Community

In pre-4e, wizards and other major casters (depending on edition) had spells separated into nine levels with first level spells being the "weakest" and ninth level spells being the "strongest." Although there was a concept in some cases of zero-level spells, those are now roughly covered by at-will cantrips/orisons in DDN.

So for daily spells, is nine the correct number of spell levels? If the DDN wizard or cleric had eight spell levels or ten spell levels for daily spells, would that be wrong? Would it not "feel" like D&D? How much flexibility is there in scaling spell power?

Jul 18, 2012 -- 1:38PM, Steely_Dan wrote:

Looks like spells cap at 7th level in 5th Ed.

What's your basis for suggesting this?

Z.

Jul 18, 2012 -- 1:30PM, GilbertMDH wrote:

In pre-4e, wizards and other major casters (depending on edition) had spells separated into nine levels with first level spells being the "weakest" and ninth level spells being the "strongest." Although there was a concept in some cases of zero-level spells, those are now roughly covered by at-will cantrips/orisons in DDN.

So for daily spells, is nine the correct number of spell levels? If the DDN wizard or cleric had eight spell levels or ten spell levels for daily spells, would that be wrong? Would it not "feel" like D&D? How much flexibility is there in scaling spell power?

Well considering that spells don't -scale- anymore individually, 10 'spell levels' is a single 9th level spell and a (near useless) 1st level spell under the '10 spell level' paradigm.  I think 2E's 'max 4 of each spell level' was just about right with no bonus spells.  Bonus spells was another (idiotic) 3E idea in relation to wizards.  Clerics had had them previously, but I could see either requiring 'bonus' spells to be healing/cure related -or- lowering the number/removing them outright also.

A 7th level wizard's spell progression was thusly 4-3-2-1, and that was more than enough -before- the inclusion of a magic missile spell that does scale.  I could even go with max 3 per spell level/no bonus spells.  But anything under that, especially when most of them don't scale, is really starting to cut too painfully into the wizard.  I get that wizards were overpowered in 3E folks, but don't annhilate them as a class.  It may be annoying that they -can- take knock or whatever, but not every group has 4 players that each want to play one of each class either.

Jul 18, 2012 -- 1:49PM, anjelika wrote:

Jul 18, 2012 -- 1:30PM, GilbertMDH wrote:

In pre-4e, wizards and other major casters (depending on edition) had spells separated into nine levels with first level spells being the "weakest" and ninth level spells being the "strongest." Although there was a concept in some cases of zero-level spells, those are now roughly covered by at-will cantrips/orisons in DDN.

So for daily spells, is nine the correct number of spell levels? If the DDN wizard or cleric had eight spell levels or ten spell levels for daily spells, would that be wrong? Would it not "feel" like D&D? How much flexibility is there in scaling spell power?

Well considering that spells don't -scale- anymore individually, 10 'spell levels' is a single 9th level spell and a (near useless) 1st level spell under the '10 spell level' paradigm.  I think 2E's 'max 4 of each spell level' was just about right with no bonus spells.  Bonus spells was another (idiotic) 3E idea in relation to wizards.  Clerics had had them previously, but I could see either requiring 'bonus' spells to be healing/cure related -or- lowering the number/removing them outright also.

A 7th level wizard's spell progression was thusly 4-3-2-1, and that was more than enough -before- the inclusion of a magic missile spell that does scale.  I could even go with max 3 per spell level/no bonus spells.  But anything under that, especially when most of them don't scale, is really starting to cut too painfully into the wizard.  I get that wizards were overpowered in 3E folks, but don't annhilate them as a class.  It may be annoying that they -can- take knock or whatever, but not every group has 4 players that each want to play one of each class either.

What I meant in regards to scaling spell power is more about spell design than how a single spell can be cast in a more powerful way. If the R&D team takes all the spells for a wizard, throws them on a table and then sorts them into little piles where each pile contains spelss of roughly the same power, how many little piles will there be? Does there have to be exactly nine piles?

I am not attempting to address the number of spells known by a given character or the number that can be cast of whatever combination of levels.

I want to know how people feel about classification of spells by power level.

Jul 18, 2012 -- 1:58PM, GilbertMDH wrote:

What I meant in regards to scaling spell power is more about spell design than how a single spell can be cast in a more powerful way. If the R&D team takes all the spells for a wizard, throws them on a table and then sorts them into little piles where each pile contains spelss of roughly the same power, how many little piles will there be? Does there have to be exactly nine piles?

I am not attempting to address the number of spells known by a given character or the number that can be cast of whatever combination of levels.

I want to know how people feel about classification of spells by power level.

Ohhhh okay, my apologies I totally misunderstood you.  No, I'm not so attached to levels that they can't be shifted some.  Just going from Basic D&D to AD&D you had to accomodate that (clerics topped at 7th in BECMI).