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Paganboy28
2009-09-16, 12:20 PM
Everyone agrees the caster classes end up over-shadowing the non-caster classes.

So how would you nerf them? Less spells? Less access to uber spells?

Or is the answer to buff the non-caster classes?


With Pathfinder they don't seem to have done much to bridge the gap between these so the problem will still exist.

Does this gap matter to players? If not then I guess this is just a mechanics problem?

Does the entire magic system in DnD need a overhaul?

How about having to make a skill check or something to be able to cast spells?

Yukitsu
2009-09-16, 12:24 PM
The problem is less classes than it is jerks willing to abuse the system. My suggested fix is to slap the offending player with a rotten herring.

Seriously, a sufficiently optimized commoner can seriously hamper a DM's plans, and a sufficiently unoptimized wizard can go down pretty hard even with full spells.

There is no silver bullet that I've seen that fixes magic. No matter how much my DM axes, I still can manage more with a caster than another player can manage with any other class. If you want, you can adjust spells available in your campaign to remove the biggest offenders.

Bayar
2009-09-16, 12:24 PM
The thing is, all the brokenness exists, but when you come down and play with your friends, you play to enjoy the game, not pwn everybody with your uber l33t spells.

If they are being jackasses and do stuff that make to not enjoy the game, break out the flesh to salt cows and other stuff and make their game miserable too.

Fax Celestis
2009-09-16, 12:27 PM
The Big Offenders (Archivist, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Wizard) are only ensconced in that position for two reasons: The first is having spells that are too powerful; the second is having access to too many spells.

Compare a wizard to a beguiler, for instance. While a beguiler gets more spells per day, more skill points, a better HD, and class features, the wizard is still considered a stronger class because it has unlimited access to every wizard spell printed--a beguiler has a much smaller and much more focused list of spells.

In a similar vein, some spells are just Too Good. Most of these are listed rather frequently in discussions. You will note, however, that despite the fact that other modes of magic approach the power of the Big Offenders, none of them breach it--binders, for instance, get their abilities much much more frequently than a sorcerer does, but they are not broken as their options are limited, and the powers they possess are not gamebreakingly strong: just strong.

Berserk Monk
2009-09-16, 12:30 PM
I was watching an episode of MST3K the other day and it was the one that showed Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders. One thing I thought was interesting about the film beside the dark satanic powers and animal deaths in a children's movie was that there were side effects to certain spells. Like, this one character casted a spell that had the side effect of propelling flames from his mouth. You could have that in D&D. Like, a side effect for a spell could be you lose 6 points to str or con or you take 20% of your max HP in damage or you lose 4 other prepared spells or some other negative side effect.

Bayar
2009-09-16, 12:34 PM
Alternatively, you could use the Slayers D20 Magic system. It is awesome.

quick_comment
2009-09-16, 12:37 PM
I think making spells deal nonlethal damage to the caster is nice. If the caster is immune to nonlethal, its converted to lethal.

RagnaroksChosen
2009-09-16, 12:37 PM
I always wondered if taking from 2nd ed would be better..

don't allow bonus spells.
Period. Not even from specialization (give them a bonus caster level instead).
Cuts down on the amount of spells they can cast, take out super broken spells and or make them RP it.

I also thought of though the book keeping would become annoying. is enforcing the spell component rule. and not allow eschew materials or spell component pouches.

Edit: I've never tried any of these though i would like to here peoples opinions of them.

Paganboy28
2009-09-16, 12:38 PM
I was watching an episode of MST3K the other day and it was the one that showed Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders. One thing I thought was interesting about the film beside the dark satanic powers and animal deaths in a children's movie was that there were side effects to certain spells. Like, this one character casted a spell that had the side effect of propelling flames from his mouth. You could have that in D&D. Like, a side effect for a spell could be you lose 6 points to str or con or you take 20% of your max HP in damage or you lose 4 other prepared spells or some other negative side effect.


That sort of thing already exists in other DnD books for corrupt spells and such. I guess you could extend that out to encompass all spells.

Jergmo
2009-09-16, 12:49 PM
I've been toying around with a lot of the spells that The Logic Ninja lists as being Stinky Cheese and some metamagic feats/etc. But my campaign also operates on lower levels with half experience progression, so 7th level spells are pretty much the new 9th level spells and anything higher is the new Epic Magic. One thing that's bothered me about the spell selection bit is "Why does every magic shopkeeper have scrolls of all of these apocalyptic spells?" A lot of the more powerful spells are from ancient civilizations that need to be discovered in the Terrifying Ruins of Doom. I've also abandoned the silly Vancian Magic system in favor of Spell Points, and yes yadda yadda that's so overpowered, however, I've decided to make it so spells increase in cost quadratically, like with spell power. (spell level x spell level / 2). IE: A 7th level spell would cost 25 points, instead of 13.

oxybe
2009-09-16, 12:54 PM
the wizard, as is, is perfectly fine.

his spells... there's the problem.

the main issue with spellcasters is that the archetypes they are supposed to emulate are generally more broad/ill-defined or have access to a larger array of options then your standard non-caster.

when it comes to combat, the only difference between a fighter, a barbarian and a rogue is the delivery method of their attacks, at the end of the day, they're all playing "HP Damage". their capabilities are also pretty much the same... while stat variations can alter it more or less and skills can allow for a wider margin of variation, they are pretty much all stuck with the same limitations on what they can and cannot do. they are largely dependent on their gear to give them extra abilities to keep up with the threats they face

casters however aren't. they can play the "HP damage" game should they feel like it but they have others they are better suited for: "stat damage", "level drain", "Save or Die", ect... and yet the delivery method stays the same, generally speaking.

if the caster sticks to one archetype, they usually aren't totally borked: the "tim the enchanter evoker" type that plays the "HP damage" game is generally considered the weakest and isn't a problem. the "mindbender/illusionist" can cause problems due to domination and other "social win" spells, but is knocked down a few pegs when he faces undead & other mindless types. the abjurer can cause problems with his counter magic and defensive spells, but is generally beneficial for the group.

the problem is when those archetypes are mixed and matched. when you have a flying, transforming, debuffing, insta-killing machine... ouch. the options casters have available to them is staggering. especially when you consider that they can use money to cover their bases or focus on their strengths.

honestly, the easiest way to nerf mages, IMO, in 3rd ed is to nerf the spell selection itself. archtype-casters, like the warmage, beguiler & dread necro, are possibly the "best" way to go about this. and even then you'll still run into problems, be it mechanical or just difficulty creating a character that is similiar to your vision.

my opinion is to take it one spell at a time, really.

Kalirren
2009-09-16, 12:58 PM
I'd make most spells take 1 full round to cast instead of one standard action. This balances spell action economy with full attack action economy.

I'd re-institute the 2E spell disruption rule; if you get hit for even 1 damage while you are casting a spell, you lose it. Period. This makes it easier for fighters to counter casters.

I'd also make use of the fact that spells are split by school and make it so that spell progression comes as a chain of feats, just like everything in the fighter class is described in terms of feats. The way I envision it to work would be thus; as a caster, you can cast any spell on your spell list if you have the slot for it. You start with a spell list that contains only the cantrips. You could take a feat to add the spells of a single school of certain levels to your spell list (not your spells known, your spell -list-): 1st through 3rd, 4th through 6th, 7th and 8th, and 9th.

Example:
The feat Least Abjuration would add 1st-level, 2nd-level, and 3rd-level abjuration spells to your spell list,
The feat Lesser Abjuration would add 4th-level, 5th-level, and 6th-level abjuration spells to your spell list,
The feat Greater Abjuration would add 7th-level and 8th-level abjuration spells to your spell list,
and the feat Master Abjuration would top it off with 9th-level abjuration spells.

The effects this would have upon wizards, sorcerers (!), clerics, and druids are profoundly balancing. You would have to tweak individual spells to scale better with caster level, but these hit the big points.

arguskos
2009-09-16, 12:59 PM
I have a running ban list of spells that I just don't permit, because they're too overpowering of everything else. Celerity, Consumptive Field, and others are on said list.

I also have broken magic into many different categories: the arcane casters are now 7 unique classes; clerics have a much more domain focused list; druids are now two classes (one with casting based on elemental themes ala Storm, one with wild shape).

So far, my changes have been working well. It also helps that I highly recommend that non-magical characters be as creative as they can be and use any and every resource they can to get where they want to go.:smallamused:

Toliudar
2009-09-16, 12:59 PM
I'm borrowing from Viletta Vadim, and preparing a campaign in which the Tier 1 classes are closed to PC's, and half a dozen of the stinkiest spells/effects (the polymorph line, celerity, craft contingent spell, Divine Metamagic) simply don't exist. If a Favoured Soul wants to go around pumping himself up with Divine Power all the time, it's still just melee, and as a DM I'll cope.

valadil
2009-09-16, 01:08 PM
I'm not sure that this would work, but it's something I've wanted to try for a while.

I would be rigorously enforce material component costs. This would include acquiring, storing, and transporting components. Some components may not be legal in certain parts of the world, because, well, the dwarf mayor doesn't want you summoning demons in the fountain by town square.

I like this solution because it hardly changes the rules at all. You might want to ban eschew materials though.

In actual game play I probably would change some of the components. I'd merge many of them together, so the bean counting wouldn't be that horrendous. There would probably be 20 basic components and a couple dozen others for special cases. I'd also print out cards of the components so that the players would have an easier time tracking them. If I really wanted to put some time into it, each component card would include a list of spells that required it.

So yes, players can cast celerity. But they can do it exactly once and only after I've given them the sands of time component from a smashed hourglass.

PinkysBrain
2009-09-16, 01:11 PM
Even if you get rid of the cheesiest spells there are still two problems with magic, the biggest nukes come out in round 1 (in important fights) and unlimited buffs create too big a difference between prepared and unprepared characters.

On the gaming den they have a mechanic which kinda sorta solves the former problem called Winds of Fate (a dice roll which determine the max spell level usable that round). But I don't really like it. I'd rather see a slow escalation of spell power as the duration of the encounter increases. Only problem is how to do it without 4e hand waving and creating a rule which completely breaks the suspense of disbelief. I'd say that if any given round a spell is cast in an area then the "magic density" increases by 1d4 (make the range in which this happens something large like 2000 feet so it doesn't become a book keeping chore) with spell level limited by magic density with a minimum of 1 (might let people bump that to 2 and 3 respectively with 2 feats). Of course you could raise magic level before a fight simply by casting some spells, but that would be detectable by casters (and I'd make some uber cheap wondrous items which detected it too).

It has the side effect that classes with decent "at will" damage not so much dependent on spell/power/invocation/manoeuvre/etc. such as plain martial characters (also binders, incarnum users and to a lesser degree warlocks) benefit since they are at full power early in the encounter. Which isn't a bad deal.

As for buffs, just limit the amount which you can have active.

Jergmo
2009-09-16, 01:13 PM
I'd also make use of the fact that spells are split by school and make it so that spell progression comes as a chain of feats, just like everything in the fighter class is described in terms of feats. The way I envision it to work would be thus; as a caster, you can cast any spell on your spell list if you have the slot for it. You start with a spell list that contains only the cantrips. You could take a feat to add the spells of a single school of certain levels to your spell list (not your spells known, your spell -list-): 1st through 3rd, 4th through 6th, 7th and 8th, and 9th.

But then they can't do anything with their feats except use them to take spells. This in general is going to have a bunch of infuriated spellcasters.

Quietus
2009-09-16, 01:14 PM
Easiest method I've found that works : Ask your players not to break your game.

Of course, if they insist on doing so, you give them a warning that whatever they do, I'm allowed to turn back on them. So ubercastersofdoom will simply ensure that they fight more of the same, and I have a lot more save or die spells available to me than they do.

Totally Guy
2009-09-16, 01:20 PM
I'd look at the cost of magic.


Currently magic if not cast before the next time you replenish your slots or rememorise are essentially wasted. So there's no cost.

I'd create a new skill, Magic Flow. Magic Flow (Con) would be checked every time the caster cast a spell. The DC would be 5 + 3x the Spell's level. If the Magic Flow check is failed it represents the caster overloading his mind and body with raw arcana or divine manifestations. The failed check would give a Con penalty equal to half the spell level. The spell cast would still have full effect.

Of course it kind of becomes a required thing for the spellcaster to have but I can't find a cost scales right without it being a skill.

Kalirren
2009-09-16, 01:21 PM
But then they can't do anything with their feats except use them to take spells. This in general is going to have a bunch of infuriated spellcasters.

It's not like fighters have anything to do besides take feats anyway. Guess why they're mad?

The big problem with 3.5 is that there are two different system languages going on - one is in terms of spells and action economy, and the other is in terms of HP, combat feats, and special attacks and defenses. They cannot coexist. One must give way.

So 4e went the route of describing fighters in a language based upon powers and action economy, and that's just fine. The alternative, which I am proposing a rough version of here, is to collapse it the other way, describe casters in terms of feats and special attacks and defenses.

You can tweak the number of feats the casters get, but in the end it won't end up being more than one every two levels, and I think that translates to a good enough restriction on the sheer variety of powers to make the game much more workable.

Typewriter
2009-09-16, 01:22 PM
The problem with spellcasting, in my opinion, is not the spellcasters themselves but the spells. I hate to admit liking any part of fourth edition, but I think that the ritual book was one of the greatest ideas imaginable.

If 'spells' were cut down to things that were damage/give penalty/insta kill/healing/few other things, but everything that had an out of combat use was made into a 'ritual', that would be awesome. Change the casting time around some, and make them fit. Make it a skill based thing where initially the skill is only available to casters, but with a feat can be made available to anyone.

One initial problem with this system would be that if anyone can buff, and anyone can raise dead, then what keeps the wizard from 'just' being a blaster and clerics 'just' being a healer? Class abilities. Wizard level 5: Once per two rogue levels you can use any ritual with twice the normal 'quantity'. The 'quantity' affected goes up by 1 for every 5 additional levels.

Quantity is dependant on the ritual. Something like grease would be a base 5 ft. square, but a level 10 wizard could affect 3 squares. Fly normally only affects one person, but a level 20 wizard could affect 5 people with one casting. So on and so forth.

But what I really enjoy is that the fun things themselves are available to everyone. Not everyone would be able to use those as well as wizards/clerics but they would be able to pull out their ritual book and Dimension Door away if they got trapped.

Tehnar
2009-09-16, 01:30 PM
Aside from the Stinky Cheese spells, I don't think most spells need changing. Maybe some of the more vague ones clarified.

What makes magic broken in 3.5 is that it grants extra actions. This is usually gained through metamagic reducers, Stinky Cheese spells, and/or class features. Removing those options would equal the playing field more.

Lycanthromancer
2009-09-16, 01:34 PM
The best way is to ban all tier 1 classes (and the highest tier 2s, primarily the sorcerer), and restrict your games to the lower tier 2s, 3s, and the higher tier 4s. Extreme optimizers could get lower tiers (low 4s and 5s), but everyone else should be higher.

So, basically, nab the psion, psychic warrior, (a modified, slightly improved) wilder, incarnate, totemist, warblade, crusader, swordsage, bard, barbarian, factotum, rogue, wildshape ranger, beguiler, dread necromancer, favored soul, etc.

Considerably better balanced, since you're banning most of core, which is most of the problem.

Murphy80
2009-09-16, 01:45 PM
I am kicking around an idea to make all spellcasters warlock like. Take the Warlock, remove the fluff and crunch of "Have to get their power from demons(C or E)" and allow them to pick there invocations from a chosen list (wiz-sor, cleric, druid, etc...). All spells would have to be tweaked to account for the ability to cast them all day long, but since they would get so few, I think that would be doable. The class abilities would need to be dropped or customized.

What do you think, is this idea worth pursuing or does it have a glaring flaw that I'm just not seeing.

Myou
2009-09-16, 01:47 PM
Re-write 90% of published spells.

FMArthur
2009-09-16, 03:25 PM
So many spells on certain lists are too powerful that you just have to accept that it's an incredibly huge project to nerf them all. Not impossible, but a major, major headache. Just outright ban the wizard, sorceror, archivist, cleric, favored soul and druid. There are enough options available in 3.5 now that banning those 6 classes still lets players desiring to play characters of those types find a suitable class without them in the game.

Gnaeus
2009-09-16, 03:33 PM
The best way is to ban all tier 1 classes (and the highest tier 2s, primarily the sorcerer), and restrict your games to the lower tier 2s, 3s, and the higher tier 4s. Extreme optimizers could get lower tiers (low 4s and 5s), but everyone else should be higher.

So, basically, nab the psion, psychic warrior, (a modified, slightly improved) wilder, incarnate, totemist, warblade, crusader, swordsage, bard, barbarian, factotum, rogue, wildshape ranger, beguiler, dread necromancer, favored soul, etc.

Considerably better balanced, since you're banning most of core, which is most of the problem.

I agree with this (although I would keep the sorcerer, and allow dips into Tier 4+5).

JellyPooga
2009-09-16, 03:37 PM
I'm not sure that this would work, but it's something I've wanted to try for a while.

I would be rigorously enforce material component costs. This would include acquiring, storing, and transporting components. Some components may not be legal in certain parts of the world, because, well, the dwarf mayor doesn't want you summoning demons in the fountain by town square.

I like this solution because it hardly changes the rules at all. You might want to ban eschew materials though.

In actual game play I probably would change some of the components. I'd merge many of them together, so the bean counting wouldn't be that horrendous. There would probably be 20 basic components and a couple dozen others for special cases. I'd also print out cards of the components so that the players would have an easier time tracking them. If I really wanted to put some time into it, each component card would include a list of spells that required it.

So yes, players can cast celerity. But they can do it exactly once and only after I've given them the sands of time component from a smashed hourglass.

This. The first game I played with magic in it was the MB/GW game Heroquest and it's 'Big Brother' Advanced Heroquest. In both of these games (in Advanced it's more pronounced), Magic is extremely powerful (probably about as much more powerful as magic in D&D is over warrior types at the Lvl 8-13 range), but is kept in check by the fact that every spell requires a component and those components are relatively expensive (for comparison, a spell component cost about the same as a sword and you needed one or more componets to cast each and every spell).

Tracking spell components is not a perfect fix; not every spell has a material component, for example, but it does do a lot towards making casters what they should be: powerful but limited in how often they can use that power.

Telonius
2009-09-16, 03:43 PM
Druid is fairly easily fixed by using the Shapeshift variant. Cleric is fairly easily fixed by removing Nightsticks and making Divine Power a War Domain spell only. (Also limiting things that grant access to additional domains).

Where you run into problems are with Wizards, Archivists, Artificers, and (to a lesser extent) Sorcerers. Flat-out removing Contingent Spell and some of the most egregiously bad or overpowered spells (polymorph line, shivering touch, Forcecage, Time Stop, Orb spells, etc) will go a long way to balancing Wizards and Sorcerers. For Archivist, limit the spell level of non-divine spells he knows. Artificers can still break the WBL balance, but without some of the Wizard's worst toys to play with it won't be quite as bad.

Myou
2009-09-16, 04:00 PM
I'm not sure that this would work, but it's something I've wanted to try for a while.

I would be rigorously enforce material component costs. This would include acquiring, storing, and transporting components. Some components may not be legal in certain parts of the world, because, well, the dwarf mayor doesn't want you summoning demons in the fountain by town square.

I like this solution because it hardly changes the rules at all. You might want to ban eschew materials though.

In actual game play I probably would change some of the components. I'd merge many of them together, so the bean counting wouldn't be that horrendous. There would probably be 20 basic components and a couple dozen others for special cases. I'd also print out cards of the components so that the players would have an easier time tracking them. If I really wanted to put some time into it, each component card would include a list of spells that required it.

So yes, players can cast celerity. But they can do it exactly once and only after I've given them the sands of time component from a smashed hourglass.

Stopping characters from using their class abilities by enforcing endless book-keeping does not balance anything. It just means that no-one will want to play casters any more. :smallsigh:

Glimbur
2009-09-16, 04:03 PM
So many spells on certain lists are too powerful that you just have to accept that it's an incredibly huge project to nerf them all. Not impossible, but a major, major headache. Just outright ban the wizard, sorceror, archivist, cleric, favored soul and druid. There are enough options available in 3.5 now that banning those 6 classes still lets players desiring to play characters of those types find a suitable class without them in the game.

I've done this. There were no Vancian casters. I ended up with a Warlock, a Totemist, and a Rogue. The warlock was the most reliable damage/round in combat, the totemist got in the way and did damage, and the rogue took a whole bunch of random skills. He also did some sneak attacking.

I provided effectively unlimited out of combat healing and it was a more politically focused campaign. Magic items were still around; you harvested magic from magical critters and used it to make magic stuff. Worked well enough.

JellyPooga
2009-09-16, 04:12 PM
Stopping characters from using their class abilities by enforcing endless book-keeping does not balance anything. It just means that no-one will want to play casters any more. :smallsigh:

Not true...nerdy geek types that like book-keeping (such as myself!) would happily play them. Besides, it's no more bookeeping than tracking 9 separate tracks of usages of spell levels that replenish every day, not to mention the slew of x/day, y-charges and one-shot magic items that most characters lug around on their adventures.

Think of it like this. Tracking material components divides spells into two types; Scrolls and Eternal Wands (lets ignore the spell level restriction on wands for the sake of this example). On Scrolls we have powerful spells of arcane might. They're so powerful, in fact, that they require the expenditure of carefully prepared reagents, most of which are rare and expensive. In our Eternal Wands, however, are the everyday spells that require little effort to cast, so they don't need the boost that material components provide to the magic process.

If anything, it's slightly easier than this because some material components can be used for several different spells (e.g. both Fireball and Scorching Ray might need a red dragon scale).

Myou
2009-09-16, 04:20 PM
Not true...nerdy geek types that like book-keeping (such as myself!) would happily play them. Besides, it's no more bookeeping than tracking 9 separate tracks of usages of spell levels that replenish every day, not to mention the slew of x/day, y-charges and one-shot magic items that most characters lug around on their adventures.

Think of it like this. Tracking material components divides spells into two types; Scrolls and Eternal Wands (lets ignore the spell level restriction on wands for the sake of this example). On Scrolls we have powerful spells of arcane might. They're so powerful, in fact, that they require the expenditure of carefully prepared reagents, most of which are rare and expensive. In our Eternal Wands, however, are the everyday spells that require little effort to cast, so they don't need the boost that material components provide to the magic process.

If anything, it's slightly easier than this because some material components can be used for several different spells (e.g. both Fireball and Scorching Ray might need a red dragon scale).

You may like book keeping, but most people do not. Think of it like this. You have to do all the regular book keeping, plus twice a much again. It serves no meaningful purpose (unless the DM actually makes it impossible for players to get supplies, in which case he might as well stop being a coward and ban casters) and slows the game down for everyone involved.

Kobold-Bard
2009-09-16, 04:22 PM
I have a running ban list of spells that I just don't permit, because they're too overpowering of everything else. Celerity, Consumptive Field, and others are on said list.

I also have broken magic into many different categories: the arcane casters are now 7 unique classes; clerics have a much more domain focused list; druids are now two classes (one with casting based on elemental themes ala Storm, one with wild shape).

So far, my changes have been working well. It also helps that I highly recommend that non-magical characters be as creative as they can be and use any and every resource they can to get where they want to go.:smallamused:

I can reccomend arguskos' arcanist variant, they replace Wizards in my new campaign.

Enforcing the Shapeshift variant fixes Druids.
Switching Favoured Weapon Proficiency and Heavy Armour Proficiency as a War Domain power makes Clerics less likely to melee. Get rid of Persist Spell (Divine Metamagic is ok with lesser feats) and adjust a couple of spells (Divine Power etc) and they're fine.

Ernir
2009-09-16, 04:23 PM
I know three ways to go about it.

1. Change the system fundamentally, possibly to the point where it is unrecognizable. 3.5 is imbalanced.
Pros: This should work.
Cons: This is an enormous undertaking, and has proven itself to be no easy task. Also, you might end up with elements of what made you like 3.5 in the first place missing. (You know, like the whole holy cow that is arcane spellcasting.)

2. Make a few, clearly defined changes to weed out most of the infinite loops, open-ended imbalances and other silliness. The ToS rules are my favourite example of this.
Pros: This is relatively easy to do (at least compared to option 1), and produces results that are straightforward and easy to foresee. Also, this makes it clear what is and what is not OK right from the very beginning, and the ruleset can be shared with other DMs.
Cons: Things will slip through.

3. Say "Hi guys. I know it is as easy as stealing candy from a sick goblin baby, but please don't break the game." Backed up with an appeal to their good nature, threats of book-tossing, or the in-game wrath of hideously overpowered opponents should lines be crossed.
Pros: Almost zero initial investment.
Cons: Requires continual watching by the DM. Is completely reliant on every party involved acting in a mature and reasonable manner.




I think I'll try relying solely on option 3 next time I DM an IRL game.

Masaioh
2009-09-16, 04:25 PM
If you need to nerf magic, then non-casters are either playing the wrong classes or not minmaxing enough. In my games as an epic sorc, I am almost always the weakest character even with epic spells.

quick_comment
2009-09-16, 04:26 PM
If you need to nerf magic, then non-casters are either playing the wrong classes or not minmaxing enough. In my games as an epic sorc, I am almost always the weakest character even with epic spells.

Then you are not optimizing at all. Once you get epic spells there should not even be comparisons between you and everyone else. Its trivial to get an epic spell that gives you +100 charisma for years.

Myou
2009-09-16, 04:29 PM
If you need to nerf magic, then non-casters are either playing the wrong classes or not minmaxing enough. In my games as an epic sorc, I am almost always the weakest character even with epic spells.

You're doing it wrong. :smallconfused:

Sir Giacomo
2009-09-16, 04:29 PM
Everyone agrees the caster classes end up over-shadowing the non-caster classes.

So how would you nerf them? Less spells? Less access to uber spells?

Or is the answer to buff the non-caster classes?


With Pathfinder they don't seem to have done much to bridge the gap between these so the problem will still exist.

Does this gap matter to players? If not then I guess this is just a mechanics problem?

Does the entire magic system in DnD need a overhaul?

How about having to make a skill check or something to be able to cast spells?

Here's some in-rules ways (most of them already in core) to obstruct the power of magic:

1. Refrain as a DM from having spell-casters regain their spells automatically. A per/day restriction is put in for a reason.
2. Play the opponents (at least the BBEGs) intelligently. This means that they know they live in a world with magic everywhere, and not in medieval world as we know it.
3. There are tons of ways to stop spells from even working before saves or nonsave-suck effects come about.
a. Get total concealment. Blocks all targeted spells.
b. Use tower shields. Blocks all ray spells.
c. Use grapple. Blocks all spells excepting Vocal spells (and even those wll have a hard time, in particular when pinned).
d. Use magic items for non-casters. It is remarkable how many spell effects exist in items that block whole dozens of spells at once, sometimes entire schools (death ward vs necromancy, mind blank vs enchantment, true seeing vs illusion, silence vs almost all spells (via blocking vocal component), wall of force vs almost everything, and also
AMF)
e. Use sleight of hand and disarm vs material components.
f. block line of effect
g. when in doubt about what a spell does, choose the non-broken interpretation.:smallsmile:

- Giacomo

ZeroNumerous
2009-09-16, 04:30 PM
Me? Gestalt everyone with Sorcerer 20. There. Balanced.

Sir Giacomo
2009-09-16, 04:32 PM
Me? Gestalt everyone with Sorcerer 20. There. Balanced.

That would be a fascinating campaign idea (a bit like Alan Moore's Miraclemen).

- Giacomo

JellyPooga
2009-09-16, 04:52 PM
You may like book keeping, but most people do not. Think of it like this. You have to do all the regular book keeping, plus twice a much again. It serves no meaningful purpose (unless the DM actually makes it impossible for players to get supplies, in which case he might as well stop being a coward and ban casters) and slows the game down for everyone involved.

It does serve a purpose if the GM is canny with it. Let's take one of the 'game-breaker' spells; Polymorph. It has a material component. RAW, that material component serves almost no purpose whatsoever. You can cast that spell every day and be none the worse off for it. If you have it prepared several times for that day, you can happily Polymorph your way through every combat.

If material components become meaningful (i.e. you have to track them) and you (the wizard) only have 5 of the required component because the GM decided that Ye Olde Magicke Shoppe only had 5 in stock when you went shopping for your supplies for that adventure, then you must decide how badly you need to cast that spell in a given fight. You may not have the time or means to go back to town to get more empty cocoons between encounters, so once your 5 cocoons are expended, that's it, no more game breaker until you find some more. Suddenly, you're only pulling out the "big guns" for fights where it matters. For the rest of it Mr.Big-Shot-Wizard has to rely on Butch McDick the Barbarian to get him through to the important fight where he can expend his costly material components and win the day.

As GM, you can tailor what components are available to your players based on your adventure. Want the players to actually have trouble navigating the Evil Wizards Tower-of-Invisible-Stairs? Only give them components for 1 or 2 castings of Fly. Think they might struggle a little? Be nice and have a 'special deal' on the components for Time Stop.

In PvP Arena fights, tracking material components serves no purpose, sure, but since when was D&D designed for that?

Masaioh
2009-09-16, 05:32 PM
Then you are not optimizing at all. Once you get epic spells there should not even be comparisons between you and everyone else. Its trivial to get an epic spell that gives you +100 charisma for years.

To get, maybe, but to actually cast it? I just looked through the ELH, and the spellcraft DC would be at least 450 before mitigation. I don't want my sorc taking damage every 6 seconds so I don't want to add backlash, I can only increase casting time to a certain limit and the DM wouldn't allow additional participants because I wasn't a Red Wizard. That leaves XP costs, but we don't use XP in our games so we replaced it with material components. 10,000 gp of components is equal to 100 xp.

FMArthur
2009-09-16, 05:35 PM
It does serve a purpose if the GM is canny with it. Let's take one of the 'game-breaker' spells; Polymorph. It has a material component. RAW, that material component serves almost no purpose whatsoever. You can cast that spell every day and be none the worse off for it. If you have it prepared several times for that day, you can happily Polymorph your way through every combat.

If material components become meaningful (i.e. you have to track them) and you (the wizard) only have 5 of the required component because the GM decided that Ye Olde Magicke Shoppe only had 5 in stock when you went shopping for your supplies for that adventure, then you must decide how badly you need to cast that spell in a given fight. You may not have the time or means to go back to town to get more empty cocoons between encounters, so once your 5 cocoons are expended, that's it, no more game breaker until you find some more. Suddenly, you're only pulling out the "big guns" for fights where it matters. For the rest of it Mr.Big-Shot-Wizard has to rely on Butch McDick the Barbarian to get him through to the important fight where he can expend his costly material components and win the day.

As GM, you can tailor what components are available to your players based on your adventure. Want the players to actually have trouble navigating the Evil Wizards Tower-of-Invisible-Stairs? Only give them components for 1 or 2 castings of Fly. Think they might struggle a little? Be nice and have a 'special deal' on the components for Time Stop.

In PvP Arena fights, tracking material components serves no purpose, sure, but since when was D&D designed for that?

Let me propose an alternate method: every time a spellcaster casts a spell, the player recieves a number of lashes with a whip administered by the DM equal to the spell level. I would prefer this to your suggestion, as a player.

edit: And, of course, as a DM. :smallamused:

JellyPooga
2009-09-16, 05:41 PM
Let me propose an alternate method: every time a spellcaster casts a spell, the player recieves a number of lashes with a whip administered by the DM equal to the spell level. I would prefer this to your suggestion, as a player.

edit: And, of course, as a DM. :smallamused:

I have to ask; why? It just seems like such an intuitive step in the right direction to me, for the reasons I've mentioned. All I've got back is that it's "needless book-keeping". Why is it needless? It serves a purpose, to my mind, so it's not "needless".

I've tried arguing this a few times over the years, but I've yet to recieve a satisfactory counter-point.

tyckspoon
2009-09-16, 05:45 PM
To get, maybe, but to actually cast it? I just looked through the ELH, and the spellcraft DC would be at least 450 before mitigation. I don't want my sorc taking damage every 6 seconds so I don't want to add backlash, I can only increase casting time to a certain limit and the DM wouldn't allow additional participants because I wasn't a Red Wizard. That leaves XP costs, but we don't use XP in our games so we replaced it with material components. 10,000 gp of components is equal to 100 xp.

Hopefully there's more to your DM's reason than that, as it's rather silly. Red Wizards simply have easier access to multiple contributors to their spells; they certainly do not have a monopoly on knowing how to have people contribute to Epic spells. It's almost certainly for the better for the game's balance, since the worst abuses of Epic spells require abusing the mitigation for multiple participants, but it's unjustified by the rules.

A more 'traditional' Epic buffing spell "merely" provides roughly +11 to a stat, lasts a week, can be cast by taking 10 on the Spellcraft check, and is usable as soon as you can get your hands on an appropriately Epic treasure haul.

Masaioh
2009-09-16, 05:51 PM
Hopefully there's more to your DM's reason than that, as it's rather silly. Red Wizards simply have easier access to multiple contributors to their spells; they certainly do not have a monopoly on knowing how to have people contribute to Epic spells. It's almost certainly for the better for the game's balance, since the worst abuses of Epic spells require abusing the mitigation for multiple participants, but it's unjustified by the rules.

A more 'traditional' Epic buffing spell "merely" provides roughly +11 to a stat, lasts a week, can be cast by taking 10 on the Spellcraft check, and is usable as soon as you can get your hands on an appropriately Epic treasure haul.

First, I don't know if my DM would allow me to take 10 on Spellcraft. His reasoning is that having someone else contribute to a spell constitutes circle magic, therefore it is exclusive to Red Wizards and other PrCs that get circle magic. He says that allowing other classes to use circle magic would make Red Wizards completely useless.

Myou
2009-09-16, 06:00 PM
I have to ask; why? It just seems like such an intuitive step in the right direction to me, for the reasons I've mentioned. All I've got back is that it's "needless book-keeping". Why is it needless? It serves a purpose, to my mind, so it's not "needless".

I've tried arguing this a few times over the years, but I've yet to recieve a satisfactory counter-point.

It doesn't balance casters - casting spells like Shapechange at all is the problem, not how many times you can cast them before you go to the market to buy more ingredients.

And people do not like tracking supplies like that, you are creating pointless work. Your purpose fails utterly. You may a well just tell the player each day which spells he's allowed to use - it's arbitrary limitation and it is bad DMing.

lsfreak
2009-09-16, 06:04 PM
His reasoning is that having someone else contribute to a spell constitutes circle magic, therefore it is exclusive to Red Wizards and other PrCs that get circle magic. He says that allowing other classes to use circle magic would make Red Wizards completely useless.
The rules make it perfectly clear that circle magic and rituals for mitigating epic spell DC's are completely unrelated things.

Masaioh
2009-09-16, 06:22 PM
The rules make it perfectly clear that circle magic and rituals for mitigating epic spell DC's are completely unrelated things.

Where does it say that? Not that my DM would care, really. He'd just say that he disagrees.

lsfreak
2009-09-16, 06:27 PM
Well, for one thing they're specifically called "rituals" and not "circle magic." The fact that one exists in the SRD (epic rituals) and the other doesn't pretty much solidifies that they're two completely different things. Hell, they even do two completely different things.

Jergmo
2009-09-16, 06:31 PM
Okay, bear with me, because I'm totally confused. Folks admit that the problem is with the spells - and the solution they offer is to outright ban the classes in favor of red-headed stepchildren that focus on a single task?

Masaioh
2009-09-16, 06:39 PM
Well, for one thing they're specifically called "rituals" and not "circle magic." The fact that one exists in the SRD (epic rituals) and the other doesn't pretty much solidifies that they're two completely different things. Hell, they even do two completely different things.

Again, my DM ruled that rituals are circle magic because they use multiple participants in casting a single spell, which in his campaigns is exclusive to the Red Wizards of Thay and possibly some other classes that I haven't heard of. It might be different if my character was a cleric or something, but it isn't.

Also, this is the ELH. There are some entries that directly contradict the SRD, for example how to craft epic golems. The ELH says to polymorph a large block of iron into mithral or adamantine, but the PHB entry on 'polymorph any object' specifically states that this is not possible.

lsfreak
2009-09-16, 06:40 PM
-snip-

Just to be clear, it *is* a house rule that epic level spellcasters can't leech power from other spellcasters. A fairly large one at that.

SRD overrules any contradictions from ELH. ELH is 3.0 and SRD is 3.5.

tyckspoon
2009-09-16, 06:42 PM
Where does it say that? Not that my DM would care, really. He'd just say that he disagrees.

Eh. Doesn't make too much difference if you're not really trying to push the epic spell creation system, it just removes one of the easier sources of mitigation (trading a slot with your party divine caster, assuming you have a 'traditional' set of roles in the group.) There's no reason you shouldn't be able to take 10, tho- it's allowed under the normal rules for taking 10 and explicitly reiterated as possible in the rules for casting an epic spell. Disallowing it smells of a largely arbitrary hate for Epic Spellcasting, in which case you'd be better off ignoring it and using your epic feats and items to advance your normal spells.

Incidentally: Here's what I assume you should be able to do as a reasonable Epic buff.

End Cast DC: ~40, reached by some assortment of: 24 ranks in Spellcraft, +10 Take 10, at least +3 Intelligence (a +6 bonus item is chump change to Epic wealth), +1 Luck Luckstone, +1 Competence Ioun Stone, +4 Morale Greater Heroism..

Mitigation: -18 Increase time to cast up to 10 minutes (this will usually be fed directly back into increasing duration, for a buff spell- 900% increase makes a spell last in excess of a week). -20 XP burn (up to 2,000 XP or equivalent provided by a Rod of Excellent Magic.) -7 to 17 contributing caster (variable depending on who you can tap for extra spells and what they're willing to give you; if nothing else, you can use Summon Monster for a Couatl or a group of Lillends.) You can use those to either increase the effect of the spell or decrease the end cast DC to reduce the development time and cost.

JellyPooga
2009-09-16, 06:43 PM
It doesn't balance casters - casting spells like Shapechange at all is the problem, not how many times you can cast them before you go to the market to buy more ingredients.

Shapechange itself is not the problem. By itself it's a 10 min/level duration spell that allows you to become very powerful, but any adventure you can complete in under 4 hours is not, in my opinion, a good adventure. It's being able to cast Shapechange on a regular basis that causes the problem. It's the "Cast Doomsday, Cast Make-Safe, Rest and Repeat" mentality that makes these spells broken. If you can't do the "repeat" part of it easily, then the problem is no longer present (or at least diminished). Sure you could take the time to source sufficient components to be able to cast your uber-spells consistantly through the adventure, but doing so would eat into the adventure time itself and one of the best GM tools to stop your players faffing around is to shove a time limit on things.


And people do not like tracking supplies like that, you are creating pointless work.

So you don't track what potions you've used, rations, scrolls, charges in your wands, uses of x/day items or anything else then? They're just as pointless to track.


Your purpose fails utterly. You may a well just tell the player each day which spells he's allowed to use - it's arbitrary limitation and it is bad DMing.

It's really not bad DMing at all. It's limiting what spells he can use over the course of an adventure. It makes him wonder whether casting Fly now is prudent given that he might not be able to cast it tomorrow. It's as bad DMing as telling a player that the Potion Shop only has 4 Cure Light Wounds in stock at the moment or that there isn't a Mage in town that can enchant your +5 Longsword with the Flaming property.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-16, 06:47 PM
Your proposal to nerf magic by requiring people keep track of spell components is overcome by the Eschew Materials feat. You basically force casters to spend a feat on something that isn't metamagic or item creation. This does not solve the larger problem of overpowered spells being cast on a regular basis.

Is that a satisfactory counterpoint?

JellyPooga
2009-09-16, 06:51 PM
Your proposal to nerf magic by requiring people keep track of spell components is overcome by the Eschew Materials feat. You basically force casters to spend a feat on something that isn't metamagic or item creation. This does not solve the larger problem of overpowered spells being cast on a regular basis.

Is that a satisfactory counterpoint?

No. Under my houserules, Eschew Materials would become either a Metamagic feat that modifies the spell level by +1 (like Still and Silent Spell do), or would be banned entirely.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-16, 06:54 PM
No. Under my houserules, Eschew Materials would become either a Metamagic feat that modifies the spell level by +1 (like Still and Silent Spell do), or would be banned entirely.

Isn't this the sort of thing you should tell people before you ask them to make a judgement on your houserules?

JellyPooga
2009-09-16, 06:56 PM
Isn't this the sort of thing you should tell people before you ask them to make a judgement on your houserules?

Strictly speaking i'm arguing for someone elses houserule...it just happened to be similar enough to my own ideas for me to take up the torch! If it were me that had initially proposed it in this thread, yes, I would have mentioned it.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-16, 06:58 PM
Strictly speaking i'm arguing for someone elses houserule...

Then perhaps you should have told me how it would have worked in his game?

JellyPooga
2009-09-16, 06:59 PM
Then perhaps you should have told me how it would have worked in his game?

Well, I don't know if he'd even thought of it! He didn't say in his post earlier...

edit: I tell a lie...he said that you might want to ban Eschew Materials.

Glimbur
2009-09-16, 07:02 PM
Okay, bear with me, because I'm totally confused. Folks admit that the problem is with the spells - and the solution they offer is to outright ban the classes in favor of red-headed stepchildren that focus on a single task?

Have you seen how many spells there are? It's easier to limit power by using sharply limited classes instead of trimming spells on a case by case basis.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-16, 07:02 PM
Ok, that works.

Do you have a projected estimate for how much additional paperwork this change would add, ie, any playtests under this rule?

I would imagine that if the DM became stingy with material components, I'd go shoot a duck with Magic Missile and keep the 100 or so feathers on its body for the Fly spell and etc for other spells. The material components aren't hard to accumulate in bulk, especially not if you have a Handy Haversack or Bag of Holding.

JellyPooga
2009-09-16, 07:08 PM
Ok, that works.

Do you have a projected estimate for how much additional paperwork this change would add, ie, any playtests under this rule?

Somewhere between "some" and "lots" regarding actually ironing out the creases of the houserule (determining what a fair cost might be, etc.).

In play, I don't see it as adding a whole lot. It's just as much effort on the Wizards part as it is for an Archer to keep track of his arrows.

Unfortunately the one game I tried to playtest this rule in fell flat after only a couple of weeks (it was an online PbP...they do that sometimes) and I haven't had a chance to try again since.

Kallisti
2009-09-16, 07:08 PM
JellyPooga, you're right. Your system would make wizards work for their spells, which would probably make up for the increased bookkeeping. It would also lead to your players spending a stupidly large amount of time tending the silkworm farm they keep in the bag of holding with the bottle of air sovereign glued to the inside.

Just ban broken spells. But don't compile a list. Make your players compile wish lists, then review those lists and ban anything broken. Why rewrite 90% of printed spells when you can just review player's lists? And if a spell is causing problems, take your player aside and ask him or her to stop. If your players aren't mature enough to play a wizard without ruining everyone's fun, then get new players.

Godskook
2009-09-16, 07:17 PM
Why rewrite 90% of printed spells when you can just review player's lists?

To a degree because players start getting pissy when we're told that our full build won't work because all the necessary spells/abilities were banned. Sure, its impossible to 'get everything', but it is nice of the DMs to give players a good idea of what's ok or not before the character creation process begins.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-16, 07:17 PM
Here are the material components for some commonly used spells:

Mage Armor: a piece of cured leather
Grease: a bit of pork rind or butter
Mount: one horse hair
Protection from Evil: a bit of powdered silver
Ray of Enfeeblement: none
Sleep: a pinch of fine sand, rose petals, or a live cricket.
Silent Image: none
Magic Missile: none
Unseen Servant: a piece of string and a bit of wood

Alter Self: none
See Invisibility: a pinch of talc and a small sprinkling of powdered silver
Glitterdust: ground mica.
Invisibility: an eyelash encased in a bit of gum arabic
Mirror Image: none
Web: a bit of spider web
Resist Energy: none
Minor Image: none

Protection from Energy: none
Dispel Magic: none
Explosive Runes: none
Sleet Storm: a pinch of dust and a few drops of water
Stinking Cloud: a rotten egg or several skunk cabbage leaves
Phantom Steed: none
Fly: a bird's feather
Fireball: bat guano
Lightening Bolt: a bit of fur and an amber, crystal, or glass rod
Major Image: none
Ray of Exhaustion: a drop of sweat
Displacement: a small strip of leather twisted into a loop
Wind Wall: a tiny fan and a feather of exotic origin
Greater Magic Weapon: powdered lime and carbon
Haste: a shaving of licorice root
Slow: a drop of molasses

Are any of these items going to be hard to obtain?

I have bolded the ones that are, in my opinion, easy to get.

Soras Teva Gee
2009-09-16, 07:22 PM
My personal houserules to nerf magic:

1) All spells with casting time of "1 standard action" become "1 full round action" giving a general 1 round of combat before magic comes into play, if the mage does nothing else. And giving Mages a disadvantage for moving same as melee classes.
2) Ensure that Concentration DCs are always competitive and threatening to mage's casting. Open other means of invoking them. Ex: Intimidate/Bluff check to disrupt casting, melee attacks have DC based on Roll To Hit not damage even if missed.
3) Persist Spell does not exist for less then Deities or maybe is Extend with x3 duration instead. Or simply doesn't work for less then hour/level spells.
4) Quicken Spell either doesn't work or is a standard action in line with #1. Caster's win because they get bigger effects for their actions, correct this by making them take more actions to do things.
5) There is no such thing as "negative spell level" adjustment. Not enough, then reduction is taken off a final sum adjustment, not by each metamagic.
6) You cannot use class features while shapeshifted.
7) Spell Resistance: Yes

Now so help me I'm not trying to entirely 'fix' magic here, because D&D invented the linear/quadratic tension in the first place. Unless you are planning to run into epic levels, endgame level 9 magic should not ruin peoples' overall experience. The point is too install some exploitable tactical weak points, make it possible to stop a wizard from casting. While reducing some of the worst cheese.

Fax Celestis
2009-09-16, 07:23 PM
Material components are a joke anyway.

JellyPooga
2009-09-16, 07:33 PM
Here are the material components for some commonly used spells:
[snip]
Are any of these items going to be hard to obtain?

I have bolded the ones that are, in my opinion, easy to get.

Although some might not be hard to obtain, consider the containment difficulties. For example; do you really want to be carrying around rotten eggs to cast Stinking Cloud? It may be easy and cheap to obtain one, but keeping that bugger intact through the trials of an adventure is going to be a tribulation in and of itself! Likewise, the eyelash encased in gum arabic; cast Invisibility too often and you might run out of eyelashes. Alternatively, try asking someone in the street how much they'd charge you for one of their eyelashes and see what they say. Powdered Silver? Sure the weight of silver being used here is minimal so the raw material cost of it will be low. However, using medieval techniques, what's the production cost of powdering silver? I'm betting that it's probably a skilled method employed primarily by people who know that they can make a tidy profit out of it. That's definitely one I'd consider putting a price on (if not for balance reasons, then for sense).

That's just three without even really thinking about them.

Kallisti
2009-09-16, 07:42 PM
To a degree because players start getting pissy when we're told that our full build won't work because all the necessary spells/abilities were banned. Sure, its impossible to 'get everything', but it is nice of the DMs to give players a good idea of what's ok or not before the character creation process begins.

Well, the point of this would be to make it easier on the DM, so said DM could easily enough add "Celerity, shivering touch, time stop, alter self, shapechange, etc. need not apply." Fill in the etc. with whatever spells bug you personally and you're good to go. My point was that the answer is not to change the underlying mechanics or the classes. They're not the problem. A few poorly-balanced spells from each of countless, myriad splatbooks are. So don't change the wizard. Don't change all magic ever. Please for the love of God Almighty, Eris Discordia Our Lady of Chaos, and Banjhulu the Elder Puppet don't nerf better-balanced casters like warlocks. Just get rid of the spells that break the game. Asking to approve a spell list intead of creating an up-front list of banned spells makes sure that spells from that one splatbook you don't have don't fall through the cracks.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-16, 07:47 PM
Although some might not be hard to obtain, consider the containment difficulties. For example; do you really want to be carrying around rotten eggs to cast Stinking Cloud? It may be easy and cheap to obtain one, but keeping that bugger intact through the trials of an adventure is going to be a tribulation in and of itself!
Either eggs or skunk leaf cabbage. Buy a head or two, pickle the leaves in a jar, and you're good to go.


Likewise, the eyelash encased in gum arabic; cast Invisibility too often and you might run out of eyelashes. Alternatively, try asking someone in the street how much they'd charge you for one of their eyelashes and see what they say.
Do wizards not have eyelashes? How about party members?


Powdered Silver? Sure the weight of silver being used here is minimal so the raw material cost of it will be low. However, using medieval techniques, what's the production cost of powdering silver?
Unseen Servant. Requires a bit of wood and some string. Lasts 1 hour/level.

Kallisti
2009-09-16, 07:47 PM
Although some might not be hard to obtain, consider the containment difficulties. For example; do you really want to be carrying around rotten eggs to cast Stinking Cloud? It may be easy and cheap to obtain one, but keeping that bugger intact through the trials of an adventure is going to be a tribulation in and of itself! Likewise, the eyelash encased in gum arabic; cast Invisibility too often and you might run out of eyelashes. Alternatively, try asking someone in the street how much they'd charge you for one of their eyelashes and see what they say. Powdered Silver? Sure the weight of silver being used here is minimal so the raw material cost of it will be low. However, using medieval techniques, what's the production cost of powdering silver? I'm betting that it's probably a skilled method employed primarily by people who know that they can make a tidy profit out of it. That's definitely one I'd consider putting a price on (if not for balance reasons, then for sense).

That's just three without even really thinking about them.

In order:
Stinking cloud: Bag of holding is airtight and the contents are not jostled by your movement.
Eyelashes: You have party members/summoned minions/the corpses of your foes/charm person/a diplomacy check.
Silver: :vaarsuvius:Would you care to do the honors? :thog:Thog like puppies *puts silver pieces on a rock, picks up another rock, and starts to grind*

EDIT: And ninja'd. Of course.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-16, 07:49 PM
Interesting note: the average person has between 100 and 150 eyelashes per eyelid.

Kallisti
2009-09-16, 07:51 PM
And the average party has four to six members. The average wizard, on the other hand, casts invisibility less than seventy-five times over the couse of his entire adventuring career.

aje8
2009-09-16, 08:12 PM
The biggest problem with the enforce maetrial copmponents plan is this:

Even if the Fighter and Wizard average to the same balance point (which I'm not sold on. But pretend I am for the moment) at any given time they will still feel unbalanced. When the Wizard casts his uber-spells (i.e. spells of 4th level+) the Fighter will feel underpowered. When the Wizard runs low on components and can't cast his spells, the Wizard feels underpowered cause he's weaker then the Fighter. If he's not weaker than the Fighter the fix fails because the Wizard is stronger or equal to the Fighter at all times which is why I'm assuming he is in fact weaker than fighter when limited by components.

So that means in total both players feel like they're not having fun and are horribly weak some of the time instead of the Fighter feeling underpowered all the time.

lsfreak
2009-09-16, 08:20 PM
Perhaps you covered this and I missed it, but there's still the problem that many/most of the most powerful spells lack any material component whatsoever. Even just going for mid-level spells, Dominate Person, Shadow Conj/Shadow Evoc, Greater Invisibility, Enervation, Teleport, and Major Image. Those are all among the most powerful spells of their level - and that's just within Core - and none of them have any material components.

rezplz
2009-09-16, 08:38 PM
I'm not sure if it's been posted before, but I found a simple "fix" for magic would be to raise the level of every spell by one. Cantrips are now first level spells, 8th level spells are now ninth level, ninth level spells are now epic.

I'm not sure how well it would work in practice though, since I've never actually tried it.

Soras Teva Gee
2009-09-16, 08:46 PM
Even if the Fighter and Wizard average to the same balance point (which I'm not sold on. But pretend I am for the moment) at any given time they will still feel unbalanced. When the Wizard casts his uber-spells (i.e. spells of 4th level+) the Fighter will feel underpowered. When the Wizard runs low on components and can't cast his spells, the Wizard feels underpowered cause he's weaker then the Fighter. If he's not weaker than the Fighter the fix fails because the Wizard is stronger or equal to the Fighter at all times which is why I'm assuming he is in fact weaker than fighter when limited by components.

This is not the kind of problem that should be fixed though.

Arguably anyways. Mainly because the only way for there to not be advantages and drawbacks with such different operating methods is to build the classes the same from the ground up. That's the solution taken by 4e, every class is built along the same lines with different fluff and details.

Though I don't think mucking around with material components is a good solution (just for different reasons)

Tyndmyr
2009-09-16, 08:51 PM
Somewhere between "some" and "lots" regarding actually ironing out the creases of the houserule (determining what a fair cost might be, etc.).

In play, I don't see it as adding a whole lot. It's just as much effort on the Wizards part as it is for an Archer to keep track of his arrows.

Unfortunately the one game I tried to playtest this rule in fell flat after only a couple of weeks (it was an online PbP...they do that sometimes) and I haven't had a chance to try again since.

You've gotta be kidding. How many different types of arrows does the average archer have?

Wizards are already one of the heavy bookkeeping classes, given the need to track spells, adding components would significantly add to the workload.

And frankly, most components are trivial to find, and have a negligible cost. There isn't a very realistic way to avoid your characters stockpiling ridiculous amounts of reagents when they find a source.

Not to mention, plenty of spells entirely lack components. Gate springs to mind.

Yes, yes, you *could* house rule all of this. However, doing so ends up blatantly being the DM setting limits on how much you can cast of each thing. This isn't likely to be terribly popular.

lsfreak
2009-09-16, 08:55 PM
This is not the kind of problem that should be fixed though.

Arguably anyways. Mainly because the only way for there to not be advantages and drawbacks with such different operating methods is to build the classes the same from the ground up. That's the solution taken by 4e, every class is built along the same lines with different fluff and details.

Though I don't think mucking around with material components is a good solution (just for different reasons)

It should be within the grasp of every character to make themselves at least somewhat useful in any situation, whether or not they're an expert. One's worth as a member of the party should have nothing to do with whether or not the wizard just blew their loadout of spells. Yes, there should be strengths and weaknesses. Just not in this manner.

Yahzi
2009-09-16, 10:23 PM
Here's some in-rules ways (most of them already in core) to obstruct the power of magic:

1. Refrain as a DM from having spell-casters regain their spells automatically. A per/day restriction is put in for a reason.
2. Play the opponents (at least the BBEGs) intelligently. This means that they know they live in a world with magic everywhere, and not in medieval world as we know it.
3. There are tons of ways to stop spells from even working before saves or nonsave-suck effects come about.
a. Get total concealment. Blocks all targeted spells.
b. Use tower shields. Blocks all ray spells.
c. Use grapple. Blocks all spells excepting Vocal spells (and even those wll have a hard time, in particular when pinned).
d. Use magic items for non-casters. It is remarkable how many spell effects exist in items that block whole dozens of spells at once, sometimes entire schools (death ward vs necromancy, mind blank vs enchantment, true seeing vs illusion, silence vs almost all spells (via blocking vocal component), wall of force vs almost everything, and also
AMF)
e. Use sleight of hand and disarm vs material components.
f. block line of effect
g. when in doubt about what a spell does, choose the non-broken interpretation.:smallsmile:

That's some sound advice, G!

I'd like to expand on item 1. Here's something I always wanted to try: make spells renew once per year.

To balance that, remove all saves. If a wizard wants you dead, you die. But he can only do it once a year.

This requires having wizard players who do not want to win every encounter in the first round by themselves, 10x a day. But of course, if you had players like that, you wouldn't even need to ask the question... :smallbiggrin:


More interesting to me is, how do you stop NPC spell casters from breaking your world? For instance, how do rogues survive in a world with Zone of Truth?

Yahzi
2009-09-16, 10:50 PM
However, using medieval techniques, what's the production cost of powdering silver?
A silver coin and a file. Apply elbow grease.

I think the chief objection to your method is that it seems like railroading. It's one thing to ban spells up-front; it's something else to tell the wizard how many times he can cast a spell this week, and then change the number next week.

Either you control the components, and hence the spells; or you let the players control their components, in which case they won't rest until they have an adequate supply.

Soras Teva Gee
2009-09-17, 12:15 AM
It should be within the grasp of every character to make themselves at least somewhat useful in any situation, whether or not they're an expert. One's worth as a member of the party should have nothing to do with whether or not the wizard just blew their loadout of spells. Yes, there should be strengths and weaknesses. Just not in this manner.

True enough, I think the solution is best found in making casting slower and more disruptable. Most scenarios I've seen with wizard=god involve them disabling without a chance for the opponent to react with more then a saving throw, if not some cheese spell that doesn't allow one. Given that spells are generally speaking several orders of magnitude worse then the consequences of such standard actions as Attack, it makes no sense that they take at best the same amount of time to accomplish.

Dienekes
2009-09-17, 12:28 AM
True enough, I think the solution is best found in making casting slower and more disruptable. Most scenarios I've seen with wizard=god involve them disabling without a chance for the opponent to react with more then a saving throw, if not some cheese spell that doesn't allow one. Given that spells are generally speaking several orders of magnitude worse then the consequences of such standard actions as Attack, it makes no sense that they take at best the same amount of time to accomplish.

Someone had a fix where spell levels 0 was a standard action, 1-3 were 1 round, 4-7 were 2 rounds, and 8-9 were 3 rounds.

I've never used it so I don't know how it would work, since I highly doubt anyone would really spend 2 rounds doing nothing very often.

Akal Saris
2009-09-17, 12:48 AM
If you coupled that casting time increase along with banning Persistent Spell and Quicken Spell, it would probably be a very effective nerf to spellcasters.

But would it be fun to play? I'd be pretty annoyed if half the party died because I was waiting for my 3rd turn just so I could cast Mass Heal on the party.

Jergmo
2009-09-17, 01:35 AM
Someone had a fix where spell levels 0 was a standard action, 1-3 were 1 round, 4-7 were 2 rounds, and 8-9 were 3 rounds.

I've never used it so I don't know how it would work, since I highly doubt anyone would really spend 2 rounds doing nothing very often.

Time Stop suddenly has no point in existing.

JellyPooga
2009-09-17, 02:18 AM
Personally (and I can't stress enough how much this is nothing more than my own opinion), I can't quite believe that people think that every class should be able to contribute meaningfully to every encounter (or words to that effect). If that were the case, there'd be no point on choosing different classes; everyone might as well just be a Druid or Ranger or Rogue and be done with it. Party roles are there because different classes are good at different things. Here's how I see the roles;

Warrior: The front-line guy. He does most of the incidental fighting. When it comes to the big-bad stuff, he's usually not got the power output to contribute meaningfully. His advantage? He's like the duracell bunny, he just keeps going and going and going...

Rogue: The face, the backstabber, the maker of cunning plans. This guy spots the traps, makes contacts with the underground rebels and steals things from under the noses of the enemy. His contribution to combat is limited.

Mage: This guy is where the power's at. He's nigh unto a god when the time is right. He is frail, though and his power is limited to being deployed at the opportune moment for his spells exhaust both him and his resources.

So the Rogue gets the deal and sources rare equipment, the Warrior gets the party through the common trials and the Mage deals with the guy at the end because he hasn't wasted his spells on the goblins that were guarding the lavatory.

Yes, it's true that some of the game-breakers don't have material components, I realise this, but rather than outright ban those spells, my "fix" is rather to limit how often those spells are usable by adding a material component (and making doing so have some kind of point). I don't see how limiting a spell is going to be looked upon any less favourably than outright saying "sorry, you can't have that because it's broken".

@Yahzi: You are right inasmuch as you, as GM, will control how often they can cast, but the player also has the choice of either getting on with the mission or sourcing new supplies. It's not railroading at all, rather (to my mind) it adds a level of strategy to the game that just wasn't there before.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh and any Archer worth his salt will have Arrows, Swiftwing Arrows, Serpentstongue Arrows, Dragonsbreath Arrows, Blunt Arrows, Bane Arrows (various), Flaming/Frost/Shocking/etc (plus 'Burst' versions). Arrows, Adamantium/Silvered/Cold Iron Arrows, Ghost Touch Arrows, Spell-Storing Arrows (with various stored spells), Brilliant Energy Arrows, Merciful Arrows, Seeking Arrows, Holy/Unholy/Anarchic/Axiomatic (as appropriate) Arrows and any combination of the above desired...and that's just looking at Core and Races of the Wild.

Zeful
2009-09-17, 02:20 AM
How would I nerf magic?

6th level maximum spell level. Period. No Epic magic, no 7th 8th and 9th level magic. Nothing.

Then I'd simply half the number of spell slots. Rings of Wizardry add one of the appropriate level, and Specialist Wizards get 1 bonus spell slot that they can move around between all levels they can cast.

But I'm a jerk. So I don't bother going halfway when I nerf something.

If I were to try and fix magic I'd have a better shot of simply writing a entirely new game system, it's that broken.

Grumman
2009-09-17, 03:57 AM
Me? Gestalt everyone with Sorcerer 20. There. Balanced.
That was pretty much my suggestion. Don't like being one-upped by the magic guy? Play a gish. Or a cleric. Or an Unseen Seer. Or a nigh-invisible guy that facestabs people for thousands of points of damage in the surprise round.

Wulfram
2009-09-17, 04:38 AM
All spellcasters are now Bards. Or if I'm feeling less lazy, use bards as a template.

Kurald Galain
2009-09-17, 05:19 AM
I actually had a campaign once where wizards required material components for spells (which was fluffed as alchemy).

It was... annoying, to say the least. It basically meant that wherever they went, the wizard player was collecting cobwebs, and acorns, and mushroom powder, and saliva from little birds, and anything else. It detracted a lot from gameplay, got more than a little silly, and didn't accomplish anything productive.

I would not recommend this to anyone.

Tehnar
2009-09-17, 05:27 AM
I don't think the way to go about it is to focus on material components. For the most part because of the paperwork needed. However if a player wants to participate it could be a nice way to spice up RP. There are a few material "no cost" material components that I do enforce in my games. For example, Evard's Black Tentacles requires a piece of a giant squid or octopus (which being CR 9 and 8 creatures) making it a uncommon sight on the fish market, and never available inland.

Another way to nerf magic I think no one mentioned yet is increasing the time required to prepare spells. In second edition it was 10 min per spell per spell level, so a high level wizard preparing his entire spell slot selection could take more then a day compared to an hour it takes now.

ZeroNumerous
2009-09-17, 05:45 AM
Here's how I see the roles;

That may work in your games. But not everyone likes being useless. Some people pick up a blasty reserve feat just because they like having something to do.


6th level maximum spell level. Period. No Epic magic, no 7th 8th and 9th level magic. Nothing.

Still better than the fighter.


I actually had a campaign once where wizards required material components for spells (which was fluffed as alchemy).

Ironically, it doesn't even -fix- anything. Shapechange? No material component, just a focus you can make with Fabricate. Gate? No material component. Shades? Any conjuration spell 8th level or lower lacks a material component.

Plus, it only nerfs arcane casters. Clerics? Still worth thirty fighters.

It's just plain a bad idea.

Sophismata
2009-09-17, 05:49 AM
Please note that the original material component suggestion actually suggested rewriting the material components so that all spells used them, there weren't more than 20 in total, and they would be hard to find or costly to aquire (so no silkworm farms).

It can work, it's a different style of game, is all. It seems to push magic back towards the 'arcane science' angle, in any case.

Set
2009-09-17, 05:57 AM
If I was really bugged by the imbalance, I'd tackle it from two directions;

1) Target specific spells that cause problems. Righteous Might, Gate, Polymorphs. Pretty much anything that gets people salivating over at the WotC CharOp forums deserves a look. Core spells would get adjusted to not be problems anymore. Non-core spells (Arcane Spellsurge, Power Word Pain, whatever) can just die in a fire.

Note that quite a few spells and options; such as shapeshifting, summoning (including gate), permanant charms, leadership, insanely high diplomacy checks, etc. primarily are problematic because of monsters that have insanely stupid powers. Candles of Invocation don't need to be 'fixed.' CR 8 monsters that can grant 3 Wishes / day are what need to be fixed, with extreme predjudice. Things that Spawn or Feed or gain infinite Constitution when hit by lightning or can split infinitely into equally tough version of themselves or even just have too much natural armor and combat utility for their HD range (War Trolls, Fleshrakers) are the problems.

The other option, instead of starting the 'magic fix' in the Monster Manual, is to take out all summoning spells (or, as the Psion did, delink them from actual monsters from the books), take out all shapeshifting, take out all enchantments / rebuke options that could place an insanely unbalanced monster under a PCs control, take out Diplomacy, and make every monster capable of doing something world-breaking have an Int score of 0, so that none of them can figure out that it's in their best interest to abuse their abilities. In which case, you'd be playing a different game, all because of a mule-headed insistence on keeping the critters in the Monster Manual incompatible with / broken compared to the critters in the Players Handbook.

2) Make standard action spells take a full-round action to cast. Just like in 1st and 2nd edition, a spellcaster is susceptible to being bludgeoned to death (or whacked with projectiles) while trying to cast a spell, evening things up a bit. No more forcing the melees to hold an action to try to disrupt a spell, the burden is put back on the caster, as it was before 3rd edition.

Kaiyanwang
2009-09-17, 06:01 AM
In my personal experience I never had problems with spellcasters so OP. In my gaming group:

- People optimize a bit, but not so much. Anyway, is not assumed that a specific PrC or magic item is available, at least not at the minimum level. Example: in our previous epic campaign, the sorcerer and the wizard sweared to obtain the right to be called Archmage and Incantatar - they didn't took simply the PrCs when available (this is RAW because suggested in UA).

- Built and combos are encouraged, but always checked by the group (to check if you help the party or you play to "mr solo") and by the DM

- One thing is considered cheesy or not, and an ambiguous rule is interpreted in a way or another, depending on the advantage that the group can gather

- "3.x does not encourage building a PC around other party members" is bull****.

- Meleers have things to do out of combat. If they don't, is DM fault. Sadly, competent DMs are rare. Even our fighter trained creatures (at level 40th, they had 5 different kind of giant worms that the wiz kept polymorphed in canaries, ready for great battles or crazy plans) and commanded Armies.

- Magic can be kept at bay with several mechanics (taint sanity anti magic wild magic black rain defiling) that are in the system. Please note that since people in my group use common sense, I don't always beat spellcasters with these mechanics - I use it for scenary variation ad keep things interesting. To keep magic a powerful but dangerous thing.

- No magic -mart

- On the other hand, I found useful increase the effective WBL for meleer at high levels. Actually, the party decided in this direction by itself. And they are not geniuses, so this could suggest a lot of things about people writing in teh internet.

- Monster are played in a smart way. And environment vary. Challenges must be both tailored around the party (with realism related exceptions) and both vary. And wotc supported this, if people don't want to see it, is not wotc fault (WOTC have a crapload of faults, but not this).

If PCs grow in power, they become famous or infamous too. BBEGs know more of them. And are prepared.

Player Skill > Built > Class. Write it on a paper and place it somewere PLEASE.

- PC act like people. A druid does not remain all the day in a shape (not alway, it can happen) because terrain could change drammatically, or have to talk with elves and fey in an elf shape, and so on. The same, magic is not "spammed" because magic is a powerful thing.

- Dispel exist. All day buffs can go away. If the CL is too high, DM made some mistake (see magic mart). On the other hand, my players buff themselves reciprocally, so buffing part is a moment of cohesion for the party not of "my penis is longer".

- "15 minutes day" can be avoided. If happens, I think that go nova sometimes if fun. For meleers, well, even arms and armors have "cooldowns", so..

- Splatbooks (I have a lot of them) IMPROVED balance in my games. We only decided what take basing on tastes and campaing. Even in the same splat. In my campaing, Devoted Spirit --> Bad , Tiger Claw ---> Good. And they are both from ToB.

- A thing that could be good for a campaign, couldn't be for another. Or a solo adventure in the same. Trust your DM please. And enjoy the game, don't "win" D&D.


I recognize without any problemt that most people will not agree with part of the things I said, or every thing i said. But for me, guys, 3.x WORKS. Nicely. FACE IT. And every campaign is very different, I cannot even play every Idea I get, so ther is not even a problem of gamestyle.

*bows*

Killer Angel
2009-09-17, 06:08 AM
I recognize without any problemt that most people will not agree with part of the things I said, or every thing i said. But for me, guys, 3.x WORKS. Nicely. FACE IT. And every campaign is very different, I cannot even play every Idea I get, so ther is not even a problem of gamestyle.


Happy to join! :smallsmile:
'specially the sentence: "I cannot even play every Idea I get".
When i'll have finished the 3.5 material I want to try, it will be time for 5.5... :smalltongue:

AllisterH
2009-09-17, 07:40 AM
I would strongly take cues from what worked in the past namely 1e/2e.

Many of the problem spells in 3e aren't a problem in 1e/2e due to the underlying subsystem. Knock for example, doesn't invalidate the rogue since you can't "spam" Knock via wand/scroll shenanigans.

Teleport doesn't get abused when there's a chance of death and the same thing applies to other spells like Fly.

Killer Angel
2009-09-17, 07:46 AM
I would strongly take cues from what worked in the past namely 1e/2e.


One of the things I miss is the casting time.
Cast a 1st lev. spell? casting time is 1 segment (between the combat round)
Cast a 7th lev. spell? casting time is 7 segments
Suddenly, the more powerful is the spell, the more high is the risk to be the target of attacks to interrupt your casting.

Telonius
2009-09-17, 07:53 AM
Time Stop suddenly has no point in existing.

I think that's a feature, not a bug.

Ogremindes
2009-09-17, 07:57 AM
All spellcasters are now Bards. Or if I'm feeling less lazy, use bards as a template.

I like this. Though you may want to add some direct damage spells to the bard list. By using the bard variants you can get:

Wizard -> Bardic Sage
Druid -> Savage Bard
Cleric -> Divine Bard
Sorcerer -> Just Plain Bard

...that could work pretty well.

Kesnit
2009-09-17, 08:34 AM
You've gotta be kidding. How many different types of arrows does the average archer have?

Quite a few, esp at higher levels where different monsters have different DR's and energy resists.


Wizards are already one of the heavy bookkeeping classes, given the need to track spells, adding components would significantly add to the workload.

No one is forcing anyone to play a WIZ. As long as the WIZ player knows up front that they WILL have to account for material components, they cannot complain later.


And frankly, most components are trivial to find, and have a negligible cost. There isn't a very realistic way to avoid your characters stockpiling ridiculous amounts of reagents when they find a source.

Not to mention, plenty of spells entirely lack components. Gate springs to mind.

Someone mentioned they changed material components. Reduced the number to about 20, and each spell requires different components and combanations of components. (So rather than needing a single eyelash to cast invisibility, the caster would need an eyelash and a vial of pig's blood. But the eyelash is also used to cast Glitterdust, Scorching Ray, and Rope Trick, and the pig's blood is also used for Protection from Energy, Gaseous Form, and Summon Monster IV.)

All components are available to some extent, but there has to be some planning since the party can't just pack up and go back to town when the WIZ runs out of a certain component.

Yes, this would require bookkeeping. But again, if the WIZ player knows this ahead of time, they can't complain later.


I think the chief objection to your method is that it seems like railroading. It's one thing to ban spells up-front; it's something else to tell the wizard how many times he can cast a spell this week, and then change the number next week.

It's realistic. If you are passing though a district full of silver mines, finding powdered silver is going to be a lot easier than finding it in the middle of a desert.


Either you control the components, and hence the spells; or you let the players control their components, in which case they won't rest until they have an adequate supply.

If the shopkeepers don't have a certain item, they don't have a certain item. If the party isn't in a large city, there probably isn't another merchant. Again, reality.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-17, 08:37 AM
@Yahzi: You are right inasmuch as you, as GM, will control how often they can cast, but the player also has the choice of either getting on with the mission or sourcing new supplies. It's not railroading at all, rather (to my mind) it adds a level of strategy to the game that just wasn't there before.


But as we have seen, getting the material components is trivially easy. Are there any realistic obstacles to obtaining the spell components for my set of commonly used, powerful spells that do not smack of DM fiat?


It's realistic. If you are passing though a district full of silver mines, finding powdered silver is going to be a lot easier than finding it in the middle of a desert.
Aren't adventurers known for having lots of, you know, silver coins? Silver, which is convertible into powdered silver?


If the shopkeepers don't have a certain item, they don't have a certain item. If the party isn't in a large city, there probably isn't another merchant. Again, reality.
But the components are trivially easy to acquire. Go through the list of spells I compiled and tell me which ones you could reasonably expect to have trouble obtaining material components for.

Here's the list for your benefit:

Here are the material components for some commonly used spells:

Mage Armor: a piece of cured leather
Grease: a bit of pork rind or butter
Mount: one horse hair
Protection from Evil: a bit of powdered silver
Ray of Enfeeblement: none
Sleep: a pinch of fine sand, rose petals, or a live cricket.
Silent Image: none
Magic Missile: none
Unseen Servant: a piece of string and a bit of wood

Alter Self: none
See Invisibility: a pinch of talc and a small sprinkling of powdered silver
Glitterdust: ground mica.
Invisibility: an eyelash encased in a bit of gum arabic
Mirror Image: none
Web: a bit of spider web
Resist Energy: none
Minor Image: none

Protection from Energy: none
Dispel Magic: none
Explosive Runes: none
Sleet Storm: a pinch of dust and a few drops of water
Stinking Cloud: a rotten egg or several skunk cabbage leaves
Phantom Steed: none
Fly: a bird's feather
Fireball: bat guano
Lightening Bolt: a bit of fur and an amber, crystal, or glass rod
Major Image: none
Ray of Exhaustion: a drop of sweat
Displacement: a small strip of leather twisted into a loop
Wind Wall: a tiny fan and a feather of exotic origin
Greater Magic Weapon: powdered lime and carbon
Haste: a shaving of licorice root
Slow: a drop of molasses

I have bolded the ones that are, in my opinion, easy to get.


Here is how I would get them:



Mage Armor: a piece of cured leather. Buy it or make it.
Grease: a bit of pork rind or butter. Buy or make.
Mount: one horse hair. Buy, pluck from fighter's horse, ask for at the local livery, stable, whatever.
Protection from Evil: a bit of powdered silver. Adventurers have silver coins.
Ray of Enfeeblement: none
Sleep: a pinch of fine sand, rose petals, or a live cricket. This is seriously not hard to find.
Silent Image: none
Magic Missile: none
Unseen Servant: a piece of string and a bit of wood. I don't know, where would I find string and wood?

Alter Self: none
See Invisibility: a pinch of talc and a small sprinkling of powdered silver. Talc is a mineral that forms into crystals. At some point, buy a large chunk of it and you're pretty much set.
Glitterdust: ground mica. Mica is another mineral that forms in crystals. Buy a large one and you're covered.
Invisibility: an eyelash encased in a bit of gum arabic. Gum arabic is a type of tree sap. The tree it comes from exists widely in this world. Spend a few days hunting down the tree and milk a large amount of sap. The average human has 100-150 eyelashes on each eyelid. Wizards have eyelids.
Mirror Image: none
Web: a bit of spider web
Resist Energy: none
Minor Image: none

Protection from Energy: none
Dispel Magic: none
Explosive Runes: none
Sleet Storm: a pinch of dust and a few drops of water. If this is unobtainable, I must seriously question the verisimilitude of your campaign setting.
Stinking Cloud: a rotten egg or several skunk cabbage leaves. Picke some leaves in a jar.
Phantom Steed: none
Fly: a bird's feather. Find a duck. Magic Missile it. The average number of feathers on a female mallard duck is around 11,903 feathers. Male ducks generally have more! ChaCha!
Fireball: bat guano. Bat familiar
Lightening Bolt: a bit of fur and an amber, crystal, or glass rod. Bats have fur. The rod might be an issue though.
Major Image: none
Ray of Exhaustion: a drop of sweat. Do I need to say anything?
Displacement: a small strip of leather twisted into a loop. [r]Buy or make[/u]
Wind Wall: a tiny fan and a feather of exotic origin You got me here.
Greater Magic Weapon: powdered lime and carbon Lime is made from limestone. It is not a rare substance. Neither is carbon, which is available in the form of graphite, a common substance. All you need to do is buy a few pounds of each./u]
Haste: a shaving of licorice root. [u]Licorice is not rare. Preserve a few jars of root.
Slow: a drop of molasses. [u]Molasses is a viscous byproduct of the processing of sugar cane or sugar beets into sugar. Buy a few jars of it.

Kaiyanwang
2009-09-17, 08:54 AM
One of the things I miss is the casting time.
Cast a 1st lev. spell? casting time is 1 segment (between the combat round)
Cast a 7th lev. spell? casting time is 7 segments
Suddenly, the more powerful is the spell, the more high is the risk to be the target of attacks to interrupt your casting.

True. In an hypotetical different 4th edition, I would been very happy to see things like this. Even backlashes or random summon (linked with the cosmology structure) or something similar.

To leave (in a LITTLE extent) some spells only to specialists (or dual spell only to generalists and so on) it's another thing that could improve the game and avoid the "I can have all" effect.

Kesnit
2009-09-17, 08:57 AM
Aren't adventurers known for having lots of, you know, silver coins? Silver, which is convertible into powdered silver?

Silver was probably a bad example, but you missed my point. The availability of components is going to depend on where the party is in the world (or outside it).


But the components are trivially easy to acquire. Go through the list of spells I compiled and tell me which ones you could reasonably expect to have trouble obtaining material components for.

I phrased things bad. I was thinking of the revised "20 component list."

JellyPooga
2009-09-17, 08:57 AM
Aren't adventurers known for having lots of, you know, silver coins? Silver, which is convertible into powdered silver?

Are Wizards well known for carrying files around as well then?

The main beef I have with not tracking Material Components is the fact that some of them are actually quite big. Unless a Wizards Spell Component Pouch is by default an extradimensional space (which I very much doubt given its cost) or absolutely huge (again, which I doubt, given it's weight), the assumption that a wizard will always have the exact component he needs at any given time, to me, is like assuming that an archer will happen to have the right arrow to defeat the particular DR of the monster they're fighting or assuming a Cleric will happen to have the required raw materials to Brew whatever potions he happens to want in the middle of a nowhere.

Sure it's not that hard to carry around bits of spider web or gum arabic or some dried bat guano, but when you add it all up and then factor in the time that some Wizards spend away from a reliable Magical Retailer, those Spell Component pouches just don't cut the mustard. They're just too small to hold 20 loops of leather and 15 bits of string and a box of silver dust and a cage of live crickets and 3 glass rods and....etc. etc. Sure this is mildly solvable at low-mid levels using extra-dimensional spaces like a Belt of Many Pockets (though I think it a rare occurence for any Wizard to actually make note of the fact that X many pockets of that particular Wondrous Item are devoted to spell components), but it doesn't explain the first 6 or 7 levels where Wizards have a Spell Component Backpack that's the size of a belt pouch.

Kurald Galain
2009-09-17, 09:01 AM
No one is forcing anyone to play a WIZ. As long as the WIZ player knows up front that they WILL have to account for material components, they cannot complain later.
Sure they can. They can complain later because they didn't realize in advance how annoying it would be.

But this still doesn't "nerf" magic in any fashion. All it means is that wizards will use every opportunity to buy five hundred eyelashes and a gallon of pig's blood (neither is particularly difficult) so they're set for the foreseeable future.

A (computer) game that uses precisely this system is the Ultima series (IV through VII). It doesn't do anything to limit magic. It just means that you a truckload of black pearls and blood moss at the earliest opportunity, and then ignore this part of the game until you run out, and then spend five more minutes to buy a new truckload. It adds neither value nor restriction to gameplay, it's just annoying.

JellyPooga
2009-09-17, 09:10 AM
A (computer) game that uses precisely this system is the Ultima series (IV through VII). It doesn't do anything to limit magic. It just means that you a truckload of black pearls and blood moss at the earliest opportunity, and then ignore this part of the game until you run out, and then spend five more minutes to buy a new truckload. It adds neither value nor restriction to gameplay, it's just annoying.

If you, as GM, allow your players to load up of a truckload of pearls and a gallon of pigs blood, then you're missing the point of enforcing material components. Where are you going to find a truckload of pearls? Probably your best best would be on the coast in a tropical climate. So if Mr.Wizard wants to make the trip from the Tundra Wasteland, where the adventure is taking place, to the equatorial island of Gee to get a bucket of pearls so that he can cast spells without having to worry about material components...then so be it. In the meantime, Destroyor the Black has laid waste the town that the Wizard was supposed to have been defending and the adventure must be written off as a failure.

Also, there's the logistics of carrying around all that stuff. A gallon of blood is quite heavy. Especially when it's in a (most likely) wooden cask. Who going to lug that around? In your Handy Haversack, you say? Well, in that case, Mr.Wizard had better be spending his move action to retrieve it and another one to actually broach the cask to get at the blood to cast his spell...oh wait. He's used his turn now. Oh well he'll have to cast that spell next turn. Oh Crap! now look what that naughty Kobold has done, he's spilled your precious pigs blood all over the floor and it's running away down the Cracks of Doom...oh well, better stop the whole adventure to go get another cask of blood...

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-17, 09:11 AM
Are Wizards well known for carrying files around as well then?
This objection is on the same level as "How are you going to get eyelashes?"


The main beef I have with not tracking Material Components is the fact that some of them are actually quite big. Unless a Wizards Spell Component Pouch is by default an extradimensional space (which I very much doubt given its cost) or absolutely huge (again, which I doubt, given it's weight), the assumption that a wizard will always have the exact component he needs at any given time, to me, is like assuming that an archer will happen to have the right arrow to defeat the particular DR of the monster they're fighting or assuming a Cleric will happen to have the required raw materials to Brew whatever potions he happens to want in the middle of a nowhere.

1. Prepare spells for the day.
2. Put the necessary amount of spell components in your pouch for the spells you have prepared.
3. Keep the extra material components in your backpack or Handy Haversack.
4. ???
5. Profit


Sure it's not that hard to carry around bits of spider web or gum arabic or some dried bat guano, but when you add it all up and then factor in the time that some Wizards spend away from a reliable Magical Retailer, those Spell Component pouches just don't cut the mustard.

You have a backpack, you know. For storing things.

Here is how I would get them:



Mage Armor: a piece of cured leather. Buy it or make it.
Grease: a bit of pork rind or butter. Buy or make.
Mount: one horse hair. Buy, pluck from fighter's horse, ask for at the local livery, stable, whatever.
Protection from Evil: a bit of powdered silver. Adventurers have silver coins.
Ray of Enfeeblement: none
Sleep: a pinch of fine sand, rose petals, or a live cricket. This is seriously not hard to find.
Silent Image: none
Magic Missile: none
Unseen Servant: a piece of string and a bit of wood. I don't know, where would I find string and wood?

Alter Self: none
See Invisibility: a pinch of talc and a small sprinkling of powdered silver. Talc is a mineral that forms into crystals. At some point, buy a large chunk of it and you're pretty much set.
Glitterdust: ground mica. Mica is another mineral that forms in crystals. Buy a large one and grind it into a powder as neeeded.
Invisibility: an eyelash encased in a bit of gum arabic. Gum arabic is a type of tree sap. The tree it comes from exists widely in this world. Spend a few days hunting down the tree and milk a large amount of sap. The average human has 100-150 eyelashes on each eyelid. Wizards have eyelids.
Mirror Image: none
Web: a bit of spider web
Resist Energy: none
Minor Image: none

Protection from Energy: none
Dispel Magic: none
Explosive Runes: none
Sleet Storm: a pinch of dust and a few drops of water. If this is unobtainable, I must seriously question the verisimilitude of your campaign setting.
Stinking Cloud: a rotten egg or several skunk cabbage leaves. Picke some leaves in a jar.
Phantom Steed: none
Fly: a bird's feather. Find a duck. Magic Missile it. The average number of feathers on a female mallard duck is around 11,903 feathers. Male ducks generally have more! ChaCha!
Fireball: bat guano. Bat familiar
Lightening Bolt: a bit of fur and an amber, crystal, or glass rod. Bats have fur. The rod might be an issue though.
Major Image: none
Ray of Exhaustion: a drop of sweat. Do I need to say anything?
Displacement: a small strip of leather twisted into a loop. [r]Buy or make[/u]
Wind Wall: a tiny fan and a feather of exotic origin You got me here.
Greater Magic Weapon: powdered lime and carbon Lime is made from limestone. It is not a rare substance. Neither is carbon, which is available in the form of graphite, a common substance. All you need to do is buy a few pounds of each.
Haste: a shaving of licorice root. Licorice is not rare. Preserve a few jars of root.
Slow: a drop of molasses. [u]Molasses is a viscous byproduct of the processing of sugar cane or sugar beets into sugar. Buy a few jars of it.

Note that most of the components can be bought and stored for long periods of time in your invisible leather TARDIS.

Gnaeus
2009-09-17, 09:11 AM
1. The spell component tracking idea further widens the gap between wizards and Sorcs. The wizard has some 200+ spells known, while the sorcerer has maybe 50. That means that when the wizard runs out of guano, he memorizes a different spell for that day. When the sorcerer runs out of components, he has to go back to town.

2. As previously mentioned, the RP results are just as silly as the 7 pound spell component pouch. "Cave full of bat dung? Time to camp!"

3. So rather than adjusting the best and worst spells for balance, you are going to go spell by spell through the ENTIRE list of every spell in existence and add or modify spell components? There are way easier ways to get better results.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-17, 09:16 AM
1. The spell component tracking idea further widens the gap between wizards and Sorcs. The wizard has some 200+ spells known, while the sorcerer has maybe 50. That means that when the wizard runs out of guano, he memorizes a different spell for that day. When the sorcerer runs out of components, he has to go back to town.

Bat familiar.

Gnaeus
2009-09-17, 09:17 AM
If you, as GM, allow your players to load up of a truckload of pearls and a gallon of pigs blood, then you're missing the point of enforcing material components. Where are you going to find a truckload of pearls? Probably your best best would be on the coast in a tropical climate. So if Mr.Wizard wants to make the trip from the Tundra Wasteland, where the adventure is taking place, to the equatorial island of Gee to get a bucket of pearls so that he can cast spells without having to worry about material components...then so be it. In the meantime, Destroyor the Black has laid waste the town that the Wizard was supposed to have been defending and the adventure must be written off as a failure.

Also, there's the logistics of carrying around all that stuff. A gallon of blood is quite heavy. Especially when it's in a (most likely) wooden cask. Who going to lug that around? In your Handy Haversack, you say? Well, in that case, Mr.Wizard had better be spending his move action to retrieve it and another one to actually broach the cask to get at the blood to cast his spell...oh wait. He's used his turn now. Oh well he'll have to cast that spell next turn. Oh Crap! now look what that naughty Kobold has done, he's spilled your precious pigs blood all over the floor and it's running away down the Cracks of Doom...oh well, better stop the whole adventure to go get another cask of blood...

If your wizard is that stupid, tell him to roll a fighter. And don't give him ToB, he doesn't deserve it, and probably will be stuck looking at the pretty pictures anyway.

You keep the gallon of blood in your haversack, along with the 10 pounds of guano and spiderwebs and whatever other lame junk you feel like requiring. Every morning, outside of combat, you remove from storage enough components to exactly cast the spells you prepared.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-17, 09:18 AM
By the way, how hard is it to buy a file in most DnD games?

Telonius
2009-09-17, 09:21 AM
NM, missed an earlier post

Kurald Galain
2009-09-17, 09:26 AM
If you, as GM, allow your players to load up of a truckload of pearls and a gallon of pigs blood, then you're missing the point of enforcing material components.
In Ultima, at least, black pearls are available in every magic shoppe, in every town. This is because the game is not about disallowing the player from using magic. If component X is available but component Y is not, then you're essentially disallowing all spells that require component Y.

See, if you wish to disallow the player from casting certain spells, you should simply say so - not allow it in theory but make it practically impossible for them to do that.



Also, there's the logistics of carrying around all that stuff. A gallon of blood is quite heavy. Especially when it's in a (most likely) wooden cask. Who going to lug that around?
(1) the 18-strength fighter.
(2) how expensive are pack animals again?
(3) do you seriously want to enforce encumbrance rules? Because again, that's a lot of added annoyance to a lack of added benefit. There's a reason why almost no RPG written has encumbrance rules.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-17, 09:28 AM
Gallon of water is only 8.35 pounds or so. 27–53 lb is the medium carrying capacity of an 8 strength wizard. This is assuming no Handy Haversack.

JellyPooga
2009-09-17, 09:30 AM
By the way, how hard is it to buy a file in most DnD games?

It's not, but if you were writing out the average wizards equipment list, how many of them would include a file? I'm betting on a big phat ZERO on that one. It's exactly that sort of assumption that I detest. I pose a problem, you say "easily solved by having X", I say "Have you got one?" and your response is "no, but I can get one easily"...but you didn't actually have it in the first place did you?


If your wizard is that stupid, tell him to roll a fighter. And don't give him ToB, he doesn't deserve it, and probably will be stuck looking at the pretty pictures anyway.

You keep the gallon of blood in your haversack, along with the 10 pounds of guano and spiderwebs and whatever other lame junk you feel like requiring. Every morning, outside of combat, you remove from storage enough components to exactly cast the spells you prepared

Yes, it's an exaggerated example, but it's just to demonstrate a point. Now assuming you have 10 pounds of X, Y and Z in your handy haversack (which you've conveniently stockpiled beforehand), that leaves less room for everything else, right? Not to mention the cost of bulk buying stuff like that. Sure you could spend the time harvesting cobwebs yourself, but to get that quantity is going to cost you money to hire someone else to get it for you (that's the way economics works folks). That will be eating into your WBL. If it's not cobwebs, but is rather Dragons Blood, then that cost is going to start ramping up fast. Suddenly you don't have quite as much money to spend on potions and wands and other handy equipment because you're forking out for the privelage of casting your spells reliably.

Fishy
2009-09-17, 09:37 AM
It's not, but if you were writing out the average wizards equipment list, how many of them would include a file?

In a world where being a Wizard required you to powder substances on a regular basis?

ALL OF THEM.

JellyPooga
2009-09-17, 09:37 AM
In Ultima, at least, black pearls are available in every magic shoppe, in every town. This is because the game is not about disallowing the player from using magic. If component X is available but component Y is not, then you're essentially disallowing all spells that require component Y.

See, if you wish to disallow the player from casting certain spells, you should simply say so - not allow it in theory but make it practically impossible for them to do that.

No no no no no...I don't want to just disallow spells. What I want to do is limit spells. I don't have a problem with you casting Shapechange or Celerity...I just have a problem with you casting it all the frickin' time! Rather than say "Yuo just can't cast it", I'm saying "You can cast it, but not too often" and the best and fairest way I can think of to do that without an arbitrary x times/week houserule, is to introduce and enforce siginificant material components.



(1) the 18-strength fighter.
(2) how expensive are pack animals again?
(3) do you seriously want to enforce encumbrance rules? Because again, that's a lot of added annoyance to a lack of added benefit. There's a reason why almost no RPG written has encumbrance rules.

Gah :smallmad:....practically every RPG has written encumbrance rules of some description and for a really good reason! You just can't lug around 10 kegs of water, 10 swords, 3 suits of plate mail and a years worth of iron rations unless you're exceedingly strong and have a specially designed harness. Let's count games with Encumbrance rules; D&D, GURPS, Shadowrun and Traveller, just off the top of my head. the games that don't have encumbrance rules are generally those that focus more on the Roleplay aspect of RPGs than the Gaming aspect, like the various White Wolf games or those with very simple rules like FUDGE or KRONE.

valadil
2009-09-17, 09:39 AM
It doesn't balance casters - casting spells like Shapechange at all is the problem, not how many times you can cast them before you go to the market to buy more ingredients.

And people do not like tracking supplies like that, you are creating pointless work. Your purpose fails utterly. You may a well just tell the player each day which spells he's allowed to use - it's arbitrary limitation and it is bad DMing.

I disagree that a single instance of shapechange is problematic. Let the caster be awesome for one or two encounters.

I agree that tracking those supplies is a lot of work, but I'm suggesting that that burden be done by the GM. As I mentioned when I first brought up the idea, giving players cards representing the components will make life a lot easier.

I don't see how finer grained control equates to bad DMing. This is a suggestion that is more interesting that simply banning spells you don't like. Players still get to cast their spells, they just have to ration them. Figuring out how to ration the spells is something that I think players would find interesting.


Strictly speaking i'm arguing for someone elses houserule...it just happened to be similar enough to my own ideas for me to take up the torch! If it were me that had initially proposed it in this thread, yes, I would have mentioned it.

Someone else appreciates the support :-)


Ok, that works.

Do you have a projected estimate for how much additional paperwork this change would add, ie, any playtests under this rule?

I would imagine that if the DM became stingy with material components, I'd go shoot a duck with Magic Missile and keep the 100 or so feathers on its body for the Fly spell and etc for other spells. The material components aren't hard to accumulate in bulk, especially not if you have a Handy Haversack or Bag of Holding.

No, I haven't tried running a game this way yet. As I said before, using cards as material components will make life easier. You can generate the cards ahead of time before you even start running the game. It's pretty easy to programatically get lists of all components if you grab a copy of the SRD for mysql or XML. From there I'd start merging common components until there were 20 or so generic components used in most spells. They'd be more interesting than a gnome's eyelash or three pieces of sand. You don't have to merge them - that's just the way I'd do it. I know this isn't an option for everyone. Coming up with these lists by hand would be a nightmare and I don't have a good suggestion for how you'd do it without writing code.

I'm okay with a player having components for as many magic missiles as they like. At low levels I might limit grease or color spray (depends on the group though. Even with these, low level casters can be weak). By the time they can cast evard's black tentacles, I wouldn't really care about grease or color spray, so those components would become more available.


Material components are a joke anyway.

They are. I don't think they should be.


The biggest problem with the enforce maetrial copmponents plan is this:

Even if the Fighter and Wizard average to the same balance point (which I'm not sold on. But pretend I am for the moment) at any given time they will still feel unbalanced. When the Wizard casts his uber-spells (i.e. spells of 4th level+) the Fighter will feel underpowered. When the Wizard runs low on components and can't cast his spells, the Wizard feels underpowered cause he's weaker then the Fighter. If he's not weaker than the Fighter the fix fails because the Wizard is stronger or equal to the Fighter at all times which is why I'm assuming he is in fact weaker than fighter when limited by components.

So that means in total both players feel like they're not having fun and are horribly weak some of the time instead of the Fighter feeling underpowered all the time.

If the wizard runs out entirely, you haven't given out enough components. I think the wizard should always be able to cast. But he shouldn't always have ammo for the big guns. Tracking components is meant to keep a wizard from winning all encounters with his time stop/wall of stone/dim anchor/cloudkill combo. It does this by limiting how often those spells can be cast. Fireball can still be cast every round, if you give out the components for it.

I don't think a wizard who is holding back will feel weaker than the fighter. He knows he's pulling his punches because he's saving them for later.


Perhaps you covered this and I missed it, but there's still the problem that many/most of the most powerful spells lack any material component whatsoever. Even just going for mid-level spells, Dominate Person, Shadow Conj/Shadow Evoc, Greater Invisibility, Enervation, Teleport, and Major Image. Those are all among the most powerful spells of their level - and that's just within Core - and none of them have any material components.

I did not cover it. That's all the more reason to change the components.


But as we have seen, getting the material components is trivially easy. Are there any realistic obstacles to obtaining the spell components for my set of commonly used, powerful spells that do not smack of DM fiat?


Aren't adventurers known for having lots of, you know, silver coins? Silver, which is convertible into powdered silver?


But the components are trivially easy to acquire. Go through the list of spells I compiled and tell me which ones you could reasonably expect to have trouble obtaining material components for.

Here's the list for your benefit:


Here is how I would get them:



Mage Armor: a piece of cured leather. Buy it or make it.
Grease: a bit of pork rind or butter. Buy or make.
Mount: one horse hair. Buy, pluck from fighter's horse, ask for at the local livery, stable, whatever.
Protection from Evil: a bit of powdered silver. Adventurers have silver coins.
Ray of Enfeeblement: none
Sleep: a pinch of fine sand, rose petals, or a live cricket. This is seriously not hard to find.
Silent Image: none
Magic Missile: none
Unseen Servant: a piece of string and a bit of wood. I don't know, where would I find string and wood?

Alter Self: none
See Invisibility: a pinch of talc and a small sprinkling of powdered silver. Talc is a mineral that forms into crystals. At some point, buy a large chunk of it and you're pretty much set.
Glitterdust: ground mica. Mica is another mineral that forms in crystals. Buy a large one and you're covered.
Invisibility: an eyelash encased in a bit of gum arabic. Gum arabic is a type of tree sap. The tree it comes from exists widely in this world. Spend a few days hunting down the tree and milk a large amount of sap. The average human has 100-150 eyelashes on each eyelid. Wizards have eyelids.
Mirror Image: none
Web: a bit of spider web
Resist Energy: none
Minor Image: none

Protection from Energy: none
Dispel Magic: none
Explosive Runes: none
Sleet Storm: a pinch of dust and a few drops of water. If this is unobtainable, I must seriously question the verisimilitude of your campaign setting.
Stinking Cloud: a rotten egg or several skunk cabbage leaves. Picke some leaves in a jar.
Phantom Steed: none
Fly: a bird's feather. Find a duck. Magic Missile it. The average number of feathers on a female mallard duck is around 11,903 feathers. Male ducks generally have more! ChaCha!
Fireball: bat guano. Bat familiar
Lightening Bolt: a bit of fur and an amber, crystal, or glass rod. Bats have fur. The rod might be an issue though.
Major Image: none
Ray of Exhaustion: a drop of sweat. Do I need to say anything?
Displacement: a small strip of leather twisted into a loop. [r]Buy or make[/u]
Wind Wall: a tiny fan and a feather of exotic origin You got me here.
Greater Magic Weapon: powdered lime and carbon Lime is made from limestone. It is not a rare substance. Neither is carbon, which is available in the form of graphite, a common substance. All you need to do is buy a few pounds of each./u]
Haste: a shaving of licorice root. [u]Licorice is not rare. Preserve a few jars of root.
Slow: a drop of molasses. [u]Molasses is a viscous byproduct of the processing of sugar cane or sugar beets into sugar. Buy a few jars of it.

Again, I suggest changing to non trivial components. The revised 20 components would be harder to obtain.


Sure they can. They can complain later because they didn't realize in advance how annoying it would be.

But this still doesn't "nerf" magic in any fashion. All it means is that wizards will use every opportunity to buy five hundred eyelashes and a gallon of pig's blood (neither is particularly difficult) so they're set for the foreseeable future.

A (computer) game that uses precisely this system is the Ultima series (IV through VII). It doesn't do anything to limit magic. It just means that you a truckload of black pearls and blood moss at the earliest opportunity, and then ignore this part of the game until you run out, and then spend five more minutes to buy a new truckload. It adds neither value nor restriction to gameplay, it's just annoying.

Components need to be more interesting than a drop of pigs blood. 500 rubies would be quite a bit more challenging to obtain.

--

I'm not suggesting limiting casters in this way because I don't want them to be casting spells. Rather, I think they should have to ration certain spells. A wizard can cast time stop at boss fights. He shouldn't do it for every single combat. That said, there are plenty of spells that should be castable all the time. Those are the ones that will have components that are readily available.

In my opinion, the best argument against this restriction wasn't even brought up. It furthers the gap between wizards and sorcerers. If a wizard runs out of components for a spell, he stops memorizing that spell. If a sorcerer runs out, he's out of luck. A GM-rationed spell like time stop might not even be worth taking if you're a sorcerer. They get so few known spells that it isn't worth the risk that they won't be able to use the spell. I don't have a good answer for fixing this.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-17, 09:39 AM
It's not, but if you were writing out the average wizards equipment list, how many of them would include a file? I'm betting on a big phat ZERO on that one. It's exactly that sort of assumption that I detest. I pose a problem, you say "easily solved by having X", I say "Have you got one?" and your response is "no, but I can get one easily"...but you didn't actually have it in the first place did you?
Most wizards don't write clothing on their sheets either. Are we to assume that wizards streak throughout the course of the entire adventure?

Besides, the rogue definitely has one in his thieves tools. You can also use a whetstone or some other grinding device to powder silver, and the fighter definitely has one of those.




Yes, it's an exaggerated example, but it's just to demonstrate a point. Now assuming you have 10 pounds of X, Y and Z in your handy haversack (which you've conveniently stockpiled beforehand)
You have an INT of 18 or higher. You've probably learned to plan in advance.


that leaves less room for everything else, right?
A few chunks of minerals and some jars does not take up a lot of space.

A Handy Haversack has two side pouches each of which is like a bag of holding and can actually hold material of as much as 2 cubic feet in volume or 20 pounds in weight. The large central portion of the pack can contain up to 8 cubic feet or 80 pounds of material.

worst case scenario, you fill half of the Haversack with stuff. What else are you carrying that takes up 6 cubic feet or 70 pounds?


Not to mention the cost of bulk buying stuff like that. Sure you could spend the time harvesting cobwebs yourself, but to get that quantity is going to cost you money to hire someone else to get it for you (that's the way economics works folks). That will be eating into your WBL.
1. How much is a common mineral going to cost you, really?
2. Backstory. Write it into your backstory that you went hunting components by yourself for a month or so.
3. Also, Unseen Servant. Unless string and wood is hard to obtain for some reason?


If it's not cobwebs, but is rather Dragons Blood, then that cost is going to start ramping up fast. Suddenly you don't have quite as much money to spend on potions and wands and other handy equipment because you're forking out for the privelage of casting your spells reliably.
Don't use spells with expensive material components. Problem solved.

Jelly, so far all your objections have been laughably easy to solve. You're nitpicking the most minor things such as "a file isn't on your character sheet, you don't have one!" and "Where are you going to find eyelashes?"

If this is the only way you to defend your position...

Kurald Galain
2009-09-17, 09:46 AM
It's not, but if you were writing out the average wizards equipment list, how many of them would include a file?
Once you rule that they require a file to obtain spell components, I'm betting on a big phat ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, of course. If something is easily solved by having X, then the clever character will buy X.


you're forking out for the privelage of casting your spells reliably.
It's still a stealth nerf. Rather than telling the wizard "don't do X", you're making life unreasonably difficult for wizards who do X. This is exactly the same thing as requiring fighters to rub themselves in Hydra Oil every morning to maintain their dexterity-bonus-to-armor-class, and to have them buy special expensive glowing obsidian whetstones in order to keep their Sword +3 sharp.

JellyPooga
2009-09-17, 09:51 AM
Most wizards don't write clothing on their sheets either. Are we to assume that wizards streak throughout the course of the entire adventure?

Yes. In a game I'm running, I expect to know what my players are wearing and that includes their clothes. I don't assume they have blankets, bedrolls, backpacks, rations or anyhting else unless they've at least mentioned it beforehand (if not actually written it down).


Besides, the rogue definitely has one in his thieves tools. You can also use a whetstone or some other grinding device to powder silver, and the fighter definitely has one of those.

Who says there's a Rogue in the party or that he has thieves tools?


You have an INT of 18 or higher. You've probably learned to plan in advance.

I don't begrudge you that but...


A few chunks of minerals and some jars does not take up a lot of space.[quote]

...when capacities are measured by weight and you're lugging around 100lbs. of components, I expect that weight to be accounted for in your magic-item-of-holds-lots-of-stuff.

[quote]1. How much is a common mineral going to cost you, really?

Depends on where you're getting it from and how much. Sure picking up a chunk of chalk from a cliff isn't going to cost a penny, but obtaining it in the desert from a trader who's carted it 300 miles to where you are is another matter.


2. Backstory. Write it into your backstory that you went hunting components by yourself for a month or so.

Player: Here's my Backstory.
GM: No you didn't.


Don't use spells with expensive material components. Problem solved.

Did you miss the part where components got upgraded to all being of significant cost? I've been arguing for the basic cost-less components, but the orginal premis was that all components became costly.


Jelly, so far all your objections have been laughably easy to solve. You're nitpicking the most minor things such as "a file isn't on your character sheet, you don't have one!" and "Where are you going to find eyelashes?"

If this is the only way you to defend your position...

The same could be said for your rebuttals...every time I pose a problem, you've come back with "yeah, but you can assume X or Y". Not in my game you can't! There are no assumptions because if you're going to assume those thing, then I'm going to assume my Fighters sword is +10 of Slashing Doom and Auto-Kill because, well if I write it into my backstory that he's the richest man in the world and that his sister is the most powerful Enchanter of Magic Items then it stands to reason that he'll have the most powerful sword ever created...to my mind, they are just as plausable assumptions.

Fax Celestis
2009-09-17, 09:53 AM
DUDES.

CHILL.

Y'all are going the completely wrong way with this.


The Big Offenders (Archivist, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Wizard) are only ensconced in that position for two reasons: The first is having spells that are too powerful; the second is having access to too many spells.

Compare a wizard to a beguiler, for instance. While a beguiler gets more spells per day, more skill points, a better HD, and class features, the wizard is still considered a stronger class because it has unlimited access to every wizard spell printed--a beguiler has a much smaller and much more focused list of spells.

In a similar vein, some spells are just Too Good. Most of these are listed rather frequently in discussions. You will note, however, that despite the fact that other modes of magic approach the power of the Big Offenders, none of them breach it--binders, for instance, get their abilities much much more frequently than a sorcerer does, but they are not broken as their options are limited, and the powers they possess are not gamebreakingly strong: just strong.

Fix spells, fix spell access (via limited lists, preferably), done.

Kurald Galain
2009-09-17, 09:56 AM
the best and fairest way I can think of to do that without an arbitrary x times/week houserule, is to introduce and enforce siginificant material components.
The point is that the latter is just as arbitrary as the former. And with the examples shown in this thread so far, you're making perfectly reasonable things (e.g. obtaining chalk, or the idea that a rogue would carry thief tools) difficult for no reason. For starters, that hurts verisimilitude. It also likely hurts player/DM rations.

Want to limit Shapechange? Give the PC three scrolls of Shapechange and run the campaign below level 17.



Gah :smallmad:....practically every RPG has written encumbrance rules of some description and for a really good reason!
Er, how about "no"? 2E has an extensive encumbrance system that gradually brings your speed down from 12, to 11, to 10 and so forth. 3E has a massively simplified encumbrance system simply because encumbrance systems are annoying. 4E handwaves encumbrance entirely (which is a good thing, because 4E horses wouldn't be able to carry their riders otherwise).

I'm reasonably sure that I can list more systems with no encumbrance than you can list systems with, simply by virtue of more rules-light RPGs existing in the first place. So "practically every RPG has written encumbrance rules" is false, and that is for a really good reason (the reason being that keeping track of such minutiae has no positive impact on gameplay).

I predict that if you want to list components for every spell in existence, then you're unlikely to finish that task; whereas if you add expensive components to a handful of spells you wish to limit, then the result will be that your players will use other spells instead. Time Stop costs a flawless green ruby? Fine, I won't use Time Stop, ever. That's still functionally identical to banning the spell.

JellyPooga
2009-09-17, 09:57 AM
It's still a stealth nerf. Rather than telling the wizard "don't do X", you're making life unreasonably difficult for wizards who do X. This is exactly the same thing as requiring fighters to rub themselves in Hydra Oil every morning to maintain their dexterity-bonus-to-armor-class, and to have them buy special expensive glowing obsidian whetstones in order to keep their Sword +3 sharp.

Of course it's a stealth nerf! That's the point! What would you rather; being able to do X on occasion or not being able to do X at all? My suggestion is for the former and I think it fairer than the latter.

Regarding hydra oil and glowing obsidian; if I thought +3 Swords or Dex-bonus-to-AC needed fixing then yes, I might require them to be maintained in such a way. As it is, I don't, so there is no measure I need take to limit them. The purpose of this exercise is to limit spellcasting from breaking the game, not to produce pointless record keeping. Your suggestions of Hydra Oil and Glowing Obsidian would be pointless. Tracking meaningful spell components to limit powerful spells serves a purpose and is thus not pointless.

JellyPooga
2009-09-17, 10:04 AM
The point is that the latter is just as arbitrary as the former. And with the examples shown in this thread so far, you're making perfectly reasonable things (e.g. obtaining chalk, or the idea that a rogue would carry thief tools) difficult for no reason. For starters, that hurts verisimilitude. It also likely hurts player/DM rations.

Want to limit Shapechange? Give the PC three scrolls of Shapechange and run the campaign below level 17.

So making a game element that's already there actually relevent is arbitrary when that element is present in other games as well as fiction and folk-lore?


I predict that if you want to list components for every spell in existence, then you're unlikely to finish that task; whereas if you add expensive components to a handful of spells you wish to limit, then the result will be that your players will use other spells instead. Time Stop costs a flawless green ruby? Fine, I won't use Time Stop, ever. That's still functionally identical to banning the spell.

So taking the latter option you present here (which is essentially the point of enforcing MatComps in the manner suggested), you agree that you wouldn't cast Time Stop unless you really thought you needed to? Hurrah! You've suddenly grasped the point of the endeavour! It's your choice that you can't be bothered to source a flawless green ruby, so it's your loss that you don't get to use the best spells. I'm giving you (the player) the option of using that spell and you're just declining it. If you so wished, you could take me up on the offer and have that spell on occasion, but that's up to you. Do you not think having that option is better than not having it at all?

valadil
2009-09-17, 10:05 AM
Want to limit Shapechange? Give the PC three scrolls of Shapechange and run the campaign below level 17.

I predict that if you want to list components for every spell in existence, then you're unlikely to finish that task; whereas if you add expensive components to a handful of spells you wish to limit, then the result will be that your players will use other spells instead. Time Stop costs a flawless green ruby? Fine, I won't use Time Stop, ever. That's still functionally identical to banning the spell.

Limiting with scrolls or components like that is exactly the same. Do you think it would be more reasonable to say you're not allowed to learn shapechange, but you can have a couple scrolls? I could be convinced that that would be more manageable.

It's not identical to banning the spell. The player still has a choice in the matter. It also depends on how prevalent rare components are. If Time Stop is the only spell with that restriction you might never take the spell. If all level 9 spells have a component, Time Stop may still be worthwhile.

Set
2009-09-17, 10:07 AM
One of the things I miss is the casting time.
Cast a 1st lev. spell? casting time is 1 segment (between the combat round)
Cast a 7th lev. spell? casting time is 7 segments
Suddenly, the more powerful is the spell, the more high is the risk to be the target of attacks to interrupt your casting.

That's the entire jist of my suggestion a few posts upthread to make standard action spells take a full round action. Your caster still has Concentration and doesn't automatically fail if pinged with an arrow, but still is going to have a rough time of it trying to cast spells within charge-and-swing range of melee classes who don't want him casting.

At the end of the round, spells go off, if they weren't interrupted, barring spells that explicitly cast faster (such as feather fall).

Kaiyanwang
2009-09-17, 10:12 AM
That's the entire jist of my suggestion a few posts upthread to make standard action spells take a full round action. Your caster still has Concentration and doesn't automatically fail if pinged with an arrow, but still is going to have a rough time of it trying to cast spells within charge-and-swing range of melee classes who don't want him casting.

At the end of the round, spells go off, if they weren't interrupted, barring spells that explicitly cast faster (such as feather fall).

Another idea could be expand this, taking from the sorcerer nerf of 3.x. You know, metamagic --> increased casting time.

Could be done something similar.. metamagic --> more rounds.

AllisterH
2009-09-17, 10:43 AM
Or we could just use the 2e shapechange spell.

From the 2e PHB,


"The spellcaster becomes the creature he wishes and has all of its abilites save those dependant upon intelligence, innate magic abilities and magic resistance"

Seems less abusive than the current version of shapechange no?

Gnaeus
2009-09-17, 11:25 AM
Wizard 6: I'm out of components for blink. Guess I need to mem another haste, displacement, slow, or ray of exhaustion tomorrow.

Sorcerer 6: I'm out of components for blink. I will just pretend I have been level drained, because I only know 1 spell of my highest level.

This makes the game so much fairer.

jseah
2009-09-17, 11:28 AM
<- from another thread:

Since we're discussing ways to nerf magic, how about making each spell have an individual, thematic counter?

As in, every spell has one, and only one, mundane weakness that negates that spell completely.
eg.
magic missile attracted to pins
teleport fails when moving into/out-of magnetic fields (such as generated by a simple magnet)
polymorph gets dispelled by any small piece of flesh from something of the same race as the caster
time stop impossible if the caster has LOE to an anchor-shaped object
enervation hits holy symbols instead of their target
black tentacles preferring to attack dolls instead of their targets
bestow curse broken by fresh water from a spring

... and so on. This can be worked out for each spell that the player takes and can be easily researched by a low DC knowledge/spellcraft check.

Of course, it means that the players can use it, so it's important to make it such that it takes at least a standard action to negate a spell. (except for some action-economy breaking ones)

Grumman
2009-09-17, 12:34 PM
Since we're discussing ways to nerf magic, how about making each spell have an individual, thematic counter?

As in, every spell has one, and only one, mundane weakness that negates that spell completely.
You are suggesting that every human-shaped creature, from a goblin Commoner 1 up, should be able to ready an action to counterspell with a 100% success rate. That's just screaming for DM abuse.

Doc Roc
2009-09-17, 12:38 PM
I think you need to go through, and either ban most of the tier one classes or prepare yourself to rebalance half the spells in core and a quarter of them outside it.

Jergmo
2009-09-17, 12:58 PM
On the timing bit, what if 0-2 was a standard action, 3-6 was a full round, and 7-9 was two rounds, and Quicken Spell is downgraded in cost a teeny and is used to bring the casting time to one stage lower?

Glimbur
2009-09-17, 01:43 PM
DUDES.

CHILL.

Y'all are going the completely wrong way with this.



Fix spells, fix spell access (via limited lists, preferably), done.

Quit making sense. That's not allowed in this thread.

Paganboy28
2009-09-17, 01:58 PM
What's wrong with using the rules for things like corrupt spells where they cost you ability points to cast, or something else that is important to the character?

Would a wizard really want to cast a spell if it made them loose say 1 point of Con per spell level? Make this unhealable by magical means and that it has to recover naturally.

Or, use the spell point system. You could burn through points quick or slow.

Maybe have spellcasting a check of some kind, a bit like epic spells. But with failure having something happen to the caster, depending on the actual spell. So the more powerful the spell, the more chance it has of going wrong and the more the chance that something nasty happens to you if you botch or fail.

That puts the risk back into magic. That is what is lacking I feel, magic is safe and predictable. Those characteristics should be reserved for normal fighting.

"I have a sword and shield... I can hit things hard and protect myself." Predictable...

"I can possibly immolate the enemy in a gout of fire... well maybe if I am lucky but if it goes wrong and i end up a flaming pile of soot.... well damn."

Failed shapechange might mean you are stuck in that form and maybe even mindless or you take on the personality of that form. Timestop... potentially freezes YOU in time, Wish... well lots of potential randomness.

Magic needs more randomness and to become more unpredictable. Forget material components and such. Magic should not be a "safe" thing to use.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-17, 02:46 PM
Yes. In a game I'm running, I expect to know what my players are wearing and that includes their clothes. I don't assume they have blankets, bedrolls, backpacks, rations or anyhting else unless they've at least mentioned it beforehand (if not actually written it down).

Read the exciting campaign journal of Grignar the Barbarian, as he spends an entire session debating with his teammates what it should carry and how it affects his carrying capacity. See as he goes from shop to shop on a journey to locate whetstones, scabbards, underwear, soap, and files! With action at ever turn, there is not a page of this player's accounts that should be missed!



Who says there's a Rogue in the party or that he has thieves tools?

You're right, I shouldn't assume there is a Rogue, or if there is one, he would have the tools to do what Rogues do. He may have invested all his money in trained monkeys instead. My bad.

Now that you have proven how hard it is to acquire/buy/borrow the rare and mystical object known as the "file", how about telling me the availability of whetstones and sandstone?


...when capacities are measured by weight and you're lugging around 100lbs. of components, I expect that weight to be accounted for in your magic-item-of-holds-lots-of-stuff.
Handy Haversack.

Alternatively, if you go through the items that I have listed in my list, you'll find that it shouldn't weigh more than 30 pounds for all of the lime, talc, graphite, feathers, and etc.



Depends on where you're getting it from and how much. Sure picking up a chunk of chalk from a cliff isn't going to cost a penny, but obtaining it in the desert from a trader who's carted it 300 miles to where you are is another matter.

Then there should be plenty of sand. I wonder if any spells have sand as a component...



Player: Here's my Backstory.
GM: No you didn't.

Player: So I did not engage in a mundane and completely reasonable activity why? It's not like I wrote that I have a +10 Vorpal sword of Awesomeness in my backstory to break WBL and overpower my character or anything.



Did you miss the part where components got upgraded to all being of significant cost? I've been arguing for the basic cost-less components, but the orginal premis was that all components became costly.

I've been talking with you, not the OP, so forgive me for not including him in the conversation.



The same could be said for your rebuttals...every time I pose a problem, you've come back with "yeah, but you can assume X or Y". Not in my game you can't!

So if the fighter doesn't write that he has a scabbard, whetstone, and oil, you force him to carry his sword around in hand at all times, prevent him from sharpening it, and have his weapons and armor rust. Gotcha. We can't assume PCs will have reasonable mundane items that an adventurer would be expected to have because it doesn't fit the archetype (wizard with a file!?!?!).

So far, aside from assuming items like files, I have also said "Yeah, but you can assume a wizard uses his own eyelash for See Invisibility." Are you saying that in your game, the wizard cannot do this?

How about the part where I said you prepare only the spell components you need in your pouch and put the excess in your backpack? Can you not do this?


There are no assumptions because if you're going to assume those thing, then I'm going to assume my Fighters sword is +10 of Slashing Doom and Auto-Kill because, well if I write it into my backstory that he's the richest man in the world and that his sister is the most powerful Enchanter of Magic Items then it stands to reason that he'll have the most powerful sword ever created...to my mind, they are just as plausable assumptions.

Is this on the same level as gathering cheap, mundane components? They are quite different matters, as we both know. Magic items are expensive to make and take a lot of time. Licorice root grows in a lot of places.

But let's say you're right. You, as the DM can make anything hard to acquire, even the most mundane things. I'll concede to your masterful debate. It's hard to buy things, and impossible to acquire them in one's spare time. What now?

Mage Armor: a piece of cured leather (Creatures with skin do not hang around these parts)
Grease: a bit of pork rind or butter (Pigs do not exist, and milk products are absent)
Mount: one horse hair (Horses were all killed and eaten in a famine two years ago)
Protection from Evil: a bit of powdered silver (There is no way to make powdered silver for one's self using improvised tools, and files are not on sale)
Ray of Enfeeblement: none
Sleep: a pinch of fine sand, rose petals, or a live cricket. (Please tell me sand exists and its prices are not being controlled by the fearsome sand mafia.)
Silent Image: none
Magic Missile: none
Unseen Servant: a piece of string and a bit of wood (Ok, I'm going to assume wood and string are available.)

Alter Self: none
See Invisibility: a pinch of talc and a small sprinkling of powdered silver (assume no talc deposits)
Glitterdust: ground mica. (Mica is widely distributed and occurs in igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary regimes. Scrap and flake mica is produced all over the world. But let us assume this place has absolutely none for some reason)
Invisibility: an eyelash encased in a bit of gum arabic (assume none of the necessary trees. Also, a shortage of eyelashes.)
Mirror Image: none
Web: a bit of spider web (assume no spiders)
Resist Energy: none
Minor Image: none

Protection from Energy: none
Dispel Magic: none
Explosive Runes: none
Sleet Storm: a pinch of dust and a few drops of water (I am going to take the liberty of assuming dust and water exist in your setting and are commonly available?)
Stinking Cloud: a rotten egg or several skunk cabbage leaves (assume no chickens or skunk cabbage)
Phantom Steed: none
Fly: a bird's feather (assume no birds)
Fireball: bat guano (assume no bats)
Lightening Bolt: a bit of fur and an amber, crystal, or glass rod
Major Image: none
Ray of Exhaustion: a drop of sweat (Assuming the wizard himself has sweat glands. However this is likely not written down on the sheet, he may very well not posses them.)
Displacement: a small strip of leather twisted into a loop (Again, creatures with skin do not exist in this part of the world)
Wind Wall: a tiny fan and a feather of exotic origin
Greater Magic Weapon: powdered lime and carbon (Limestone does not form, nor does graphite.)
Haste: a shaving of licorice root (Licorice is offensive, and all licorice plants were systematically rooted out and destroyed)
Slow: a drop of molasses (Dentists will not allow sugar products to be traded)

Not a bad list, even assuming one is in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Who_Da_Halfling
2009-09-17, 04:37 PM
Honestly, having read through the thread, PaganBoy's idea sounds the most plausible. Obviously editing every spell ever printed (or systematically going through them and banning the ones that are problematic) would be an unfeasibly monumental task. Editing all the material components is likewise unfeasible, although the gameplay of such a change would make sense and might well be entertaining.

Although Jelly and Pharaoh have been getting into semantics about it, I agree (sort of) with both of them. I'm with Jelly that a system where the material components needed to cast spells are not common and their expenditure is not trivial would be interesting. If you doubt it, how often have you had characters who have a limited number of, say, Scrolls of a certain kind, or a certain kind of Magical ammunition that is not renewable? Isn't it somewhat interesting having to pick and choose when to use said item? Isn't that basically the same as having to pick and choose when to use certain class-feature spells?

Now, such a system would have to be heavily reworked if it is based on 3.5 since, frankly, 3.5 isn't really designed that way. This is where I agree with Pharaoh. Material components in 3.5 spells are meant to be trivial or even ignored. Using them to limit access to magic in 3.5 would be very difficult, as many of the components are very easy to find and it's not very reasonable to try and cut off access to them (the ones that ARE difficult are indeed the ones that players often have to think about how and when to use them, such as Raise Dead).

I think if I were to design a system the way Jelly and the OP are suggesting, it would have a fairly unlimited number of simple spells (something like Magic Missile might even qualify) that had trivial material components or none at all so that I wouldn't be completely paralyzed by a limited supply of components in a minor encounter. After all, the tension of options is only interesting if you don't end up being forced to do nothing at all. Perhaps a stronger limit on spells-known in exchange for a higher spells-per-day or even a non-limit on spells-per-day is called for?

Anyway, for all practical purposes, I think PaganBoy's idea is probably the most sensible if you want to somewhat balance magic in a 3.5 setting. Increased spell-failure chances, more difficult Concentration DCs, and reduced ability to easily cast defensively would all make casting more difficult and give melee characters and enemies more of a chance. I don't necessarily think PaganBoy is on the mark on his reasoning (martial combat is far from predictable), but I think there's certainly call for making combat and magic EQUALLY unpredictable. Saves alone don't really do it (after all, many powerful spells don't offer saves at all, and it's fairly easy to ramp up your save DCs, especially in comparison to AC vs. Attack Bonus).

I'm not sure that randomness alone would balance things (there is still the problem that martial characters can only hit things in different ways, wheras magic users can do all kinds of crap to enemies), but I think it would be a good start.

-JM

Kurald Galain
2009-09-17, 04:39 PM
Mage Armor: a piece of cured leather (Creatures with skin do not hang around these parts)
Grease: a bit of pork rind or butter (Pigs do not exist, and milk products are absent)
Mount: one horse hair (Horses were all killed and eaten in a famine two years ago)
Protection from Evil: a bit of powdered silver (There is no way to make powdered silver for one's self using improvised tools, and files are not on sale)
What is this, DM of the Rings?

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-09-17, 04:40 PM
I'm not sure what it is, but chalk is worth it's weight in salt, apparently. Which is worth it's weight in gold. Which is worth half it's weight in beans.

Doc Roc
2009-09-17, 04:44 PM
Actually, yeah, that... does... Yeah, huh.


Sure am glad I took track.

Kami2awa
2009-09-17, 04:47 PM
Not got time to read the whole thread, so apologies if this has come up before. I have often thought that increasing Casting Time would do a lot to reduce the dominance of magic. In 2e, many spells (especially more powerful ones) took a long time to cast, and if you were hit (or otherwise distracted) while casting, the spell fizzled and was lost.

This meant that casters almost always needed melee-class bodyguards to keep enemies out of the way while they charged up the big gun spells. It also made special movement abilities such as those of thieves very useful as they could be used to bypass the bodyguards and take out spellcasters.

My recommendations for improving 3.5:

- Increase casting time for almost all spells, probably proportionate to their level so that more powerful spells take longer. There are some exceptions; obviously Feather Fall is no use if it cannot be cast quickly, and the Power Word spells are only one word* so can be cast quickly.

- Get rid of Quicken Spell. Aside from cancelling out casting times, almost all of the worst abuse of the magic system uses Quicken Spell to throw out powerful spells like Forcecage and Time Stop before anyone else can act.

- Make Concentration check DCs higher so mages can be more easily distracted and prevented from casting.

Furthermore, I really like the variant rules which require spells with XP cost to have a rare component instead, e.g. the horn of a legendary red minotaur. Such as component should not be available buy, and requires a side quest to get it. The variant rule for metamagic'd spells requiring higher quality components (see http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/metamagicComponents.htm#expensiveVersionsofExistin gMaterialComponents) is also nice and further lends itself to side quests.

====
*:vaarsuvius: One Word! ONE WORD!!!

Paganboy28
2009-09-19, 02:41 AM
I dislike game mechanics that use XP as a component for spells or magic. XP is a metagame concept that shouldn't really be used for anything other than levelling.

Instead as I have said before the "simplest" way to make magic more balanced is to have it cost the character something important and make it less predictable.

So:

1) Have a spell cost something relevant or important, ability loss, hit points, etc

2) Have spells have to make a casting roll,

3) those feats that increase or improve spells would also increase the cost of the spell in terms of abilities, hit points or etc

4) have the ability damage "magical" in nature so that it cannot be cured easily by magic.


So maybe healing is a transferal of hit points, or things likfe fireball would cause the caster to become exhausted or something when cast due to the intensity of the spell....

Just off the top of my head, but as stated before magic should not be something that is easy to do or that is safe.

If magic is predictable, safe, and otherwise riskfree why isn't everyone doing it???

Imagine a spell which would cost you 2 points of Con every time its cast... that would make a caster think more about casting it all the time. Especially if that ability loss can only be healed naturally.

Call it magical backlash, which in conjunction with a casting roll (no taking 10 either!) means there are the possibilities of botches and such which could also mean more disasterous results.

Another idea that just popped into my head, spells that are based on caster level could be randomised a bit like the Wild Mage PrC.

Bang
2009-09-19, 03:20 AM
Everyone agrees the caster classes end up over-shadowing the non-caster classes.
Then there's nothing to fix.

With recognition of the strong and weak options within a system, a player can choose what he uses in building a character. The power of a character concept is the player's to manipulate: I can build a samurai within the core rules from the Cleric, Bard, Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Assassin, Shadowdancer, Eldritch Knight or a combination of the these*. As long as I don't act like a douche and detract from other players' fun, the system won't create any problems.

*'Magic' has no clear definition. It could be the enchanter's explosions on a mountaintop, the knight's muttered prayer for protection as he steps onto the battlefield or the detective's superhuman leap of intuition. Badass Norman doesn't need to let the Spells section of his PHB gather dust.

Zeful
2009-09-19, 12:50 PM
Then there's nothing to fix.

With recognition of the strong and weak options within a system, a player can choose what he uses in building a character. The power of a character concept is the player's to manipulate: I can build a samurai within the core rules from the Cleric, Bard, Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Assassin, Shadowdancer, Eldritch Knight or a combination of the these*. As long as I don't act like a douche and detract from other players' fun, the system won't create any problems.

*'Magic' has no clear definition. It could be the enchanter's explosions on a mountaintop, the knight's muttered prayer for protection as he steps onto the battlefield or the detective's superhuman leap of intuition. Badass Norman doesn't need to let the Spells section of his PHB gather dust.

Assuming of course everyone playing is aware of the problems, and agrees with the above line of thinking, then there is nothing to fix.

I don't agree with it. As the above line of thinking limits me to few master villain archetypes, which get boring an repetitive as a DM and a player. I see the disparity between classes as a bug, and not a feature.

Bang
2009-09-19, 12:54 PM
I don't agree with it. As the above line of thinking limits me to few master villain archetypes, which get boring an repetitive as a DM and a player. I see the disparity between classes as a bug, and not a feature.
I'm having trouble thinking of an archetype that can only be portrayed with one build.

Zeful
2009-09-19, 01:12 PM
I'm having trouble thinking of an archetype that can only be portrayed with one build.

Good for you. I'm not that imaginative, and I don't think in terms of "what would be the most effective". I see the disparity between classes as a limitation to the stories I can tell. I see that as a failure of the system, which in turn is a failure of the designers. There's nothing good in my mind of a system in which a feature of a class (wildshape, spellcasting) is more powerful than an entire other class.

Set
2009-09-19, 02:22 PM
On the timing bit, what if 0-2 was a standard action, 3-6 was a full round, and 7-9 was two rounds, and Quicken Spell is downgraded in cost a teeny and is used to bring the casting time to one stage lower?

Alternately, have the time to cast based on when you got that spell. Spells 2 or 3 levels below the highest level you have access to become usable quicker, as a standard action, instead of a full-round action. Even an 18th level wizard will still need full round actions to cast his highest level spells, but will finally be able to cast 1st - 6th level spells as standard actions.


XP is a metagame concept that shouldn't really be used for anything other than levelling.

Agreed.



1) Have a spell cost something relevant or important, ability loss, hit points, etc

2) Have spells have to make a casting roll,

3) those feats that increase or improve spells would also increase the cost of the spell in terms of abilities, hit points or etc

4) have the ability damage "magical" in nature so that it cannot be cured easily by magic.


Combining those options, you could require a Spellcraft roll to cast any spell, with penalties to metamagic them, and perhaps bonuses to cast them at lower CL? If you fail the roll, you take nonlethal damage equal to the level of the spell (plus some if metamagicked). If you roll a 1, the damage is lethal damage and you're stunned for 1 round by the backlash of magical energies. On a failed roll by just a few points, you might have the option to 'force' a success by taking lethal damage instead of nonlethal damage.

Other mechanics might be in play, so that if you take damage from spellcasting higher than your Int/Wis/Cha modifier in a round, you are also stunned, or something.

Other spells might be *particularly* strenuous, but have commensurately impressive effects. Any spell that would normally cost XP or whatever might Exhaust the caster and inflict 1 pt of Con damage / spell level automatically, with extra equal damage if the Spellcraft roll is botched, which could be pretty darn frightening. (I want to cast Wish? I'm gonna take 9 Con damage. No way around that. If I blow the roll, I'm gonna take 18 Con damage...) Spells like Permanancy and Gate would be on the 'you're taking your life in hands...' list, like Wish.

Oslecamo
2009-09-19, 02:28 PM
There's nothing good in my mind of a system in which a feature of a class (wildshape, spellcasting) is more powerful than an entire other class.

However, for many classes spellcasting is pretty much their only feature. Take the spells out of a wizard and what is left? A commoner with a talking bird at best.

Second, it's also the DM's duty to reign some rule on the classes. For example, teleport description clearly states that there are areas of the world that are teleport-proof due to their natural characteristics. If the DM however chooses to don't apply this anywhere, of course teleport sudenly becomes uber-powerfull.

Similarly, if there's as much free time as the archivist and wizard likes and scroll'rus galore, of course they'll spiral out of control as they learns every spell in existance. If mother nature doesn't give a damn about anything and there are animal encycplopedias for free everywhere, of course druids will run wild.

SilveryCord
2009-09-19, 02:36 PM
One thing I heard on this forum was to have each caster rely on all three mental attributes for their spellcasting. Intelligence for the highest level of spells knowable, Wisdom for the number of spells known/per day, Charisma for DCs. To cast that Save-or-Die level 9 spell, you still need 19 intelligence, but it will be gutted, powerwise, without an equally high charisma.

There are still spells to rewrite, of course, and it's perfectly within the realm of possibility for a level 20 wizard to enter combat with all three attributes over 18, but it will hopefully at least put some strain on their WBL compared to martial characters, and it would certainly make building spellcasters more interesting.

Bang
2009-09-19, 03:00 PM
If you really wanted to nerf spells until casters and non-casters are roughly equal, you'd limit casters to 1-2 spells, total.

Let the spells be used at will, but only let one instance of the spell be in effect at a time.

Make their effects comprable to cantrips at level 1, advancing in power until they become somewhere around a level 5 effect by level 20.


What this would look like:

A general template of a spell like "[Energy] Blast" which starts doing CLd4 damage with a ranged touch attack at level 1, eventually becoming CLd6 to an area with a save-or-stun at level 20, would put an Evoker on roughly the same power scale as a core Fighter or Paladin.

An effect like "Charm" could start as a single-target at a time one-step attitude shift. So a Level 1 Enchanter could force a hostile enemy to save or temporarily become unfriendly. A level 20 Enchanter might be able to force 10 hostile enemies to save or temporarily become indifferent to the party.

A conjurer might have one type of monster he can summon, requiring motionless concentration as long as the spell is in effect. The power of a Summon spell might rise along the same lines as the Summon Monster line now, if SM is only being used for SLA-less brutes.

A diviner might be able to start by being able to discern who or what was in an area 5 minutes before. By level 20, he should be able to use a Detect Thoughts-like effect and maybe Scry.

A Transmuter might start with effects like bending small pieces of metal or slightly altering an animals features and eventually progress to changing the composition of an object or transforming a creature into another, related creature (gaining Extraordinary abilities and all intrinsic ability modifiers, but nothing else). Remember that one of the guidelines has to be that only one spell can be in effect at a time: only one cart of coal can be turned into gold at a time and as long as the Transmuter has the Fighter turned into a giant, he has no other special abilities to speak of.

An Illusionist might be able to start with Ghost Sound and Silent Image and, by 20th level, have the ability to cast Mirage Arcana.

A Necromancer could start with the ability to command a single body for the one round after its demise. By level 7, it should be possible to create any number of 1-2 HD zombies for long enough to usefully serve (a week?). By level 20, a Necromancer might be able to create genuinely powerful undead. At no point, however should the Necromancer be able to command more than one at a time. Created undead should be treated as NPCs by default, working toward some diabolical end unless somehow swayed.

An Abjurer should be able to Dispel.

And, just to round out the transfer of the magic system, some other 'schools' or caster types:

A Healer class that could transfer damage from one character to another (similar to a Shadow Sun Ninja or Empathetic transfer-using Psion) would be nifty. Let time and the Heal skill deal with restoring HP. Automatic healing makes wounds cheap. Making healing come with a cost would be a strong catalyst for conflict. Imagine how involved the game wpould become if a sacrifice was neccessary for a ressurection spell.

One class could be dedicated to teleportation, gaining increasing skill at it from spending a round concentrating in order to move 10 feet at level 1 to Teleport around level 20.

A Plaguebearer or other debuffer class would be needed to fill some of the holes in transmutation and necromancy. If the class required concentration to force ability penalties on one target, eventually shifting to blindness, deafness or lameness for a group and eventually allowed actual diseases to be passed on, the class could be interesting in play.

A Kineticist class could fill in for some of the holes left by Evocation and Transmutation. Give the class an increasing amount of telekinetic force (from being able to lift a mug at level 1 to lifting an elephant at level 20) and nothing else. Make Telekinesis difficult to use in combat: Give creatures saves against being manipulated, make violent movement impossible.

A weather manipulator could shift from slightly changing the temperature at level 1 to making drastic weather shifts (not in the "controlled tornado destroying an army" sense; more along the lines of "Fog rolls in, you hear the sounds of thunder")

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Anyway, if such drastic change isn't your thing:
(I posted this first, before deciding to more directly address the OP. The only reason I'm not deleting it is that doing so could be horribly confusing if someone quotes or responds to that part of it.)


The part of the 3.5 magic system that I think needs to be fixed is the paperwork of bottomless spell lists.

I tried dropping prepared casters with the group I DM for. Players who wanted to use them got spontaneous versions of the classes.

It seemed to help in a few ways:


It dramatically cut the time spent digging through books to check minor details of every spell in a class list.
It seemed to help with party cohesion. No caster could do everything. Only one caster could summon a dire badger to tunnel through cliff walls. Only one could use telekinesis to manipulate objects or move other characters. Each characters had to rely on the rest of the group.
It made players deal with problems using an incomplete toolbox. In one game, there was no rogue and none of the players had Knock. In their various break-ins, the four casters developed different methods of dealing with doors: One summoned monsters to charge the doors, one used direct damage, one used an object summoning spell and a skill buff to pick the locks, one just used gaseous form to pass through and worked out a way to get the rest of the group through afterward.
It was better received by new players. It seemed more natural than the 'Guess What You'll Want to Do in the Future!" game.
It encouraged game flow. There were none of those times when the characters have to camp out for a day so the Wizard can choose new and appropriate tools for the situation at hand. If the players couldn't do something immediately, chances were that stopping wouldn't help.
And, incidentally, it removed "Tier 1" from existence.

All in all, removing prepared casting made the game more fun for my group to play.

Zeful
2009-09-19, 10:57 PM
However, for many classes spellcasting is pretty much their only feature. Take the spells out of a wizard and what is left? A commoner with a talking bird at best.

Second, it's also the DM's duty to reign some rule on the classes. For example, teleport description clearly states that there are areas of the world that are teleport-proof due to their natural characteristics. If the DM however chooses to don't apply this anywhere, of course teleport sudenly becomes uber-powerfull.

Similarly, if there's as much free time as the archivist and wizard likes and scroll'rus galore, of course they'll spiral out of control as they learns every spell in existance. If mother nature doesn't give a damn about anything and there are animal encycplopedias for free everywhere, of course druids will run wild.

Not what I'm talking about. If, for instance, I were to try a design a villain for Batman, Clericzilla, Mr.Ubercharger, and an Artificer. Anything but another Batman Wizard or Clericzilla will be too weak to actually be any kind of valid threat. Two builds, about eight archetypes of villains. This is not enough variety to keep me as a DM or a player interested in any campaign, simply because it's too damn monotonous. This is a bug, not a feature.