It sounds very very cool.  A table for each individual spell, talk about magical and unique.  Ben might have just sold me on this one.

As far as wieldiness goes, this just screams for spell cards.  Hand out whatever spells they memorize, have the table text on the card for the players to read, and if they fail and lose the spell, hand it back.

Quote from: estar;444919In my own playtest the caster killed himself by too good of a result with enlarging a door.  It popped out straight out at him (I rolled it) and smashed him after he failed his reflex save.

First time I seen somebody directly by an ordinary door.

Awesome.

If I were that player I would want to keep that character sheet forever.

Rolemaster wins for its simple "Extraordinary Spell Failure" rules. Want to cast a spell above your level? Go for it. But beware the critical failure tables...

Similarly, my first impression was to think that tables for every spell would be cumbersome and laborious. I've come to the conclusion that, if edited a bit and after some more play testing/tweaking, it might work very well.

For players, it will be fun to print up your own spellbook and refer to it a bit like the wizard you're roleplaying. However, for the DM running the NPCs, it might be a bit more laborious, with much page flipping.

Quote from: MelanNot really interested. Too fiddly, plus a great virtue of the D&D system is that it works.

OK, granted I've not read/played/DMd any D&D editions other than 1e AD&D, but I think you're implying this is more fiddly than D&D, a statement which I find utterly amazing. Yep, it's no Trail of Cthulhu, but D&D bloat vs the planned 64 page dcc rpg just does not compute.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;445063That's way too fiddly for my liking, and the opposite of what I am looking for in a D&D clone.

1. It's hard to know if it's fiddly or not, since it's only an early draft of a playtest rule. If it doesn't play well, it will get changed.
2. DCC RPG is not a D&D clone.

Intriguing, but looks clunky.    Great idea, but needs work.

Quote from: The Butcher;445059Jason Vey's Spellcraft & Swordplay has an interesting take on it (a memorized spell is only gone when you fail a spellcasting roll; as long as you get successes, you can cast it again and again), but I'm not sure how it works out in actual play.

It makes casters more powerful.  I added such a mechanic in S&W.  You make a Magic Saving Throw with a -2 modifier per level of the spell.  

So your 1st level mage in S&W has a save of 15 with +2 vs. Magic so you need a 15 to keep your 1st level spell...75% chance to fail.  

Your 10th level mage in S&W has a save of 6 with his +2 bonus so you keep 1st level spells on a 8 or higher (60%) and keep 5th level spells on a 14 or higher.

Also, if you fumble (natural 1 or modified 0 or below), your spell goes wild and something strange happens.   I later added that if you roll the exact save number on the die, you keep the spell, but the one you just launched goes wild.

So essentially the "chance of recall" does little or nothing for low level guys who are the ones who actually need more spells than the 10th level mages.  

Also, spell failure doesn't make sense for Clerics.

Presentation can make a big difference.

Some spell descriptions in Advanced D&D are pretty ornate, and commensurately awkward to sort out in the old format that buries details in paragraphs.

However, a format that broke down such a spell into something that looks more like a handful of 4e powers could be quite easy to manage. Listings might be even more convenient on physical cards or in a digital spreadsheet or database program than in a book.

Different people are likely to have different responses. For instance, some strongly prefer either the 3e/ 4e D&D "ascending AC" or the 2e "THAC0", while I find the old matrices more expeditious than either.

Quote from: SpinachcatAlso, spell failure doesn't make sense for Clerics.

That depends, I think, on the extent to which their "Lord works in mysterious ways". The understanding of clerical magic as propitiatory prayer rather than automatically functioning "technology" may be less current today than it was when the AD&D books specified that spells were imparted -- and could be denied -- by a deity either directly or via its messengers.