Fixing Overpowered Spell Casters

[Kaelik]

Why Mind Fog at all? Has anyone ever used that spell ever? For anything?

Fucking with people's will saves is decent.

??? If they fail a will save, then they are more likely to fail future will saves. This is trash in combat, because if they failed the first save, you could already have them dominated/confused/blinded/ect.

This is fail outside of combat, because you can punch them unconscious if you have them captured.

[PoliteNewb]

Why are you banning Glitterdust, but not Color Spray, Stinking Cloud, Web, Sleet Storm, Deep Slumber, Confusion, Fear, Entangle, and Control Winds?

Why Summon Monsters, and not Animate Dead/Create Undead?

Why Wall of Force and not Wall of Stone, Iron, Ice, Thorns?

Why Mind Fog at all? Has anyone ever used that spell ever? For anything?

Do we really need a spell-by-spell comparison? Okay, if you want.

-Color spray has shorter range, smaller AoE, and is less effective.
-Web is less effective, as is Stinking Cloud, and both target saves other than Will.
-Deep Slumber has a HD limit.
-Sleet Storm? You're comparing save or blind to having a slightly harder time moving?
-Entangle is environment sensitive.
-Confusion is 4th level; by then, I don't mind some save or sucks. It also allows you to actually do stuff sometimes.
-Fear ends encounters, but doesn't kill people.
-Control Winds? It's a 5th level spell, and what does it even do at the level you get it? Knock down tiny creatures?
-Summon Monsters is MUCH more versatile, and is available at 1st instead of 5th/11th. Animate Dead has other limits as well.
-Wall of Whatever...Force can't be beaten by nonmagical means, that puts it in it's own class.
-Mind Fog...*shrug* It looked like a save hoser, so I thought it could be abused.

When all's said and done, though...if you think those other spells are just as abuseable, feel free to ban them too. That's up to you, Kaelik. I did say this was just for starters.

And btw, saying "A wall that is completely immune to damage is the same thing as walls that can be completely destroyed by damage" is pretty obviously stupid.

I think that post was a joke really... well kind of a red herring to show how stupid it is to ban half the book.

Nope, not joking. And for that matter, a.) it's not stupid to ban spells, b.) it's not even close to half the book, and c.) banning spells is really and truly the only way to nerf casters (EDITED TO ADD: without simply re-writing all the casting classes), which was the OP's stated goal.

He really wants to ban the wizard, cleric, druid, monk, and fighter.

I believe I mentioned that as another option in the exact same post.

[Swordslinger]

The save or dies really aren't that unbalanced. Wizards are glass cannons, and people die pretty fast in 3E anyway.

It's mostly the spells like fly, greater invisibility and the utility spells that make wizards crazy good.

[Novembermike]

Why Mind Fog at all? Has anyone ever used that spell ever? For anything?

Fucking with people's will saves is decent.

??? If they fail a will save, then they are more likely to fail future will saves. This is trash in combat, because if they failed the first save, you could already have them dominated/confused/blinded/ect.

This is fail outside of combat, because you can punch them unconscious if you have them captured.

It's a spell that's either abused or useless. If you can force people to stay in the fog for 4-5 turns then they have a pretty good chance of failing at least once, at which point you can just hit them with some more permanent stuff. The main thing though is that any abusive or useless spell should probably be removed.

[CapnTthePirateG]

The save or dies really aren't that unbalanced. Wizards are glass cannons, and people die pretty fast in 3E anyway.

It's mostly the spells like fly, greater invisibility and the utility spells that make wizards crazy good.

Unless you dumpster dive through splatbooks for spells, are an incantatrix, or both. Then good luck.

[Wrathzog]

He really wants to ban the wizard, cleric, druid, monk, and fighter.

I said that. Now, tell me why this is such a terrible idea.

Casters are too powerful. Fighters and Monks are too weak. Simple Solution: Let's just get rid of them and see what we have left. Actually, let's take that a step further and just toss out all of the PHB classes. Fuck'em. Now where are we? What is the game like?

[erik]

He really wants to ban the wizard, cleric, druid, monk, and fighter.

I said that. Now, tell me why this is such a terrible idea.

Casters are too powerful. Fighters and Monks are too weak. Simple Solution: Let's just get rid of them and see what we have left. Actually, let's take that a step further and just toss out all of the PHB classes. Fuck'em. Now where are we? What is the game like?

Beguiler, Dread Necromancer... *shudder* Favored Soul and perhaps Archivist and Artificer. It might be interesting kinda like the special olympics.

[Juton]

If you ban the classes from the core book you may force players to look a little more critically at the classes they choose. Take the fighter out of the equation and the player has to choose between things like the Samurai, Warblade or the Swashbuckler. Since they can't go with the default choice they should expend effort on deciding which class is best for their concept, thus optimizing.

The Archivist and the Artificer can be very powerful though, depending on the MC. You'll need to nerf/ban them or your savvy players will still grossly outclass your other players.

[erik]

Yah I know they can both be top tier classes but for whatever reason it seems like in every game I play we get the shaft on treasure, item/spell access and downtime for crafting. Not a good recipe for those two. =-(

[Archmage]

I ran a Tome game where casters with arbitrarily-large spell lists (wizard, cleric, druid, archivist) and artificers were were not permitted. It worked pretty well, actually.

[Blicero]

Yeah, for my games, I only use the themed sorcerers (beguiler, etc., along with a Transmuter and Diviner I wrote myself) to fill the roll of spellcasting. My only major change was that Advanced Learning was a 1/level thing, and you could learn any spell of a castable level.

[sake]

Parden me for stating the obvious, but why not just bloody play 4E, where all the 'disrupt the DM's precious, precious sacred holy untouchable plot baby' powers had been removed and the Stab People with Sharp Things classes are the top tiers in all but one of the class roles?

[Psychic Robot]

because 4e is shit

[Josh_Kablack]

As to banning classes, it's totally viable and can save a lot of rewriting.

I'm currently running a game where Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Paladin and Druid are not on the list of available classes.

For my game, they got replaced by Tome classes like Samurai, Knight, Jester, Fire Mage, Snowscaper and White Mage. But if you don't want to use Tome-type "pull everyone up to wizard-level" balance there is no reason that you can't just pull in classes from somewhere else (WotC expansions, 3rd party publishers, various OGL fansites/wikis, self-written, etc).

You just need to

• Make sure that you have multiple classes to cover each of the niches of swording, sneaking, blasting and duct-taping. That means a minimum of 8 classes (although you can have classes that cover multiple roles like a Swordage or HMO).
• Make sure the classes are relatively balanced against each other and against your conception of what the game's power level should be.
• Make sure the classes are thematically and/or mechanically interesting to your players.

and you're good to go.

[PoliteNewb]

Parden me for stating the obvious, but why not just bloody play 4E, where all the 'disrupt the DM's precious, precious sacred holy untouchable plot baby' powers had been removed and the Stab People with Sharp Things classes are the top tiers in all but one of the class roles?

That's a pretty hilarious leap from "maybe wizards shouldn't have a class ability of 'do everything'" to "PLAY 4E YOU FUCKING GROGNARD BECUZ YOU LIKE SUCKY GAMES". What do you have, like, a +40 Jump check?

In other words, it's not at all stating the obvious, it's a bullshit false equivalency.

Unless you really do think 3E with a handful of spells removed = 4E. In which case, I weep for you.

[Wrathzog]

Parden me for stating the obvious, but why not just bloody play 4E, where all the 'disrupt the DM's precious, precious sacred holy untouchable plot baby' powers had been removed and the Stab People with Sharp Things classes are the top tiers in all but one of the class roles?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svwGRJA28lY

[Neurosis]

The quickest way to start fixing overpowered spell casters involves them not going first. This means banning or nerfing spells like moment of prescience or nerveskitter. It could also mean that more or all spells take one round to cast, like sleep or summon monster. You'd probably want to officially limit what types of divinations are available to the caster, the TO application of contact other plane should be out right banned IMO.

I looked it up and moment of prescience apparently and confusingly (with its misleading name) does not work on initiative rolls, so I am confused by your second sentence.

[Archmage]

An initiative roll isn't an opposed Dex check?

[Lokathor]

It's a dexterity check, but not technically an opposed one (you don't have a direct opponent).

[K]

For the record, none of the spells people listed as "must nerf" being removed entirely wouldn't stop me from making every fighter in 3.X DnD from feeling small in the pants. I mean, I could even use focused Evocation builds to do it and Evocation is the suckiest and least subject to abuse spellset. You be surprised with what I can do with the rest of the spells.

You can't nerf spellcasters down to fighting guys. The actual task is not possible because spellcasting has hundreds of unique effects that fighting guys just can't do, and fighting guys do a few things.

At best, you can make the fighting guys better at a few things than spellcasters. The other option is to give those hundreds of unique effects to the fighting guys.

[Prak]

I had a general thought for nerfing casters, it's just a thought, really, so I am honestly asking whether people think it'd work well or not.

Suppose being a full caster (say, level 7 and above spells) requires holding and using an object. A wizard reads from his spell book, a cleric brandishes his holy symbol, a druid holds above them their staff of living oak, sorcerers cling to a family heirloom that is passed down as the gift awakens within their lineage, whatever, and these objects are both fragile, and nigh-indestructible. Which is to say, an enemy fighter can smash your grandmother's hand of glory, and your casting ability is significantly diminished, but at the beginning of the next day, it has been repaired by the magic it would otherwise channel.

How that diminished magic manifests is kind of up in the air. But the options I see are basically:

• Your spells are easier to resist (lose half spell level, class level, something to DC)
• You can't cast spells of your highest levels (you basically "forget" your top two or three levels of spells until the item has been repaired)
• You can't cast at all, your spells are basically automatically resisted, something along those lines.

Now, straight up saying "Sorry, your book got burned, you can't do anything magical until the ashes reform" is bullshit. But "Your book's tie to magic was damaged, and now you can only inflict the least effect of your spells (spells automatically resisted)" could work, though still seems a bit much.

Just genuinely curious as to what people think of the idea. It has an effect, casters will generally stick more to the back lines, but they may also just buff up before combat and then stop casting while they're in imminent danger. Also, I'm sure it doesn't really address things much beyond tactics.

[fectin]

If I needed a fetish to cast, I would armor it up, or get it implanted or something. Basically, I think you've recreated familiars, but slightly less useful.

[Prak]

If I needed a fetish to cast, I would armor it up, or get it implanted or something. Basically, I think you've recreated familiars, but slightly less useful.

Well, as far as I can think, you'd need to cast from inside an especially roomy iron maiden in order to armour up your fetish.

Just a thought, wondering on the viability and whether it would actually balance casters a bit.

[Smeelbo]

In CalTech/MIT Warlock, the OD&D variant we played in the 70's, spell casters had to wait 6 rounds before they could cast another spell, and most weapons attacked 3 times a round. That is, each melee character attacked about 20 times in the time it took a caster to cast two spells.

The result was something like a football skirmish line, where the linebackers/melee protected the quarterback/caster until they could cast their second spell, which usually ended the combat if it weren't already over.

Considering that these were the really old days of D&D, it worked pretty well. Certainly, most of the characters were melees.

Smeelbo

[Username17]

In CalTech/MIT Warlock, the OD&D variant we played in the 70's, spell casters had to wait 6 rounds before they could cast another spell, and most weapons attacked 3 times a round. That is, each melee character attacked about 20 times in the time it took a caster to cast two spells.

The result was something like a football skirmish line, where the linebackers/melee protected the quarterback/caster until they could cast their second spell, which usually ended the combat if it weren't already over.

Considering that these were the really old days of D&D, it worked pretty well. Certainly, most of the characters were melees.

Smeelbo

From the standpoint of the combat minigame, balancing wizards and fighters is actually pretty easy. Once the game branched away from battle simulators and started having other stuff to do, Wizards started leaving "fighters" badly in the dust.

-Username17