Talk:Miscasts (4e Variant Rule)

Overpowered

I'm all for variant rules, but this seems a bit overpowered and might need a bit of balancing. Negative effects are kinda of bad, but I don't understand why all of the damage effects use Charisma as the primary stat. Also, allowing critical misses (natural 1's) to be treated like critical hits (natural 20's) seems unbalanced as well. Especially with the bottom variant rule of Uncontrolled Spellcaster allowing 50% of your attacks to count as miscasts. This would in effect boost the critical hit rate from 5% to around 40% (very rough calculation). I think this needs some serious balancing. Lacitpo 06:51, 6 April 2009 (MDT)

Just some things I'd like to point out:

• Its charisma based because all of the intelligence in the world doesn't help if a sudden surge of energy flows through you. You have to react instinctivly rather than think to get the effect you want.
• Yes, there is a 41.6% chance of getting a crit on a miscast. Thats a 5.416% total chance of criticals, including nat. 20s. However, there is a 41.6% chance of wasting the spell on a miscast. Completely.
• The chance of criticals is 20.3% (excluding nat. 20s) not 40%. on an uncontrolled spellcaster. With a 20.3% of wasting the spell, (and a 1% chance of reducing your HP to 0% and a 8.3% chance of missing) the 20s (which just maximise damage on the first attack roll) are balanced out.
• The DM rules when a caster is uncontrolled. Not the player. This prevents a player trying to gain an unfair benefit from miscasts.

The theory is that, even though there are some really good bonuses, the bad things are really bad. Not just spell failure, but waisting the spell. Yes, the balance isn't perfect, but it's not all that overpowered. I think wasting the spell is worse than getting a nat. 20 is good. --Sam Kay 08:55, 6 April 2009 (MDT)

I think a good way of balancing this variant would be to shift the normal miss effect up to 8-9, add a slight negative effect to 7s, and weaken the current effect for 10-11. Beefster 13:54, 14 December 2009 (MST)