No Spellburn for Rituals

[Ryan Kent]

I am strongly considering this house rule. I read a few posts about how spellburn can be abused and/or unbalancing if the wizard is allowed to rest up immediately after without risk. Most spells like Find Familiar and Wizard's Staff are designed to be cast out of adventuring time when the wizard is free to rest up afterwards. I know I can pull a deus ex machina and have an unavoidable dangerous situation or quest develop shortly after the wizard casts every ritual, but I find that unsatisfying. If I only allow the ritual casting modifiers and cap out each category at +4, I think it might be better and more in line with Appendix N. Thoughts?

[GnomeBoy]

What if you just make it clear that Spellburn is meant to be a gamble? If you're not piling on events and situations that would make the "free resting up" uninterrupted, just agree that the spirit of the thing is you suffer after performing large amounts of spellburn and decide on how much (even none) of a Spellburn is covered before the next event in the campaign. Maybe 1dX days pass quietly, so that maybe a little, maybe a lot of healing can happen, then things start rolling again. It keeps it a gamble, it's simple, and it it doesn't make things too easy when by design they shouldn't be...

[Ryan Kent]

I agree that Spellburn should never be mundane or easy. That is contrary to Appendix N source material. You are on to something that the rules for recovery from Spellburn should involve GM discretion rather than merely a rule in a book regarding healing attribute points over the passage of time. I worry though about exercising to much discretion and being perceived as arbitrary or capricious.

[BanjoJohn]

I think I would allow for spell burning during a ritual, but I would probably roll a 100%d to see if an unknown enemy of the wizard interrupts the ritual to attack while the wizard is weak from spellburning. With the more points the wizard burns increasing the chance that the enemy will decide to attack.

[GnomeBoy]

...I worry though about exercising to much discretion and being perceived as arbitrary or capricious.

Set the recovery method up at the beginning -- then when players are deciding to Spellburn, it's an informed decision. "We're going to use a d12 to decide how many days pass between adventures, and that's how much downtime you'll have for other things." No caprice, just normal DCC swing.

[Ryan Kent]

Instead of days until next adventure, I think I will house rule that spellburn recovers at GM’s discretion over a long period of time. The greater the spellburn for a single spell, the longer it takes to recover.