Caution: Half-baked idea ahead!
I really like the Channeled spells that are in the PHB II. Combined with the Swift variants of some spells (Swift Expeditious Retreat, for example) they nicely introduce the idea of "building up" a spell for better effect, or casting it quickly for less effect. I think it would be cool to apply this to some pre-existing spells as a house rule. In some cases, maybe rushing the casting gets you a reduced range/area/effect, or makes the spell function as a similar but lower-level spell, while taking extra time does the opposite.
So to take everybody's favorite evocation Fireball as an example:
Swift Casting: Acts as Burning Hands (yes I know this is way better than a quickened Burning Hands, maybe reduce the damage further or have it do only 1d4+CL, max 5 or something)
Standard Action: Regular effect
One Full Round: Regular effect, +1 on each die of damage
You could also come up with some standard trade-offs. Maybe if a spell normally takes a Standard action to cast, increasing that time to one full round raises the save DC by 1 or 2. Stuff like that.
Anybody done something like this before?
I really like the Channeled spells that are in the PHB II. Combined with the Swift variants of some spells (Swift Expeditious Retreat, for example) they nicely introduce the idea of "building up" a spell for better effect, or casting it quickly for less effect. I think it would be cool to apply this to some pre-existing spells as a house rule. In some cases, maybe rushing the casting gets you a reduced range/area/effect, or makes the spell function as a similar but lower-level spell, while taking extra time does the opposite.
So to take everybody's favorite evocation Fireball as an example:
Swift Casting: Acts as Burning Hands (yes I know this is way better than a quickened Burning Hands, maybe reduce the damage further or have it do only 1d4+CL, max 5 or something)
Standard Action: Regular effect
One Full Round: Regular effect, +1 on each die of damage
You could also come up with some standard trade-offs. Maybe if a spell normally takes a Standard action to cast, increasing that time to one full round raises the save DC by 1 or 2. Stuff like that.
Anybody done something like this before?
