Community Viewpoint: Bard Spell-Swapping

By Ralsu

As Ten Ton Hammer reported on May 8, the Turbine developers behind Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach (DDO) are closer to a final plan that will allow bards to swap spells. The pen-and-paper (PnP) Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) on which DDO is based allows bards to swap one spell for another of the same level upon training for a new character level. The PnP system introduces the option at Level 4 and allows for another swap at each even level thereafter. The design aims to prevent players from abusing gameplay mechanic. The Turbine plan to implement spell-swapping in DDO works as follows:

First, we are going to allow only one spell exchange every three days. We do not want...Bards exchanging spells freely and we understand that gold cost alone is not an effective limiting factor for all characters....Secondly we decided to make the gold cost for a spell exchange dependent on both character level and spell level. It only costs 100gp for a Level 1 character to switch a level 1 spell but it would cost 50,000gp for a level 10 character to exchange a level 5 spell...bards should give some serious thought to the spells they pick. Completely free, unlimited spell exchanges reduces that need.

In case you missed the decision process that brought Turbine to this point, I'm going to recount the idea of spell-swapping from the moment Turbine put it out for discussion until present. What follows are comments made from DDO players who spoke up on the official DDO forums.

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The Original Proposal

On April 24, Community Relations Specialist Samera posted the original proposal to allow spell-swapping for bard:

This is a new feature that would allow Sorcerers and Bards to swap spells from their spellbooks for a new spell of the same level.

How will it work?

All...Bard trainers will have a new option added to their dialogue box: “I would like to exchange one of my spells for a different one.” Selecting this option brings up the Spell Exchange panel. Spell exchange works in the same way as the Action Point system - select the spell you would like to get rid of on the left, and select the desired spell on the right. There is a cash price for each spell swap and you can only swap a spell for another spell of the same level. You can swap as many spells as you like, at any time you like, the only limit is how much money you have in your coin purse....

How much will it cost?

The following is an example of the pricing scheme. THIS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

Level 1 Spells = 1,000 gp per spell
Level 2 Spells = 4,000 gp per spell
Level 3 Spells = 9,000 gp per spell
Level 4 Spells = 16,000 gp per spell
Level 5 Spells = 25,000 gp per spell

The DDO community was quick to react and make suggestions.

Wulf Ratbane: Can you explain the rationale for the departure from the 3.5e rules? That is, why "Any spell, any time, for a cash cost..." instead of only when leveling up?

Ziegler Von Strahn: I am pretty sure that the PnP rules dont require a Sorc to spend gold in any way to swap out spells at leveling....This just adds more fuel to the fire of moving farther from DnD...and more towards generic [massively-multiplayer online game].

mattllow: NO NO NO!!! This is just wrong...Bards should be very careful of the spells they pick, they shouldnt be allowed to swap them anytime they want.

Kantern: The pricing has to be alot more. Unless you are trying to make warforge alot more common and wand buying obsolete for them.

Gror Stoneshard: If the cost model goes in, there should be a either a finite number of times you can do it at your current level (so that number gets reset when you level up) or there should be a real world timed restriction before you can do it again.

Samera [responding to Wulf Ratbane]: There are two reasons [we departed from the D&D rules] actually. First, we do not want to punish people who have already hit the level cap. Second, Stormreach is an ever-evolving world. We don't want to punish people if we change a spell (for instance the recent changes to Web) or if we add a new spell into the mix.

Udinthrik: you could put a timer on it, keep costs the same, but say you could only do it every 48 hours or so.

Gror Stoneshard: I would like to keep the following separate, if at all possible:

1. Functionality to account for MMO dynamic changes to spells.
2. Money sinks.
3. Incentives to farm/grind.

Wulf Ratbane [with the debate hinging on whether the pricing proposed in Samera's first post is adequate]: Levels are a finite resource. Action Points are a finite resource. Quests that cannot be abandoned and repeated are a finite resource.

Gold is not a finite resource. It is an essentially limitless resource.

In order to predict what effect this spell swap system will have game-wide, you have assume that some player somewhere will have more than enough gold to swap out as often as he likes. (And that assumption is not much of a stretch.)

DDO Developer Graal [13 pages into the thread]:
The main purpose of adding the ability for Bards and Sorcerers to exchange spells is to allow us to add new spells and to make changes to old spells without severely penalizing these two classes that have static spell lists. The MMO genre is dynamic and ever changing compared to a PnP D&D campaign so the system has to be more flexible than the 3.5 D&D rules.

We want a mechanism in place that will always allow Bards and Sorcerers a way to exchange spells. Any system that limits exchanges to a finite number (however that number is calculated) would have to have so many exceptions and special cases that it is highly unlikely we will implement it. On the other hand we do not want Sorcerers and Bards to exchange spells on a whim. The trick is to pick a mechanism that balances these two requirements.

I am listening to your concerns...I am going to take all of your feedback into account and there will most likely be some further restrictions on spell exchange. Basing exchange cost on character level rather than spell level and requiring some kind of time delay between exchanges are two of the better ideas we will be looking at.

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Graal's post indicated that the developers had received the message: the original proposal was too forgiving and would lead to exploits. That brings us to the current proposal.