Magic just got a little more dangerous!

[Psion]

I'm not happy with the scaling oomph of magic in my game as it broaches 13th level. So I have cobbled together a few house rules (phrased as campaign qualities, natch). Of course, you gotta have magic in your campaign for these to apply.


   Precocious Apprentices (Permanent): Magic is dangerous even in the hands of dabblers. When calculating saving throw DC for spellcasters, the character may replace their number of spellcasting feats with their spellcasting ranks divided by three (round down, for arcane casters) or the step of the path that the spell is being cast from (for divine casters.)

Example: a Mage 5/Rune Knight 8 with 2 spellcasting feats and a charisma of 13 would have a spell save DC of 14 instead of 13.

Reasoning: First, it makes making challenging spellcasting opponents simpler and makes them scale better (since save DCs will now scale with menace, at least for arcane casters). Second, I find that spells featuring saves scale too slowly unless you are a concentrated mage; I feel loss of caster levels, spell points, and spell levels should be sufficient cost for dabblers.

   Arcane Adversaries (2 AD): Neither apprentice nor master may trifle with spirit beings. Creatures with the Spell Defense ability have their spell defense rating calculated as 10 + Threat Level + 2 x Spell Defense grade.

Example: at threat level 14, a creature with Spell Defense IV has a spell defense rating of 32.

Reasoning: Again, scaling of NPCs is a concern here. As written a creature that renders the party mage irrelevant at low level becomes a pushover at high levels. This makes defense against scale such that for the most part, a IV or less Spell Defense is mostly a nuisance, and 8 or higher is unlikely to succeed without high attributes, feat investment, and/or action dice.

[Sletchman]

I like these, a lot.  Both myself and a mage-player of mine found that the Save DC for both PCs and NPCs was far to low - to the point that a couple of PCs could actually automatically pass some NPCs save DCs (and a many non-mook NPCs would only fail against his spells on a very low dice roll).

[Psion]

Thanks!

I've reworded the qualities a bit for my document, updating it above.

[Nibenay]

I like the precocious apprentice quality, especially because most NPCs come up with wimpy DCs otherwise, but is there an error in your example? Mage 5/Rune Knight 8 is a total of 13 caster levels, /3 and rounded down is 4, plus 1 for the charisma bonus is 5, plus the base of 10 should be 15, not 14. Is that right? Just want to make sure I haven't missed something.