Back in July, I wrote about a house rules where monsters never miss in combat. The logic was that the story is about the PCs, not the monsters. So instead of the monsters rolling to hit, the players would roll to defend.
A week later, I wrote about my magic casting variant where players have to make a successful roll in order to cast a spell.
As I was translating the spell book for the latter, it occurred to me that I have significantly “nerfed” the spell casters.
Rules as Written
In the rules from the D&D book, a spell-caster always succeeds, and their target gets a saving throw to see if they avoid (or reduce) the effects of the spell. Let’s assume that’s a 50/50 chance, so the caster has a 50% chance of successfully getting his desired effect.
Rules with Spell Check
By adding the spell check, things get bad for the magic user. Now there’s a 50% chance that the spell will work to begin with. Then, if it does, there’s a 50% chance that the monster will save, and avoid the the effect. So now the caster has an overall 25% chance of successfully getting his desired effect.
Rules with Spell Check but no Save
By adding the spell check, but taking away the save, things get back to normal. Now there’s a 50% chance that the spell will work, but if it works then it works.
Unanswered Questions
While this solves the primary problem, there are still a few issues that come to mind.
NPC casters: How I do handle evil wizards and tribal shaman? Do I make the roll to cast a spell? Do I give the party a saving throw?
High level monsters: The higher the level the monster, the more likely it is to make its saving throw. By doing away with saves, every monster is now equally affected (or not) by magic. Maybe this is a feature?
PvP: If a player casts a spell on another party member, do I let the target have a save?
That’s it!
That’s it for this week!
This is the first post of 2021. 2020 was a good year for the blog. Let’s hope 2021 is as good for the blog, and better for you and the world!
Happy 2021! Thanks for the many blog posts, and look forward to the future of what you'll be sharing!
ReplyDeleteas for the topic at hand, I think that some other concepts you're introducing could help with the unanswered questions:
For NPC casters, you could do similarly to how you've changed to-hit rolls from monsters into defense rolls for PCs. For enemy magic, the target could have a saving roll.
For high level monsters, perhaps this is another factor which bumps up the difficulty of the spellcasting, which will offer that same tiered difficulty of success.
As for PvP...I feel like there's a few routes. You could adjust the rolls for PvP so the combined spell check roll and saving roll from the two players amounts to ~50% total. You could use the context to determine which is the more difficult thing to do (succeed the spell cast or save against it), then have the just that player roll. Or perhaps (if you trust your players), you could have just the casting roll but have the target and caster role-play the outcome (with your guidance) to see what impact is had. Or some other fourth, superior option I haven't considered. =)