So, I'm in the lead up to running my first campaign and I've got a few homebrew rules I'm happy with based on my experience as a player. I'm not too familiar with magic classes though outside of people in my group playing as them, so it's not something I want to introduce rules for without running it by some more experienced people first and maybe getting some pointers to improve it. I've looked through the rulebook in regard to this stuff but I'm still not 100%.
1) So, casting spells.
I played a mage character for about 3 sessions in a little mini campaign and I didn't really enjoy it, largely due to the fact I felt picking certain spells was a waste due to them being situational and using resources as well as being really reluctant to cast spells with the "what if I need that [spellslot] later?" attitude. I noticed in a much longer campaign the two caster players being pretty reluctant to cast spells too, especially outside of combat incase they needed the slots in combat.
So to promote picking a few spells that are a bit more situational or don't have a directly 'combat' use as well as allowing players to be a bit less cautious about using spell slots, I was thinking of getting rid of spell slots entirely and instead requiring a roll for success with every cast.
For direct damage spells I would probably just use the targets AC. For AoE spells that often have a save to take half damage I would probably add the AC roll too (or instead of? I'm not sure there). For everything else that doesn't necessarily have a target I would just gauge how 'powerful' I think the spell is as well as the spell level and assign a DC to it for success. It gives a chance of spells missing or simply not working (which seems fair if I get rid of spell slots) or even a critical fail that directs the effects at the caster (which I think could be funny depending on the spell used, but that's just me).
Does something like this seem balanced? Would I be making casters too powerful or underpowered by doing this? I think I would personally be okay with them being a little more or less powerful in return for having more flexibility on casting, and I would obviously run that by the players too before implementing it if that was the case.
2) Learning spells.
Instead of just learning spells automatically upon leveling to make magic seem that bit more special, I was thinking that before the character "knows" the spell they first have to find a book containing "instructions" on how to cast said spell. Buy it, find it, look in a library. I could just have a spell book for each class or I could split them into different books based on spell level or 'type of spell' such as a book containing all the fire based spells.
After getting the book they have to succeed on what are essentially death saving throws but for spells. They can make these 'death saves' once per day either in or out of combat and if they succeed on their daily saves they "know" the spell. Obviously they could "learn" the spell pretty much straight away or they could end up at level 15 still trying to learn a level 2 spell depending on how their rolls go.
If in combat they tried casting the spell (which would also count as a death saving roll) and they succeed they could cast the spell normally, kind of like "they're getting the hang of it and managed to cast it". I wouldn't personally try it IN combat but hey, maybe it's a really useful spell and they're willing to take the chance.
2.5) I would like to add something like the 'spell death saves' to other things where it makes sense just for a bit of flavour.
For a lot of 'physical damage' classes I can't really think of a plausible way to do it since something like a barbarian, to me, a lot of their skills I can justify in my mind that they learned it through experience and when the character "levels up" that's just when they kind of got the hang of it. It doesn't make sense that they would need to go and train to use rage. I guess I'm thinking here "what other class skills would 'learning' make sense with?"
Druid forms I would like to add rolls to just for possible moments like "I turn into a shark" but they get a natural 1 and turn into a seahorse. However I'm not sure whether I would do the same as I've said about rolling for spells, whether they should have to somehow 'learn' to transform like I've mentioned with learning spells or whether this is something that's just a bit unfair to make a player roll on. Maybe in regard to learning transformations I would just require them to turn into something of that challenge rating rather than saying "you have to learn every single different animal". Possibly for more 'exotic' transformations make them learn it to make them a bit more special.
I realise I've wrote quite a bit. Thanks if you've read this far, double thanks if you can help point me in the right direction here.
1) This is too powerful, but I understand wanting to do away with slots for flexibility. I recommend using the spell point variant rules in the DMG.
2) I think older editions (I've only played 5e) had a system where you had to learn spells from a book, scroll, or master before you could use them, but it was done away with for simplicity. You could add such a system back, but I would maybe keep it simpler than you currently have it (like only having to succeed the the learning save once, but the DC starts high and gets lower with each attempt).
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So, I'm in the lead up to running my first campaign and I've got a few homebrew rules I'm happy with based on my experience as a player. I'm not too familiar with magic classes though outside of people in my group playing as them, so it's not something I want to introduce rules for without running it by some more experienced people first and maybe getting some pointers to improve it. I've looked through the rulebook in regard to this stuff but I'm still not 100%.
1) So, casting spells.
I played a mage character for about 3 sessions in a little mini campaign and I didn't really enjoy it, largely due to the fact I felt picking certain spells was a waste due to them being situational and using resources as well as being really reluctant to cast spells with the "what if I need that [spellslot] later?" attitude. I noticed in a much longer campaign the two caster players being pretty reluctant to cast spells too, especially outside of combat incase they needed the slots in combat.
So to promote picking a few spells that are a bit more situational or don't have a directly 'combat' use as well as allowing players to be a bit less cautious about using spell slots, I was thinking of getting rid of spell slots entirely and instead requiring a roll for success with every cast.
For direct damage spells I would probably just use the targets AC. For AoE spells that often have a save to take half damage I would probably add the AC roll too (or instead of? I'm not sure there). For everything else that doesn't necessarily have a target I would just gauge how 'powerful' I think the spell is as well as the spell level and assign a DC to it for success. It gives a chance of spells missing or simply not working (which seems fair if I get rid of spell slots) or even a critical fail that directs the effects at the caster (which I think could be funny depending on the spell used, but that's just me).
Does something like this seem balanced? Would I be making casters too powerful or underpowered by doing this? I think I would personally be okay with them being a little more or less powerful in return for having more flexibility on casting, and I would obviously run that by the players too before implementing it if that was the case.
2) Learning spells.
Instead of just learning spells automatically upon leveling to make magic seem that bit more special, I was thinking that before the character "knows" the spell they first have to find a book containing "instructions" on how to cast said spell. Buy it, find it, look in a library. I could just have a spell book for each class or I could split them into different books based on spell level or 'type of spell' such as a book containing all the fire based spells.
After getting the book they have to succeed on what are essentially death saving throws but for spells. They can make these 'death saves' once per day either in or out of combat and if they succeed on their daily saves they "know" the spell. Obviously they could "learn" the spell pretty much straight away or they could end up at level 15 still trying to learn a level 2 spell depending on how their rolls go.
If in combat they tried casting the spell (which would also count as a death saving roll) and they succeed they could cast the spell normally, kind of like "they're getting the hang of it and managed to cast it". I wouldn't personally try it IN combat but hey, maybe it's a really useful spell and they're willing to take the chance.
2.5) I would like to add something like the 'spell death saves' to other things where it makes sense just for a bit of flavour.
For a lot of 'physical damage' classes I can't really think of a plausible way to do it since something like a barbarian, to me, a lot of their skills I can justify in my mind that they learned it through experience and when the character "levels up" that's just when they kind of got the hang of it. It doesn't make sense that they would need to go and train to use rage. I guess I'm thinking here "what other class skills would 'learning' make sense with?"
Druid forms I would like to add rolls to just for possible moments like "I turn into a shark" but they get a natural 1 and turn into a seahorse. However I'm not sure whether I would do the same as I've said about rolling for spells, whether they should have to somehow 'learn' to transform like I've mentioned with learning spells or whether this is something that's just a bit unfair to make a player roll on.
Maybe in regard to learning transformations I would just require them to turn into something of that challenge rating rather than saying "you have to learn every single different animal". Possibly for more 'exotic' transformations make them learn it to make them a bit more special.
I realise I've wrote quite a bit. Thanks if you've read this far, double thanks if you can help point me in the right direction here.
1) This is too powerful, but I understand wanting to do away with slots for flexibility. I recommend using the spell point variant rules in the DMG.
2) I think older editions (I've only played 5e) had a system where you had to learn spells from a book, scroll, or master before you could use them, but it was done away with for simplicity. You could add such a system back, but I would maybe keep it simpler than you currently have it (like only having to succeed the the learning save once, but the DC starts high and gets lower with each attempt).