Quick Thoughts on Encounter Based Spell Limitations

Here is one idea I had for a spell system. These ideas are pretty rough and would need to be refined. They are essentially inspired by the idea of encounter powers and rituals, but lean more towards third edition D&D.

So each spell caster has a certain number of spells points. Let's say they have the number of spell points needed to cast their highest level spell. Let's use a 12th level caster as an example. He has 6 spell points. Casting a spell requires it's level in spell points. Every round of fighting he recovers half his total spell points. In our example this would be 3 points. The effect is that he could cast a 6th level spell right off and then constantly be casting 3rd levels spells, but to cast another spell above 3rd he would have to either not cast or to cast a 1st or 2nd level spell. You could even adjust this by changing the recharge rate up or down. This is a potential way to limit spell casting inside of combat and would allow encounter based resource limitations instead of daily limitations.

So what effects on game balance would this have? Well, you could say that spell casters would be much more powerful because they wouldn't have to hold anything in reserve for other battles. They could cut loose. Or you could say that they would be much weaker because they wouldn't be able to casts the same amount of spells in a battle as they normally would. They can't simply pull out all their big guns immediately. So at some point I would like to try and experiment with this. You could try modifications like having the mage's base level of spell points being half their maximum castable spell level and they have to spend 'charging' actions to artificially raise this number.

Okay, so two aspects kind of screw this up. One is healing. Players would be able to heal like crazy between fights and be full up. Well, in 3rd edition between combat healing is something the rules seem a little schizophrenic on. Sometimes it seems like they are trying to vastly limit between combat healing like having a ring of regeneration require 15th level to craft and give you points by the hour. But the preferred method of out of combat healing seems to be Wands of Cure Light Wounds and Wands of Lesser Restoration. These two easily crafted, fairly cheap wands basically make out of combat healing a non-issue after you hit mid levels. In fact, between combat healing goes from a major limiting factor to a non-issue incredibly quickly. Fourth edition gives you much more healing and allows easy healing out of combat, but it does have a daily limit and this effectively is much more of a limit than a sack full of wands.

So let's just say that we don't need to really limit out of combat healing. But what about non-combat spells. If you have unlimited access to spells like Knock or Teleport, that is going to have drastic impacts on your game. So you could have some kind of daily spell points as well and you would mark of non-combat spells off of this resource. This, of course, requires you to figure out what is a non-combat spell and this can get a little difficult. What about dimension door? This whole resource, of course, doesn't need to be as tighly monitored as combat resources and can be done relatively loosely. Also, if you introduce this option you can say that certain spells require encounter based points and daily points. Maybe your highest level spells require both types.

Now some people may be thinking, "ZOMG, tracking 2 numbers!!!" Yeah, you do have to track a couple more numbers, but I don't think that it would be particularly bundersome since the normal system makes you track the contents of a list. For a 20th level caster you are technically tracking 9 numbers. Also, it is a tool to get away from the beast of Vancian magic and move the strategy for spell casters from a spell slot selection game that can take quite a while before you are playing to more of a strategy based thing where you make decisions based on planning for the next rounds.