Rambling thought experiment.

[subplotkudzu]

I have heard some talk about how 4E is going to have more by way of per encounter special abilities and spells to try to remove some of the resource management out of the game. This is, I suppose, to counter the wizards complaint of having the best 5 minutes of their day followed by being useless, but a) I've always seen the resource management aspect as a key part of D&D and 2) if you're not contributing with your personality and skills you're probably not a good fit for my games anyway.

 

But this raised an idea (which might be in 4E for all that I know) that rather than having X number of spells per day per level, spellcasters instead ratchet up on how often they can use their more limited number of spells. For example

 

A Wizard has grasped spells up to the 7th level of ability - very impressive, but his power to cast the greater spells is extremely limited. He can cast ay of his cantrips once very 5 minutes (or once a fight, to make it easy). His First level spells can each be done once per hour, while his Second are based on sun position - once from sunrise to noon, noon to sunset, sunset to midnight, midnight to dawn. His Third level spells are once per day, making them still very useful. Fourth level is more difficult, as each can only be cast once a week, while his Fifth level spells work only once per season. His limited cache of six level spells can each be cast but once per year, while he can manage his precious 7th levels only once every 1001 nights.

 

It certainly isn't *less* resource management, though a lower level spells are easy to come by. Power levels would have to be shifted - I figure the arrangement I listed as being about right for a 7th level spellcaster, not the 15th normally required to cast 7th level spells. That would also get some of the rarer, neat higher levels spells in play faster, which would be both cool and a dangerous power imbalance.

 

Game world time flow would have to be consistent - if the game keeps jumping forward a season a session the spellcaster could burn through their lower level spells quickly. Balance would be an issue if the spellcaster did cast every spell they knew for the next 1001 nights in the first hour of game time (and then bitched about their loss of absolute power) but those people wouldn't be the target audience anyway.

 

The lack of repetition in any casting period will make spellcasting more varied, as you can't just Magic Missile everything - you might have 8 more first level spells at your fingertips, but once Magic Missile is used, it's gone for a while.

 

I'm not sure this would be better, or even viable, but I think it would be interesting.

 

Now the rambling part: the idea of spells refreshing per solar arc fits Emirikol nicely. In that world each day is always 14 hours, sunrise to sunset, with the seasons coming from the phases of the sun. In the height of summer there is some time of horizon glow for an early dawn and lingering dusk, but for practical purposes the night is always 10 hours. The moon is visible every night, with monthly phases but a constant path.

 

That got me thinking about the other aspects of Emirikol's planetary structure. The sun, we know, is goddess of fire, dying and being reborn every year. I don't recall ever settling on what the Moon is, so there are probably many fields of thought on the subject - a pool of ocean in the sky? The home of the celestial court? It predates the ascension to godhood of the last emperor, so we know it's not him, but everyone other philosophy and cult lays claim to it, including Chaos worshippers.  The Stars are indeed the spirits of ones greatest ancestors, and the sky becomes a little more crowded every year. In rare instances the final end of a once prominent family line has caused whole constellations to wink out of existence, as the ancestors no longer have ties to the world.

 

Just some random thoughts. It's a magical world, after all. No reason not to make it magical in construction.

Comments

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

The ideas are interesting, if somewhat likely to be unplayable, in practice.

Admittedly, I think they'd work a lot better in fiction than in an RPG. Those pesky players!

And any class that can use rituals must decide when it's worth spending the cash and time on a ritual (the category where "spells you quest for" is going, as well as most spells that you want available but which either you don't want to cast during combat, or don't want people casting during combat -- remove disease, teleport, identify, etc).

I'm not sure about the rest of it (it looks viable enough in abstract, but it does hinder the players who just want to play a straight up Fighter or Rogue and not resource manage) but splitting out spells into combat and rituals could be very useful. A break from previous versions of the game - larger than anything we saw in 3E's spellcasting - but useful

Thankks for the explanation.

[mneme]

The worldbuilding ideas work fine, of course -- it's just requiring players to keep track of resources in a 1001 (or longer) day cycle that's the issue.

Yeah, it does seem like for better or worse, "I don't have to worry about managing spells, I just swing a sword" easy-peasy characters will be gone from 4th edition. OTOH, it seems like they're trying to remove all of the more annoying nitty gritty decisions to have more reasonable turn by turn/day by day options (no clerics with hundreds of spells available in each slot, no power attack), so who knows? Maybe they'll end up with a decision tree that will please both the fighters-players and the wizard-players. Or mayber not.

I also like the rituals -- they avoid having to optimize characters for combat vs out of combat, and keep the "spells as treasure" mechanic in the game while making sure that characters can't rachet up their personal combat power just by buying/finding spells and spending small amounts of gametime and money.

Yeah, I've been having fun explaining the 4th edition changes to friends, as I've been paying a lot more attention than most people I know. Maybe I should do a short series of d&d4 exegeses? That could be entertaining, I suppose.