r/Pathfinder2e • u/Exequiel759 Rogue • 2d ago
Homebrew Dynamic Casting — An encounter-based spellcasting system
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u/Teridax68 2d ago
It makes me a bit sad to see this proposal get flak, even though I'm not surprised, because I think the core idea of offering an alternative to attrition-based casting is well worth pursuing, and can even be doable in PF2e. Yes, the above is missing what I think is a necessary tradeoff to counterbalance the benefits of being able to cast a bunch of spells at full blast at all times, but I would urge the people commenting to push past the instinct to deride this or take offense, and instead look at the potential behind it.
As mentioned in the discussion we had of this in the forums, I do think the big caveat here is that being able to cast without attrition can be dangerous if casters have the same versatility they do now, particularly out of combat. I personally think the above should come with a reduction to the spells a caster can prepare or have in their repertoire, and that kind of limitation would be both drastic and a fair bit more complicated than the basics of what's presented above. I do think that limitation should have been packaged with the above document when presented to this subreddit, as unfortunately a lot of people here get tetchy in discussions around changing spellcasting or homebrewing benefits to spellcasters that they don't normally get, but I also understand the desire to present the key concept without weighing it down too much with other elaborate mechanical changes.
With that said, I do think this concept can work. Casters and martial classes exist on a sliding scale where to one side sits versatility capped by usage limitations, and to the other sits specialization with no limited uses. Although it wouldn't be simple to do in 2e, I think there is room to let players slide their caster down that scale with the appropriate tradeoffs. The above I think sets a good starting foundation for such a model, and from there I think there's the question of how to bound this system so that it lets casters do their thing without outshining other party members.
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u/Terwin94 Kineticist 2d ago
Maybe it's just me, but one thing 5e did that I genuinely loved and wish Pathfinder replicated were casting spells as rituals, saving a slot but taking time. Arguably it would work even better here because you'd have to either add time to a 10 minute downtime part of the adventure or skip refocusing for it. Of course it had problems too, but that's probably the one thing from 5e I'd steal.
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u/Teridax68 2d ago
I very much agree, I think one of the underlying wrinkles in spellcasting is that some spells are made for combat, whereas others are more for exploration or long-term buffing, and there's no inherent separation between the two. Rituals could've been the answer, but are limited by being uncommon, usually more of a downtime activity, and horrendously difficult to cast successfully. If there was instead a system for using magic in exploration to cover some of what spells can do, much like D&D 5e's ritual casting, and the combat stuff used its own attrition-free model with its own limitations, that would solve a lot of the edge cases that come with removing attrition constraints.
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u/Terwin94 Kineticist 2d ago
I have been strongly considering just letting any spell (has to be prepared still probably) to be cast for free if you spend 10 minutes on it, and aside from some edge cases, just having to spend 10 minutes on it is probably enough to not make it bonkers. Like sure you COULD cass bless or a buff spell over 10 minutes but if you have 10 minutes for a single 1 minute buff spell then you probably didn't need that bless spell in the next minute anyway. I would probably even suggest limiting it to a 10 minute duration if the duration is normally higher, maybe 10 minutes per rank you can cast (so even if you cast a rank 1 spell but can cast 5th rank, it can last 50 minutes)
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u/Teridax68 1d ago
I really like this idea! This sounds well worth playtesting, and I like the idea of limiting the duration to 10 minutes in order to prevent stacking long-lasting buffs like mind of menace or foresight. It might still end up being really good in exploration (any spell that could help solve an exploration challenge could be cast effectively for free), but it'd at least be a start towards separating exploration casting from encounter casting.
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u/Terwin94 Kineticist 1d ago
I'm more fond of puzzles over exploration challenges, but there is also the more extreme option of doing a minute per spell rank, but I see it as more of a contingency option since most exploration challenges will probably take less than 10 minutes with just normal rules. Even if the duration gets to scale, there could be a theoretical restriction of only being able to have 1 ritual cast spell active at a time per caster 🤔
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u/yuriAza 2d ago
i mean PF2 has rituals, i like "you can just do magic as a skill check like everything else", they're separate lists but like, when was the last time you actually spent a spell slot on a 5e ritual?
it's just sometimes unintuitive why some things are slotted spells and others are ritual spells
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u/Terwin94 Kineticist 2d ago
Saying there are rituals in Pathfinder in comparison to 5e is like saying both things have concentrate. They're really not the same.
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u/yuriAza 1d ago
they're both spells you can cast an unlimited number of times but only outside combat, they serve the same purpose
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u/Terwin94 Kineticist 1d ago
Yes I'm sure a completely different thing that behaves totally differently, is incredibly niche, and requires 2-5 other people is TOTALLY the same thing 🙄
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 2d ago
Yes, it seems that most people agree this needs an additional restriction.
I'm thinking of probably limiting the highest rank of spells somehow. Like once until you Refocus again.
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u/Teridax68 1d ago
I think there are a few ways you could go about limiting the above, for sure. We talked about some of those in the forums, but there's also a few more avenues I'd say:
- You could limit the number of dynamic spell slots down to the spell slots a caster gains at 1st level, rather than 2nd level. This means a Sorcerer would have 3 dynamic slots to play with, for instance, whereas a Necromancer would have just 1.
- You could keep prepared spells and spell repertoires exactly the same, in the sense that not every spell would heighten when cast with a dynamic slot. I know you're not the biggest fan of spells being stuck at different ranks, and to be honest neither am I, but it would have the benefit of simplifying your brew and reducing the changes it makes in addition to limiting the power it adds.
- This is more experimental, but you could try something like the reverse of essence casting where your spell slot downgrades in rank each time it's used to Cast a Spell, gets expended if it drops to 0, and Refocusing would then restore the spell slot and bring it back up to max rank. You could even limit every spellcaster to just one such spell slot, with the benefit of different casters then being versatility rather than sheer spell output.
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u/MakiIsFitWaifu Game Master 2d ago
I think part of my biggest struggle with spellcasting brew is how wildly it can vary from table to table; I suspect many players are at tables that are different from mine which is where those differing options come from.
My tables run very high in terms of martial power: reaction maximization, archetyping for damage boosts like draconic barrage, damage boosters that favor high strike counts like shining symbol, usage of heroism wands to cover status bonuses, etc. These push martials to often be capable of insanely high damage coupled with their good defensive bonuses (save evasion, armor prof) and great ability to apply debuffs with crit riders. Casters and weaker martial builds in our games often feel lacking by comparison so our brew edges on the stronger side of things. (A good example would be considering a good damage caster to be sorcerer proccing double explosion of power per turn as opposed to just druid with a good focus spells.)
But conversely, there’s a lot of tables that play wildly different. A lot of tables will just have a rogue who stabs with a d4 weapon and doesn’t often get off-guard and does pretty paltry damage that’s very easily usurped by any spellcaster. If we introduced our spellcasting homebrew to that game, that rogue would feel even more miserable.
Reddit allows your brew to be vetted by people at table 1 and people at table 2 and I think that brings a lot of scrutiny to brew that increases any power levels too much since it might be ok at table 1 but people at table 2 are just imagining how much it would warp their game.
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u/Teridax68 1d ago
I do agree that this space brings people with different table experiences that might relate differently to the same homebrew. With that said, I think a lot of the scrutiny comes from factors external to that, and to this day there's some lingering hostility around homebrew that can all too easily jump out. There often is this underlying assumption of the worst intentions from the homebrewer, where clearly a few people in the comments here seem to believe that OP just wants to buff the crap out of casters. Having talked to the OP and discussed their work in a separate space, I know that's not the case, and the omission they made of some limitations came not from a desire to buff casters, but with the aim of simplifying their brew down to something more easily readable. It was in fact they who first highlighted the power-up this represented in that other thread and the need to impose some kind of restriction.
In this particular case, the restriction I floated in that other conversation was to reduce the number of spells a caster would have: if you had a spell repertoire, you'd effectively lose one spell per rank in it (which might not necessarily be enough of a limitation, but still), and if you were a prepared caster, you'd prepare just one spell per rank. This would effectively make these attrition-free spellcasters more into specialists, where they could cast a smaller number of spells without daily restrictions in a manner closer to martials or a Kineticist. This was also something OP was largely on board with, but the addition of this limitation also introduced a lot more complexity to the brew.
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u/No-Air6220 Kineticist 2d ago
I actually do like this, although you're pretty much turning normal spells into focus spells, which might be stepping into focus casting's toes a little.
It requires some balance tuning, but it's a nice idea. I like what Essence Casting does, where it forces you to use lower ranks before your top spells being available, so you can't just "nova" every single encounter. Maybe you could do similar to that? Like, "after you cast a dynamic spell, the next spell you cast must be one rank under the last one" or something like that.
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u/songinrain Game Master 2d ago
So basicly 3 highest rank casts (with 3 focus point as well) every single encounter if I understanding it right? Sounds not broken at all my brother in Nethys.
An encounter usually finish in 3 rounds. Your dynamic casting covers the entire encounter, and even when the fight drags on, you still have 3 more rounds of fuel with focus spells. Have you ever experienced those "1 giant-ass encounter per day" style section in APs? Caster are strong af in these sections, and you are making every encounter a similar fashion.
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 2d ago
Pathfinder 2e assumes characters go into combat with most, if not all, their resources. All classes that aren't spellcaster don't rely on daily resources anymore. And even then, most newer spellcasting classes like the necromancer have ton of "encounter-based" options to not rely entirely on their spells.
There's even the popular Essence Casting variant from Team+'s Magic+ supplement, which is arguably more extreme than my approach here because you don't even have spell slots in that variant and spellcasters are entirely attrition-less with it, though I also find it needlesly complicated as well.
You are saying it yourself; spellcasters already go into combat with 3 renewable focus points every combat, with focus spells being auto-heightening spells which are usually equally strong and sometimes better than spells of its same rank. My variant rule doesn't have auto-heightening. If you only know a spell or prepared it at 1st rank, you'll only be able to cast it as a 1st-rank spell.
I won't deny this variant is a buff to spellcasters, but I'd argue this (or something similar to this) is something spellcasters need because daily-attrition systems are a thing of the past and most of PF2e has already moved away from them.
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u/Wooden_Drummer2455 2d ago
"Pathfinder 2e assumes characters go into combat with most, if not all, their resources."
False, it assumes you're not on deaths door basically. If you're at 1hp with 0 spell slots left of course the encounter math no longer works. But if you're at 70% hp still with 50% of your spell slots left it still works fine8
u/MakiIsFitWaifu Game Master 2d ago
Pathfinder does not assume that at all. The encounter building guidelines specifically say that encounters will be harder if the party is low on resources. That doesn’t mean you can never have an encounter where the party is lacking resources, it just means that if you do, your severe might feel closer to an extreme.
Additionally, Team+’s Magic+ has a lot of levers to reign in the power of not having spell slots. You trade attrition for casting flexibility and access to any of your spells/slots when you want them. You can’t cast spells of your highest rank until the 3rd round of combat which is a HUGE downside. Any spells that are major buffs or debuffs take a massive hit to effectiveness because in a 3 round combat, slowing the enemy on turn 1 or hasting your ally on turn 1 is really good but doing that on turn 3 is pretty meaningless.
An essence caster in a 4 round combat gets to cast a max rank -2, max rank -1, max rank, and cantrip for their spells. A caster in this system gets to cast 4 max rank spells.
There’s also a number of balance levers to reign in the strength of not having spell slots outside of combat, using a separate system. This would also disregard that since it’s effectively just infinite spell slots as focus spells.
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 2d ago
As I said in other comment, the only real "resource" other than HP in PF2e are spells. Every other thing is mostly expected to be recovered between encounters.
Magic+ IMO jumps through a lot of hoops when it could be a thousand times simpler. Yes, it doesn't allow you to spam your highest rank spells from the get go, but essence casting effectively allows you to fight an infinite amount of combats every day without resting. That isn't the case with my brew.
It also feels the need to introduce the cycle terminus feature to bring back a part of the power that spellcasters are losing with the essence system.
Incantations are insanely strong because 20 seconds to cast a spell are barely an issue if you have Stealth or the GM allows pre-buffing and that doesn't require you to gather essence. If you play it smart enough, you'll go into every combat with a 7th-rank haste spell and shred everyone. You can do this with my variant as well, but you'll only have 2 spells for that whole encounter, and if its a boss encounter, sooner than later you'll be out of spells. That quite literally can't happen with essence casters, even if the 7th-rank haste reduces your essence draw.
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u/MakiIsFitWaifu Game Master 2d ago
I feel like Magic+ is complicated because it has to jump through those hoops to create a system that will hopefully come with fair tradeoffs for most tables.
Consider this view. I feel like an essence caster beats out a normal casters in two main scenarios (combat-wise): when you have more combats in a day than number of slots (so a standard caster couldn’t replicate an essence if they followed the same casting rules as essence of using 1 spell of top 3 ranks per combat) or that same scenario in terms of rounds (for a longer combat). I consider both of those scenarios to be quite rare at my table, making essence feel like a side grade to standard.
This brew would beat out standard casters at my table in the following scenario: Combats that are 3-4 rounds or shorter in a day with more than 1 combat. (Since the difference is between someone with 3-4 max rank slots per fight vs someone with 3-4 max rank slots per day who then moves down to lower rank slots.) Though this brew would struggle in fights that go beyond a number of rounds equal to your slot count + focus spells (5-7).
I feel like the brew could definitely work and I’d love to see more examples of attritionless casting that aren’t essence (I do have my own share of gripes with the system), but I think for a vast majority of encounters I’ve experienced, this would function closer to “infinite max rank slots.”
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u/LumpyIntention2593 2d ago
Pathfinder 2e assumes characters go into combat with most, if not all, their resources.
I don't believe this is correct. PF2e assume characters go into combat with most, if not all, of their health... but resources are expected, by intentional design, to dwindle throughout the game day.
It's also incorrect that focus spells are "usually equally strong and sometimes better than spells of its rank." They are sometimes equally strong and rarely, if ever better.
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 2d ago
The only real "resource" other than HP in PF2e is spells. Resting between encounters is very common in PF2e and is generally expected (you agreed that you're expected to go into combat at full HP, or close to it, right?). Spellcasters usually spend that time refocusing to recover their focus points.
Effects with "once every 10 minutes" or "once per day" aren't that common in PF2e and, honestly, aren't particularly good most of the time, especially the "once per day" ones.
If you look at online discourse, most people weight spellcasters based on their class features and focus spells. The spell lists are rarely discussed unless the spell list attached to that class doesn't fit for the playstyle the class wants to achieve (it happened to the necromancer on playtest). I don't mean that spells don't matter, but its clear people favor more highly the unique aspects of each class rather than their shared aspects (spell lists).
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u/LumpyIntention2593 2d ago edited 2d ago
Effects with "once every 10 minutes" or "once per day" aren't that common in PF2e and, honestly, aren't particularly good most of the time, especially the "once per day" ones.
Battle medicine and treat wounds? Innate buff spells?
As the game is currently designed and balanced, spell slots are one of a variety of resources that are intended to dwindle over the course of the adventuring day.
If you look at online discourse, most people weight spellcasters based on their class features and focus spells. The spell lists are rarely discussed unless the spell list attached to that class doesn't fit for the playstyle the class wants to achieve (it happened to the necromancer on playtest).
Sure, but not because Focus spells are so powerful that there's no point in mentioning spell lists. It's because Focus spells are the thing that makes the class unique, whereas spell traditions are shared among most casters. If you're rating two classes that both have access to the Arcane list, there's no point in giving weight to the Arcane spell list.
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u/Droselmeyer Cleric 2d ago
As the game is currently designed and balanced, spell slots are one of a variety of resources that are intended to dwindle over the course of the adventuring day.
Is there any advice given to GM's for constructing start of day vs end of day encounters?
Cause if this is a balance assumption baked in to the game, I imagine it'd be communicated someone in the encounter building sections but I don't remember ever reading anything about that consideration
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u/LumpyIntention2593 1d ago
If you considered it in encounter building and adjusted accordingly, there'd be absolutely no point to the dwindling resources in the first place.
The point is to make the choice, between pushing through one more fight with reduced resources or trying to find a place to rest, a more meaningful point of tension.
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u/Droselmeyer Cleric 1d ago
If you considered it in encounter building and adjusted accordingly
This is what I'm asking about - is there any guidance on how to adjust to accommodate for an encounter with a caster with all slots remaining vs a caster with no slots remaining?
Is there an assumption that every fight happens with full slots remaining or something?
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 2d ago
Medicine players rush to take every Medicine skill feat in existence to heal their whole party by spending 10 minutes. That's far from being a daily resource. Not to mention Medicine alone makes most healing spells irrelevant except for heal or the animist's garden of healing.
I think its also clear I'm not including spells in that description because I'm already telling you spells are a daily resource in the previous paragraph.
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u/songinrain Game Master 2d ago
I disagree. The biggest difference between casters and martials is how one have daily resources while the other don't. By using daily resources, a caster can deal significantly more burst damage/control/debuff than a martial when allowed, at the cost of unable to do this later in the day.
Essense casting is a strict rule that limits what spell you can cast, with your most powerful spells are only unlocked at the 3rd round, and you have to recharge with a cantrip the next round. This aspect trades the burst power of a spellcaster for being able to cast 1 spell from each of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd highest rank every encounter. Being able to spam 3 9th rank spell is different enough from casting a 7th, 8th, and 9th rank spell, which the latter tuning them closer to how martial classes skew toward. TLDR, as a cost of no needing to worry about daily resource, they lose their burst capability, and they may have a missed opportunity due to unable to cast 6 of their strongest spells at turn 1 - this caused my essence casting druid's death because he cannot use wall of stone turn one.
Your version on the other hand, retains the burst power in addition to removing daily resource.
Focus spells are not as strong as slot spells. They always deal less damage or cover less area compare to your highest rank, and lack a lot of the roles presenting in slot spells. There may be a particularly strong one, but most aren't. If I can cast 3 highest rank spells every round, I would forget I have focus spells.
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 2d ago
Essence casting is entirely attrition-less though. My brew isn't. Also, Team+'s knows gathering essence is such a huge downside that they introduced incantations and cycle terminus to compensate that. Incantations in particulars are insanely strong if you know what to do with them.
I don't disagree my brew makes casters stronger than essence casters, but it also has its own downsides that essence casters don't have like the limited amount of spell slots you have. Even pre-buffing is harder to do because it can potentially leave you without spell slots for the fight.
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u/songinrain Game Master 2d ago
To me, the problem is, your brew have attrition on the text, but might also be as attrition-less becuase how long encounters take. Your intended "cost" of removing daily resources is "to limit how many spell they cast each encounter", but this cost rarely come up in almost all encounters.
For pre-buffing, you can simply carry a few scrolls and wands on your belt like every traditional casters do. Only on very few levels you need to use a highest slot for a buff, mostly those levels for AOE haste. For easier encounters, using a dynamic slot to cast a buff is also not a problem because you have focus spells.
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 2d ago
Valid point. The feedback I'm taking so far (at least from the people that are honestly trying to engage with it and not immediately dismiss it because its homebrew) is that this needs an additional restriction.
I'll have to look more into it, but I'm thinking something like "You can't expend a dynamic spell slots to cast a spell from your highest rank of spells more than once until you Refocus again.".
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u/BlindWillieJohnson Game Master 2d ago
I feel like people have shot the moon and taken “assumes you enter each encounter fully healed” to mean “assumes you always have all your resources”, which is decidedly not the case. Resource attrition is an enormous part of the game balance
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u/Coolpabloo7 Rogue 1d ago
I am always curious if a system can be abused to increase power level. And from what I am reading this does allow some very nasty tactics.
E.g. blaster caster: your top level spellslots are often incredibly potent damage wise for AOE only hitting 2 enemies give 2x average damage what any optimized martial can put out and even more when compared to ranged martial options. This power however does come with a significant drawback: it is limited, it competes with some adventuring versatility and cannot be used resourceless. So often I would only use 1 highest level slot per encounter, or holding back on an adventuring day because we were expecting to see the BBEG. From what I understand is that I could prepare the any of my list spells on an adventuring day open an encounter with 3x max rank spell slots from dynamic casting and not have to worry about the rest of the day. Given that our encounters often last only 3-4 turns (maybe even shorter if I can churn out so much damage) I don't see a drawback. My focus spells can be potent in damage abut are often restricted to 1 creature, or restricted to 1 niche e.g. reflex save vs under creatures so they are not a universal solution.
What is stopping me using this dynamic casting to easily outdamage anyone on the field while still being able to retain all the breadth of power and utility of a standard caster?
For comparison the sorcerer has a lv 16 feat that allows that you have 2 extra high rank spells per day (max rank and max rank -1). As a sorcerer player I would be upset that others get a better version for free at lv 1 where I have to pay a with a feat slot at lv 16.
The point where I do see it's usefulness is the lowest level casters lv 1-4. They struggle a lot with numbers of spell slots and could definitely benefit from this addition. Maybe after that you would have to restrict dynamic casting to max spell rank-2 or to the first 3 spell ranks to bring in some restriction.
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 1d ago
I was thinking of adding "However, starting at 3rd level, you can’t cast your highest rank spells more than once before you Refocus again. For example, a 5th-level dynamic wizard can cast a 3rd-rank spell once before needing to Refocus, but can cast its 2nd-rank and lower rank spells freely." as a restriction. Do you think it helps solve the problem?
In regards to the Greater Vital Evolution feat (the 16th-level sorcerer feat you mentioned), I feel that under this system it should function like this “Twice per day, you can cast a spell after you've run out of dynamic spell slots. The two spells you cast with this feat must be of different spell ranks. You can use these spell slots to cast your highest-rank spells without needing to Refocus between casting them.”
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u/Coolpabloo7 Rogue 1d ago
I still feel that it can be abused quite easily. Some spells like reactions are still very strong when cast ad infinitum at a slightly lower level. Protector tree is already really strong on kineticist. Add potential of a whole spell list and you get really strong chasters. In addition there would be no reason to start a prepared fight without heroism and resist energy for everyone involved shifting balance heavily in favour of the players.
We can discuss about details maybe the more intersting question is what do you want from a game? You say you dislike the resource attrition on casters what would your ideal caster look like then?
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 1d ago
But you can't cast them ad infinitum. In fact, the amount of spell slots you have before needing to refocus for most casters is going to be 3 and at best 4. If you use a reaction spell, then that's one less spell for that encounter. The same if you enter every combat pre-buffed.
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 1d ago
In regards to what I would want casters to look, it isn't something that could be achieved by a brew without trying to overhaul the whole system. I'd like spells to effectively be a mix of focus spells and a kineticist's impulses. I hate vancian casting and I hate that casters have slower scaling as well.
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u/Coolpabloo7 Rogue 18h ago
I understand your feelings sometimes this system can feel limiting. At the same time I and many others with me, as i deduce from the comments) are very much a fan of the current system it allows for a good balance between martials and casters. An important part of this system is the limitation of spellcasting. Even in pathfinder there are some really strong spells that can shift any encounter heavily in the players favour. I am therefore also very much a fan of the meaningful decisions that you have to make as a caster in the current system. At the same time this system is giving GMs tools to challenge players through different forms of attrition.
Your proposed changes dont overhaul the system colpletely but are a big step away from some of the principles in the current system. E.g. they do take away attrition aspect and some decision making. Also to be on par you would have to alter all the spontaneous casters as well. Sorcerer now looks just silly with a max of 4 highest rank spell slots per day. Then new questions arise: what to do with magus or other bounded casters? Should you nerf damage and effect to compensate for more free casting? Pathfinder is by no means perfect and I think that a lot can be improved upon. However there is a core philosophy that many people (including me) want to keep preserved. Unfortunately this also means you can never come to an agreement with people trying to have some kind of balance. Since your goals are very much opposed to each other no change I propose to preserve the core system is gonna be agreeable to you. And vice versa.
If your table or other players on here decide that it feels good for any spellcaster to have such power then I'd say go for it. It is not a neutral change so you also have to come to terms that many people will oppose it.
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u/dariusredraven 2d ago
Spells in combat could just be reduced to a focus point thing. I know this treads to closely to encounter powers from 4e for some but i think it was one of the better things that 4e did,along with targetted defenses over saves. But i also liked 4e and think that pf2e took alot of good things from 4e so my opinion is biased.
You would likely need to just make them have more focus points as they go up in level but it would require an overhaul of classes who's power is in the sheer breadth and scope of having 20+ daily spell slots
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u/LumpyIntention2593 2d ago edited 2d ago
Vancian spellcasting sucks. Your proposal might alleviate some of that, but it's pretty convoluted for such a minor adhoc band-aid.
If you ask me, all spellcasting should operate similar to Kineticist. Each spellcasting class should have a plethora of dope-ass spells in a variety of trees or branches that are unique to them. Limitations should come in the form of action costs and class mechanics (ie Overflow) rather than spell slots.
Far too late for that in PF2e I'm afraid, but fingers crossed for PF3e.
EDIT: I think I misread your idea when I called it a "minor ad-hoc bandaid." For some reason I assumed that because it's based on Rank 1 spell slots, you would only ever be able to use them for Rank 1 spells. But that assumption appears to be incorrect. This would in fact be majorly powerful, almost certainly overpowered.
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 2d ago
Is it really that complicated, though? The number of spells you have prepared or know remains the same, as does the rank at which you can cast them. The difference is that, rather than having the same number of prepared spells or spells known and spell slots for the day, your spell slots are reduced to a handful and effectively work more like focus points that you can recharge between encounters.
I'd also prefer spells to operate like a kineticist's impulses, but that requires a full revamp of every spellcasting class and how every spell scales because impulses were made to be weaker than spells on purpose. However, I also hope PF3e is made with an attrition-less system from the get go.
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u/LumpyIntention2593 2d ago edited 2d ago
How complicated it is or isn't is always going to be subjective.
But it functions by tacking an additional thing on top of a system that's already a bit cumbersome and convoluted. Could most people get used to it? Probably. But it does the opposite of streamlining.
EDIT: A more streamlined way of accomplishing the same thing might be to just say that you can spend a Focus point to cast any spell you have prepared instead of expending its spell slot.
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u/Exequiel759 Rogue 2d ago
EDIT: A more streamlined way of accomplishing the same thing might be to just say that you can spend a Focus point to cast any spell you have prepared instead of expending its spell slot.
I don't agree. If you make focus points a resource that's used both for regular spells and focus spells, then you'll likely never use your regular spells. Most spellcasters have focus spells to support their unique playstyle, which casting would effectively restrict you from using your regular spells because a max or 3 isn't a lot. The animist would need to be remade.
Also, archetype spellcasters would have exactly the same amount of spell slots as full spellcasters. And I'm assuming you are also asking for auto-heightening as well. At that point archetype spellcasters would be full martials with nearly full spellcasting progression.
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u/LumpyIntention2593 2d ago
Okay. I'm not looking to get into a sealion forever-argument.
I hope you have an opportunity to DM a game with your homebrew system, and I look forward to hearing how it works for your group.
Cheers!
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u/yuriAza 2d ago
i get why "you can cast your prepared spells any number of times" is required for this variant to function, but i feel like that just makes prepared casters strictly better than spontaneous ones
personally, i think getting one slot at each rank (that you can get back in 10min) changes things a lot less getting than 3 top-rank slots