Dungeons & Delvers 2E: Expanded Arcane Focuses

While running Age of Worms yet again for long-term playtesting purposes, I was a bit disappointed in that the encounter with the necroturgist ended without him getting a single spell off (not for a lack of trying, just how the dice fell). Initially, I thought that, okay, maybe we should keep Sustain spells so that he could at least have some defensive buffs, but then several days ago I had another thought. But first, an explanation.

Sustain spells and talents in 1st Edition allow a wizard to have certain magical effects active all the time, at the cost of reducing his total Willpower pool. For example, the Enchanter Talent is required to take any Enchantment Spell (it's essentially a gateway Talent for that school). It also has a Sustain effect, which lets the wizard use Intelligence instead of Charisma for social skills (reflecting him subtly using magic to influence others), but reduces his maximum Willpower by 2 while active.

(It should be noted that a bit of Willpower can be recovered via periods of rest (1 per wizard level), but generally a wizard will not quickly or easily be able to just activate a Sustain spell, drop it, and then rest to get it back, especially given that the more rests you take, the longer you have to rest to see any benefit, and there's a cap of three times per day. However Sustain spells reduce your maximum Willpower, so you can't rest to get these back without first dropping the Sustain effect.)

Abjurer is another Talent, which is required to take Abjuration spells. It also has a Sustain cost of 2, and while active you can use Intelligenc instead of Dexterity to determine Armor Class. Mage Armor builds on Abjurer, granting you an additional +1 bonus to Armor Class and 1 DR, but it ups the total Sustain cost by 2, for a total of 4.

Since your total Willpower is only 4 per wizard level, if you use both at the start of the game you basically have to dip into hit points in order to cast spells, of which you have precious few compared to most other classes.

Animate Dead is from the Necromancy school, and lets you have 1 Hit Die worth of undead follow you around for every 2 Sustain invested (up to your wizard level), and there are Talents that let you animate larger creatures at an increased Sustain cost, so you could have, say, a 6 HD owlbear skeleton under your command, so long as you were willing to reduce your Willpower by 18.

Mechanically I think this is fine, and even justifiable from a certain flavor perspective, but I'm personally not a fan of having always active magical effects, at least not so easily. So what I'm thinking of is building on the wizard's staff and focuses, as well as monk implements from 1st Edition.

The wizard's staff is a Delvers innovation. Normally in Dungeons & Dragons you'll see wizards with staffs in some of the art, even though they don't serve any particular purpose except as a pitiful weapon reliant on the wizard's pitiful martial prowess. Sure, you can obtain magical staffs, which basically let you spam a specific spell until it runs out of charges. Useful for a time, sure, but also boring.

In Dungeons & Delvers, wizards have a Magic Bonus, which starts out at +1 and increases every five levels. This is added to a spell's save DC, but only applies if the wizard has his staff. This gives a wizard some incentive to pack one around, but in 2nd Edition we're making it much more useful: in addition to upping save DCs, it also lets you re-roll Drain dice when casting spells (and if you don't have it, every spell costs another 1d4 Drain).

This addition makes it useful for every spell, and not just the ones that impose a saving throw. Furthermore, there are numerous wizard Talents that let you do other things, so long as you have your staff. For example, Blaster Caster lets you also re-roll damage dice, and there's another that gives you a Defense bonus equal to your Magic Bonus, but only after casting certain spells while you have your staff.

Wizard focuses and monk implements are other Delvers innovations, which give wizards and monks something to spend their money on given a lack of reliance on mundane weapons and armor. Wizard focuses can provide varied benefits, such as increasing spell range, DC, damage, etc, though are typically restricted to a single school of magic. Monk implements on the other hand provide access to monk Talents, or enhance a specific Talent if you already possess it.

In 2nd Edition many spells require more than 1 Action to cast, plus you can't move at all when casting a spell that requires 1 or more Actions (Swift and Free Action spells are fine). In most cases you can suffer more Drain to speed it up, which can be mitigated by Drain re-rolls. With our magic focus idea, however, a wizard can craft an item that is keyed to a specific spell and makes it easier to cast, or just plain better.

So, a wizard could have an amulet that lets him cast a Barrier spell as a Free Action. He could also have a sword that can be enchanted with a Flametongue spell as a Free Action, or a Swift Action. Or one or both could let him re-roll additional Drain dice when the wizard casts the spell, which would make it more likely that he rolls a 1 on the Drain die even should be suffer more to speed up the casting process.

Focuses could also enhance the save DC, increase the wizard's level for the purposes of enhancing it (many effects are limited by the wizard's level), and for really powerful focuses they could just reduce the Drain cost entirely, to a minimum of 1. Finally, similar to monk implements, a focus could grant access to a specific spell, perhaps with an increased Drain cost and/or reducing the wizard's effective level when using it (so he can't enhance it as much).

The wizard can craft these items and give them to other people, and with an investiture of Willpower turn them into one-use magic items that the wizard has to recharge later (Willpower can only be regained once per day, now, so it's a bigger deal). This also opens the door for characters to find focuses made by other wizards, and to make them more flexible you could let non-wizards activate them by spending hit points (since they lack Willpower).

Our daughter is playing a wizard in the current campaign, and I've already got some prices for various effects based on how much Drain will likely be saved over time, so we'll see how it goes.