@Rubiksmoose Yeah. I've got a draft for a more specific question that directly addresses the root of it. Haven't had time to read it over again. Probably monday.
My counterpoint is that Sorcerers can't change their spells whenever they want. That would be incredibly powerful on a Cleric or Druid, but on a Sorcerer, if their spells can't deal the right kind of damage, they could lose half their lineup from one bad dungeon.
@Xirema Not really - a miss on attack roll does nothing. Many spells still do something on a save. Honestly, I'd never take Heighten either. I think it's too expensive for what it does.
@NautArch That I also debated for awhile. My gut instinct was that Thunder and Lightning pair a bit too nicely in terms of their sources, so they shouldn't be treated as opposites. It's a tricky call though, since some of the damage types don't have perfectly natural opposites.
Suppressed I like, though again... I'm not sure on the cost. Perhaps a different cost for Instantaneous spells vs. ones with durations. For example, a Suppressed Fireball is a lot less scary than say... Suppressed Cloud Kill, or Suppressed Spirit Guardians from a Divine Soul Sorcerer.
@NautArch Artillery is highly gimmicky. Most spells have relatively tiny AOEs for their Range, so using that only really makes sense if you're playing in a battlefield-type encounter.
@NautArch I'd probably consider lowering the odds on successfully targeting the exact chosen location, though I'd have to make the rolls more complicated to do that.
@T.J.L. I'd probably prepare Reclaimed Spell if I knew I were going into a spellcaster-heavy encounter. Provides some resistance against Counterspell spam.
@KorvinStarmast I'm okay with the ruling on those rerolls, mostly because I do a lot of convention games and getting people to roll efficiently in the first place is a chore. Anything that involves a reroll takes even more time.
@nitsua60 No, you are not crazy. The 1e method was to hit the target number, or over, not the AC or over. Even with THACO you needed to roll that target number or better. TN determined by table, thaco, with modifiers etc ....
1. Spell Sniper only affects Attack Roll spells, very few of which (possibly none?) "target an area" 2. Artillery Spell removes your ability to precisely choose where the spell will land, making it less powerful than Spell Sniper for most encounters. It's only powerful in situations where you know that landing the spell ~1000' away will still hit something valuable.
@T.J.L. Yes, I agree, and Jeremy had a subsequent tweet or SA commentary addressing the "rerolling slows down play" point exactely. But I'd rather have seen that precise point on why put into the SA.
@T.J.L. I could see that. I've gotten very good at prepping my dice and counting quickly. So rerolling is not a big deal in terms of time. Adds maybe 5 seconds.
@T.J.L. Bear in mind with Flexible Casting, you do spend more points than the level of a spell to create it. So in a sense, you're only getting half the value of the spell back from that Metamagic to begin with.
@Xirema Sure, but you're also getting something for next-to-nothing. Any other caster would lose the spell slot in its entirety. You're getting about 75% of it back (creating spell slots is never 2:1).
@Xirema About your metamagic homebrew, do you automatically know all the lower metamagics and can apply any you've prepared freely throughout the day, but you can only prepare a single greater meta magic?
@GreySage For the lower Metamagics, it's based on your INT modifier. You can prepare a number each day equal to it (minimum 1). You're correct about the Greater metamagics.
I'm also not sure I understand the mechanics of a sorcerer being able to choose. Their whole schtick is that the power is just kinda theirs. Flexibility in that doesn't seem to jive.
Quote of the day from GiTP forum discussion: DMs need to lighten up about rules and just let things flow. Players need to do the same, but also stop looking for "loopholes". Both sides need to stop weaponizing the rulebooks (PhoenixPhyre is one of my favorite posters there; has some neat ideas on world building)
@NautArch Well, the goal is to give them something. I don't much approve of the way that Sorcerers lost all the advantages of being a Sorcerer in the 5e conversion but retained all their disadvantages. I mean, one of their Metamagics (Careful Spell) is just a weaker/less interesting version of a feature that Evocation Wizards get to do for free (Sculpt Spell).
@Xirema Ah, okay. That's the first time i've heard they're underpowered - and having seen them in play, I disagree that they are underpowered. So maybe I'm looking at this from a view that's inherently going to cause problems for a review.
@GreySage We had a wizard in our party in the early phases of the campaign, and we've had two sorcerers since. So i'm comparing early wizard vs late sorcerer - but in terms of combat, I haven't seen a big difference in the power of the wizard vs sorcerer - and I"ve seen the power of metamagic and been very impressed.
but gain, that's early wizard, vs later sorcerers.
I'm not sure where that math is coming from. If a character casts a 5th level spell, and that metamagic goes off, they get 5 points back. They need seven to turn it into a slot, which means they're getting 5/7ths, or 71% of the slot back.
I'm not suggesting a sliding scale for how many points you get back from a spell. Make it half the level of the spell. End of math.
Aside, I feel like the spontaneous aspect of Sorcerers is overvalued. Like, sure they don't need to prepare their spells in advance, but at level 11 a Wizard will have more spell prepared than a Sorcerer will ever know, and it only goes up.
@Xirema I like the intent behind artillery spell but I think it needs a tweak. Right now it reads as pretty complex compared to other mechanics and the "miss" distance is a) potentially massive, b) extremely likely, c) worse on a higher roll (against the usual intent of the game)
@Xirema I hate when they do that. Like how they gave Destructive Wave to to Storm Clerics. Paladins have to wait until end game for it, but the cleric gets it early? No way, man.
I really wanted it to have a more normal distribution in its targeting, but I don't know a good way to handle that without just adding lots of dice and modifiers.
because yeah, fireball for example - 10% chance to be dead on but if you miss, no matter what you roll for the offset, you'll have missed by at least 130 feet
@SirCinnamon I mean, I guess you could go like, 10d8 - 45, multiplied by the distance between you and the target, divided by 70.
Generate an angle between 0 and 179, somehow.
In that scenario, the maximum distance it could be off by is equal to half the distance between you and the target—and very unlikely to hit at that extreme.
here's simpler although stronger by a good deal: 81-100 = hit 1-20 = offset north 21-40 = offset east 41-60 = offset south 61-80 = offset west Offset = size of aoe (radius, edge size, line-length) * range die
range die = d4 if target < 1mile away d6 if target 1-5 miles away d8 if target 5-15 miles away d10 if 15-30 miles d12 if 30 - 100 miles d20 if > 100 miles
those ranges are off the top of my head but... something like that
@SirCinnamon I would probably scale all those distances down by like a factor of 4-5. Normal visibility when you're not orbital-dropping from a moon is about 5 miles.
@Xirema It does over simplify in that respect. It could be changed to be N-NE-E-SE-S-SW-S-SE to vary a little more but if it avoids doing trig at the table it's worth it!
Sidebar: as you might be able to guess, I added some Standard Deviations to my probability calculator.
Stats for Roll [10d8-45]
====
Total Possible Rolls: 1.073741824E9 (1073741824)
Mean: 0.000000
Median: 0
Mode: 0 (5.8199208E7)
80% Range: [-9,+9]
95% Range: [-14,+14]
99.5% Range: [-20,+20]
Sidebar to this sidebar: I don't remember what 1 standard deviation is supposed to represent, and I'm hoping it represents the 80% centered on the mean.
