I wanted to make something that could encourage a big climactic moment. What I was imagining was the end of a boss fight, several players are down and your wizard is out of spell, they may be able to end it but it could be a huge sacrifice.
Some problems I already have:
1) it's too long/complicated. I was attempting to make this scalable, the idea was a lower level mage could hurt themselves quite easily, but a more powerful one could take some strain to pull of some lower levels spells. When most other feats are a couple sentences at most I feel like this may be too complicated.
2) I intended to make this something that any spell caster could take but it's really geared towards wizard. This is from a lack of experience and I would love any suggestions on this.
3) My description and snippet are pretty bad, it's something I need to work on in general but my writing has always been pretty coarse.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, I look forward to any advice you have.
I sort of see some similar ideas as an Evocation Wizard's 14th level feature, Overchannel. The first half of the feature raises damage is not relevant here except the part of restricting it to 1st to 5th level spells. Being able to cast spells higher than 5th might be unbalanced. The second part deals with taking necrotic damage based on the level of each spell. Maybe use that as a way to reduce your description and help keep balance?
That is a good example to work off of. I do agree that offering higher spell levels does risk making this unbalanced which is why I wanted to stack the hazards as you went up the list. I thought about changing to to just be based on spell level but I wanted to avoid this becoming something like a free pearl of power with slight side effects at lower levels.
I think I could steal a bit more from the Wish spell and take a handful of the effects I like from the table and apply those, with the level of spell you use affecting your recovery time. something like penalties to how many spell slots your recover every rest, maybe reducing your max hp, and the taking damage when casting for 1D4 days for every 2 spell levels rounding up.
Okay. If my goal was to reduce length of the feature, and I knew it was a 1 use per long rest thing, then I wouldn't have a table personally. Doing so helps with your concern with length directly.
Variant 1: Apply 1 level of exhaustion to yourself for each level of the spell (a 6th level or higher would mean the ultimate sacrifice of course).
Variant 2: Apply necrotic damage to self scaling with spell level (a 6th level or higher spell could to be possible if you have the HP left over)
Variant 3: Reduce your maximum HP scaling with spell level until you long rest (pretty sure you still die if your max HP is less than 1, so correct me if I'm wrong here)
Varient 4: mix of 2 and 3.
These are simplified options obviously, but this is assuming that your wizard is making one last ditch effort and you're trying to reduce the feat's length.
I like all for of these, I think for the necrotic damage I could make it something like "2D10 per spell level" that way for most lower level casters it would still be considered deadly damage, but for high level 17-20 if they do something like a 9th level spell 18D10 is still considered dangerous.
I might mix all of them in a way. Doing taking the above damage dice, a scaling max hp reduction, and a flat 2 levels of exhaustion regardless of level.
The 2 levels may be too much. I can't think of anything off hand that does multiple levels in one action but I really like the idea of the draw backs taking multiple days to fully recover from. Maybe instead of the 2 levels of exhaustion it's only 1, but your max hp is healed by 1 hit die each long rest. What do you think?
I recommend doing what is easiest for your book keeping. Keeping in mind if it's a spell casting class they already have to deal with keeping track of spells, and making a feat that also must be kept track of can be a burden. The only feat in the PHB that I can think of at the top of my head that has a good amount of book keeping is Ritual Caster (and it deals with a literal book!). You could use that as a reference for length.
Personally I wouldn't mix exhaustion with the other two. As exhaustion levels themselves tend to be reduced by 1 per long rest (and 4th level halves max hp so mixing it with max HP reduction is redundant or overkill). I think Greater Restoration also removes 1 level of the condition.
Those are very good points, I might stick to just the damage one then since I think it scales really well with the damage table in the DMG. I may keep the max hp reduction as you described it then too.
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https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/346292-reckless-mage
I wanted to make something that could encourage a big climactic moment. What I was imagining was the end of a boss fight, several players are down and your wizard is out of spell, they may be able to end it but it could be a huge sacrifice.
Some problems I already have:
1) it's too long/complicated. I was attempting to make this scalable, the idea was a lower level mage could hurt themselves quite easily, but a more powerful one could take some strain to pull of some lower levels spells. When most other feats are a couple sentences at most I feel like this may be too complicated.
2) I intended to make this something that any spell caster could take but it's really geared towards wizard. This is from a lack of experience and I would love any suggestions on this.
3) My description and snippet are pretty bad, it's something I need to work on in general but my writing has always been pretty coarse.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, I look forward to any advice you have.
I sort of see some similar ideas as an Evocation Wizard's 14th level feature, Overchannel. The first half of the feature raises damage is not relevant here except the part of restricting it to 1st to 5th level spells. Being able to cast spells higher than 5th might be unbalanced. The second part deals with taking necrotic damage based on the level of each spell. Maybe use that as a way to reduce your description and help keep balance?
That is a good example to work off of. I do agree that offering higher spell levels does risk making this unbalanced which is why I wanted to stack the hazards as you went up the list. I thought about changing to to just be based on spell level but I wanted to avoid this becoming something like a free pearl of power with slight side effects at lower levels.
I think I could steal a bit more from the Wish spell and take a handful of the effects I like from the table and apply those, with the level of spell you use affecting your recovery time. something like penalties to how many spell slots your recover every rest, maybe reducing your max hp, and the taking damage when casting for 1D4 days for every 2 spell levels rounding up.
Does the wording imply you will only be able to cast one spell with this feature then you must take a rest?
The current one does yes, just above the table "You cannot use this feat to cast spells again until you finish a long rest."
Okay. If my goal was to reduce length of the feature, and I knew it was a 1 use per long rest thing, then I wouldn't have a table personally. Doing so helps with your concern with length directly.
Variant 1: Apply 1 level of exhaustion to yourself for each level of the spell (a 6th level or higher would mean the ultimate sacrifice of course).
Variant 2: Apply necrotic damage to self scaling with spell level (a 6th level or higher spell could to be possible if you have the HP left over)
Variant 3: Reduce your maximum HP scaling with spell level until you long rest (pretty sure you still die if your max HP is less than 1, so correct me if I'm wrong here)
Varient 4: mix of 2 and 3.
These are simplified options obviously, but this is assuming that your wizard is making one last ditch effort and you're trying to reduce the feat's length.
I like all for of these, I think for the necrotic damage I could make it something like "2D10 per spell level" that way for most lower level casters it would still be considered deadly damage, but for high level 17-20 if they do something like a 9th level spell 18D10 is still considered dangerous.
I might mix all of them in a way. Doing taking the above damage dice, a scaling max hp reduction, and a flat 2 levels of exhaustion regardless of level.
The 2 levels may be too much. I can't think of anything off hand that does multiple levels in one action but I really like the idea of the draw backs taking multiple days to fully recover from. Maybe instead of the 2 levels of exhaustion it's only 1, but your max hp is healed by 1 hit die each long rest. What do you think?
I recommend doing what is easiest for your book keeping. Keeping in mind if it's a spell casting class they already have to deal with keeping track of spells, and making a feat that also must be kept track of can be a burden. The only feat in the PHB that I can think of at the top of my head that has a good amount of book keeping is Ritual Caster (and it deals with a literal book!). You could use that as a reference for length.
Personally I wouldn't mix exhaustion with the other two. As exhaustion levels themselves tend to be reduced by 1 per long rest (and 4th level halves max hp so mixing it with max HP reduction is redundant or overkill). I think Greater Restoration also removes 1 level of the condition.
Those are very good points, I might stick to just the damage one then since I think it scales really well with the damage table in the DMG. I may keep the max hp reduction as you described it then too.