DnD Dithering: We’re Off to See the Wizard
You’ll note that this is not one of my “What I Want to See in D&D” posts. That’s because I don’t actually know if this is something I want to see. I’m theorizing and tossing out ideas to see what sticks.
As you know if you’ve paid even vague attention to the online portion of the RPG community for the past, oh, decade, one of the common issues of concern is the balance of power between spellcasters and non-spellcasters. I’ve talked about it a bit myself.
The problem, in a nutshell, is that spellcasters have–or at least potentially have–both the versatility in their magics and the power in their offensive spells to outshine any other character in the party.
Different editions have tried to address this in different ways. 1E and 2E had wizards advance more slowly than most other classes, but this is a fake fix. It staggers the progression, but it doesn’t ultimately change anything.
1E, 2E, and 3E also had various ways a spell could be disrupted. That’s reasonable in theory, but the problem is that it sucks, as a player, to have your entire turn basically wasted, or to have one of your limited spells per day lost without getting to cast it. It may be fair, but it can lead to long periods of sitting around bored in an encounter.
4E balanced by giving everyone, even the martial characters, powers of roughly equivalent strength. This was the perfect solution for a lot of people, but lots of others objected–usually based on one of two points:
A) They want realistic fighters, not wuxia/Hercules types, and a lot of the more potent abilities were pretty obviously magic of a different name.
B) A lot of people want the classes to play very differently from one another, and this similarity of structure led to a similarity of play.
The other method that all editions but 4E have used to one extent or another is limited resources. A wizard or other spellcaster only has X spells he can cast in a day. He might be able to deal out more damage at one time than the fighter, or accomplish more in one minute than the skill-monkey, but he can only do that a couple of times, so the numbers balance out over the course of play.
That’s a perfectly fine idea, except for one problem. It only works if your playstyle is similar or identical to the one around which the system is based. If you prefer one or two huge battles in a day, rather than a larger spread of smaller fights, it throws that balance out of whack. The wizard can go nuclear in every fight. Sure, occasionally it’ll come back to bite him, but for the most part, players get to know what sort of setups their DM prefers.
None of the solutions are anywhere near perfect, either. Drastically weaken and strip options from the spellcasters? You lose a lot of the feel that’s made them spellcasters over the last 38 years. You remove not only the favorite classes, but the favorite style of play, from a huge part of the audience.
Longer casting times? Easier disruption? Unreliable casting? All well and good, but again, we get back to the “standing around doing nothing worthwhile for multiple rounds” problem.
Raise the power of the non-spellcasting classes? Again, a lot of people dislike raising the martial abilities to the level of potent spells.
Can all of this be reconciled? Well, no, not perfectly. There’s no such thing as perfect balance, anyway. You could just say that “If you want mundane martial characters, don’t play past Level X, when they have to basically be supernatural to keep up,” but again, that’s not going to satisfy everyone.
So, finally, we get to my point. Chew on this and let me know what you think.
Say that wizards (and other spellcasters, but I’m going to use wizards as my example, because it’s a shorter word) have X number of spells per day, as they have in most prior editions. But they also have an array of much weaker magical abilities, what in 4E would be considered “at-will” powers.
Spells require a roll to cast. The difficulty of the roll depends on both the spell level and the caster level. The precise math doesn’t matter for this discussion; let’s just assume that the highest level spell a character can cast is always really hard, but they get easier as the spell levels get lower.
Here’s the thing. If the casting roll fails…
A) You do not lose the spell. You cannot cast it, but you can try again next round.
B) If the spell fails, you can immediately change your action to casting one of your at-will/mini-spell abilities instead. And those have no chance of failure.
What, exactly, does this accomplish? Well, it limits the amount of Ultimate Cosmic Power the wizard can toss out, not only by day (X spells/day), but also by individual encounter. In some encounters, the wizard will get really lucky and get off a whole bunch of mega-spells. In other encounters, he’ll get really unlucky, and not get off a one. Most of the time, it’ll be somewhere in the middle.
The reason this matters is that now, it doesn’t matter how many encounters a DM prefers to have in a given day; the wizard still cannot constantly outshine everyone else, but still has the opportunity to sometimes steal the spotlight–as all characters should have, on occasion.
It also, unlike prior “spell check” systems, doesn’t make the player sit around chewing his cud if the roll fails. He can still throw out a mini-power which isn’t going to alter the flow of the encounter, but is at least as useful as anyone else’s basic attack. He’s gotten to contribute something. And he hasn’t wasted that one cool mega-spell without getting to cast it; he just didn’t get it off this time.
(If you’re using an optional spell-point system, something like 3E psionics, this can still work. You simply don’t waste the points if the roll fails.)
Is it a flawless idea? No, of course not. Anything that adds extra rolls to combat needs to be carefully considered, given how easy it’s been in both the most recent editions to slow combat to a crawl. But I think–especially if the mini-spells all require a minimum of rolls, and the difficulty numbers are easily accessible–that it won’t add much, and the benefits might be worth it. It adds some additional decision-making time as well, due to “Oh, crap! The spell didn’t go off! What at-will power should I use?!” But that’s easily fixed by the old “If you don’t decide quickly, you’re delaying until you make up your mind” routine.
This could work with casting times of multiple rounds, instead of requiring a roll. But that means more bookkeeping–”Are we on round 4, or round 5?”–as well as removing some of the flexibility. (Under the roll system, if the spell doesn’t go off in round 3, you can decide if you want to try it again or use something else in round 4. With casting times, you’re either stuck to what you committed to, or you have to start over.)
So, there it is. Thoughts? Comments? Modifications? Gaping holes that I apparently missed?
Edit to add: Okay, my bad. I neglected to make one point clear.
This roll is just to see if the wizard can cast the spell. He still has to make whatever attack roll, or get past whatever saving throw, the spell normally requires. Same thing with the “mini-spell.” The fact that he can use it without a check doesn’t mean it automatically hits or anything.
Yes, that means that a wizard trying to cast a “real” spell (as opposed to an at-will/mini-spell) needs to make two rolls, not just one, where a fighter swinging a sword just makes one. But that’s the entire point. The idea is to make it so the wizard cannot always throw his best attacks, but can always try to do something. But the key word there is “try.”
What about balancing this with non-spellcasters? Does the fighter get a second swing with his axe or does the rogue get a dagger toss if they miss with their first attack? That would be my first question once I heard the wizard gets a “contingency” spell. Maybe it would be better as a feat or encounter ability?
Okay, my bad. I neglected to make one point clear.
This roll is just to see if the wizard can CAST the spell. He still has to make whatever attack roll, or get past whatever saving throw, the spell normally requires. Same thing with the “mini-spell.” The fact that he can use it without a check doesn’t mean it automatically hits or anything.
So no, there’s no equivalent for the fighter or rogue, because the fighter and rogue don’t have to roll to see if they can make an attack in the first place. They just make it and either hit or miss.
The idea is to make it so the wizard cannot always throw his best attacks, but can always try to do SOMETHING. But the key word there is “try.”
After looking at this for a bit i realized that it suggests something that goes with the modular model they are talking about. What about having something called style points? They would be based off level and prime characteristic. Say, for example, that a wizard only has some basic minor spells, you get more at certain levels, and it does a d6 damage. Now using the style points the wizard can change it from affecting 1 enemy to being a burst, a blast, or even adding more damage. This would also work for thieves with back-stabbing, fighters with clearing out small groups of minor enemies, or one bigger enemy, rangers with hated enemies, etc. As you go up in level you unlock more uses and different kinds of usage. Wizards would have to decide whether to go to a burst 2 or add fire as a type of damage available. The flavor could be retained and wizards would be very customizable with out adding too much complexity. And think of the fighter that could swing through crowds of low-level orcs while still having a battle with their chieftain.
Another good idea! For flavor reasons, I’d suggest instead of if a spell fails, you get to pick from any of your mini-spells, instead each spell has a mini-effect. Most of these mini-effects might be the same – for example, all the fireball or other “big flame” spells all have a mini-spell effect of a 1d4 fire bolt on failure or something. Flavor-wise, it makes more sense to me that the spell you are trying to cast fizzles into a minor effect rather than “well, that failed, let’s start over but with something smaller”.
Plus, with flow of play, it takes a decision out that could slow things down. Sure, maybe with feats or whatever customizing mechanic, PC could get the ability to choose mini-spell, but by default having a fixed mini-spell makes sense (to me at least) and doesn’t slow down combat.
Either way, it is an interesting idea, and I do like it. Not sure all the players in my groups over the years would like that, but also we very rarely run into problems with balance between martial and spellcasters. In 3.x, sure the spellcasters could blast away with huge stuff, but we also had the fighter that built a smartphone app to handle all of his attacks with cleaves and power attacks and all that. So I’m sure it comes up in many games, but never came up in ours. That being said, I like your idea because it just sounds fun as well!
Love the idea…but love Ken’s enhancement even more! Then the dice economy is still fun but limited: 1 roll to see if big bang goes off, 1 roll to hit (either way), 1 roll for damage. Sounds fun! I like that the concept is similar to the monster recharge ability in 4e that made book-keeping sooo much easier on the DM. (ie no remembering how many rounds until a power can be used again, just roll to see if it can).
Hmm. I’m of two minds about this.
On a theoretical level, I really like Ken’s idea of each spell having a “minor” effect that goes off–without costing the spell slot–if the casting roll fails. You’re right that it removes a full step of last-minute decision making, and it’s thematically more solid.
On a practical level, though I’m concerned about the design space and word count that would be necessary to give EVERY SINGLE offensive spell a “failure effect.” (Especially since, given my love for creative casting, I like seeing spells used offensively that weren’t designed for it.) One could break it down into categories, I suppose–all fire spells do X on a failure, all lightning spells do Y, etc.–but then you run into problems with spells that combine effects, or have effects that are not easily categorized.
Plus, there needs to some contingency for using this rule on non-offensive spells. Suppose a wizard’s trying to cast a flying spell in the midst of combat. He should still have a chance of failure, but…
As I said, I’m not opposed to the idea. I like it in the abstract. It just requires further thought to see if it’s viable.
Also, I’m thinking this system should have a benefit for wizards who keep focusing on the same spell. Maybe, for each round you cast the SAME spell, and fail, you gain a cumulative +1 on the roll to cast it NEXT round. But if you switch to a different spell, you start over from zero.
I was gonna say basically what ken said: have a fizzle effect for each spell, which (1) is what happens when you fail to fully harness the energies of a spell casting and (2) makes up those minor/at-will magics that you have, rather than having a separate list.
If that seems like too many (to create, or to track in play), do them in groups. I’d suggest one for each school of magic, maybe further broken down into the level of spell being cast. Or maybe the spell level is irrelevant, and the effectiveness of the fizzle/at-will abilities just scale with character level. Though they would have to stay less than a 1st level spell… Hmmm…
Anyway, that would leave you, at most, a dozen or so magical at-wills to track. And you wouldn’t be spending time making a decision after the point of the failed spell roll (well, unless any of these effects had options, but as not-full-blown-spells, I’d suggest they shouldn’t.