Another balancing act
So a while back I posted a topic asking for some help with balancing a magic heavy game. And when I say magic heavy, I mean a Harry Potter-ish world where pretty much everyone can use magic, from peasants and fighters to your regular wizards. I was given plenty of ideas, and it did help me balance some things out, but I've run into a small issue concerning Professions obtaining spells.
I wanted to give professions access to specific spells that would make working in that profession easier. I.E. farmers gaining the Enrichment version of Plant Growth, cooks gaining Create Water or Goodberry, alchemists getting Detect or Neutralize Poison, that sort of thing. My problem comes in though when I try to balance out when people gain these spells. I want to tie it all into the amount of ranks someone puts into their Profession, and I've come up with a few things. For example:
To cast a spell gained from your profession, you need a number of ranks equal to the spell level+5. So a 0 level spell needs 5 ranks, a 1st level spell needs 6 ranks, and so on.
At first glance that looks ok, and from spell levels 0-4, it works just fine. You gain new spell levels at a rate that's on par with a wizard. Yes, there are a few fluctuations, such as getting no spells at level 1 and gaining 4th level spells one level earlier then a wizard. But those are balanced out by the fact that the spell choices are very limited to things that would make sense for your Profession to have, and the fact that to get a 4th level spell you'd need to sink 9 skill points into your Profession. However, for any spell that's above level 4 it becomes completely unbalanced. Case in point, with the above rule you can gain 9th level spells by level 11 just by maxing out the ranks you have in your Profession.
Now, I figured I could keep things balanced this by saying that your Profession can only give you up to 4th level spells, and I think that would work. What do you guys think?
I wanted to give professions access to specific spells that would make working in that profession easier. I.E. farmers gaining the Enrichment version of Plant Growth, cooks gaining Create Water or Goodberry, alchemists getting Detect or Neutralize Poison, that sort of thing. My problem comes in though when I try to balance out when people gain these spells. I want to tie it all into the amount of ranks someone puts into their Profession, and I've come up with a few things. For example:
To cast a spell gained from your profession, you need a number of ranks equal to the spell level+5. So a 0 level spell needs 5 ranks, a 1st level spell needs 6 ranks, and so on.
At first glance that looks ok, and from spell levels 0-4, it works just fine. You gain new spell levels at a rate that's on par with a wizard. Yes, there are a few fluctuations, such as getting no spells at level 1 and gaining 4th level spells one level earlier then a wizard. But those are balanced out by the fact that the spell choices are very limited to things that would make sense for your Profession to have, and the fact that to get a 4th level spell you'd need to sink 9 skill points into your Profession. However, for any spell that's above level 4 it becomes completely unbalanced. Case in point, with the above rule you can gain 9th level spells by level 11 just by maxing out the ranks you have in your Profession.
Now, I figured I could keep things balanced this by saying that your Profession can only give you up to 4th level spells, and I think that would work. What do you guys think?