Soul burn and Brain burn: Hurt in a low magic campain.

[Draz74]

To everyone who keeps harping on about how full casters are unplayable and you couldn't even cast a single fireball without risking your life...

Yes! That's the point! You don't play a character who relies on spells in a fight, because those characters die. The people who did that are all dead. Any player character has to have an alternative to casting spells.

Honestly, I don't see this kind of response when people say they banned wizards, clerics, and druids from their campaign. Nor do I see it when people mention Call of Cthulu, which will drive any character who uses spells too freely insane. It's not a campaign in which you play a straight caster who can't fight. That's the setting, and the players, from what we've heard, like it. The original poster (presumably) did not spring this on the players after they'd rolled up characters, or in the middle of the game to nerf the wizards.

It's low-magic. Personally, I like it; it gives magic a much more dramatic feeling. Increasing the power of spells would also give players a reason to take a couple levels of wizard or sorcerer, but I like the idea behind it, and the potentially lethal execution.

Exactly. Thank you.

Come on everybody, if he's playtested this system, let's trust him that it works. It's not like any of the characters will be dumb enough to be full casters. This is a cool system to make it so that a character who likes living dangerously can multiclass into casting classes a bit.

[GryffonDurime]

A thought occurs:

Your world should be ruled by Druids. Seriously, if you've got druids as-written in this game world, they're going to murder anything they touch. They're fullcasters who, with Natural Spell and Wild Shape, can have effective Constitution scores well into the 30s or 40s; arguably, Con damage might not lower their hitpoints in animal form because they aren't altered by increasing Con, and they can gain the effect of a night's rest by expending one Wild Shape--or they could just shift into something new with better constitution!

I like the idea, really--I do. But I'd definately deal with the Druid before I instituted this.

[Krrth]

I am likeing how more people are getting this, particularly snarky. Thanks for the feedback peoples.
Spell like and supernatural don't work until you master your "flow". Which is learning how to regulate your internal energies. Its hard to do and unlikely that many characters will but when a character does they are unbeatable.

There are no liches, no undead. They are magic creatures, no soul = no magic to hold them.

Material componants are negligiable in this system, just soul energy.
Magic Items can't hold a charge for more then 24 hours so its pretty much single use only.
Wizards have to self teach themselves, which offers a strange, oh how the mighty have fallen aspect to them. It created a strange relationship between the wizard and sorcerer of the party.

I think the problem most people are having here is the high chance of death when casting even a low level spell. To be honest, I can see where this would have some interesting dynamics, but the con drain seems a bit much to most people. Even the hellfire warlock PrC only does 1 point of con per use. Incidently, are there clerics? If so, restoration just became a lot more useful.

[Arbitrarity]

I think the problem most people are having here is the high chance of death when casting even a low level spell. To be honest, I can see where this would have some interesting dynamics, but the con drain seems a bit much to most people. Even the hellfire warlock PrC only does 1 point of con per use. Incidently, are there clerics? If so, restoration just became a lot more useful.

So long as you are willing to risk 4d6 CON damage not killing you...

"Come on! I need to heal that to cast again!"
"But I have only 16 CON!"
"So? Statistically you won't die!"
"Ok..."
*Rolls*
Well, using an online roller, I just got, over 4 rolls, 15, 14, 16, and 19. I'm not liking these odds.

[Asklepian]

I actually like the idea, having done something similar in another game system. Besides, he says his players enjoy it, no one here has to play in his game, so taking his word I fail to see why it should provoke outrage. It's not as though he came into your home to tell you how to play your game.

At any rate, focusing on the actual question:

Seems to me there's 3 main ways to approach it, assuming you don't want to either leave it the same or ban it completely (I doubt you'd need advice if that's what you wanted, eh?).

1) Use essentially the same system. Of course, it works off of power points as opposed to spell levels, so maybe 1d4 Con per power point? It's not that hard to figure out some fluff, just say something along the lines of the psionic energy burning a person's health in order to power its effects. In other words, it's directly drawing on the body, as opposed to the soul like magic does.

2) Have it burn something else. HPs, Intelligence, the like. Other people have made plenty of suggestions in that vein, so I'll leave it to them.

3) Have some other completely different penalty involved. Perhaps an increasingly difficult save check against suffering status effects? Maybe you go blind, then deaf, etc, as the psionics 'burn out' your nervous system temporarily from strain. The more power points, the more difficult the save. Again, since there's presumably no other magic to save you, it'd be something you could recover from given time and rest.

Anyways, that's my chump change.

[Krrth]

True. On the other hand, warlocks got a little cooler. Since their powers already come from the soul, they can blast all day and not get overshadowed from others. Plus, they can scribe whatever scroll they want and use it the next day. Scroll of Heal, anyone?

[Krrth]

...

3) Have some other completely different penalty involved. Perhaps an increasingly difficult save check against suffering status effects? Maybe you go blind, then deaf, etc, as the psionics 'burn out' your nervous system temporarily from strain. The more power points, the more difficult the save. Again, since there's presumably no other magic to save you, it'd be something you could recover from given time and rest.

Anyways, that's my chump change.

That made me think of something. The Wheel of Time has rules for forcing casting when you are out of power. Basically, the con check goes up every time you use it in a day. If you fail, make your fort save. If you fail badly enough, you can loose all ability to use magic. Ever.

[AmberVael]

I like the idea, and I think it could make spellcasting much more interesting, but honestly such a variation on the natural system makes caster types highly unbalanced.

Unlike all the thoughts other people have stated:
1) Use HP drain.
2) Lower Con drain (though it COULD stand being taken down to 1, or maybe 1d4)
3) You *@#$*@# stupid #$@(#$(@ use a different system, you sock.

I'm going to have to agree with DruchiiConversion instead of using the other ideas.
Give them a slightly better class to go along with their drastically reduced spellcasting. It fits the rare magic theme (think of how many times Gandalf pulled out a sword and kicked ass rather than actually using magic) while helping the player be a bit more useful. Possibly use the battle sorcerer variant as a starting point, or the cleric class (and psychic warrior for psionics, obviously).

Possibly you could take and edit the idea of the generic class variant and just drop their generic spellcasting class, and make feats for spellcasting.

No matter how you do go, I don't think anyone is going to really cast over a level 4 spell (unless you DO reduce con drain), so really don't bother with spell levels over that when designing feats or classes.



As for psionics... it really depends on how you do fluff. If you go with it basically just being mental magic, Con damage all the way.
But seriously, it will make it more balanced if you just deal Con damage all around, fluff aside.

If you do change the fluff, I'd say putting it in a non casting stat for the classes will make the most sense. Say it drains other aspects of their personality.
Psions- Drain Charisma. They slowly get more and more attached to the flow of mental energies and find it harder to focus and be themselves. They just lose awareness of who they are.
Psychic Warriors- Drain Intelligence. Their focus on combat and the destructive and warlike powers they wield slowly give them a more animalistic outlook on things. They become less and less sentient and more feral, focusing on combat and instinct.
Wilder- Drain Wisdom. Due to the highly emotional drain and dependence on their powers, wilders often lose common sense and focus on the things around them, instead just losing themselves to their own emotional highs that induce their powers.

I think that would work out, would give interesting opportunity for roleplay, as their personality and outlook would be changed due to their use of power, disabling them in an alternate way from the wizard, who relies on his own inner energies to fuel things. It easily fits with the psionic fluff that is already there, too.

[Somebloke]

It might work, although I have a nasty feeling that everyone would play warlocks...or factorums.

Well, actually, the warlock might be a nice half and half- a blend of very low magic powers that do not do damage, and normal level powers that do. I have had a similar concept run before.

[Riffington]

1d6 Con damage isn't the flu. It's like being poisoned with Large Scorpian Venom, and it gets worse from there.

Speaking as an MD, 1d6 Con is a little less severe than the flu. I'm not familiar with the game's understanding of disease, but in real life the flu has much worse sytemic effects than a couple scorpion stings. (albeit without the chance for loss of limb)

Many people call their colds "the flu", but influenza (as well as bad colds, for that matter) can be pretty bad. I've seen old (not death's door, but certainly not capable of running - probably Con 5) people die from it. I've had it, and noticed a massive reduction in my endurance - couldn't jog more than a minute.

His rule is you get back 3 Con/day, so this ailment doesn't last long.

[GoC]

I quite like it.

But some things need changing. Like you say, casters aren't going to use their spells in normal battle. That would just be stupidity, they'd die every time. So what ARE they going to do in battle? With a d4 hit dice, half BAB and no proficiencies, not much.

So simply buff up the Wizard/Sorcerer/etc to Cleric levels - d8 hit dice, 3/4BAB. Then you've got a secondary combat character who can occasionally pull out something truly amazing at great cost to himself. Sounds a little like Gandalf to me.

This is an excellent idea!
Solves most of the problems with this idea while not making Mr. Stubborn change his spellcasting mechanics!

Riffington: D&D Large Scorpion venom is like being biten by about 1000 Earth scorpions. Tell me that isn't severe?
Also it's 1 CON per day, not 3.

[Krrth]

Speaking as an MD, 1d6 Con is a little less severe than the flu. I'm not familiar with the game's understanding of disease, but in real life the flu has much worse sytemic effects than a couple scorpion stings. (albeit without the chance for loss of limb)

Many people call their colds "the flu", but influenza (as well as bad colds, for that matter) can be pretty bad. I've seen old (not death's door, but certainly not capable of running - probably Con 5) people die from it. I've had it, and noticed a massive reduction in my endurance - couldn't jog more than a minute.

His rule is you get back 3 Con/day, so this ailment doesn't last long.

I don't think it's the healing time that is the problem. It's the massive up front loss of con. Unlike the other stats, if con hits 0, you are dead. With everything else, you are mearly "out of play" for a little while.

[Lemur]

I like Vael's idea for psions the best so far. I kinda like the way the setting sounds, personally, although I wouldn't play a spellcaster in it unless I could find some sort of loophole. It's what a smart mage would do, after all

A question about the setting, though. Do, and if so, how do supernatural wielding but non-spellcasting classes fit in to the world? What happens to monks and bards, or warlocks, when they use supernatural or spell-like abilities?

[Arbitrarity]

Were I to try this (Actually, the basic idea is good, penalizing spellcasting), I'd make it subdual damage. Deadly enough (CdG!), but recoverable, etc. The problem, however, lies in the selection of the quantity of damage. Something like spell level^1.5d3 might work, rounding up. I.e. 1d3, 3d3, 6d3, 8d3, 12d3, 15d3, 19d3, 23d3, 27d3. A spell of your maximum level would eat about half your health, never knocking you out, initially. But 6 damage/casting at level 3 hurts.

The issue is that subdual and lethal heal at the same time with healing spells, so KO'd casters would be really easy to get up again in combat.

[Bender]

Just another thought. Change in status was mentioned before, but you could make it worse per spell/power level:
0: mild headache for an hour with some penalties
1: worse headache with more penalties and inability to cast spells for an hour
2: as 1, but longer and blindness/deafness
3: unconsciousness for couple of hours, followed by 2
4: as 3, but save vs permanent loss of con
higher: ever higher save vs death

still harsh, but the risk is more manageable and lowlevel spells aren't lethal, you just can't cast them too often.
I've got the idea from some novels of L.E.Modesitt, where something like this happens to the main character when straining too hard.

[Irreverent Fool]

I very much like the idea that casting spells is very draining on the magic-user but have yet to find/come up with a mechanic that reflects this. Perhaps the first spell a caster casts in a day makes them exhausted, and from that point forward a flat temporary CON damage per level of the spell.

Since you mentioned something about burning off soul energy, perhaps a willing participant could lend a fragment of themselves somehow, allowing you to drain of their stats at a greater rate than if you were draining off your own. This would set the stage for collecting slaves or brainwashing people to gather their soul energy to power some BBEG's spells.