The Gaming Den

You shouldn't have to "invest" into getting level appropriate power. No matter what weird-o collection of levels and feats you take, you should end up with a level appropriate amount of power.

If your character conception is for whatever reason best defined by taking a pile of Fighter levels - that should be viable. If your character conception is for whatever reason best defined by taking a pile of Wizard levels - that should be equally viable. And if for whatever reason your character conception is best defined by taking near identical numbers of levels of Wizard Fighter and Druid - that should be viable as well.

And as long as you have to invest 15 levels into Wizard before you can cast a level-appropriate spell for character level 15 - that just aint going to happen.

So every ability should scale. When you are a 15th level character, and you pick up your very first level of spellcaster - the spells you pick up need to be viable and level appropriate for CR 15 challenges, because that is what you are facing.

So where does character investment fit into this equation? What can you do to make your character a "Paladin" if any yutz on the street can take one level of Paladin and Smite Evil just as well as you? It happens in ability specialization, not in ability power.

As long as every single ability scales to your level, the higher levels of classes can feel special simply by dint of the fact that the abilities they provide are harder to get.

It can still take 5 levels of investment into Paladin before you get the Mount. Once you get it, it should keep scaling with you automatically, but it can still take a five level investment before you get it at all.

Obviously, most classes are going to have to be trimmed down a lot. Honestly I don't see more than 5 levels worth of abilities in the vast majority of classes. And I think that's a good thing. Once you invest 5 levels into being a Paladin, isn't it about time that you start investing into levels of "Guy whose tabard pictures transform into monsters" or something?

People want and deserve PrCs - which can also be short and give abilities which scale. At the end of 20 levels, you'll have 20 different abilities, every single one of which is scaled up to 20th level of effect - a simple quadratic power curve all the way out to 20th level.

Just like Clerics work right now.

-Username17

I agree that any character level you snatch up should be more or less as viable as any other level you could have snagged instead, but with this:

Obviously, most classes are going to have to be trimmed down a lot. Honestly I don't see more than 5 levels worth of abilities in the vast majority of classes. And I think that's a good thing.

I have to ask, what's the point of having more than 5 levels in a class, then? I mean, do you really want to set it up so that not multiclassing after a certain point is dumb?

I want to set it up so that not multiclassing after a certain point is impossible.

-Username17

I've been thinking this for a LONG time...

The key to how many levels a class can go, is how many levels you should have to invest in an ability which is appropriate for your character level.

Note that the whole concept of investing for power is necessarily out the window - the only reason for a class to have more levels is to force people to invest more if they want access to the class' exclusive schtick.

Can you think of a single ability which is so exclusive that if you want it and it is appropriate for your level, that you should none the less have to have invested more than five levels to get it?

Highly specialized abilities include:

Transforming into animals
Having undead bodyguards
Turning people to stone with your gaze
Shooting beams of pure force or light out of your hands
Turning invisible

Can you honestly say that once you become high enough level for such an ability to be fair, that any of these abilities are so specialized that they should take more than 5 levels of investment into that schtick before you can be allowed something that weird? Keep in mind that every single one of those abilities is available on CR 4 monsters.

Personally, I don't think so. I really think that you should be able to get skeletons following you around at first level, so taking even a single level of "Guy who animates corpses" (let's call it Necromancer) should at least give you that option.

There's a whole separate question of whether abilities should come in fixed orders or not. For example, I really think there's room for a character who communes with spirits and eventually sicks wraiths and spectres on people without ever animating corpses. This means that either there have to be selectable abilities in the Necromancer class - or there has to be more than one available class which is basically a necromancer.

-Username17

Frank wrote:Can you honestly say that once you become high enough level for such an ability to be fair, that any of these abilities are so specialized that they should take more than 5 levels of investment into that schtick before you can be allowed something that weird? Keep in mind that every single one of those abilities is available on CR 4 monsters.

If I am reading you right, are you saying that both core classes and Prestige Classes should tentatively be structured to have a max of around 5 levels each?

If so, this would somehow jive with your notion from the other thread that a pre-Epic character will in fact be forced to multi-class due to the condensed cap limits of all classes.

If this is what you are saying, it seems like a plausible way for all pre-Epic characters to have a somewhat equal number of high level abilities. Eliminating the Wiz-20 "I got 9th level spells!" / Fighter-20 "I got Whirlwind!" power discrepancies.

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083222602[/unixtime]]I want to set it up so that not multiclassing after a certain point is impossible.

-Username17

I don't have a problem w/ this in theory. But practically speaking, how is it not going to be a huge mess?

It's difficult enough to balance the core classes. There's only 11 (12?) of them, and even those 12 aren't remotely balanced. If you require 5 level ceilings, you're talking about a minimum of 40 classes that not only have to balance among themselves at least roughly, but also balance as they scale.

Scaling is the most difficult thing to balance. After 30 years, no one has a grip on how to balance scaling powers. Now, everything would have to be balanced as things scale, and balance as the scaling powers synergize.

I could see this working w/ fighter classes. D20 Modern only has 10 level classes, and as a practical matter most classes are only 5 or 6 long. But once you add magic . . .

What if just fighter classes were modular, and let you swap around?

I don't have a problem w/ this in theory. But practically speaking, how is it not going to be a huge mess?

It's already a huge mess.

But for a less pithy answer: you have two basic options - either the class abilities are selectable or they are not. If the class abilities are selectable, then each of the classes has to be long enough to potentially go back and choose all of them. If the class abilities are fixed within each class, then there have to be enough classes for each of the classes to be short enough such that everyone can get access to what it is that they want.

If you go for the selectable abilities concept - people are going to end up essentially never taking the last couple of levels in any class ever. While it is possible that you might want all of the abilities granted by a class - it's not very likely. From a practical standpoint, you've already selected every single ability you wanted more out of the class - so the chances that you still want the ability you haven't selected yet (your last choice within the discipline) - is low. While from a power standpoint all of these abilities are supposed to be analagous, from a character flavor standpoint you are getting diminishing returns every time you make a new selection off an increasingly picked over list.

If you go the non-selectable abilities concept - classes have to be really short and numerous. That is, when people want to play the creepy girl who cries until spectres come out of the walls to protect her - you want to take abilities that take you straight there without taking side streets like gaining the ability to animate skeletons or command ghouls. As such, there have to be a whole crap load of classes, which in turn means that peoples' 9th level character sheets will have stuff like "Cuisinart 2/Mustard fairy 3/ Algebra Master 1/ Prinny Commander 2/ Lockheart 1" - some people are violently opposed to that sort of thing.

So it's going to come down to what you find most distasteful - people jumping ship regularly before finishing classes - or people collecting large samples of classes with bizzare and barroque names. For some reason those things really piss off some people - although I personally don't see the problem with either one.

Let's look at the example of the Barbarian. The Barbarian does exactly three things:
* He gets helluva pissed.
* He's fast.
* He's wicked hard to kill.

That's it. We could be generous and stretch that out to maybe five levels (if, for example, we split the hard to kill abilties into several sections which each made you hard to kill in a different way). But after that, there's really nothing that the Core Barbarian does.

But there are lots of other things that Barbarian style characters want to do. Some people want the uncontrolled and uncontrollable berserker. Some people want their rage to transform them into their animal totems. Some people want a deep mystical connection to the land which lets them call on the aid of the wilds. Some people want to dominate a horde of orcs by force of strength. Whatever.

Now, you could extend the Barbarian class even farther by allowing you to select one of the weird specific schticks each level after you got the basic stuff. That would work. But of course, the only time anyone would ever finish the Barbarian class is if they for some reason wanted to become the uncontrolled berserker skin shifter military commander and spiritual advisor to a horde of orcs in the wilderness. Which is possible, that is certainly a playable character. But it's a playable character with an extremely unique schtick. Which is to say that just about everyone else is going to just become a Bear Warrior or a Horde Master and then bug out to another class and get different abilities.

Or, of course, you could totally go out and make a separate character class for each of those schticks and then either require people to take Barbarian levels or not.

What if just fighter classes were modular, and let you swap around?

Then multiclass spellcasters would still suck.

Wizards shouldn't have to invest 15 levels to get 15th level abilities either. Spellcasting levels should probably be handled by schtick and not by power. Which is to say, I honestly don't give a damn if a warrior goes out and takes a single level of guy who teleports around and then starts teleporting around. He could just have a Cape of the Montebank when he was mid level - he could just have a helm of teleportation at high level.

A character investing a single level at mid level could just have Dimension Door - that wouldn't be unbalanced. A character investing a single level at high level could just have Teleport - that wouldn't be unbalanced either. The one ability should naturally scale into the other, because we desparately want to avoid the situation where chaarcters can get hosed by having taken abilities out of order.

Spellcasting is, if anything, easier to hand out in this fashion. And it is more important that it do so, honestly.

-Username17

You know, I betcha I know what the problem is...

The problem is that for a 15th level fighter, Wizard 1 costs the same as Fighter 16, when level theory states that a classes 16th level is all but infinitly more powerful than a classes first level (Level theory states that every two levels doubles a character's power. Not uniformly true, but then again it's a theory). I'm thinking that perhaps we should drop the uniform XP chart and assign levels an XP cost. This way that fighter can get several levels of wizard for the same cost he'd have to get to Fighter 16.

I mean, sure you still have to worry about classes not being balanced, but you have to deal with that anyway no matter what.

-Desdan

I'm thinking that perhaps we should drop the uniform XP chart and assign levels an XP cost.

We tried that for thirty years, and it sucked.

-Username17

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083264049[/unixtime]]Then multiclass spellcasters would still suck.

Wizards shouldn't have to invest 15 levels to get 15th level abilities either. Spellcasting levels should probably be handled by schtick and not by power. Which is to say, I honestly don't give a damn if a warrior goes out and takes a single level of guy who teleports around and then starts teleporting around. He could just have a Cape of the Montebank when he was mid level - he could just have a helm of teleportation at high level.

A character investing a single level at mid level could just have Dimension Door - that wouldn't be unbalanced. A character investing a single level at high level could just have Teleport - that wouldn't be unbalanced either. The one ability should naturally scale into the other, because we desparately want to avoid the situation where chaarcters can get hosed by having taken abilities out of order.

Spellcasting is, if anything, easier to hand out in this fashion. And it is more important that it do so, honestly.

-Username17

Yes it would. That'd suck - and so be unbalanced. Currently, a mid-level monk going up in level gets higher base damage, +1 BAB, +1 saves, and dimension door. And probably sucks. So how is a fighter getting just one of those abilities (dimension door) from levelling up going to match?

(Btw, The current system isn't all full of bad. It has stuff that doesnt work, but for the most part it works OK.)

I can see shorter classes working w/ fighter classes, and maybe w/ rogues. Those abilities, and low-level spells, are much easier to compare and balance. Once you add spellcasting into the mix, it's all off. Especially if you have more than 10 basic casting classes, which your system requires.

As for multiclassing spellcasters, it's never going to work. Ever. Until the magic system fundamentally changes. As long as spell power increases exponentially, there is nothing that is ever going to be worth giving up a caster level. Maybe if that one level of fighter gives you +16 BAB, +6 fortitude saves, and +3 hp/level (keep the feats), is that worth giving up a shot at Gate next level? Maybe. But that's what your talking about to make multiclassing spellcasters OK.

It's just as bad from the other side. If a high level fighter gets teleport for giving up a fighter level, why bother being a fighter at all?

So, taking the magic system as it is, any system that mandates multiclassing is never going to work for spellcasters. Since revamping the entire magic system is probably more complicated than this one little thread can do, why not concentrate on something we could maybe address - applying a modular system to fighter classes?

Desdan_Mervolam at [unixtime wrote:1083264168[/unixtime]]You know, I betcha I know what the problem is...

The problem is that for a 15th level fighter, Wizard 1 costs the same as Fighter 16, when level theory states that a classes 16th level is all but infinitly more powerful than a classes first level (Level theory states that every two levels doubles a character's power. Not uniformly true, but then again it's a theory). I'm thinking that perhaps we should drop the uniform XP chart and assign levels an XP cost. This way that fighter can get several levels of wizard for the same cost he'd have to get to Fighter 16.

I mean, sure you still have to worry about classes not being balanced, but you have to deal with that anyway no matter what.

-Desdan

That's an interesting idea. I'll have to think that over.

As for multiclassing spellcasters, it's never going to work. Ever. Until the magic system fundamentally changes.

I think that's a given.

Investing a level into spellcasting should give you access to some spells - which then keep up with the character level from then on. If all you want to do is throw fire at people - that shouldn't cost you more than a level, and it should still keep up damage wise with other attack forms at high level.

As long as spell power increases exponentially, there is nothing that is ever going to be worth giving up a caster level.

Exactly, which is why it shouldn't increase that way.

Right now, sinking more levels into Wizard gets you more options, more charges, more powerful effects, and better effects out of the things you can already do. It makes your spells more likely to work, go farther, last longer, and be harder to get rid of. It stays crunchy even in milk.

And it shouldn't. Taking more levels of spellcaster should just give you more options. All the other scaling effects of caster level should just happen autmatically by going up in character level or not happen at all.

-Username17

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083222602[/unixtime]]I want to set it up so that not multiclassing after a certain point is impossible.

Why?

Shouldn't you just balance it out so that you can continue doing what your character does? I mean... I'm an evoker, I cast spells and blow stuff up, that's what I do, I don't really want to learn how to fight with a sword or heal people... I just want to get better at blowing stuff up.

I think multiclassing is too encouraged already in D&D, especially with how the save system works. There is no reason your cleric shouldnt' take sacred exorcist and no reason your fighter wouldnt' want to pick up barbarian levels for rage.

But what about the character where raging isn't his thing? What if the concept of the fighter class fits him perfectly? Why should he be forced to pick up something else, Why can't 20 levels of fighter just be equal to a barbarian 5/ fighter 2/Templar 4/etc.?

I don't see the point of forcing people to multiclass. All it encourages is the stupid oversaturation of the game with a PrC for every possible character concept, which ends up restricting people to whatever happens to be published as the next PrC crazy. And we run into a magic:the gathering style game where everyone is just looking for the latest and most overpowered PrC out there that their DM is willing to allow.

PrCs are great for WotC's economics because they keep getting people to come back buying books for the same reason they'll buy the next magic set if it's better than the last. Unfortunately you can't just change your character around like you can change your M:tG deck when you get the new cards.

Honestly, PrCs need to die for the most part. Stuff that serves a cruicial role in the game can stay, like the Mystic Theurge, but other stuff like weapon master and the virtuoso should just be lumped into the high level fighter and high level bard's abilities, because that's all they are.

Shouldn't you just balance it out so that you can continue doing what your character does?

No.

People have the option of doing other things. Those things have to be level appropriate when they get them or they have the multiclassed wizard dilemma.

Which means that for things to be balanced, you have to keep doing whatever it is you've been doing regardless of what class you take next level. So once you have a set of abilities, gaining a level of "that set of abilities improves" is not a class feature, because that set of abilities should be improving anyway.

Once you've run out of new things that you want to do that your class can give you - you must select a new class if you want your character to resemble your vision. The only solutions are:

1> Add new abilities to the class (for example, you could define all Barbarians as a hordemaster or bear warrior).

2> End the class and provide additional class options for people to customize themselves with.

If a class doesn't have anything new to add, it should end. Period. The Barbarian Archetype conception doesn't go very far before it runs out of ideas, which means that it either needs to start giving access to weird selectable abilities or branch off into a bunch of PrCs. Note that in reality, those two possibilities are actually one possibility. There is no difference between having a choice of classes which each provide one ability or having one class which provides a choice of ability - it's entirely meaningless semantics and organization.

Now maybe you would prefer it if after a few levels you started getting "selectable barbarian abilities" - and then new supplements could publish new alternate barbarian abiltiies to choose from like they do for Fighter Feats (only level scaling so they weren't such a god damned kick in the balls). Honestly, that's not different from having PrCs so I don't see why I should care one way or the other.

What if the concept of the fighter class fits him perfectly?

What concept? The fighter class is just a series of selectable abiltiies which suck. You could make them good, and then the Fighter would be viable - or you could scrap the entire concept and have people take levels of Swashbuckler, Duelist, Cavalier, Cuisinart, and Mustard Fairy. It doesn't make any difference.

If you are "selecting a class" which comes with an ability which auto-scales to your level, this is in absolutely no conceivable way different from you taking the next level in your class and then "selecting an ability" which then autoscales to your level.

And because these are equivalent statements, and more people seem to enjoy writing "Swashbuckler" on the top of their character sheet than in their ability list - I'm going to have to say that things should probably just break down into a crap load of classes every one of which is just really short.

Let's face it - the class system exists only so that everyone has to take something from column A and something from column B. So that not everyone just puts all their points into Chain Lightning. So that people's powers can scale together in some rough fashion. There's no reason why we need to have different character classes at all. You could just have one "character class", and a series of lists that you got to select one thing from every single level. That would work just fine. The only difference really is that people would just happen to have fighting ability - they wouldn't have "Fighter" written on their character sheet.

-Username17

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083275300[/unixtime]]
Which means that for things to be balanced, you have to keep doing whatever it is you've been doing regardless of what class you take next level. So once you have a set of abilities, gaining a level of "that set of abilities improves" is not a class feature, because that set of abilities should be improving anyway.

Well, it depends on what you call an ability. There are general abilities simply casting ability or fighting ability, then there are specific abilities like weapon focus or rage. Now, I think what you're saying is that specific abilities, such as weapon focus and rage should continue to scale upwards based on character level and not class level. So once you've got barbarian rage, it does a certain thing at 1st character level, gets better at 10th and then gets tot he best at 20th, even if you've only got one level of barbarian.

Basically the problem here is that instead of improving your rage with a new class level, you gain another ability that does basically the same thing and stacks with rage, so now you've got rage and this other ability. So the guy who had rage may have it scale now, but he lacks this new ability if he decides to multiclass, so really nothing has changed. The guy with both abilities is still the superior fighter, you've just inflated the numbers a bit, since you only need 1 level to get greater rage now.

Once you've run out of new things that you want to do that your class can give you - you must select a new class if you want your character to resemble your vision. The only solutions are:

But fighter classes don't have vision. They basicaly hit stuff with their sword and damage it. As they gain levels they just get better at doing that. They gain more attack bonus, more damage, and so on. Not every fighter even cares about bull rushing or tripping people. Conan just cuts stuff in half, he doesn't worry about disarms and finesse moves.

1> Add new abilities to the class (for example, you could define all Barbarians as a hordemaster or bear warrior).

But sometimes you don't want new abilities for your concept. What if my vision of a character is for him to simply become a better swordfighter. I don't want him to be some quasilycanthropic guy.

If a class doesn't have anything new to add, it should end. Period.

there's always something new to add for a class, or there should always be...

You can always become a better fighter... always. If you had a +20 attack bonus last level you can have a +21 or +22 next level. You can also do more damage and have better AC. Sometimes faster, stronger, tougher is all you want out of your character... you don't want him to turn into some lame werebear wannabe.

The Barbarian Archetype conception doesn't go very far before it runs out of ideas

Its underpowered right now because the abilities aren't strong enough, but the basic idea doesnt' have to change as you get higher in level. Wizards do different stuff as they learn new spells, you arent' content with just creating magic missiles when you can be teleporting and so on, but fighters basically just get better at what they do. As you said before, the barbarian is about raging and being really tough to kill. What if I just want to get better at those things? Why can't I just take more barb levels to do it?

I may not want new abilities, I may just want to be better at the old ones. I wanna be the leanest, meanest unstoppable rage machine on the block, that's why I chose barbarian in the first place.

What concept? The fighter class is just a series of selectable abiltiies which suck. You could make them good, and then the Fighter would be viable - or you could scrap the entire concept and have people take levels of Swashbuckler, Duelist, Cavalier, Cuisinart, and Mustard Fairy. It doesn't make any difference.

A fighter is the guy who beats people by skill at arms, technique. that's what they're all about. Technique, not emotion. It's what separates them from a barbarian. Barbarians go apeshit on people and tear them up while fighters prefer a more tactical approach and acquire skills through lots of training.

Now, you don't need 20 different classes for each branch of training when you just have feats. Feat trees work absolutely fine for differentiating different styles of training. Want to be a cavalier, great you got a mounted combat tree. Just tack on deadly charge and some of the cavalier PrC bonuses to the feat tree and you're set. Wanna be a duelist, then you get mobility, dodge, and other feats that fit the agile unarmored warrior. Canny defense should be a feat in that mobility tree.

And because these are equivalent statements, and more people seem to enjoy writing "Swashbuckler" on the top of their character sheet than in their ability list - I'm going to have to say that things should probably just break down into a crap load of classes every one of which is just really short.

People like writing swashbuckler when that's actualyl what they are. When you have to be ten different classes and you say "hey my character has really been doing the same stuff training and paradigm wise as he was at level 1", players more or less thing the huge list of class abilities might as well just say fighter 15 or wizard 15.

Let's face it - the class system exists only so that everyone has to take something from column A and something from column B. So that not everyone just puts all their points into Chain Lightning. So that people's powers can scale together in some rough fashion. There's no reason why we need to have different character classes at all. You could just have one "character class", and a series of lists that you got to select one thing from every single level. That would work just fine. The only difference really is that people would just happen to have fighting ability - they wouldn't have "Fighter" written on their character sheet.

Well, yeah, exactly. And from a design standpoint, you want a good balance of classes such that you can define a concept with a class, but that class can also be mixed with others in case of a mixed concept.

"Guy that masters a greatsword and kills with it" isnt' a mixed concept. You should only need one class for this, and that class is fighter.

There's no point in making the game super complex by people having to reference 10 different class ability charts for one character. I can't even imagine designing an NPC with a system of 100 different classes, it'd be such tedium.

If I can just slap fighter 15 on a simple character, I wanna be able to do that because it's way simpler to build than a "toughguy 5/swordswinger 5/duelist 2/great leaper 1/dodgemaster 2"

And as a DM who may want to create NPCs and lots of them, I don't want to spend hours trying to mix and match abilities like a PC does. I should be able to just take 15 levels of one class and the NPC is competetive as a 15th level character should be.

While your proposal could be cool from the PC side of things, a DM is going to be tearing his hair out at the complexity.

But fighter classes don't have vision. They basicaly hit stuff with their sword and damage it.

This is quite possibly the lamest thing I have ever heard anyone say.

Ever.

I can't imagine anything less fun than telling some players "You can have a character conception" and then turning around to other players and saying "You can't."

-Username17

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083279991[/unixtime]]
I can't imagine anything less fun than telling some players "You can have a character conception" and then turning around to other players and saying "You can't."

Some players don't want one, some players just want to play the simple swordswinger. they want to attack things with their weapon and they want to kill stuff with their weapon. They want to do that and be good at it. That's it.

Doing stuff like turning into a bear or growing wings isn't part of what they want to do. They just aren't interested in flying at will or doing dragonballz or Wuxia crap. They watch Aragorn in LotR kill some orc and they say "hey that guy is cool, I wanna be like him."

Maybe they also want some stuff on the side like some diplomacy skills, but they aren't willing to pay a level to get better at this stuff.

Now, you don't need 20 different classes for each branch of training when you just have feats. Feat trees work absolutely fine for differentiating different styles of training. Want to be a cavalier, great you got a mounted combat tree. Just tack on deadly charge and some of the cavalier PrC bonuses to the feat tree and you're set. Wanna be a duelist, then you get mobility, dodge, and other feats that fit the agile unarmored warrior. Canny defense should be a feat in that mobility tree.

But now you are talking baout 20 different classes.

Scratch that, you are talking about billions of classes. With a "b".

If all Fighter does is "give more feats", then feats are by definition class features. Which means that the number of classes possible from a mechanical stand point is simply the number of different combinations of feats you can take.

Not counting the order you can take them in, assuming a set of 30 feats and 11 choices of them - a Fighter has a simple fifty four million, six hundred and twenty seven thousand and three hundred different choices of layout. Factor in some of the more exotic feats (such as the Book of Feats, which promises over a thousand feats), and maybe give a Fighter access to some real number of bonus feats - and the number of potential classes generatable by this method becomes intractably large.

In what way is that simpler than writing up, say, 300 classes? 300 classes is less to sort through than worrying about bonus feats at all.

-Username17

Feats however don't come with BaB and save progressions, and that's the difference.

If I have 6 classes, I need to look up 6 different talbes just to calculate my base saves and BaB, that's a hell of a lot of crossreferencing for something we could have just handled with feats. To figure out the hit points of a 15th level NPC I'm generating in this system I have to also figure out 6 different hit dice.

Now this is after I've figured out what classes I want in the first place, which could take awhile in and of itself.

When you require 4 classes to represent "a guy who swings a sword" you've gone too far.

Feats however don't come with BaB and save progressions, and that's the difference.

When you are handing them out as class features - they sure as hell do.

-Username17

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083267316[/unixtime]]And it shouldn't. Taking more levels of spellcaster should just give you more options. All the other scaling effects of caster level should just happen autmatically by going up in character level or not happen at all.

Frank, in another thread you argued that spells shouldn't change in power based on caster level. That's not much different from powerups based on character level. Just pointing that out.

There are systems that allow a PC to just pick "casting ability" instead of other skills, and then let that ability scale up as the character becomes more powerful. A lot of computer games use similar systems. Shadowrun, too, among others. But it's not a D&D system.

It seems good in theory, but every time I try to think of specifics, the D&D magic system just has to go, not just get tweaked. Since that's not really an option (D&D is the magic system), I don't see this working. But you've put a lot more thought into this than me, so I'm looking forward to what you come up with.

Frank, in another thread you argued that spells shouldn't change in power based on caster level. That's not much different from powerups based on character level. Just pointing that out.

Exactly. When your spells are not changing in power based on caster level, and are instead changing in power by character level - that's in no way different from Fighter and Barbarian powerups scaling by character level. Which is the whole point. Everyone should be put on the unified level/power standard, because supposedly that's what a level means.

-Username17

That's not the same thing at all. Spells are either static, providing a fixed output that never changes, or they scale, and I thought you argued they shouldn't scale at all. If spells scale, but the scaling isn't tied to improving in a class that somehow limits other powers, then you haven't "fixed" multi-classed spellcasters. You've just turned everybody into a multi-classed spellcaster, b/c that's the only way to keep up.

I think you're aiming towards a spell level system, where multiclass caster "backs" into casting level and gets whatever the highest caster level would get. A ftr16/wiz1, for example, could get 1 9th, 8th, 7th, and 6th level spell. That's fine, but it does little as a balance issue, b/c those spells probably equal more than 1/2 of all the power a 17th level caster has - and the straight caster would be out the fighter abilities. You can argue about the other 3 8th level spells and junk, and that's fine, too. Make it a fighter 14/wiz3 or something.

If you do the reverse, and let the fighter a spell list of a 1st level wizard, at 17th level ability. Well, there's no point to that. That's little better than 3.5 multi-classing.

The problem is, if casting does scale on character level, and the scaling is worthwhile, it turns everybody into multi-classed casters. I mean, why would you bother adding barbarian abilities when you could add the ability to Gate in an Archon?

I'm not saying it can't be done. But it's not as simple as saying spells can scale w/ character level instead of caster level.

That's not the same thing at all.

I think you're aiming towards a spell level system, where multiclass caster "backs" into casting level and gets whatever the highest caster level would get.

Actually no, I am aware that such a system is unworkable.

What I'm thinking right now is that people should probably just get a couple of spells per class level - and the effects you can get out of them should be determined entirely by character level.

For example, let's say that we cut out all the crap from the spell list and get it down to just the basic spells available:

Abjuration
Protect (Resistance, Shield)
Banish (Remove Curse, Dismissal)
Ward (Alarm, Hold Portal)

Conjuration
Summon (duh)
Create (Create Water, Wall of Stone)
Heal (this should probably be necromancy)
Transport (teleport, planar binding - very problematic)

Divination
Detect (Detect Magic, Scry)
Question (Tongues, Contact Other Plane)

Enchantment
Stupify (Sleep, Feeblemind)
Compel (Charm, Geas)

Evocation
Blast (Fireball, Shout)
Force (Wall of Force, Floating Disk, Telekinesis should be here)
Light (Light, Darkness, very weak subset, especially in 3.5 - should include Silence)
Metamagic (Contingency, Prismatic Weirdness - very strange set up)

Illusion
Figments (Image, hallucinatory terrain)
Glamer (Nystal's Magic Aura, Invisibility)
Pattern (Color Spray, Hypnotic Pattern - very limited group)
Phantasm (Phantasmal Killer, Nightmare, should probably just be lumped into the rest of the Fear effects)
Shadow Magic (Shadow this, Shadow that - these are broken and should go away. Instead, Figments hsould simply be able to produce tactile sensations and with failed saves, of damaging people.

Necromancy
Soul Magic (Ray of Enfeeblement, Soul Bind)
Fear (Scare, Fear - this should all go into Enchantment as a general emmotion class of spell).
Corpse Magic (Animate Dead, Gentle Repose)
Fatigue Spells (Ennervation, Wave of Fatigue - courtesy of 3.5 and hopelessly underpowered)
Poison and Bone Spells (Contagion, Bone Armor, all that crap has business being in Necromancy at all - I use the Diablo terminology mockingly and purposefully)

Transmutation
Transform (Alter Self, Polymorph, broken as all get out).
Enhance (Magic Weapon, Bull's Strength - these don't make us happy either)
Communicate (Whispering Wind, Message - these should be Illusion or Divination)
Resize (Enlarge [person], Shrink Item)
Manipulate (Animate Rope, Fabricate)
Time Control (Slow, Time Stop)

That's only 31 spells. In the whole game. You could hand out like one or two of them per level of spellcaster and maybe let people get some of the class feature spells (like Awaken and Create Undead, which have no business being spells at all). You could also condense it a bit more by trimming out the stupid, for example I think we could drop the entire concept of Evocation handing out stuff like Contingency and just make those class features.

And then each of those spells should scale with level just like the warrior class features should.

So taking a level in Wizard lets you blow fire with a damage appropriate to your level - but it doesn't give you the ability to teleport or raise the dead.

Further, I think that spell slots should be dropped as a concept for anything other than your top tier of effects. When you are 12th level and proficient in Fear spells you really shouldn't have to keep track of how many slots have been dedicated to having an unnerving aura - you should just be able to have that all the time. You should, however, only have a limited number of times per day that you can unleash the true form of Terror upon the valley you are in (which should probably be once per day).

Now, I don't have a problem with a Black Knight investing only a single level into doing that. Just like I don't mind Louie the Wizard taking a level in Barbarian and then totally going ape on people sometimes with his stick. Rather than needing a whole Prestige Class of Blackguard to reconcile wanting to have a depression aura and stab people - you should just take a single level of spellcaster and have Fear Magic. Really, it should be that easy. And the magical fear you get should be every bit as good as that of the Necromancer of your level.

-Username17