Why I Stopped Using Spell Slots in my 5e Campaign

I really like the idea of blood magic. Question with this system though, how do you account for up casting spells?

I like this. I pretty much like any option that makes the story more interesting. It’s why I like DCC so much. But the 5e guys I know are more interested in “winning” and thus these types of variables they would see as a negative for them, because variability is less gameable.

People will really change everything about 5e before they just decide to play anything else.

I found your video because I'm working on a new video tentaively titled, "Why I Hate Spell Slots." Your "roll to cast" system in similar to what Margaret Wiess and team did with Sovereign Stone D20. They even have an option to sacrifice HP to cast a spell faster. Question: do you use a mana pool of points to limit a mage's power level? Or, can they continue to cast spells indefinitely?

True20 does something similar but adds a +1 DC to spell casting rolls for each spell cast in the last hour.

I really like how magic works in DCC. I think if I was to ever adopt a system, that would be it.

Interesting idea but it makes the casting situation at higher levels more risk than reward which can be problematic because people play this game to role play a powerful being and have agency with that power. The agency is taken away when I keep failing the checks just to be able to cast my spell.

On another note- I've never thought of expending spell slots to be the same as forgetting the spell. My understanding of how it worked is that the higher level spells just took that much more mana out of your character and after a certain point they simply cannot do that again without a rest. Just like an athlete doing a string of complex moves in a sport- eventually you'll run out of gas and be unable to properly accomplish the task.

I had a low magic system where humanoids were just not powerful enough to cast traditional spells (although many supernatural creatures were), and every spell was essentially a ritual. I stole the Diabolist and Summoner spells from the original Paladium RPG. So essentially, to cast a spell, you had to take time to draw wards or an elaborate circle. There were also certain mixtures of herbs and plants you could burn to create fumes as well, or things like medicine bags/hex bags that could be created and carried around after "charging them" when you create them. Then I stole the PPE system from Rifts, where each "spell" had a "mana cost". There were spell components that you could sacrifice that had certain "mana values" to power your spell (like dragon bones or pixie dust). Alternatively, there were also ley lines that crisscrossed the planet of varying power (some were more powerful than others) If you were near one, it would give off some energy that you could use to power "spells". These lines waxed and waned in power, and at certain times they would be more powerful than at other times (like at midnight there would be a x2 multiplier, or a x10 multiplier at certain yearly events like vernal equinox). Where lines crossed they would be particularly powerful and be able to fuel even the most powerful spells (like resurrection and wish-type spells). The downside is that these large places of power also caused creatures to sometimes spill in from the spirit world when they were at their most powerful which sometimes had to be dealt with. Blood magic was also used, so you could get a small amount of mana by cutting yourself (a certain amount of mana per hit point damage done), or by sacrificing living things (with humanoids being the most powerful). You could also get a group together in a ceremony which could also generate some mana based on how many people were involved.

Spells were not something used in combat, so spellcasters also had to be somewhat proficient in martial combat and contribute in that way in fights. Spells mostly buffed you before battles started or healed you after a fight finished. Certain classes, like shamans or priests, could create blessings that could protect you or buff you for a certain amount of time after a pair (basically like a ceremony I mentioned before) which could be made more powerful depending on how many people in the part participated (and participation could be limited depending on the particular god).

DM since 1984 here. Time to drop some science on the young ones. Reliability and flexibility-of-use for an effect has a massive influence on game play. That fireball may do 6D6 with no fuss no muss, but you use it in ONE SITUATION, meanwhile a Fighter can swing a sword endlessly. The fighter has already done a combined 20D8 damage to various monsters by the time the fireball is cast. Combat is one of the things that HAPPENS MOST in a D&D adventure, making the Fighter ironically, very versatile. The ability to fight works on EVERYTHING ALMOST ALWAYS. You're not making magic more "magical" by making it less RELIABLE, you're just kneecapping a class that's already balanced in other ways that are more subtle. D&D is far from a perfect game, no edition ever has been (Moldvay comes close), but the simplicity of Vancian magic (along with abstract HP damage) is one of D&D's genius strokes, and is kind of central to what makes it really "work" underneath the hood.

SUPER late to the party here, but what would you do in this system to port over warlocks? How would you switch over their "2 spell slots I get back on a short rest" to the roll to cast system?

Consequences are more interesting than failure. I really like the idea of pushing yourself to get the spell working, that presents characters with interesting choices.

However, having played a fighter, there's nothing that sucks more than, after 3 weeks of scheduling issues, finally sitting down at the table and then whiffing your attacks. Not to mention a lot of spells already have an attack roll or a saving throw, meaning half the time they already fail. If my DM added this roll to spells as well, I would quit the campaign on the spot.

Our DM uses this with our campaign and I can’t stand it as a paladin. I ended up being a gimped fighter for two game sessions because I had a bad series of roles. I would rather use a system of mana (points) or lowering the dc and only the hardest spells for your level having a dc check.

Is there a follow up to this video?

Savage worlds uses a system called power points. You can recover them by resting. But savage worlds also has a mechanic called bennies, they work as a way to allow the players to tempt fate and reroll a bad or mediocre dice roll for something better. However you can also use them to regain power points. Most casters are going to have between 10 and 20 points starting off. And most novice spells cost 1 to 3 points. However, if you want to cast a more powerful version most have the option to spend more power points for that.

Now in conjunction with this the DM can give out bennies whenever they see fit and every player has three at the start of the session, plus if you get a joker for initiative all player characters get a bennie. So effectively spells just get more expensive to cast, but almost never become unavailable.

Ive always like forbidden lands magic system. Spells always go off. But if you get a bad roll a mishap can happen. Simple as the spell not going off, all the way up to a hell portal opening and your character being taken from the world. Make a new character

Not a fan of how spellcasting is handled in 5e but I also hate the idea of a 20th level wizard having a flat 5% chance to fail casting a 1st level spell. Inconsistency kills the game for me which is why I’m a big fan of things like reliable talent. That said, it’s an interesting system that could work as a subclass. Maybe a reworked wild magic sorc or new wild magic wizard.

The way I run magics is with a sort of daily strain system. You can cast any spell you know, but each spell incurs an amount of "strain", some more than others. Strain is a number out of 100. each time you cast a spell, you roll a d100 and have to get higher than your strain for it to not fail or backfire. Strain is removed by resting, or letting it wear off over time.

I like it!

Never liked spell slots. In my games, I give my players a mana pool, much like their HP, and each spell costs a specific amount of mana. And mana regens at a constant rate, unless a debuff says otherwise. It isn't so fast that it can allow them to indefinitely cast magic for an entire encounter, but they're not crippled and useless after one or two fights in a (potentially) six fight dungeon. Because I make my dungeons pretty much a gauntlet each time. There's checkpoints and town portals for those players who are more into the role play aspects, they're usually the types who wanna explore a dungeon for the lore and traps, whilst the combat oriented players get their fill of a good ol smackdown.

I can see the merit in this in a low magic/fantasy campaign but at the same time id personally find it reallt frustrating if I was a wizard and because of bad dice that session that I basically just sat around and did nothing because my spells completely whiffed so i wouldn't use it at my table

Cool idea though

Sorry to those who plays your campaigns

So the circle of stars druid is just the most powerful spellcaster in the game if we use this system...

Start at lvl 1, failed to cast spells, got killed by a goblin kid. The end.

That poor cleric that will have so much work to do... also balancing on this is really wack, the 5% lower chance of losing the spell is not enough incentive to not upcast everything and blood magic damage is mostly only relevant at the first few levels which kinda takes off the whole point of it being there. If id run this id make it dc 8 + twice the spell level, and potentially give them scrolls to regain spells as a consumable, also completely disregard blood magic cuz its dumb, just let them cast it, most spells already need a save, this just nerfs cc and gives a constant self-damage for spellscasters which is not the most interesting nerf tbh

I have been using a roll to cast system in my home game and playing in another game run by a buddy who is also using it. It makes casting more fun and adds risk.

One of my players nearly killed themselves and another player trying to cast cure wounds, after rolling a nat-1 on their roll to cast.

I'll preface all of this by saying: I don't like things that make it so that my class features are risky, and will go out of my way to mitigate those risks, to the point of treating ones that are even moderately risky as "unavailable" in most circumstances. So this could just be a sign that this system isn't for me, in general.

Now, to the system itself: I particularly dislike that failing the first time you try to use a spell means that you don't get to use that spell at all that day. Not, "you only get one use out of it," but "oops, you didn't get any uses." This means that you're going to need to prepare backup spells not just for different elements or the like, but the same kind of spell jsut a little different in order to ensure that you aren't forever out of fire spells just because you failed to cast searing ray once. This sharply narrows what the caster can prepare (and makes it even worse for the known caster with a more limited array of spells).

"With this system, there's no need to track spell slots; you can either cast a spell, or you cannot cast a spell." This is only technically true. You're still tracking spells castable, which is going to functionally take the same amount of energy and thought as tracking spell slots. So, again, technically true, but you're still tracking something and that something is as much effort to track.

Recovering a failed spell on a critical cast is nice, but doesn't make a lot of narrative sense: why would critically casting fly let you recover the ability to cast burning hands? It also seems to me that you're more likely to burn out on spells with only 2 or 3 ever successfully going off than you are to get a critical cast and recover even one of them. (Yes, I'm pessimistic about the odds of success in this system. To be more fair, if we assume a +4 casting stat modifier and a +2 proficiency bonus, a first level spell is going to succeed on a 5+, which in theory is pretty good. You have an expected value of about 3 castings of that before you fail and lose it. The problem for me is the possibility that, on a bad rolling day, you get literally nothing out of your spellcasting. While that can happen "anyway" if you keep rolling badly to hit, the number of to hit rolls is sufficient that it's far less likely you'll wind up with a single bad streak costing you the entire game day.)

It doesn't sound like fun to me. It sounds like a recipe for anxiety and frustration as I have to hyper-focus my spell selections in order to have a chance of getting the focused-on effect to work, making my spellcaster a one-trick pony, and generally making the game less fun. "The chance at infinite spells" is also the "chance at no spells at all."

I reworked the entire D&D spell casting classes all the way back with 2.0 and even stopped buying their shit rulebooks after 3.0, went back to 2.5 and have not looked back.

A DM must be free from the confines of someone else's rules once he has...mastered...how to run a campaign.

Anyway. None of this "Must re-learn" spells after casting and being limited to how many times you can cast it garbage. The magic user already has enough limitations on them by TIME to cast that also requires full concentration, hand movement/reagents and the like that prevents them from just quickly casting fireball after fireball and wiping out a battlefield themselves.

SInce there still is a to hit or save roll to overcome for the spell to have an effect in addition to the roll to cast this makes it harder and sometimes just unfair to cast spells. At least make the spell always go off and change the roll to cast to roll to retain. If you fail then you lose the spell after casting it. Just a suggestion

So question. Example: scorching ray. Do you roll for spell success and to hit? Or if the spell succeeds does it automatically hit. I think it would feel pretty bad to roll success then miss the attack, and then roll failure the next turn.

there are two systems I want to try for spellcasting. Instead of spell slots roll a Con save vs Spell DC (10 + spell's level). On success you cast the spell as is, on a fail, roll and additional Con save or gain a point of exhaustion! ... The second is cast spells by coin flippin. choose heads or tail and cast a spell. If you're lucky you cast the spell, if not either nothing happens or WILD MAGIC happens... The final is the one on the DMG that uses spellcasting by points.

Had a dm try something similar. He was the only one in the group who would dm so we had to go along with it but all the players unanimously decided none of us eould do characters that had the ability to cast any spells at all since we were against it. After a few sessions our table just decided to permanently remove magic as a player option entirely. Magic is solely the province of a select few magic beasts almost all evil or villains. Been a lot of fun the past few years

Reminds me of a video where a guy made DND 5E combat a lot more risk reward where he drew inspiration from The Raid Redemption. I took on this idea for my campaign and now I'm doing it to you

Your blood magic reminds me of spellcasting in the original Chivalry & Sorcery where you had fatigue points that came back hourly (normally used to cast spells) and body (more akin to D&D hit points) that came back daily. If you were out of fatigue points, you could still cast magic using your body points. It was a fun system and I had never thought about how to incorporate that into 5e.

Easy: s l o t s

This reminds me of my favorite magic sytem from The SLayers D20system. good shit.

Just my two cents here: in a world where magic existed for a long time it would inevitably fall into attention of scholars and be studied with a scientific approach. It would explain why "modern" for a setting spellcasters are capable of casting spells so consistently. It is not that I do not like the idea of chaotic magic, I just believe that unless you give a strong in-universe reason against it, it would not remain as chaotic and unreliable.

No.

So... what happens with artificer?

So wizards and sorcers and caster clerics just pass their turn about 35% of the time? If you have a player that's rolling bad they could have their high level caster just standing there all night. Sounds like a bad time.

Do you know DC20 by the Dungeon Coach?
You might like the casting system based on Mana and with critical casting too.

Nice video, thanks for thinking outside of the Box.

Looked at the document and I really like it in general, but critical failure portion doesn't quite sit right with me for spellcasters who derive their powers from gods like clerics (I'd also include paladins and druids here). But I have a solution: Since an oath is likely taken to uphold a god's tenants, they only need to pay tribute if those tenants are ever broken. I don't think a god would be as fickle to just take your magic away when you're in the middle of mission for them, especially if you're doing it to further their cause and you've been pretty devout about it this whole time. Narratively, it bugs me. I still think they should lose access to that magic if they fail normally, though.

Rolling a 1 wouldn't do anything to them unless a GM deemed the circumstance necessary, like if they're casting in magically chaotic area or if the god doesn't have as much power in the domain they're in. Since you're acting as a conduit for the god's power, I think having that safety net until you break your oath with them should be a significant difference.

As someone who played D&D with extremely min-maxed players this would literally just be infinite spells using this system. I see how this can be an interesting idea but within the confines of 5th editions systems it is not something I would ever consider even using. Then the martial classes would be even less viable being further delegated to purely being used as HP resources, or tanks. Interesting idea though maybe you should try making your own game.

i think a mana system would probably be better, would allow more spellcasting while still putting limits on it, problem is getting it right.. currently looking at spell slot level plus number of spells in that level added with other spell levels... thus it coverts slots to mana and messes with very little

i like the idea but im concerned about my spellcasters feeling like they've wasted their turn in combat if they fail their roll to cast. essentially its a wasted turn with no outcome, due solely to a die roll (meaning they can't strategize around it)

How do you handle eldritch blast since it doesn't gain damage, just additional projectiles. Seems like it'd be a bummer to keep it at 1 pew for such a core feature. Or do you treat each add'l blast as a level for the roll?

Also, are healing spells treated as roll for success and then for healing? Have you had any table issues with healing spells having a chance to fail?

So you nerfed casters. Alright, how did you nerf martials? I’m sure you did, because you always treat all your players equally, right? Right?

So... Variation of No Power Point setting rule from Savage Worlds but for d20 system? Cool

This is similar to what I did at my table. I have a very large homebrewed wild magic table (and a separate one for divine magic). I created tables for the to cast DC's with 9th level spells being like 27 to cast, but I do not have were you loose the spell if you miss the role (only if you failed 3 times). I might try this change, reduce the DC but loose the spell if you fail. I am having a problem now with spamming low level healing spells, so this might be the solution.

My other tweak that I recommend is that if a spell has an attack roll, I only make them roll once to cover both to hit and to cast. This keeps it from being like disadvantage.


I would really like a way to change divine magic so it feels different from arcane magic. Any ideas?

If you dont Like the spellslot system, why do you still Play DnD?
There are many other ttrpgs out there.
I really dont get why you need to bend DnD rules when you could easily play a different Game that suits you better 🤨