path") the entirety of Tome would be radically different, and IMHO all the non-wizards wouldn't be genital-waving contests for semidivinity through Celerity, Contingency, and Permanency abuse.

[Kaelik]

Yes yes I do realize how ridiculous the concept seems but it would be more of an option for DM and players to say "ok all spellcasters are Mage for this campaign" and not use PHB spells.
I understand a lot of PHB utility Batman Wizard spells would be missing but they would gain, as to paraphrase Frank again, "options not abilities "

That seems really stupid. I have no idea what this quote is supposed to mean but it doesn't mean this. "sure we removed all fucking utility in the entire fucking game, but you can cast 7 different kinds of fire attack spells, so why would you even want to cast Scry?"

Again, it sounds like just like every other time that anyone has suggested this, that your first priority is ruining the game and making it as unfun as possible in pursuit of an a priori principle of deleting the spells chapter.

There does not appear to be ANY reason of any kind to delete the spells chapter except "it sounded like a new idea" and you are willing to suffer any amount of worse game to implement an idea for no reason.

But also, ESPECIALLY directly inspiring the majority of core Tome writing, the Wizard was the comparison standard to which all others STILL don't come close, and the problem is yet still.. all the spells.

Nah, this just isn't reality. Wizards are not too powerful compared to Tome characters. That's not an issue.

If one were to compare every spellcaster to 3e Warlock (hence my thread title "the Warlock path") the entirety of Tome would be radically different, and IMHO all the non-wizards wouldn't be genital-waving contests for semidivinity through Celerity, Contingency, and Permanency abuse.

And also every character would be boring and have way less utility unless you wrote, again, several hundred pages of new material that exactly copies all the stuff in the spells chapter you want to delete.

[JonSetanta]

But also, ESPECIALLY directly inspiring the majority of core Tome writing, the Wizard was the comparison standard to which all others STILL don't come close, and the problem is yet still.. all the spells.

Nah, this just isn't reality. Wizards are not too powerful compared to Tome characters. That's not an issue.

If one were to compare every spellcaster to 3e Warlock (hence my thread title "the Warlock path") the entirety of Tome would be radically different, and IMHO all the non-wizards wouldn't be genital-waving contests for semidivinity through Celerity, Contingency, and Permanency abuse.

And also every character would be boring and have way less utility unless you wrote, again, several hundred pages of new material that exactly copies all the stuff in the spells chapter you want to delete.

Quote 1 (I'm not responding to the first one, you'll see what I mean eventually): Wizards are the most powerful class in all of D&D. Ever. You can not convince me otherwise.
They are, I repeat, a shit benchmark for holding all others in comparison.

Quote 2: Boring, no. Less utility, perhaps in a sense that you can't grab Rope Trick or Contingent Teleport, but as I stat out ideas here (I'm undergoing treatment for extended vision loss and migraines currently, it's going to take time) but instead more like, to refer to your Scry reference and ignore "7 different fire options", remote information gathering would be more like Shadowrun astral projection to prevent the scry-and-die tactic. I'm taking inspiration from non-D&D sources too because They Do It Better.
A few hundred bogged-down list of Clairvoyance/Scry/Whateverthefuckall divination utility spells vs. the ability to project your spirit remotely THEN do various tricks by just sensing intangibly and invisibly from a coterminous plane is a better deal when it comes to applying options.
Just a sample from my notes, the "spirit form" would have a set amount of HP and act like an Ethereal character, but move faster, thereby giving targets countermeasures rather than just "I see the target, teleport in, Celerity, Power Word Kill, then Contingency Teleport on the trigger of the enemy death", a non-challenge befitting something more like a Mage: the Ascension game than what Gygax was aiming for.

These aren't "scrap everything and write hundreds of pages" concepts. Maybe 20 pages tops but I doubt it would even add to that.
The factor here we disagree on is on my opinion no one should be able to do the crap fully researched optimized Wizards do vs. sticking to pure Tome style OP sessions, of which in my experience always led to Rocket Tag.
Which... Isn't fun.

I'm prepared to write. I've been doing it for decades.
The issue is 99% of concepts I post here are shat upon because they are always held to Tome standards, and I'm stating that Tome is the Wizard path of game design, my objective is 3e Warlock as baseline then build from there.
This is literally the title of this thread.


You may not like it, komrade, but it do.

[JonSetanta]

Sample 1

7/18/2024

[Warlock Path] Mage
2024

HP: 8
SP: 6
Class skills: as Wizard
Saves: Will
AB: 1/2

Level to Rank to maximum spell slot equivalent
Level 1: Rank 1 : SL 1
Level 5: Rank 2 : SL 3
Level 9: Rank 3 : SL 5
Level 13: Rank 4 : SL 7
Level 17: Rank 5 : SL 9



Mage Spell Basics:

1 spell or filter known per character level, adding Intelligence bonus at Rank 1. With each 8 hour sleep 1 Mage spell may be rechosen.
Alternatively a single Arcane school or element may be selected and spells may be readied and rechosen also from that school or if the spell has that element tag.

Level 1: Mage Power: Add the character's Charisma bonus to Spellcraft and Concentration checks.

Mage Rank is determined by Mage levels. and determines the number of Filters that may be applied to Mage spells.
2 Filters may be applied per Mage spell for each casting per Rank.

Any Mage spell may be cast with Verbal and Somatic components as a Standard action. The only Material component required is a Spell Focus, which is any wood, bone, metal, or crystal wand, rod, or staff. Once chosen it is bonded after 8 hours of sleep the Mage can summon it as if by magic item curse, released willingly as a Standard action, and placed or retrieved with a personal pocket dimension as a Free Action.

Don't use Attack rolls but instead roll a Spellcraft check vs. either Dexterity or Constitution score (not bonus), whichever is higher when offensive spells target any number of opponents, compared for each target, but if any target has Spell Resistance the Spellcraft must also beat that value before comparing it to others.

For more than one target Spellcraft once then compare it to the Dexterity, Constitution, and SR of each chosen targets within that area.

DM Option: Static DC
If this is too much math simply roll a d20 against Target Number 6.
Lazy and doesn't scale, but hey, it's fast.



Mage Spells:

Rank 1: a target in Range 100f/20 spaces, affects all 1 space adjacent targets as chosen as an Area
Rank 2: Range 400f/80 spaces, 2 spaces adjacent
Rank 3: Range 800f/160 spaces, 4 spaces adjacent
Rank 4: Range 1200f/320 spaces, 8 spaces adjacent
Rank 5: 3 miles or line of sight, 16 spaces adjacent


Spells:

Magic Blast: Deal 1d6 Force damage per Rank + Charisma bonus with +3 per level 2 and higher.
Astral: Self and willing allies only, the Spirits of all affected split from their bodies and are able to interact with the Ethereal Plane, moving at double normal speed and even to the Astral if 1 hour is spent in an in-between phased state. Spirits are identical to the affected but have 1 HP per level and can act normally but the bodies are in stasis and Dazed until those affected are damaged in body or the Spirit is reduced to 0 HP, after which the body receives a matching amount of damage and returns to normal at the beginning of their next turn.
Jaunt: Teleport self and willing allies to any unoccupied spaces within range that you have unobstructed line of effect to or have touched previouly. All allies must touch you or your Spirit (while they are also Spirit) when this spell is cast.
Detect
Barrier
Morph
Door


Filters:

A Filter may be applied to a spell cast as if it were a SL+0 Metamagic feat, changing the element from Force to that of the Filter.

Fire
Ice/Cold
Electric
Stone
Water
Air
Acid
Iron
Silver
Empower: Increase Mage Blast damage by +3 per level.
Double Range
Double Area

[deaddmwalking]

Edit - Everything here written before the above post

I don't think 3.x can be saved - too much baggage. Classes like the Beguiler would have been better than Wizard/Cleric, but they can't exist in the same universe as those classes. If you could be a wizard, there's really no reason NOT to be a wizard.

As for spell lists, 20 pages probably isn't going to cut it - not unless you can be extremely reductive in your description language. We're at 100 pages for spell descriptions, and just lists of spells with 1 sentence descriptions takes 19 pages. When you can modify a spell multiple ways communicating those options either requires more description OR you have to have a very clear 'application' that you apply to those spells with it's own description. Metamagic feats try to use the apply a function method, and it ends up generating a lot of questions.

The 3.x Psion tried to be explicit about how each power could be augmented, but I think there could be questions about why a particular power didn't have the same augment as another power, and they also had metapsionic feats that attempt to apply a broad modification to a large number of powers.

I wouldn't hold anything to a Tome standard. I don't think Tome is very good. I agree it turns into rocket-tag far too quickly for my taste. But if you agree that Tome tried to build everyone up to the level of wizard, and wizards exist in your game, then a class that is designed to be weaker than a wizard will struggle. Completely removing existing classes can be done, but it's going to raise a lot of red-flags with players. You MAY be able to create a balanced fun game where everyone can participate and fulfill the heroic fantasy tropes OR you MAY be a power-tripping GM so focused on your story that you want to make sure players have no agency at all. Trying to discern which means taking a look under the hood at the classes and alternate rules you have.

And if your players are going to have to go that deep ANYWAY, it's almost less confusing to just create a new game. And that's going to be more than 20 pages for sure. For our system we have general rules (think the PHB minus spells) at 110 pages, Magic at 153 pages, Monsters at 90 pages, and a special alternate Magical System that's 26 pages. While what we have is playable, there are things that could really be expanded on. We don't have lists of non-weapon gear or hirelings, we don't have any descriptions of specific magic items, and racial options don't have any descriptive writing of the physical form or culture. We also don't have anything campaign specific like deities or city creation tools.

Going back to the 3.x warlock, they of course had eldritch blast, which was their primary offensive weapon. They also had a limited number of invocations which often worked like spells, giving them a special power. An invocation that lets you 'soul-walk' and spy in place of scry might be thematically appropriate if you replace wizards, so potentially having more invocations that fulfill the roles previously covered by wizards/sorcerers might work, but then there's the question of whether the required tools are AVAILABLE to enough characters. You don't want everyone to be a warlock, and you don't want every warlock to have every power, so you have to find a way to distribute those powers more broadly.

If you end up going that route, you're really not too far from using Spheres (or even Domains, which I believe inspired them). If some characters have fewer tools, but the game requires just as many solutions as before, you need to find a way to distribute the tools to more characters, otherwise no character can compete at higher levels. Like, we know that the Fighter can't even GET to the high level adventure without the Wizard, so unless the Warlock can pick up that burden, a lot of characters simply become unavailable. Effectively, getting rid of clerics/wizards means also getting rid of classes that the casters were carrying already. That points to either all new classes, or a bolt-on power-up that gives them access to spells. Depending on how you approach it, that could also be some substantial page-count.

I guess the important thing is to realize that the game is a series of inter-related connections, and changes to one absolutely will change others. There are no simple fixes because each one requires at least 2 more somewhere else, so it quickly expands exponentially.

[JonSetanta]

Sorry about the same-time post,I woke up, took pills, caffeine, smoked, then got to writing, and just before you wrote that deaddm my draft was up.

Migraine specialist appointment in two hours, I'll get to looking at Sphere content and SRD "essentials" that broadly encompass the bare minimum diversity.

No, I'm not really supplanting the Wizard or Tome, but providing a Warlock-like baseline for alternative that is somewhere between power tier of some kinda hybrid Sorclock.

[deaddmwalking]

For the specific implementation suggested above, I wonder why have a different targeting method? Making a roll and comparing it against every creature's ability scores seems cumbersome.

If I understand correctly, if I am Level 5, I am Rank 2. I may apply 4 filters (2 per rank). If I use mage blast and I have a Charisma bonus of +5 my base damage at 1st level was 1d6+5. Each level above 1 I get an additional +3; since I am level 5 I get an additional +12. My base mage blast damage at 5th level is thus 1d6+17. I can Empower my blast for +3 per level (+15). If I don't need to do anything else (like extend the range, or increase the area) I can Empower it 4x (+60 damage). Thus, if desired, I can do a 1d6+77 at will mage blast.

This appears to make warlock characters excellent artillery - they can lay down a barrage of precision damage far in excess of other characters at that level. It is less clear that they have utility powers that they can share with other characters (like giving everyone darkvision).

[JonSetanta]

For the specific implementation suggested above, I wonder why have a different targeting method? Making a roll and comparing it against every creature's ability scores seems cumbersome.

If I understand correctly, if I am Level 5, I am Rank 2. I may apply 4 filters (2 per rank). If I use mage blast and I have a Charisma bonus of +5 my base damage at 1st level was 1d6+5. Each level above 1 I get an additional +3; since I am level 5 I get an additional +12. My base mage blast damage at 5th level is thus 1d6+17. I can Empower my blast for +3 per level (+15). If I don't need to do anything else (like extend the range, or increase the area) I can Empower it 4x (+60 damage). Thus, if desired, I can do a 1d6+77 at will mage blast.

This appears to make warlock characters excellent artillery - they can lay down a barrage of precision damage far in excess of other characters at that level. It is less clear that they have utility powers that they can share with other characters (like giving everyone darkvision).

Is Empower too much?
I ripped it straight from the Metamagic but I could remove it and just have each Element filter add different damage and/or status.

How about no Empower, but instead the Big Three of Fire, Ice, and Electric deal +1 per level.

[JonSetanta]

If I understand correctly, if I am Level 5, I am Rank 2. I may apply 4 filters (2 per rank). If I use mage blast and I have a Charisma bonus of +5 my base damage at 1st level was 1d6+5. Each level above 1 I get an additional +3; since I am level 5 I get an additional +12. My base mage blast damage at 5th level is thus 1d6+17. I can Empower my blast for +3 per level (+15). If I don't need to do anything else (like extend the range, or increase the area) I can Empower it 4x (+60 damage). Thus, if desired, I can do a 1d6+77 at will mage blast.

Level 5 is Rank 2, adding another 1d6 as well.

Is that on par with an Empowered Magic Missile or Fireball average?

Edit: I just noticed you applied Empower 4 times.
I had assumed each Metamagic feat could each be applied once per spell, yet stacked between different types.

Stacking elements would add +1 to +2 per level extra but one element would have to be the "dominant" and others the "bonus".

[deaddmwalking]

I empowered it 4x because nothing said I couldn't, and that's the power move. Force damage is generally better than other damage types, so it'd be rare not to choose the 'do more damage option' if you can. Specifying that each 'filter' can only be applied one time would certainly avoid the largest abuse that I see. But there's probably no reason you'll want to apply 4 filters at once, and certainly not 6 or 8. Double Area + Empower with one 'flavor' option is probably all anyone will use.

I don't see anything that says the base damage increases from 1d6 to 2d6 at 5th level. I don't have any problem with that. If the extra damage is too big relative to the dice roll, there's almost no point in having a dice roll.

Magic Blast: Deal 1d6 Force damage per Rank + Charisma bonus with +3 per level 2 and higher.

Assuming Empower can only be used one time and the base damage at 5th level is 2d6, and my Charisma is +5 it sounds like my base damage is 2d6+17 (+3 at 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th level for a total of +12) with the possibility of doing +15 damage by empowering it, so total damage of 2d6+32.

A fireball at 5th level does 5d6 damage (21 damage average). You can't typically empower a fireball at 5th level - it would require a 5th level spell slot. And of course, having limited number of spell slots per day (and sacrificing higher level spell slots for increased effectiveness) is actually a burden for casters.

I'm a little disappointed that lines, cones, etc aren't offered. Being able to precisely place a spell from overhead and have it emanate outward is usually the best option if you want to avoid friendly fire. Since that's the default option warlocks will have very little issue with spell targeting.

Personally, I like the idea of spells being 'touch' by default, and then using 'filters' to increase the range. Line, then cone, then burst at a progressive cost (ie, +1, +2, +3). That said, there's really no COST to any of those - if you have 4 filters to play with and you can do the power at will, once you've decided what is optimal for the situation, you'll keep using it. Something like Psionic Focus where you have to restore it to use again might be helpful in this case - maybe something like 1 'free' filter at 1st, 2 'free' at 5th, but you can expend your focus to get an additional filter. Thus a 1st level Warlock could do his eldritch blast in a line every single round, but to empower it would require spending some action, so it would be every other round or some such.

[JonSetanta]

How about a Touch origin at level 1 that elevates to a Cone with a Filter?
And half the number of Filters usable at any one casting, say, equal to Rank?
I'll get to different area effects after my migraine appointment.

I did consider having the element filters applied every other round, avoiding the spellspam of normal at-will casting... You'd have to alternate elements.

[deaddmwalking]

How about a Touch origin at level 1 that elevates to a Cone with a Filter?

Like everything, there are so many other factors that have to be right, but I generally like the idea that you start small and grow from there. Touch to a cone seems like a pretty reasonable one, especially if you expect the caster to use at least one filter with every casting.

And half the number of Filters usable at any one casting, say, equal to Rank?

Again my sense is that fewer filters, while restrictive, will force meaningful tactical choices for the player. If you can do everything you want AND MORE there's no reason to even bother with filters and limits. The moment they're regularly using fewer filters than they're permitted it probably means you've been too generous. Keep in mind that additional selections from the same list are progressively less interesting. If you finally take the 5th power that you could have taken 4 times previously but kept rejecting because there were better options, you're definitionally getting something less than your first choice. If you're planning on making all filters available to all warlocks all the time, it still might be worthwhile to gate them so it feels like you're getting something more powerful at 5th level than at 1st.

I'll get to different area effects after my migraine appointment.

I did consider having the element filters applied every other round, avoiding the spellspam of normal at-will casting... You'd have to alternate elements.

I don't know that this is even desirable. When fighting a frost elemental, why wouldn't you want to use fire every time? To me, it's a question of cost. If everything is at will and free I'll choose the optimum option every time, which won't change until the enemy does or something else intervenes (like protection from elements). That's true to with area blasts, too. If the opponent is on one side and the party is on the other, I can keep putting fireballs behind him so he's in the area and we're not. Why would I switch to touch if I didn't have to?

I do think that if you have the warlock always wanting more 'filters' than they can typically use, but they can buy the extra 'at a cost', that's probably a good thing.

In our heartbreaker we have two classes that primarily do spell casting (this is relevant, I swear). One class is the wizard class who works a little more like the 3.5 Sorcerer. They know spells, and they can cast those spells in any combination. They could cast fireball over and over and over and over again if they want to. But they have a small pool of spell points so they have incentive to use smaller (cheaper) spells. We also have damage and DCs scale by character level so using your 1st level spells really could be as effective as your 3rd level spells in many situations. While it's not 'at will' the way a warlock is, it still helps encourage variety.

The other class is the Mystic, which is a little like a Binder - they partner with one or more spirits and are limited only to the spells that the spirit gives them. This makes them substantially more limited than the Wizard in terms of flexibility. But they do have one major advantage. When casting a spell, they can 'discharge' their bound spirit, increasing their Caster Level. This means they can cast a higher level spell than a wizard of equal level, but they need to rebind their spirit to cast ANY spells after that. Empowering a spell in this way has some clear benefits, but there's a powerful reason not to do it often.

In both cases, balancing what they want to accomplish with their limited power budget and trade-offs makes the class interesting to play. If the character can always take the optimum action it tends to get repetitive and stale - and players can reduce their turn to 'their usual'. That's bad with a fighter full-attacking with his greatsword and that's bad with a Warlock using his 'Mage Blast' every round. If you're married to an at-will resource, you'll still want to think about ways to make the play experience fun by rewarding variety. Alternatively, you can add caveats and exceptions - like requiring some kind of focus to get all the filters you want - but then needing to take some type of action to restore that focus. In all cases, you want the player to have a meaningful choice to make EVERY SINGLE ROUND in combat.

[Foxwarrior]

This feels like a topic similar to one that's dear to my heart so I might as well pitch in. Once long ago I was really into the idea of making a caster class about speaking words of power that actually have meaning, because that's what the fluff of wizards (and not just D&D ones at that) is all about, so I wrote this: https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Wordmaster_(3.5e_Class)

But the problem I had to grapple with after that is that it's really not a good substitute for a wizard at all, most of the cool spells like teleport and contact other plane and protection from evil have effects that don't really care about what kind of spell shape or riders you can add to them so representing them within that system hardly makes any sense at all.

I gave the idea another go with the https://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Arcanomer_(3.5e_Class) where the idea is that there's a whole bunch of bespoke effects you get from combinatorial word interactions and a bit more of the casting effort is in trying to phrase a spell to do the thing you want, and also the shapes you can now allow funny stacking.

I think that an actual substitute for the wizard that's effect-combining-based would have to basically have a spell physics engine and I'm entirely not sure it's possible to write one that could work in a ttrpg.


As for your idea, you know you can just ban the wizard and wizard-like classes in Tome right? Make players play icewrights and warpers and whatnot, there are actually a lot of decently strong options.

[Kaelik]

As for your idea, you know you can just ban the wizard and wizard-like classes in Tome right? Make players play icewrights and warpers and whatnot, there are actually a lot of decently strong options.

The problem your very reasonable suggestion runs into is that you are trying to address the CLAIMED problem, not the actual problem.

The claimed problem is a made up one about Wizards being too powerful. The actual one is "I HAVE TO DELETE THE SPELLS CHAPTER! It's such a good idea if I can delete the spells chapter. It's like a SL 1 Dark Souls run for me, I thought of the idea, and now I have to do it for no possible reason except to say I accomplished the goal."

Wizards are the most powerful class in all of D&D. Ever. You can not convince me otherwise.

I'm sure I can't convince you of anything, ever, no matter what, because your brain is teflon. But that's not relevant to the point that they aren't in fact that in Tome at all.

Quote 2: Boring, no. Less utility, perhaps in a sense that you can't grab Rope Trick or Contingent Teleport, but as I stat out ideas here (I'm undergoing treatment for extended vision loss and migraines currently, it's going to take time) but instead more like, to refer to your Scry reference and ignore "7 different fire options", remote information gathering would be more like Shadowrun astral projection to prevent the scry-and-die tactic. I'm taking inspiration from non-D&D sources too because They Do It Better.
A few hundred bogged-down list of Clairvoyance/Scry/Whateverthefuckall divination utility spells vs. the ability to project your spirit remotely THEN do various tricks by just sensing intangibly and invisibly from a coterminous plane is a better deal when it comes to applying options.
Just a sample from my notes, the "spirit form" would have a set amount of HP and act like an Ethereal character, but move faster, thereby giving targets countermeasures rather than just "I see the target, teleport in, Celerity, Power Word Kill, then Contingency Teleport on the trigger of the enemy death", a non-challenge befitting something more like a Mage: the Ascension game than what Gygax was aiming for.

Yeah see, this is kind of the point. Rope Tricking is not an extremely powerful game breaking ability, but you wrote this like you think it is.

It's just a neat thing to do. But you are willing to remove hundreds of neat things from the game for what remains no discernable reason.

Your example of someone using Scry and die tactics to teleport in, use Celerity, and the Power Word Kill and contingency to teleport out is both not how any session of Tome D&D ever goes, and also not a problem. Besisdes the many problems with it, starting with that you don't know how the Tome rules interact with Scry or Teleport, and that Power Word Kill is actually very bad at killing people, it is generally not a problem that a 17th level character sometimes kills someone. By well before 17th level you should be dealing with stuff that isn't solved by killing one person. Like, even if this CR 17 enemy didn't have 100HP, or any of the many immunities, your proposed standard is negated by a nearby cleric ally who casts True Resurrection.

But also scry and die was literally already solved in Tome. It's a very strange thing to complain about.

Divination is a complex concept that includes many things, but in fact, Astral Projection like in Shadowrun is not a 1 to 1 cover for it. Instead, Astral Projection as in Shadowrun is a way of attacking people from far away, and also doesn't provide all the kinds of information that you want from divination. In particular, Scrying is not always used to look in a specific location, but sometimes to find a specific person who you do not know the location of. And outside of scry/die tactics, you can literally just want to use that for information gathering, the same way you use other divination spells like Divination or Augury, where the information cannot be provided by Astral Projecting.

These aren't "scrap everything and write hundreds of pages" concepts. Maybe 20 pages tops but I doubt it would even add to that.
The factor here we disagree on is on my opinion no one should be able to do the crap fully researched optimized Wizards do vs. sticking to pure Tome style OP sessions, of which in my experience always led to Rocket Tag.
Which... Isn't fun.

1) D&D combats are too fucking long. They take too much time. If they are 2 rounds long, that's 30 minutes minimum. People who want 14 round combats have no idea what they are asking for.

2) "fully researched optimized Wizards" are a thing that has nothing to do with the utility in the spells chapter. The most broken ones that have ever been concieved are: a) A person who casts spells at CL 999999999999, and it doesn't matter what those spells are. b) One that nukes several fucking miles by combining a diviniation spell with some weird metamagics. c) Anything that uses Wish without XP, which isn't interesting and is a solved problem. d) Anything that uses Calling Magic in place of going on adventures, which is just a problem with giving people infinite minions. e) Using dumb metamagic stacking to make extremely mediocre damage spells instead do +Texas damage while persisting a bunch of defensive buffs.

None of these things are fixed by getting rid of the too powerful spell Augury!

3) It sounds like your real problem is that you don't like ANY Tome classes or ANY tome abilities because you don't like the power level. That's not an unreasonable position to have, but it's not actually a problem with the utility in the spells chapter. And also, it's evidence against your claim that Wizards are too powerful and everything else is too weak. Conduits, and Icewrights, and Firemages, and Tome Fighters, and Tome Barbarians, and Tome Samurais, and Druids, and other Tome characters are just as powerful as Wizards! It's not the case that the spells chapter is the problem if that is your complaint!

I'm prepared to write. I've been doing it for decades.

A

Being "prepared to write" and being able and willing to write the hundreds of pages of utility needed to duplicate the informatino in the spells chapter are very different things. Also doesn't help that you are completely wrong about how much utility exists or what it does and think you can do it in 20 pages.

The issue is 99% of concepts I post here are shat upon because they are always held to Tome standards, and I'm stating that Tome is the Wizard path of game design, my objective is 3e Warlock as baseline then build from there.

If you want to balance a 3.5 hack around a lower power level, then do that, write a bunch of classes that do that. But it's actually going to be way easier to do that while keeping the spells chapter then it is to start with the premise that you must delete the chapter for no reason, and then come back to working around to uh look something something something.

You could even just keep using the spells chapter and the monsters in the monster manual and not rewrite them all, instead of rewriting all the monsters in the monster manual so that you can say you deleted the spells chapter.

Hell you could even have abilities like WARLOCK ABILITIES THAT ALREADY EXIST that reference spells in the spell chapter.

[deaddmwalking]

Rewriting spell lists so they don't have all the spells is functionally deleting a whole bunch of spells.

And rewriting spell lists is absolutely something you should do if you're doing any type of 3.x hack. Domains and Spheres are both collections of themed powers in part because having a theme is cool. Default cleric/wizard and to a lesser-extent druid lists lack a unifying theme, which can be a put-off. Some of that can be addressed by fluffing the spell description (like insisting whispering wind is a butterfly, and a Giant Wasp is really a butterfly (that stings like a bee!) but ultimately a more focused caster is what a lot of people want.

Rope Trick might seem like a one-of cool ability, but something along those lines could be a class-defining power. A video game like Portal uses the ability to connect two different points in space as the game - a class that effectively has a ring-gate power can do a lot (as shown in the recent D&D movie). Fewer 'cool tricks' and more 'thematically linked cool powers' for me, please.

[JonSetanta]

Kaelik. I paused at "Teflon" and take it as a compliment.
Then I skipped most the rest of the vague bile and found some good points later on, but regardless.

"You could even just keep using the spells chapter and the monsters in the monster manual and not rewrite them all, instead of rewriting all the monsters in the monster manual so that you can say you deleted the spells chapter."

This was a good point. If you could stop the usual bitterness you'd be an excellent critic.

Edit: I forgot to take my evening benzodiazapine pill and wrote some mean things here, removed them when I realized it wasn't truly what I wanted to convey.
I'll try better for clarity in my posts.

I apologize for having gone gung-ho about "scrap the whole spell list" but if you've ever played an all-caster campaign in 3.5/3.75, it's a pain in the ass.


Foxwarrior, you are indeed ahead of me when you mentioned spells such as Prot. Evil can't be adjusted, BUT things such as range and diameter and duration CAN! Ha.
So that's why I added, on the first sample of "Mage", an option to keep one choice of Arcane or element subset/school if a player so chooses, then apply Filters from there...

Currently doing version 2 which does NOT scrap all core spells but allows player option to grab what they want and blend it within the same class, somewhat between a half-sorcerer half-warlock.

[JonSetanta]

Anyway.
Here's what I jammed out in the hospital waiting room today.
I hope this makes sense. Took a few rewordings.

Mage Spell Basics:

1 Mage spell or Filter known per character level, adding Wisdom bonus to that amount.
With each 8 hour sleep a single spell or Filter (explained later) may be rechosen.
By player's choice a single Arcane school or element selection of Arcane spells may be chosen and spells may be readied and rechosen also from that school or if the spell has that element tag.
The Mage "knows" all spells from that school or element except Celerity and Contingency but may only ready, as if each were a Mage spell, a number of those level-appropriate spells as of they were a Wizard to determine maximum slot level, and cast them at-will.

There. Best of both.

[Kaelik]

Here's you: you can't write a single sentence without insulting someone, and you were responsible for driving away Trollman from this very forum. I figured you need a reminder about that.
You bark. And bark. And bark. But I'm not going to Ignore function you because you've not truly a troll, just pessimistic.

LMAO, if you want me to be nicer to people, probably don't remind me of how I cruelly ran off the guy who's probably thrilled right now that his preferred politician is banning all healthcare for trans people by being mean to him about his politics.

You literally bragged about how immune to evidence you are and I put it one insult in response and you immediately bragged about how you didn't read most of my post in response. Genuinely, your entire understanding of the game is wrong, and you are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist with a change that doesn't address it because your real problem is a completely different thing that I'm trying real hard to suss out, but you are making it difficult.