Plebian wrote:so if you're playing with a polite group of friends the casters will probably not try to make everyone useless, but the fact that it's there is a really big hit against the cooperative aspect of 3e and 2e. people shouldn't have to purposefully not take abilities to put them roughly equal to the guy who's having to charop like hell to approach the usefulness of a mediocre caster.
NO, this still sound like 4th editions crappy approach to design so people do NOT have to actually work together. Just because a wizard has access, via the books, to spells of massive power and damage, doesnt mean the player should choose only them or the DM allow it.
With 3rd and 4th the DM has no say over what a caster can have, unlike 2nd and under.
The thing 4th does that shows the problem of the min-maxing wizard is with what the spells do. You have a spell for flight, it last only long enough for use in combat. as world design, this means that for some reasons wizards never developed longer lasting spells, or they want to call those rituals like some pagan cult dancing around a fire rather than a wizards spell.
How is it in 4th that wizards had only time in the lives to study a spell that lasts only as long as a combat? this ruins suspension of disbelief because for all that studying the wizard only learned spell with which to fight. Take editions earlier than 4th and look at a wizard taking only those high-end optimized combat spells, and you have to ask, where in the hell did this wizard come from, and how did they only try those kinds of spells? Maybe in one game such a wizard would be allowed, maybe one where the world was at constant war, an NPC wizard in the service of a kingdom to help defend it....but every adventuring wizard doing things fucks the SoD of the game. to study these kinds of spells you have to try them, so where the hell was the wizard learning them? who would let them in their city with these kinds of effect going on all the time.
Characters like an optimized fighting wizard with all damage spells, just dont fit in the world, even if the mechanics allow them. That is where the DM must take up his job of making sure the characters fit. The player is "building", used to be called creating cause you designed it rather than just assembled it, a character that doesnt fit with the group.
Again, if the group wants a wizard with only blasts and stuff for damage, and get one, they have nobody to blame but themselves. CoDzilla exists in games because the other players at the table, and the DM allows it to be in the game.
if it is coming down to someone claiming, "but the rules say i can do it", then tell the person to go play with the rules, because the rest of the group says you cant.
LFR an such things have ruined the game in regards to characters because 3rd and 4th try to say everyone can play anything cause the rules say so and the DM has no power over it, and allows any old character to group anywhere even if it doesnt fit.
DMs used to look at a character someone brought in and made changes to make it fit the word, removed items, levels, etc. Now people are creating characters in a vacuum. That is fine that the other party members don't know what is on your character sheet, but the DM then needs to make sure that all the characters will work together as a group as if even a freshly starting group had people coming new to it, as they all are.
take a group of 5 people playing that each make clerics. This would be good in a ethos campaign, but not one where religion was a backdrop and not a real big part of the game world. A job of the DM is to make sure the characters fit before the game starts.
So if keeping your character information elusive form the other players, the DM still need to be able to say the characters function together as a team. The alternative is to make character all together and help suggest things to the other players that their character might want to help cover areas of things others cannot do. This will stop the wizard form doing anything that disrupts the game, and that is what it really is a disruptive player to play such a wizard. Likewise the wizard player wont have to hold back on things to make other characters feel special, because he would have chosen spells that compliment the needs of the group.
2nd edition games for me had the wizard player always being given a short list of required spells that the other party members thought would be needed the next day. for memorizing then, it was not his fault if something was needing instead. the group is climbing down or up or going across a ravine or something that might require risky attempts and chance of falling, you prep feather fall, not delayed blast fireball.
So the problem wizard only exists if the other players allow him to, so simply dont allow him to exist. the game shouldnt cut back on types of spells or something else to make the wizard forced to have only a certain amount or type of spells, let there be lots of fire,, ice, lightning, whatever based spells so a wizard can specialize, just like a fighter can specialize in a weapon. just take responsibility for letting your wizard player be a jerk, not blame the game for giving him the tools to do so.
so don't blame 3rd or 2nd for the wizard having a big list of spells, but blame yourself for letting them use and choose spells that didnt have him cooperating with the rest of the group.
blaming the game for giving lots of options and tools while you let someone abuse them is like blaming the fat man for going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and eating the entire buffet. (think im going to eat tons of rice when you got steaks and ham and turkeys and lobster there...shit, i can make a feast off $10 at golden corral!)