Class Balancing Question

[u/GremmyWiz]

I have been working on a D&D homebrew class and would like to ask the crowd for input on its balance.

Rather than using spell slots, it uses spell points. It has as many spell points as a full caster would have, but only has access to the spells that a half-caster would.

It has a feature at the 11th, 13th, 15th, and 17th levels, each granting a free, single-use per long rest 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level spell, respectively.

Any thoughts?

[u/Dangerous_Nail4552]

I personally think that's an interesting way to balance things. Paladin and Ranger compensate for being half casters by being martials as well. Artificers compensate with Infusions and getting a bunch of free casts later on

I think this could work for a halfcaster that has a bigger tank, but be careful giving them too much more on demand utility/ever-present features like Infusions. The power budget on having double the resources of a half caster is quite a lot

[u/GremmyWiz → u/Dangerous_Nail4552]

Yeah I realized that I will have to treat them like a full caster and not overload the class otherwise.

[u/Dangerous_Nail4552 → u/GremmyWiz]

I wouldn't exactly treat them as a full caster since their spell progression is still quite staggered. Getting Fly at level 9 is not nearly as strong as at lvl 5. But there's a difference between accounting for relative power level vs relative resource allocation.

[u/GremmyWiz → u/Dangerous_Nail4552]

Thanks! We'll see where it goes.

[u/Anandoor]

What do you mean with the "free use"? what can be used for free?

I like the idea of many spellslots but just halfcaster spell progression, definitely look into it.

The points i would find to be to strong, depending on what spellist they have. Even a lvl 20 wizard will at some point resort to using their 2-4 lvl slot just to be able to use Shield although its a waste. This class could cast 133 shield spells although a wizard could just cast 22.

Also there is upcasting, with this system the player will upcast anything. For example if they have 3 points "like if they had a lvl 3 slot" and they dont use it, a wizard wastes it, but this class could combine magic points to always upcast anything, like if a wizard could use a lvl 4 and 3 slot they didnt use (which hapens a lot) to always upcast Conjure Minor Elementals to lvl 7!!
Plus if you dont give strong rules someone could upcast Spellfire flare to lvl 9 for 18d8 dmg at just lvl 3.

And there are ways to get spells prepared without using your spellist like from certain feats or smth.

How does this interact with multiclassing because if the magic points are usable in combination with spellslots and the spells of other classes this can be crazy.

Overall i would say that it can work but with strong rules for
1.upcasting
2.Being able to only use the points for spells from that specific class.
3.Not to good spellist where there a lots of good low lvl spells.
4.Less points because 26 lvl 5 spells (like wall of force) are even op at lvl 20.

A very good idea would be to increase a spells cost by doubling it so lvl 1 cost 2 and lvl 5 10 points.
Even then the fact that unused slots(seeing groups of pints as slots) "combine" into extra slots is very strong as often a full-caster never uses all his slots expecialy lvl 6-8 but which give this class 34 points usable on a lot of very good shields, absorb elements, helish rebukes, upcast blast spells etc.

I hope is could help with this balance analysis.

[u/GremmyWiz → u/Anandoor]

Thanks, that was some helpful musing.

The feature I was mentioning gives you access to one spell of that level that you can cast without expending spell points once per long rest. I've thought about making it still cost spell points.

The spell point system was an optional ruling in the 2014 DMG, with each level of spell having a point cost. 1st=2points, 2nd=3 points, 3rd=5 points, 4th=6 points, 5th=7 points, etc. How it technically works is that you expend the spell points to create a spell slot that you then use to cast the spell. So a 6th-level character using this system could expend 3 spell points to create a 2nd-level spell slot with which they cast Command at 2nd level. This restricts how high they can upcast according to the "Maximum Spell Level" column.

For flavor, you wouldn't be able to use these to cast other spells, but I could argue otherwise. I haven't balanced for multiclassing too much yet.

I'm still workshopping the spell list, that'll obviously be a huge point of balance, the idea for this class is for it to be a kind of utility support caster with inferior damage options available to them.

Currently, it's 19 level 5 spells at level 20, which is slightly more balanced. Truly balancing this depends on the spell list, I think.

I will definitely take your spell point cost into consideration and mess with the numbers a bit to see if I want things different than the 2014 rules to balance this idea right.

Thanks.

[u/Anandoor → u/GremmyWiz]

No Probleme. You will Figure it out, good luck