The Gaming Den

Back in the misty days of yore, Recharge Magic was published as an optional rule in Unearthed Arcana, and was received with a resounding "meh". Personally, I love the huge gonzo pile of spells that is D&D, but not so much the daily resource scheme, and I'm none too happy with huge buffstacks and duration tracking either.

I am tinkering with a different take on Recharge Magic and "not tracking durations. I would appreciate input.

google doc

Under this system, I don’t see why you don’t cast your biggest two or three for your max level spells in every combat. Since DND combats tend to be three rounds long, it’s more than enough.

Also, it means you never cast round/level spells any more, so lower level slots are basically reserve spells that you only see in contingency circumstances, but it still means you abuse the longer duration spells. In fact, spells like greater magic weapon are max abuse under this system

I liked recharge magic conceptually but having payed a couple of adventures with it it is almost more hassle than it is worth.

The advantage the system had in 3.x was that it meant that you got rid of the 15 minute workday by basically limiting a caster to 1 spell per spell level per combat. This was not bad when players had 1-4 level spells because it mimiced what would happen normally anyway.

However, it also made fights where you might want/need to cast mutiple high level spells very difficult.

Honestly, the best part of it was not having to worry about spells with durations longer than 1 minute but less than 8 hours.

I think I almost prefer the 5e method where duration are basically

instant
1 round/level
1 minute (Concentration)
10 Minutes (Concentration)
1 Hour (Concentration)
8 Hours
24 Hours
Permanent

There are basically no variable durations that increase with level. If I were starting from scratch I would have durations of

instant
1 round/level
Concentration
1 Hour
Till Next Sunup/Sundown
A Year and a Day
permanent

D&D magic feels like shooting magic bullets, so if your revolver staff can hold 6 spells and then you gotta reload, and you've only got X amount of bullets total, that would be the ideal D&D wizard magic system for me.