The Campaign Builder's Guild

Just how scary are you talking?

If I'm gauging Wild Shape correctly, using some of the Unearthed Arcana variants as my guideline for pricing, when all things are said and done, the Druid has less than 30 points avalable to pay for their spellcasting. When Cleric casting was 60 points, and Wizard casting was 100 points, I have a hard time believing that the Druid's is that weak.

Well if you have access to complete mage and complete arcane, there are feats that grant per day uses of cantrips and first level spells. You could build your base with those, and work your way on up, but I'm afraid you might have to use guesses for spells beyond fourth level.

You might want to try those feats into the item creation rules, then divine the higher spells with that...

Do you mean try to determine the use activated item cost of a wizard's spells in gp, and then reverse engineer that into feat costs? That's difficult, because all of the items that grant a feat have differing costs (ranging from 2,000 gp to 8,000 gp).

I think he meant using the fact that X/day cantrips = 1 feat as the basis of your spellcasting prices.

Quote from: sdragon1984I think he meant using the fact that X/day cantrips = 1 feat as the basis of your spellcasting prices.

yeah. Then take the cost of making an item that uses those cantrips and compare to the cost of making items from higher level spells.

Well, again, I like pricing them liniarly. The current 3 points per level for cleric and 5 points per level for wizard seems reasonable. That's 6 points per 2 levels for the cleric (effectively being 1 feat for each spell level, and 1 feat for each caster level), and the wizard is 10 points per 2 levels (so 1 feat for each spell level, and 2 feats for each caster level).

With this as an example, we could say that the minimum cost for spellcasting is 1 feat per spell-level. The standard cost for caster levels would be 2 feats per caster level, wih a modifier for the breadth the caster has access to.

With this, the minimum we could charge for the Druid would be 20 points (2 points per spell level; I'm not counting cantrips right now, but I'm also counting the theoretical "10th" spell level). If the druid is really 30 points overall, then that ends up being 0.5 points per level for spell breadth. Is the druid's casting really 1/4th the power of a clerics? If it's half the power of a clerics, then the Druid needs to have 40 points of room for their casting, and that only takes them a little over.

Stargate, I see what you mean now. I'll make some charts.

Stargate, I started to crunch some numbers on that, but the problem is that it won't create a liniar flow at all; and if the wizard isn't allowed to scale liniarly, the calculator will show that they're grossly underpowered at low levels and grossly overpowered at high levels (and in my experience, they're fine as long as they augment their abilities with scrolls and wands at low levels, and that they don't get too spammy with cheep spells at high levels).

Right now, I want to discuss the overall power of wizard vs. cleric vs. druid spellpower. Are a wizard's spells really worth twice as much as a clerics, or four times as much as a druids?

Edit-> Snip

Xeviat (if I am allowed to save the "kap'n :P ), why do you want to keep the costs scaling liniarly? I can understand that it makes calculations more easy, but it does not represent the actual increase in power a wizard receives from a higher caster level.

Perhaps you could try some cubic or even exponential scaling for full-casters, something that more closely resembles their actual powercurve?

Quote from: Kap'n XeviatRight now, I want to discuss the overall power of wizard vs. cleric vs. druid spellpower. Are a wizard's spells really worth twice as much as a clerics, or four times as much as a druids?

No they are not. Cleric and wizard are about the same, with druid trailing a bit behind (nowhere as far as twice as powerful though). My opinion anyway.

And not having a non-linear power curve is not accurately showing the power of a caster.

I disagree. If you remove caster level from the equasion, because I'm sure we can all agree that +1 caster level is a pricable ability, all we have left is an ever increasing spell level access. If you compare a 1st level direct damage spell (lets say Burning Hands) to a 3rd level one (lets say Fireball), all we're really getting is an increase in area effect, or an increase in secondary effects. The damage all scales with caster level (aside from the caps, but psionics systems show how to remove those well).

If you look at the majority of a caster's power being the spell levels they have access too, and if problematic spells are adressed, going from a 1st level spell effect to a 2nd level spell effect really seems to be a pricable, feat-like ability.

Can you disagree?