magic's true cost (house rule idea)

[Rabbit]

So I was trying to think of a way to adjust magic in a D&D (3.5) making it more costly for characters to use. My goal being that players still have access to varied and amazing spells, but returning some mysteriousness and awe to magic.

So often with D&D it seems the characters get to a certain power level and access to powerful equipment they eventually figure out ways to bypass what could be fun challenges. Then the DM planning time is spent working out these power boosts instead of fun adventures. The first aspect of this is the equipement and magical items characters can get, which a DM can control easy enough. The other is a character's personal spell arsenal.

I like the idea of wizards burdened with secrets of the Arcane. A world where wizards can due great and terrible things but at a cost.

One idea I had was to add the following feature to all casters. Every time a spell is cast to completion the caster must make a fortitude save (adjusted by spell level.) A failure would render the character Fatigued, a Fatigued character that fails becomes Exhausted, and an Exhausted character who fails a Fortitude becomes Unconscious.

This could even be a tiered fortitude save. Losing by <5 Fatigued, 5-10 Exhausted, >10, Unconscious. Maybe rolling a 1 does damage to the caster?

I want players (and their characters) to consider some consequences that come with using magic.

Any thoughts?

Fatigued
A fatigued character can neither run nor charge and takes a -2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. Doing anything that would normally cause fatigue causes the fatigued character to become exhausted. After 8 hours of complete rest, fatigued characters are no longer fatigued.

Exhausted
An exhausted character moves at half speed and takes a -6 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. After 1 hour of complete rest, an exhausted character becomes fatigued. A fatigued character becomes exhausted by doing something else that would normally cause fatigue.

Unconscious
Knocked out and helpless. Unconsciousness can result from having current hit points between -1 and -9, or from nonlethal damage in excess of current hit points.

[Rabbit]

Actually I think I like this option better. It is less random than using a save. And using a fortitude save may just make players bulk up their con to over come the penalty.

I'm talking about a Spell Pool system that involves fatigue and exhaustion as more and more spells are used up. It will be easier to just provide a link for the rule; www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm#spellPointVariantVitalizing

[icnivad]

This system looks really promising and makes more sense in terms of how spells would work if they existed. Spell slots always seemed a little silly to me.

[reefwood]

This does seem like a potentially neat variant. Let me see if I understand correctly.

-Casting spells costs spell points, and if you lose too much spell points, you get fatigued (or more).

-Resting regains spell points and removes the physical condition.

-If you prep spells for the day, you have to get a full night's rest to change the spells you can cast.

It seems like you can kind of cast spells all day long, as long as you can rest. Though, there is only so much time in a day to rest. Casters who prep spells are limited to the spells they prep that day, but a spontaneous caster like a Sorcerer can cast any spell as often as there are spell points to cast it, and spell points can be regained as long as there is time to rest.

It kind of expands on the ability to cast spells of a lower level in higher level slots... which I think most people forget about anyway. And it gives prepping casters a bit more flexibility because if they want to maybe cast the same spell more than once in a day, they only need to prep it once.

Does it seem like I have this right?

[Rabbit]

welcome back!

yeah, that's it for the most part. we are about to play a DnD 3.5 game using this varient to test it out in an actual game. we haven't started yet if you wanted to hop in.

I noticed the thing about resting to regain the spell pool and I think the DM can give players a time crunch in their adventure goals to counter that.

[reefwood]

Thanks!

And it would be sweet to roll some dice, but I should probably focus on apartment hunting for the time being. I'm even putting off the next Game of Thrones book until I have a place to live

[Rabbit]

Ha, no worries. I am kind of putting of the game running until I feel a bit more settled (still looking for a housemate, myself.) So we'll see how all our lives pan out over the next few weeks.