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View Full Version : Can "Spontaneous preparation" balance casters?



Thoughtbot360
2008-06-27, 10:08 AM
I was thinking, maybe would it help balance casters with non-casters if you had to prepare your in-combat spells just prior to combat? Here's how the system works:

1) The wizard wakes up and prepares spells as usual. However this list is much more limited, involving only utility, divination, and other non-combat spells. Any of these spells are available until you use them or if you prepare non-combat spells again. (as usual)
2) When the wizard suspects combat is in the near future, he can give up a prepared non-combat, for a direct damage or Save-or-Die or etc (similar to how a Cleric can spontaneously cast Cure spells). This process takes a few minutes, and can (probably) not be done *in* combat, where a whooping 10 rounds make up a single minute. This concept is called "Spontaneous Preparation"
3) Timing and discretion must be used. After you prepare a combat spell, it will only be "fresh" and usable for a short while. By the end of the hour, the spell has "decayed" and the magic no longer works. You cannot use the combat spell -nor can you get back the out-of-combat spell- once this happens.
4) I don't know if Buffs (like Wind Wall, Bull's Strength, Mind Blank, etc.) should count as "spontaneously prepared" combat spells or not.
5) I don't have a really good idea of how to compensate the wizard who's been ambushed.

As mentioned in item 2, this system is called "Spontaneous preparation". This is basically a system that gives an advantage to Fighters in terms of preparedness.

Of course, Wands and Contingency are a bit of a problem.

kamikasei
2008-06-27, 10:17 AM
Sounds interesting. I'm inclined to say buffs should not count as combat spells, as that way, you end up with a wizard whose safest bet is to prepare a mix of buffs and utility spells, and if combat breaks out, to boost the rest of the party rather than waste spells in advance trying to be ready to blast.

You might consider giving them something like eldritch blast or an at-will (but requiring an attack) magic missile, so that they would have some magical attack option to make them useful in their own right rather than almost totally dependent on others.

Other questions arise around the status of various battlefield control spells.

Foxtale
2008-06-28, 05:06 AM
What about something like this:

Spontaneous Preparation [General Feat]
Prerequisite: The ability to memorise spells.
Benefit: You may spend one minute meditating and/or praying to replace one memorised spell you have not used yet with another you could normally memorise. If this is used in combat, you must pass a Concentration check each round or lose concentration and have to start again.
Special: A wizard may choose this as one of his bonus feats.

Talic
2008-06-28, 05:52 AM
This has a major disadvantage.

How many fights do casters get in where they're not expecting a fight until a couple rounds before it happens?

A lot. Waking up in the middle of the night... Being ambushed, attacked.

This proposal makes the wizard class utterly incapable of recovering from a surprise attack. Their only option is to flee, or die.

Because, by the time a caster could get a single spell? The combat would be well and truly over. Adding in the low hp of the wizard, and any ambush, even by characters grossly lower in level than the caster, would be completely fatal.

You've got balance, all right. Either the caster wins when he does know, or the caster loses when he doesn't.

In either case, rolls, tactics, strategy, recovery ability? All irrelevant. We have a character who is either a god of all he surveys, or a 9 year old girl, with no in betweens, and a shift time that's 4-6 times longer than the average fight.

You'd get a bit more playability requiring each spell to be transferred as a full round action, and lasting 1 hour.

You'd also get a bit more playability if you only restricted the wizard's top spell levels in this way (for example, a level 1 wizard would not be restricted with level 0 magic... A level 15 wizard would not be restricted with level 4 and lower magic)

Tsotha-lanti
2008-06-28, 06:09 AM
So wizards, who are already made incredibly poweful by preparation time, are now made even more powerful (versatile) by less preparation time?

No, it wouldn't balance anything.

Jade_Tarem
2008-06-28, 06:13 AM
I agree with Talic.

You've just had the pendulum swinging the other way with wizards, to say nothing of how this would (or rather, would not) work with sorcerers who would very nearly be better than wizards in every concievable way under this system - and you can't transfer this system over to them easily, because there's no preparation analogue for sorcerers.

And what of Druids and Clerics? Those classes' best combat spells are buff spells, which you might leave unaffected anyhow. This means that you haven't balanced classes at all - just nerfed wizards (and wizards specifically) hard.

Ironically, the "spontaneous preparation" designation on this ability is misleading - the only thing spontaneous will be the transformation of the wizard's body into a pincushion upon ambush. This ability only works for the wizard when nothing about the combat is spontaneous.

You've modeled this on how a cleric can spontaneously cast cure spells, but this is the exact opposite - the cleric's spontaneous-cure ability is useful because he doesn't need to memorize cure spells any longer, because they're always there when he needs them. Here, the wizard needs his combats spells in combat, and can't have them because he wasn't given a full minute's warning - and that minute only gives him one spell! God forbid the enemy makes its saving throw.

So... this needs some work.


Edit: Tsotha... um... did you read anything in the original post other than the words "Ten rounds to prepare?" The wizard isn't allowed to stock up at the beginning of the day, and has to spend ten rounds (PER SPELL) preparing right before the combat starts - or after the combat starts, in the case of an ambush.

We could stage a little demostration. Fighter vs. Wizard - wizard gets no spells until ten rounds into the combat. The result will be exactly what it sounds like.

Thoughtbot360
2008-06-28, 08:17 AM
Sounds interesting. I'm inclined to say buffs should not count as combat spells, as that way, you end up with a wizard whose safest bet is to prepare a mix of buffs and utility spells, and if combat breaks out, to boost the rest of the party rather than waste spells in advance trying to be ready to blast.

You might consider giving them something like eldritch blast or an at-will (but requiring an attack) magic missile, so that they would have some magical attack option to make them useful in their own right rather than almost totally dependent on others.

Other questions arise around the status of various battlefield control spells.

Hmm..eldritch blast would work. Either that are making the wizard more fighter-like. Our spellcaster has become something extremely like unto a Ritualist -one who needs to do a long freaking ceremony to use magic- which means that simply studying magic in a cushy, scholarly life will be inadequate for anyone to become an adventurer.

As stated before, I hadn't yet thought that far, but I knew that Wizard's needed something that could help them cope. Talic actually brought up something similar to a solution I thought about but did not post:


You'd also get a bit more playability if you only restricted the wizard's top spell levels in this way (for example, a level 1 wizard would not be restricted with level 0 magic... A level 15 wizard would not be restricted with level 4 and lower magic)

Yeah, It basically implies that a Wizard gets into better practice with higher-level spells over time, so that he's not entirely helpless.

@Foxtale: Well, Feats are optional, and we're talking about a rules change here. Also, and I hate to be negative about it, but; that feat would mean that casters would be constantly changing their prepared spells all through the day.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-06-28, 10:01 AM
Edit: Tsotha... um... did you read anything in the original post other than the words "Ten rounds to prepare?" The wizard isn't allowed to stock up at the beginning of the day, and has to spend ten rounds (PER SPELL) preparing right before the combat starts - or after the combat starts, in the case of an ambush.

We could stage a little demostration. Fighter vs. Wizard - wizard gets no spells until ten rounds into the combat. The result will be exactly what it sounds like.

The entire premise of the "Batman wizard" is that wizards use prep time. That's the whole point. With this system, the wizard would stock up on scrying and other spells that are designed to give the wizard all the prep time in the world, and when they are preparing to go into combat (teleport means wizards and their parties do pick the time and place of their combat, pretty much), they'd switch 5-20 of these spells for combat spells tailored to defeat the threat ahead.

This would solve none of the issues of the "Batman wizard" model, and would in fact exacerbate them.

The idea of a demonstration like that is ludicrous. "First round, I teleport out. We'll resume combat in half an hour, when I teleport above you with overland flight on - having scryed you - and bomb you to hell with 3-6 spells designed to hit your weaknesses, also found out with some of the non-combat spells I didn't switch out."

Jade_Tarem
2008-06-28, 10:19 AM
The entire premise of the "Batman wizard" is that wizards use prep time. That's the whole point. With this system, the wizard would stock up on scrying and other spells that are designed to give the wizard all the prep time in the world, and when they are preparing to go into combat (teleport means wizards and their parties do pick the time and place of their combat, pretty much), they'd switch 5-20 of these spells for combat spells tailored to defeat the threat ahead.

This would solve none of the issues of the "Batman wizard" model, and would in fact exacerbate them.

The idea of a demonstration like that is ludicrous. "First round, I teleport out. We'll resume combat in half an hour, when I teleport above you with overland flight on - having scryed you - and bomb you to hell with 3-6 spells designed to hit your weaknesses, also found out with some of the non-combat spells I didn't switch out."

There's no amount of scrying in the world that predicts the future. The ninth level spell Forsight gives you a few seconds of precognition, not unlike Jedi danger sense. The first time the group gets ambushed by a few archers with the initiative, the first time the wizard gets hit with a dimensional anchor, or the first time the wizard has to fight one more time per day than he has teleports memorized, then he's sunk.

There's also the problem of party cohesion. Oh, and the problem of less-than-major combats, which the wizard has to basically sit out unless he wants to delay the fight for an hour or so to get ready. This can get pretty annoying to the rest of the party. Someone will nearly always end up bored. Also, remember that the premise was to balance casters by having them do nothing while still being a valid target. Your "work around the problem" solution is clever, but all you've done is made the adjustment in the OP irrelevant (except that it's more aggravating to work with). Which, I suppose, was your point.

And that demonstration is only ludicrous at level 9 or above. The problem I was thinking of is what wizards of levels one through eight are supposed to do. Or a wizard who was somehow cut off from his teleports.

I won't deny that your wizard combat model is valid. It's even compelling. No, the problem is that there can arise a situation where the wizard cannot survive or even contribute, no matter what, even if the EL is spot-on.

Also when the only response to ambush is "I teleport away, then come back in half an hour to fix it." (because contingency and ORS are out - in fact, contingency is useless) then there's a serious problem. Either the DM comes up with a way to stop you, in which case we're back to square one (what Talic and I said - the dead wizard) or else he doesn't, and fights become procedural and silly according to what you said (and you do have a point). You end up with the same situation as before, only worse in every way.

So yes, you made a good point there. It's just that your first post was worded oddly (and perhaps badly), and that confused me. It seemed like you wrote it in a hurry.

AstralFire
2008-06-28, 10:47 AM
To sum up, the idea has merit, but in its current state only exacerbates current balance issues by simultaneously further weakening the "by the seat of my pants" wizard who is something of an underperformer and further strengthening the Xanatos Wizard who does not need any help at all.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-06-28, 03:49 PM
I didn't write anything in a hurry; it seemed like elaboration should have been unnecessary. The "Batman" model wizard would benefit inordinately from this. That other, especially low-level, wizards would suffer inordinately is also true, obviously.

So the proposal fixes nothing, makes an existing problem bigger, and makes wizards who are played in a balanced way (like blaster wizards) worse. Meanwhile, warmages, beguilers, and the like would all be more powerful. (Is charm person a combat spell or not, anyway?)