User talk:66.90.104.57/Strenuous Casting (3.5e Variant Rule)

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Could someone give me some feedback on this?


 * Well, while I can see how it may help the idea that Wizards are God, it just forces upon everyone else a slightly shorter 15 minute workday. Wizards will still blow their wad, beating out the encounters in a turn or two, then they'll force everyone to wait for them. --TK-Squared 16:59, 5 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think this necessarily scales appropriately with caster hit points. Assuming you have to roll for hit points, a wizard with a moderately good Con (say, 14) has an average of 4.5 hit points per level (2.5 from HD and 2 from Con). This means that at level 17, when 9th level spells first become available, you will have about 76.5 hit points. Casting a level 9 spell, by this method, costs 63 points of nonlethal damage (level 9 times 7 for level -2). So you can cast one level 9 spell and then you're pretty much burned out. Which is either a minor inconvenience or tantamount to suicide.


 * That having been said, this is pretty easy to circumvent by becoming a lich and becoming immune to nonlethal damage. So that's really your primary issue without anything else being considered. All in all, I don't see how it fixes anything. Besides, the wizard and other casters can easily play down to the level of other characters. It's just a waste of their potential. I don't really see why people think it's a bad thing to just be able to adjust your spell selection, preferring instead to cut the wizard's nuts off.


 * While I'm here, I'm going to be a SPAG Nazi. "Rouge" does not equal "rogue", not to mention that this terminology is outdated. Please correct. - TG Cid 17:05, 5 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The point of this variant is that it makes casting your highest level spells very costly, encouraging you to use spells of lower levels. That being said the hp cost was a bit too high, so I lowered it.  My problem with just restricting spell lists is mostly a flavor one, it makes magic seem weak, while the flavor of this variant is aimed at making magic seem powerful, just being extremely difficult (and dangerous)to properly wield.  I don't know how to deal with the 15 minute workday.  It hasn't been a problem ever in any of the games I've DMed, since my games generally don't have time for 8 hour resting periods between encounters.  Could any variant like this not encourage it?


 * This doesn't solve any of the problems stated in the introduction and looks simply to add more problems. As TK-Squared mentioned, wizards can still do their "I win the encounter" with a single spell if they want (something that would be annoyingly anticlimactic if used at the very end of a dungeon against the Big Bad). Really, this rule just encourages everyone to not play a wizard because of the annoyance and hassle. It also would eliminate the classic wizard villain as an option since he'd only be able to cast 1 relatively high spell (not even his highest) before having to wait several weeks to regain all that lost HP through natural healing. Talk about lame. As for the "full caster" bit mentioned in the rule, what if a cleric takes a level in fighter (something like cleric 4/fighter 1 for example), does he still count as a "full caster" or does "full caster" just mean "a spell cast from a class that grants a full spellcasting progression up to 9th level spells"? This rule really isn't capable of solving the problem it aims to fix. You're gonna need an entirely different and in-depth solution than just "you take damage, deal with it" (that's an oversimplification, but the basics of what this does).--Ganteka Future 18:40, 5 August 2012 (UTC)


 * This still doesn't help when a wizard casts Glitterdust at level 10... --Ghostwheel 21:23, 5 August 2012 (UTC)


 * This cost structure is a mess. It takes you approx 6 hours to rest off casting 1 of your highest level spell because of the half rate. You probably can't cast your full compliment of spells in a day if you wanted to (even with Temp hit points), and that's a pretty big nerf.


 * If you just want people to cast their lower level spells in preference to their higher level ones, you could make the penalty larger and the duration shorter, but have it only apply to their top level spells at any given time. Maybe a Fort Save (same DC as your spell) vs. Unconscious / Helpless for 5 minutes. In that case casting one of your highest level spells might end the encounter for you as well as the enemies. If you want to make other levels less dangerous, they could make the save with a +2 / +4 for each spell level less than their max until you just let them auto succeed at casting without falling over. Might even toss in the ability to cast a spell with a lower DC, since the tradeoff of you being more likely to succeed while the enemies are also more likely to succeed could be workable.


 * It won't help Ghost with people casting strong spells several levels after they acquire them, but there's nothing for that but spell removal. - Tarkisflux Talk 03:13, 6 August 2012 (UTC)