My players just reached level 6. One of them gathered some high quality materials and got a nat 20 to make a custom weapon, and I'm struggling to decide how to balance it.
This player is a multi-classed blade singer wizard and artificer. He uses a gun as his blade dance weapon. He is wanting to make it so that he can load spells into his gun at the start of the day and shoot them later - no big deal! However he *also* wants it to be a bonus action to shoot all of these spells. So he can basically shoot a regular bullet as his action, then cast an entire spell as a bonus action. Even the meta- magic adept feat only gives you 2 sorcery points to work with, so I just can't think of a way to make this fair. We agreed that *if* I can find a way to balance, we would cap it at single target spells and only up to 4 levels worth of spells being stored at a time (with the ability to increase this cap as they level up and he spends more time working on it).
We discussed alternatives like letting him use his spell casting modifier instead, but that's something he gets as an artificer later already. We also discussed increasing range like making touch spells ranged if cast through the gun, but thanks to using intelligence for AC, he's very much a front liner. He very much has his heart set on the bonus action feature.
So is there any way to balance this? I feel like the bonus action specifically would be really crazy, but is it actually going to be as broken as I think? If we agree he can't cast a spell as his action, then shoot a different spell as his bonus action, is this really going to be over powered?
With a few caveats added, I think this could work and it wouldn't be overpowered. I see the need to clarify the following points:
Only spells with a casting time of an action may be stored. This is a fairly important limitation, because otherwise you're leaving the door open for ritual casting and spells that intentionally have a long casting time, such as leomund's tiny hut. Additionally, this ties neatly into the level 11 artificer feature which has the same limit.
The bonus action isn't a big deal if:
Loading spells costs a spell slot as normal
Any material components that are consumed still need to be provided when loading a spell
Loaded spells that aren't used "expire" after a long rest. Otherwise there is a limited amount of stacking possible, bringing 4 levels of spells over from the previous day. This would wreak more havoc than anything else, because DnD is heavily reliant on resource drain to provide challenge.
Clarify when exactly the spell is being casting during this procedure. If the spell is cast when loading the spell (preferrably directly after completing a long rest), it can no longer be counterspelled when the spell is actually "shot", but it will be easier to track. Spell slots need to be crossed off when loading the gun.
The reason why metamagic bonus action casting is so expensive is the flexibility of being able to choose which spell you're casting as a bonus action. In this guns case, spells need to be defined when loading them, reducing flexibility. Quite an important limitation.
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My players just reached level 6. One of them gathered some high quality materials and got a nat 20 to make a custom weapon, and I'm struggling to decide how to balance it.
This player is a multi-classed blade singer wizard and artificer. He uses a gun as his blade dance weapon. He is wanting to make it so that he can load spells into his gun at the start of the day and shoot them later - no big deal! However he *also* wants it to be a bonus action to shoot all of these spells. So he can basically shoot a regular bullet as his action, then cast an entire spell as a bonus action. Even the meta- magic adept feat only gives you 2 sorcery points to work with, so I just can't think of a way to make this fair. We agreed that *if* I can find a way to balance, we would cap it at single target spells and only up to 4 levels worth of spells being stored at a time (with the ability to increase this cap as they level up and he spends more time working on it).
We discussed alternatives like letting him use his spell casting modifier instead, but that's something he gets as an artificer later already. We also discussed increasing range like making touch spells ranged if cast through the gun, but thanks to using intelligence for AC, he's very much a front liner. He very much has his heart set on the bonus action feature.
So is there any way to balance this? I feel like the bonus action specifically would be really crazy, but is it actually going to be as broken as I think? If we agree he can't cast a spell as his action, then shoot a different spell as his bonus action, is this really going to be over powered?
With a few caveats added, I think this could work and it wouldn't be overpowered. I see the need to clarify the following points:
The reason why metamagic bonus action casting is so expensive is the flexibility of being able to choose which spell you're casting as a bonus action. In this guns case, spells need to be defined when loading them, reducing flexibility. Quite an important limitation.