I want to add something like ley lines in my world: casters would be heavily affected by this. For example: in certain conditions, I want to give casters power to "tap" into ley line and restore spell slot at the cost of hit points. And there are few more effects.
I mean, I once made a character whose gimmick was to run into melee and cast fireball on HIMSELF. Because the damage he took gave him bonuses including temporary hp.
@RollingFeles My gut feeling from seeing similar things in 3.5 and 4e is that you can't do it. In order to make it harsh enough to not be trivially bypassable, you'd make it so harsh nobody would find it worthwhile.
Another thing I'd warn: with the exception of D&D 4e, D&D has traditionally lumped magic users with more, better features and flexibility as they go along to achieve ever more miraculous feats and more of them in the same day, while giving non-magical people... ways to hit people slightly harder with a sword. or stuff like that. D&D 5e also seems to do that.
this is another feature that only magic users benefit from, which gives them power and flexibility (more stuff in the same day when a primary limitation on their power was always the amount of stuff they could do in one day! wow! who wouldn't want that?) while giving non-magical characters... nothing, like usual.
i would advise non-magical characters should be able to benefit from leylines directly, or there should be a similar offering to non-magical characters.
@BESW I see your point. Still, I don't want use it to as regular mechanic. Ley lines would be something caster will feel, they will be limited with their geographic placement(players could try to draw map for them and invest in world magic-science!) and their activity time: some periodic event when ley lines are blazing with magic.
@JoelHarmon it's still making magical characters even more awesome still, while making non-magical users even more irrelevant for lack of the awesomeness they're given
@doppelgreener I've read a lot about liniar fighters, but fighters in 5e are very enjoyable for me :) Also, I'm considering this to be harsh experience for magic users too: wisdom safe throw in order to bear with magic burning in their bodies. The thing is to make risky and interesting.
Relephant: the stuff didn't give you more spells. It let you apply metamagic feats to your own spells, even if you didn't have the feats or the higher level slots to use them.
And about healing: I think it might very well burn the users during this ley lines activation: everyone are overflowed with magic and then: boom, someone try to fill another flesh with some more and instead of healing, there are burns. But I want to show this to players before they try, otherwise I think it would be frustrating.
@RollingFeles i'd honestly let fighters and other nonmagical characters benefit from leylines themselves, but i'm not sure what mechanic it should grant them.
(@Joel now I guess I definitely am getting into the realm of answering it to some limited extent, but I think this is still healthy talk to have. if we happen to come up with a full solution, whoever's an expert enough to provide it could bring it to main site.)
Here's the flavour I'd dump on it: leylines are fonts of raw magical power, right? And adventurers in this world are around magic constantly; they've almost certainly learned a thing or two about dealing with it, even if they don't know how to make full use of it. Leylines would infuse nonmagical characters with significant power, one way or another.
I've had several instances where discussions here led direction to Q&A on the mainsite which was basically just boiling down the discussion so one person asked and another answered.
Spellcasters would have the same happen to them (and they can let that happen), but they're expert enough in funnelling magic they put it to a more useful purpose rather than let it run rampant on their physical being.
I imagine how it interacts with each player character might vary, and it might be fun to let the players themselves say how. Some of them might have an "oh no what's happening!!" kinda experience as power just gets shoved on them; for some of them the leyline magic might be guided by their instincts to give them stuff they didn't know they wanted; some of them might be able to consciously guide it to give them roughly something they know they want.
I will think over this. I want either situation where everyone will get some power boost or when caster would be more powerfull, but more vulnarable and with it limit the ways to shield caster. If they tap into activated ley line they won't be able to burn everything, then go away few miles and let cleric heal them, or just take a short rest. I want to make this tough choice.
And in the same time, non-magical users would be safeguards and they will(or it would be better to say: I want to arrange this) shine after caster played his part.
I have a couple of things buzzing through my head: magical creatures who hung around leylines too long and became enormous, horrific monstrosities, and giving leylines no drawback and instead just using the presence of one as an awesome mechanical/plot device for a particular setpiece, like an Epic Battle featuring Magically Empowered Heroes vs Ferociously Powerful Big Bad.
Still, the situation: "hey, caster has some neat and dangerous feature and we're better just because we're not affected by cost?" is kinda lame. If I'm not giving them features with ley lines, I want to add it other way.
(in such a world I'd be tempted to say that the Tarrasque was, I don't know, just some brown bear that happened to be snoozing right on a leyline eruption -- and then it started pursuing other leyline eruptions to consume the power they're just putting out there for the taking, and it's still doing that today.)
@doppelgreener I'm thinking about ley hunter monsters or such. Caster who taps in, would become hunter's sweetest desire. So, party can ambush big bad and use ley line activation(they need to predict it's activation) and after the fight caster would be exhausted and vulnerable and party will have to deal with beast who wants him dead.
Heh. "Let's lure the Big Bad Guy toward the ley lines so we can kick his face in!" "...and have the Arcane Dragon of Doom show up to eat us AND him? No thanks." "Aw, come on, we can take the dragon too!"
@RollingFeles I am sure that in a world full of wizard academics for whom leylines would have particular relevance, someone would have started working on a way to forecast leyline activity.
@doppelgreener Yep! Some lines will be known, some basis for activation forecasting too.
I want to encourage players to study this: map unknown lines and find the way to predict their activation.
"Hey, this Big Bad Guy is marching our way. We can face him now or we can use leyline activation in two days to overcome him. But during this two days we must arrange safe escape for innocent folk from BBG"
