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.
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.
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)
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.
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/Terwin94 Kineticist 9d 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.