The Gaming Den

Let's say you have a d20 based fantasy heartbreaker, where some classes are people who wear armor and swing weapons and other classes have robes and maybe magic wands. However, access to spells is not specifically governed by class or ability scores.

Instead, each class has a Base Spellcasting Bonus, which is basically their caster level and determines their spell slots. Someone with BSB +5 has access to 3rd level spells, someone with BSB +6 can cast more of them, and BSB +7 means you have access to 4th level spells.

In addition, each class has a Base Attack Bonus. This is used for basic combat actions, but also determines your "caster level" and available slots for martial maneuvers. These include abilities like "Assess Weakness", which has explicitly written noncombat uses in architectural work, in addition to more stabbing-focused stuff like what you see in Tome of Battle.

Feats provide scaling benefits based on character level.

In such a game system, can a "Fighter" whose class feature is lots of feats be effective at level 11? They will have access to level 3 spells due to their Poor BSB.

Depends on the spell list. Depends on the Feats. Depends on whether or not monsters have arbitrary immunities and if you could get around those defenses by "assessing weakness."

Depends on a lot of things... but I'd say that the concept is fine.

I think yes, they could represent a viable challenge, or a good character concept.

A "Fighter" with 11 "Feats" and focused on martial combat, with some spells to back him up when needed... yep, looks like a good idea.

Atmo wrote:yep, looks like a good idea.

There are a whole lot of very good reasons to not reduce the entire game to one or two resource management systems shared across multiple classes.

Most importantly, what the fuck is the point of classes if a Wizard 3/Druid 2 has the same spells as a Wizard 5 or Druid 5, and spells are (presumably) the most important defining feature of your class.

Presumably, the spellcasting classes would look somewhat different in such a system. If it did have wizards and druids, maybe the druids would get shapeshifting and the wizards could shuffle around their prepared spells more.
EDIT: Or maybe the wizard gets bonus feats like the fighter. Maybe each of them has to pick from a class-restricted list.

While the actually mechanics you've suggested are problematic, yes I'm totally on board with fixing the fighter in the simplest way possible by just giving him spells a high levels. As long as mundane sword guys stop trying to be a thing after level 10 I'm willing to be pretty open minded. Good luck getting the rest of the gaming community on board with it though.

Kaelik wrote:Most importantly, what the fuck is the point of classes if a Wizard 3/Druid 2 has the same spells as a Wizard 5 or Druid 5, and spells are (presumably) the most important defining feature of your class.

Thinking about this a bit.
[*]Separate BSBs for each class. Reduces to same situation as original.
[*]Unified BSB and fully unioned spell lists, depending on class features to make different builds behave differently. Wiz 1/Druid 4 is differentiated from Wiz 4/Druid 1 only class features. This buffs spellcasters way too much.
[*]Unified BSB and spell slots, but access to particular spell levels is a class feature. Wizard 3/Druid 2 has 4/3/2/1 slots and can prep Wizard 2 and Druid 1 into those slots. Wizard 5 has 4/3/2/1 and can prep up to Wizard 3. Druid 5 has 4/3/2/1 and can prep up to Druid 3. High-level slots can be accessed with metamagic. I think this is my favorite; it behaves quite a bit like normal multiclassing and fully supports classes with different progressions (bard, sorcerer get BSB and lists at different rates).

How do we deal with combinations of preparatory and spontaneous casting? My first proposal is to do something like what Clerics do with healing spells, where spontaneous casters give you the ability to suddenly turn prepared spells into spells of some much shorter list of spells. Another option might be a way you can mark some of your slots as being reserved for spontaneity in the morning, with spontaneity coming off the shorter list. And do we want to work Spherecasting into this somehow?

Also, what spells are available to fighters? Probably just give every class a default spell list - fighters prep off sorc/wiz, monks cast spontaneously off druid or cleric choose at creation, rogues prep off bard, and so on.

I think I like this mechanic.

How would you go about integrating spellcasting into high-level mundanes, LM?

My thoughts are that if you include spellcasting as something that "everyone has", you keep people from running into the cognitive dissonance that keeps mundanes terrible in comparison and never reach a point where they can whine about their concept becoming obsolete.

Thus, "Fighter" gets a starting gear package that includes cantrips for protecting your chainmail from rust and teleporting your sword into your hand from a worn sheath. They are flavored as somebody who focuses on the martial arts, which is simple enough to give them a lot of free time to pursue other stuff as represented by feats.

Lord Mistborn wrote:While the actually mechanics you've suggested are problematic, yes I'm totally on board with fixing the fighter in the simplest way possible by just giving him spells a high levels. As long as mundane sword guys stop trying to be a thing after level 10 I'm willing to be pretty open minded. Good luck getting the rest of the gaming community on board with it though.

I'm behind this, although you're probably going to have to make it tied to CON or something or else you'll have some serious MAD.

I actually remember seeing something like this a while ago, where all classes gain a spell slot progression, and then added things for non-casters to do with their slots. It included things like magic items requiring atunement that takes spell slots (so the Fighter's class features includes "I get to use more magic items than you do without giving up anything"), Magic Item abilities that burn spell slots (ie you use Thor's Hammer to cast chain lightning, it burns one of your spell slots to do so) the ability to burn slots to sustain spells cast on you (so yes, casting buff spells on the Fighter really is more efficient than casting on yourself), and the ability to pick up a feat to get a handful of spells known (like 1 or 2 per spell level) or pick up ritual casting (ie get a spellbook but any spell in that book is going to take you some time to cast), and so on.

I could easily see something like this working.

The idea of BAB and BSB is inherently flawed, but overall the idea could work quite well. Instead of giving each class arbitrary bonuses to attack and spell casting, I'd assign each class flat +5 to attacks made with their primary stat, a +3 to attacks made with the secondary stat, and a +1 to attacks made with their tertiary stat.

Spells and Combat Maneuvers could then be assigned the stat they use, so that for example Cure Light Wounds would have Clerics be the best at it (Heals get +5), Fighters be decent (Heals get +3) and Wizards get +1.

Meanwhile, Wizards might get to cast Chain Lightning (INT Spell) with a +5, while Monks get it at +3 and Barbarians get no bonus since INT isn't in their top 3 stats.

It does run the risk of making characters feel more samey, though, so would need to come on top of solid core class features. Wizards learn more spells, Fighters get defender auras, etc.

Kaelik wrote:

Atmo wrote:yep, looks like a good idea.

There are a whole lot of very good reasons to not reduce the entire game to one or two resource management systems shared across multiple classes.

Most importantly, what the fuck is the point of classes if a Wizard 3/Druid 2 has the same spells as a Wizard 5 or Druid 5, and spells are (presumably) the most important defining feature of your class.

Some spells can be unique to certain classes. Others are shared. That's how D&D3 already works. And that's ignoring the part where D&D3 multitasking is bullshit to begin with. By making classes a buffet instead of a niche you're already reducing it to, essentially, point buy in which you purchase power packages in the form of class levels.

Kaelik wrote:Most importantly, what the fuck is the point of classes if a Wizard 3/Druid 2 has the same spells as a Wizard 5 or Druid 5, and spells are (presumably) the most important defining feature of your class.

Easy. Levels in Druid and levels in Wizard give you different spells known off of different lists. If we say you get 2 spells per level off the list of the class you took that level, then someone who goes WDWDW gets two 1st level wizard spells, two 1st level druid spells, two 2nd level wizard spells, two 2nd level druid spells and two 3rd level wizard spells, while a Wiz 5 gets four 1st level wizard, four 2nd level wizard and two 3rd level wizard without learning anything off the druid list at all.

If you want to be really fancy, do the following:

Wizard: Learns 3 Wizard/Sorcerer spells per level.
Sorcerer: Learns 2 Wizard/Sorcerer spells per level, gets 1 bonus spell slot per level on top of ones from BSB.
Druid: Learns 2 Druid spells per level and one Wildshape Form.
Cleric: Learns 2 Cleric and 1 Domain spells per level.
Ranger: Learns 1 Druid spell per level, has bad BSB.
Paladin: learns 1 Cleric spell per level, has bad BSB.
Bard: Learns 1 Wizard/Sorcerer spell per level, has bad BSB.

This makes Fighters Viable by, technically, not making them Fighters anymore, yes? O.o
Just to make sure i understood this one correctly.

Stahlseele wrote:This makes Fighters Viable by, technically, not making them Fighters anymore, yes? O.o
Just to make sure i understood this one correctly.

That really has more to do with 3E Fighters not having much of an identity, really. They're The Class that Gets More Feats, and that's about it. Using 3E as the starting point is a bad idea in general since most classes are either grossly overpowered or pathetically underpowered, with few finding a reasonable median.

Elaborating on my idea, in addition to tiered flat bonuses to all spells and spell-like abilities based on your top 3 Ability Scores, every class would also have a core feature, feature set, or selection of features that no other class could get. EG:

Fighter: Defender Aura, Combat Supremacy, Weapon Mastery options
Wizard: Arcane Supremacy, Cantrips, Implement Mastery options
Rogue: Sneak Attack or Backstab, Trickster or Disguise Options
Cleric: Magical Healing, Buffing, Turn Undead
Ranger: Animal Companion, Survivalist Training, Archery Mastery options
Barbarain: Rages, Primal Spirit powers, etc.
Monk: Flurry of Blows, Chi powers, Wuxia