Why I Stopped Using Spell Slots in my 5e Campaign

Finally upgraded my old iphone 8 video quality to my new camera. AND I figured out why my sound quality has been random as hell. Hope you all enjoy the upgrade in video/sound quality!

It's always felt strange to me how spells function in Dungeons and Dragons 5e. You're telling me you can mess with the weave and have magic function consistently all the time? Casting Dimension Door or Fireball has no risk to the caster or those around them? Seems fishy to me.

Drawing inspiration from Shadowdark RPG @TheArcaneLibrary , Frostgrave, and other games like Dungeon Crawl Classics, I designed my own homebrew roll to cast magic system you can use with your 5e D&D Campaign. In this video, I share that homebrew with you and offer the rules text for free in the link down below. Please note that this document is a "live" document and I will be updating this with FAQ's and other adjustments as I fine tune this homebrew. Enjoy!

If you enjoy this content, please throw me a like and subscribe to the channel so you can stay informed when I upload new videos. Thank you kindly!
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[aydenwofford]

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

[moralecheck]

I ran a short campaign where the DC started at 5 to cast and went up by 1- each time the spell was cast. The wizard had a blast - literally - with fireball until we reached the end and the severity of the next check sank in…

[codiethompson]

I both: do not like your idea and don’t want to use it at my table;
and Also: love that you made this video, as it’s thought provoking and interesting new take on how magic “could” be handled!

[ColonelMustache]

I can definitely appreciate this thought process. Personally, I'm not sure if I'd enjoy using it. A lot of 5e spells are already pretty feast-or-famine (i.e. save or suck spells), and adding another necessary dice roll exacerbates that. It already sucks when you botch an Inflict Wounds attack roll, or the enemy rolls really well to save against Polymorph or Disintegrate. And getting a critical Fireball or Hold Person would probably end a lot of fights instantly. Which is super cool for the caster and would admittedly be hype as hell, but feels like it would widen the gap between casters and martials even more. That being said, I can appreciate the idea that even if I botch my Raise Dead, it doesn't waste my opportunity to cast Bigby's Hand instead, since they no longer share a resource. It would also encourage the use of utility spells like Silent Image and such, since you don't need to "save" the spell slots for combat.

[mikeyallen]

I think a soft version of this could be a way to extend past expended slots. So your spell slots now represent your ability to cast spells safely but you can extend this by doing the check. Id probably increase the DC in this case (maybe 13 + twice the spells level) and similarly double the amount of health needed to make up the difference

[SecularMentat]

I love the idea of blood magic. I'd like to see some kind of 'using your hit dice' to regain lost spells as well. So you could make further sacrifice to pull a clutch spell off.

Also, the 'not knowing if you've can cast that spell 4 times today' really adds a bit of tension to spamming certain spells.

Breaking concentration of concentration spells might also have the effect of losing the spell for the day (though maybe this is too hardcore).

[jonathanfenton]

I haven't gotten into 5e yet, but for my 3.5 casters I prefer using the alternate spell points rule in which removes spell slots from sorcerers and other spontaneous spellcasters, and wizards, clerics, etc. Had to prepare a spell only once (using up a single spell slot) to cast it as many times as you want using your spell points.

[The_Murder_Party]

Removing proficiency from the check seems… very strange to me because it means you never get better at it, and seems like a massive flavour fail for the same reason.

[akisha]

In "The Dark Eye" you can manipulate spells, some sponateous (when casting) some by investing XP into it. For most you have to roll, to see if the effect happpens and you can even botch, creating uninteded negative effects. The system also uses something akin to mana points.

[RandomSpaceMonkeys]

Beautiful! Bravo. I really enjoyed this. I think you just changed my concept of magic in D&D. That's a first in 27 years. I'm excited to run some magic players now. Thank you.

[Syega]

There are two major mechanical issues I can see with this:
1. Buffing the check. The most commonly available option is enhance ability. Advantage on the check drops the mishap chance to 1/400 and the failure chance below 10% for most of your spells. And also there is the circle of stars druid who cannot fail to cast a spell when their dragon constellation is active (min 10+mod rolled on Int and Wis checks). This is not even an endgame thing, it is a 2nd level feature.
Suggestion: Magic has no effect on casting checks.
2. Spells that use saves. Is the save replaced by this roll? If yes, then Int, Wis and Cha save proficiencies are basically useless. If no, then these spells are extra unreliable. If single target, it might not even be worth learning them.
Suggestion: Keep saves, but add +2 to spell save DC-s.

There is also non-mechanical issue: bad rolls. If a primary caster rolls badly at the start of the day, they can just go and sit in a corner for the rest of the day. Not managing a resource well is your fault, thus living with its cosequences is ok. But rolling bady is not a choice. Going with the standard adventuring day, you will have about 4-6 encounters, and a wizard could run out of spells, without actually casting any successfully or getting seriously injured, on the first one. I don't think many would consider this to be fun.
Suggestion: Using blood magic makes you actually succeed on the check. (Maybe only for an additional sacrifice: 2x the cost, or lose a HD.)

All in all I get what you are going for, but this is such a core feature of the game, that I have to ask: why not just play, say, Savage Worlds, which already has a roll-to-cast option?

[mazdeq]

awesome video man! just started dming my first campaign about 5ish months ago (been playing 5e since the pandemic started) and these videos are great at expanding my horizons/making me think about my world. Thanks!

[mushroomking]

just a heads up, hp also correlates to your general energy level. This is shown in 5e with the fighter's second wind ability where they gain hp by dipping into a well of stamina. Just in case you would like to flavor text the blood aspect differently.

[Zhon]

My friend has been building his own custom RPG system for a while now, and at one point when it was still pretty similar to D&D (it's diverged a lot since then) this was the solution we came up with to differentiate wizards and sorcerers. Wizards used spell slots, just like in D&D, but sorcerers used a system just like this one - they could cast any spell they wanted as much as they wanted, provided they made the check to cast it. There were a few main differences:

1) Even if you failed the check to cast the spell, the spell still went off. Losing your action entirely when you fail a spellcasting check sucks, especially when it's expected that it'll happen multiple times every day. You still suffer an arcane mishap if you fail the spell, though (usually self-damage, but sometimes it would randomly hit a different target, etc).
2) When you failed a spellcasting check, you lost the ability to cast spells of that level until you rested, not that particular spell. So failing to cast Fireball would lock you out of casting third-level spells entirely. You could still upcast them, though - so you would be able to cast Fireball at 4th level still if you wanted to (but then the check was harder, and you risked losing fourth level slots instead).
3) Because this was sorcerer-specific, instead of being part of all magic, sorcerers got several class features to mitigate the downsides. As they leveled, they got the ability to ritual-cast any spell, which guaranteed success (allowing them to still use utility spells out of combat without crippling their combat potential), as well as resistance to damage from arcane mishaps and improved chances to cast low-level spells without losing them.

It was pretty fun - I immediately decided that the best way to make use of this system that had you occasionally explode was to be standing in melee range so the people you exploded next to were bad guys. Then I just used all the options that made my casting more powerful but higher risk, blew up everything around me for two or three turns, and then had to run away if anything survived the nova because I couldn't cast spells anymore.

[asherhockersmith]

I kinda like the Shadowrun spellcasting system. You cast the spell, define its limits, see how effective it is, and then try to resist the "drain", or the mental and physical repercussions of channeling the mana.

[TheWizardsTales]

Good job existing. After mentioning how I wanted to allow a player to multiclass between two archetypes of the same class and how I wanted a player to explain exactly HOW he was helping and made him move in order to be able to provide the help action in pushing someone over a cliff when he was fifteen feet away, I was run out of Reddit as some sort of villain. I'm glad someone out there doesn't see D&D as a religion and the words of WotC as a pantheon of gods whose words can't be altered (even though the DMG says the DM is the final arbiter of the rules and has the right to alter them). Subscribed.

[lukasmarks]

Interesting ideas. I personally have gotten to play quite a bit of Dungeon World lately and I have to say that I find their system quite refresing. It can be a bit tricky to adjust as a whole, as it varies a good bit to D&D type games but the way combat and checks in general are handled is interesting.

First of - DCs are done away completely, everything depends on your dice throw.
Second - A D20 is not used in this particular system. You roll everything with 2D6s. If you roll a 1-6 on a check, you fail, if you roll a 7-9 you succeed on what you planned, but something unexpected happens in addition to that. And a 10 and above is a complete success without drawback.
The "you succeed, but..." part is where it shines for me. Our DM usually gives us a few options of bad sideeffects that we can choose from. Mostly something like "you take damage yourself", "you hurt somebody else along with it", "you increase the overall stakes of the encounter", "you sustain a status effect until your next rest", and so on. Whichever are appliccable in the given situation. We also use an optional rule for advantage and disadvantage wherein you use a 3rd D6 and take the two highest or lowest respectively.
As a third change - AC works differently. It no longer raises the DC but the AC gets directly subtracted from the damage taken (granted DW is a lot scarcer with hit points - 20 already being very good).

I feel like this could also be adapted to D&D, but haven't tried it yet. The D6 thing is somewhat a matter of taste I think.

If this sounds interesting, I strongly recommend having a look at the system. Just be warned - it's a very different playstyle to general D&D and related systems.
Before anyone asks, yes DW is a PBTA system.

[Marco_Belletti]

Man, you are so free and wild with 5e...I love it! I'm enjoying your channel

[shallendor]

Back in AD&D, we used spell points! at 3rd level you had one 2nd level spell and two 1st level spells you could cast, which gave you 4 spell points, and you could have memorized Magic Missile, Grease and Web! and each day you could cast 4 Magic Missiles or 2 Webs, or Web and 2 Magic Missiles!

[Grogeous_Maximus]

Funny to find a video on this. In my homebrew, I'm making spells to function closer to AD&D psionics, which function somewhat similar to this. Interesting channel, instant subscribe