Magic Balancing - why doesn't it work?

[Halaster]

I've read a few threads here and looked into the tier system (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1002.0), and there seems to be a general consensus that spellcasting is decidedly unbalanced.

Now, to me it was always a given that the primary balancing factor for spellcasting is either
a) a limited selection of spells available for casting (sorcerer, bard)
b) the need to preselect your spells without knowing which ones you need
and that this more or less outbalances the possibilities of spellcasting. Like, when you prepared a fly spell and stay on the ground all day, so much for that slot. I also got the impression that most, if not all spells have such "no go" criteria. And, since most spellcasters (druids aside, I guess) have little but their casting ability to go for them, they fall somewhere into the balance, perhaps slightly above the non-spellcasters, but not in such crass categories.

Now, where did I go wrong? What do players do to make spellcasting such a formidable weapon?
I could think of a few things
- optimizing their spell selection with spells that they can always use that I haven't thought of (examples if you have)
- not using their full capacity and selecting spells "on the fly" to increase flexibility
- using feats to make individual spells more versatile (energy substitution, that sort of thing)
- always resting whenever they see some problem coming that their current spells can't handle (kinda unrealistic)

Please help me understand what the problem is.

[The Glyphstone]

The biggest problem is #1 in your list. Fly, for instance, is a vastly useful spell for a number of reasons, because mobility can win fights on its own. If the DM makes the mistake of sending monsters without flight/decent ranged attacks, one 3rd-level spell slot (4th-5th for mass fly, or a Lesser Chain Rod) can render the entire encounter trivial. Fly can bypass traps or chasms or any terrain-based environmental hazard you care to name. Fly can help you reach the spices on the top shelf. There's so many reasons why you would want to leave the ground that Fly is always a good pick.

Then there's the Polymorph line, Enervation/Energy Drain, Haste, personal buffs...the number of multi-purpose spells or spells that are 'always useful' is staggering. Even Charm/Dominate spells, as maligned as Enchantment is, can be incredibly valuable swiss-army-knives when there's an opportunity to use them.

In more theoretical play, casters employ fantastic amounts of divinations to ensure that they know exactly what to prepare for the day. That tends to rarely (though occasionally) be usable in practice, so most just pick spells they can always make use of...and when a caster can end or decisively decide a battle with 2-3 spell slots, he'll always have surplus slots at the end of the day to leave an error margin. If the DM is trying to do an endurance fight, that's what reserve feats are for, and the melee will run out of HP long before the caster runs out of spells.

[Boci]

One method I am currently working on is making a set of six tier 3 advanced casters. We already have the beguiler, dread necromancer and a tweaked warmage, so that leaves a summoner (conjuration), spellweaver (transmutation) and an oracle (abjuration/divination).

[Halaster]

OK, so there are simply too many universal spells. I don't really see the problem with buffs, since you need someone to buff in the first place, so all you do is raise the capabilities of others. I've been there myself with a cleric character, bringing up the rear and watching everyone else do the work while I churn out buff after buff.

As for the rest, would you care to give me a rough listing of types of spells that are problematic, so I know to watch out for those? My group isn't exactly comfortable with homebrew stuff and would greatly prefer RAW.

From Glyphstones post and my own considerations I get this:
- movement/mobility spells used to avoid encounters or stay out of the way of their potential harm
- spells that allow their parameters to be set after casting (polymorph, charms, some illusions), so much so that the caster can adapt them to nearly situation (combat, stealth, etc.)
- spells against which virtually no immunities exist (are there any?)

Anything else?

[Douglas]

OK, so there are simply too many universal spells. I don't really see the problem with buffs, since you need someone to buff in the first place, so all you do is raise the capabilities of others. I've been there myself with a cleric character, bringing up the rear and watching everyone else do the work while I churn out buff after buff.
Typical buffing is not really a problem. Buffing taken to an extreme is ridiculous. Take a look at Team Solars in my sig to see the theoretical potential of buffing. Stack that pile of buffs on an ordinary flea, and it would laugh at the pathetic weakling of a threat that is the Tarrasque.

[Morty]

In my understanding, it's really rather simple. The designers underestimated the applications and usefulness of many "indirect" spells like Fly. Having to prepare spells and a limited selection were both supposed to keep the spellcasters down, but in practice, it's not enough because many spells are good enough to be always useful and sometimes too powerful.

[Knaight]

Morty has the right of it, in a concise way. Some spells are unbalanced, that is the issue.

[Zergrusheddie]

*claps at Morty*
That's pretty much what I think too. Of course, another problem might have been that they expected more of a "Blasty" kind of Wizard and Sorcerers.

As others have said, even having to prepare spells ahead of time doesn't have much chance to balance the power of Wizards against smart or informed players. There are lot of spells that simply do not punish you for never loading and there are spells that don't punish you for loading. Summon Monster 2 might be useful, but there are plenty of other spells that are better. No matter what you are going to do, Glitterdust is always useful in combat.

Having a limited number of spells helps a little more, but there are so many spells that can be cast that give the Wizard and Friends a massive boon. Haste pretty much doubles the amount of damage a low level Fighter does a round and can turn a moderate encounter into a cakewalk. Confusion allowed a level 10 Party to defeat something like a CR 16ish encounter because the Beguiler rolled really high on the Spell Resistance check. They spent 10 rounds kicking the crap out of each other while the Fighter cleaned up the stragglers. I have witnessed a single spell wipe out an encounter because the enemies were put in such a bad position.

Spells, I think, are balanced around the idea that you only have a few of them and can't do them over and over like a Fighter can do damage. The problem lies with the fact that a single spell can end an encounter on the first round, which means you don't have to cast them over and over. And some spells are just flat out too powerful.

[Lhurgyof]

You could always just make sure that the encounters challenge the wizards, use monsters with SR, like the aoa from Fiend Folio, it has reflective spell resistance. If the wizard likes to fly, put in some powerful winds that bring the wizard down to ground level, just try to level the playing field between the magic and mundane.

[valadil]

In my understanding, it's really rather simple. The designers underestimated the applications and usefulness of many "indirect" spells like Fly. Having to prepare spells and a limited selection were both supposed to keep the spellcasters down, but in practice, it's not enough because many spells are good enough to be always useful and sometimes too powerful.

To be fair though, a spell like Fly is tough to balance. You can compare damage output all day long, but Fly can't be given an expected value. It just changes how the combat works.


If the wizard likes to fly, put in some powerful winds that bring the wizard down to ground level, just try to level the playing field between the magic and mundane.

The problem with this is that you then end up telling the wizard his spell doesn't work. This is okay some of the time, but why would he even take Fly if there are always more winds?

This actually ends up being one of my least favorite things in 3.5. Too many trump cards. And the trump cards are all binary. For instance, casters lose against grapple. Unless they have Freedom of Movement, in which case grapple is rendered useless.

[jmbrown]

There's also the option of going back to the AD&D era of magic :smallbiggrin:

A) There is no concentration. You take damage, your spell fails.
B) You can't move while casting a spell and lose your dex bonus to AC
C) Magic increases your initiative position. In a 3E setting, if your initiative was 19 and you cast a level 3 spell (which usually has a casting time of 3), then your initiative would be bumped down to 16.
D) Magic is actually mysterious and dangerous. Haste ages you, teleportation can send you hundreds of feet above your target or beneath it (which instantly kills you), contacting other planes has a chance to cause you to lose your sanity, contacting and enslaving planar beings is totally dangerous, utility spells like fly have a variable duration, rope trick is 30 minutes per level, even simple spells like identify force you to drink a poisoned substance which leaves you totally unable to adventure until you recover.
E) Get rid of metamagic items. Metamagic feats are fine but good god, who decided metamagic rods were a good idea?

Those are my fixes. In other words, ditch 3E and play AD&D or Castles and Crusades :smallcool:

[Lhurgyof]

There's also the option of going back to the AD&D era of magic :smallbiggrin:

A) There is no concentration. You take damage, your spell fails.
B) You can't move while casting a spell and lose your dex bonus to AC
C) Magic increases your initiative position. In a 3E setting, if your initiative was 19 and you cast a level 3 spell (which usually has a casting time of 3), then your initiative would be bumped down to 16.
D) Magic is actually mysterious and dangerous. Haste ages you, teleportation can send you hundreds of feet above your target or beneath it (which instantly kills you), contacting other planes has a chance to cause you to lose your sanity, contacting and enslaving planar beings is totally dangerous, utility spells like fly have a variable duration, rope trick is 30 minutes per level, even simple spells like identify force you to drink a poisoned substance which leaves you totally unable to adventure until you recover.
E) Get rid of metamagic items. Metamagic feats are fine but good god, who decided metamagic rods were a good idea?

Those are my fixes. In other words, ditch 3E and play AD&D or Castles and Crusades :smallcool:

Or Hackmaster. xD

[Halaster]

Yeah, I guess that pretty much outlines the problem. Every spell that can't be neatly broken into numbers has the potential to alter the course of the game. Luckily for me, my players aren't more imaginative with these than I am, so I guess I'll just stick to RAW. As for lucky rolls: the GM rolls more often than the players do, so chance always favors him. A blown encounter here and there hardly ruins the campaign, and sometimes makes the players feel good, and is more than balanced by all the times I've had to fudge a overly good roll on my part...

Thanks for the enlightening insights.

[WarKitty]

Also the fact that casters can reliably use magic items. So a smart wizard spends his downtime scribing scrolls of those occasionally useful spells.

[Eldan]

- spells against which virtually no immunities exist (are there any?)

Anything else?

Orb of Force tends to be the classical example.

The problem for me is that all these spells are basically what makes caster more interesting to play than the (frankly boring) fighter types. Limiting them too much, or forbidding them outright, makes the game uninteresting.

[Kyeudo]

The problem for me is that all these spells are basically what makes caster more interesting to play than the (frankly boring) fighter types. Limiting them too much, or forbidding them outright, makes the game uninteresting.

Very true. Fighter-types are one trick ponies whose one trick can be rendered useless by such simple spells as Fly or Grease. This is why Tome of Battle came into existance.

[The Big Dice]

Those are my fixes. In other words, ditch 3E and play AD&D or Castles and Crusades :smallcool:
Or OSRIC :smallwink:


Very true. Fighter-types are one trick ponies whose one trick can be rendered useless by such simple spells as Fly or Grease. This is why Tome of Battle came into existance.

If you play your fighter as a one trick pony, that's fine. I tend to go for a stabby and cutty melee weapon, a smashy and crushy melee weapon as a backup and a ranged weapon to finish off. Fly or Grease? No poblem, I got me a crossbow right here.

[BRC]

Personally, I think part of the problem is inflated, which dosn't mean that Spellcasters arn't overpowered, they just arn't as overpowered as one would think from reading discussions.

This is because of the way these discussions work, which is usually along the lines of "How does one do X", and because of the massive number of spells out there, somewhere there WILL be a perfect spell to do X, or at the very least, a few spells. This is because, in these theoretical discussion, the wizard in question knows exactly what they're going up against, and has every spell in the books available.
In actual gameplay, even scrying can only do so much (assuming your DM dosn't block it somehow), and you're limited by what spells you have in your spellbooks (assuming every town, village, and hamlet dosn't contain that convenient item shop that contains every item ever published). However, those restrictions don't show up in these discussions very much.
Also, most of these discussions take place at very high levels, and frequently they use the medium of One Character vs Another, while DnD was designed in terms of a group of characters vs a group of monsters.

Now, casters ARE more powerful than other classes, just not to the point that reading online discussions would lead you to believe. This is largely because there is a MASSIVE amount of spells out there. Any mundane equivalent has to work with the constraint of "What could somebody theoretically do with a sword", with spells, the only constraint is the writer's imagination.
Most people attempt to balance casting by focusing on the Caster, but the caster's arn't the problem, the problem is the spells.

[WarKitty]

Personally, I think part of the problem is inflated, which dosn't mean that Spellcasters arn't overpowered, they just arn't as overpowered as one would think from reading discussions.

This is because of the way these discussions work, which is usually along the lines of "How does one do X", and because of the massive number of spells out there, somewhere there WILL be a perfect spell to do X, or at the very least, a few spells. This is because, in these theoretical discussion, the wizard in question knows exactly what they're going up against, and has every spell in the books available.
In actual gameplay, even scrying can only do so much (assuming your DM dosn't block it somehow), and you're limited by what spells you have in your spellbooks (assuming every town, village, and hamlet dosn't contain that convenient item shop that contains every item ever published). However, those restrictions don't show up in these discussions very much.
Also, most of these discussions take place at very high levels, and frequently they use the medium of One Character vs Another, while DnD was designed in terms of a group of characters vs a group of monsters.

Now, casters ARE more powerful than other classes, just not to the point that reading online discussions would lead you to believe. This is largely because there is a MASSIVE amount of spells out there. Any mundane equivalent has to work with the constraint of "What could somebody theoretically do with a sword", with spells, the only constraint is the writer's imagination.
Most people attempt to balance casting by focusing on the Caster, but the caster's arn't the problem, the problem is the spells.

Which is why I personally favor handing more tricks to the fighter. At higher levels you should be a legendary demigod who can violate the laws of physics with his sheer awesomeness.

[Morty]

Personally, I think part of the problem is inflated, which dosn't mean that Spellcasters arn't overpowered, they just arn't as overpowered as one would think from reading discussions.

This is because of the way these discussions work, which is usually along the lines of "How does one do X", and because of the massive number of spells out there, somewhere there WILL be a perfect spell to do X, or at the very least, a few spells. This is because, in these theoretical discussion, the wizard in question knows exactly what they're going up against, and has every spell in the books available.
In actual gameplay, even scrying can only do so much (assuming your DM dosn't block it somehow), and you're limited by what spells you have in your spellbooks (assuming every town, village, and hamlet dosn't contain that convenient item shop that contains every item ever published). However, those restrictions don't show up in these discussions very much.
Also, most of these discussions take place at very high levels, and frequently they use the medium of One Character vs Another, while DnD was designed in terms of a group of characters vs a group of monsters.

Now, casters ARE more powerful than other classes, just not to the point that reading online discussions would lead you to believe. This is largely because there is a MASSIVE amount of spells out there. Any mundane equivalent has to work with the constraint of "What could somebody theoretically do with a sword", with spells, the only constraint is the writer's imagination.
Most people attempt to balance casting by focusing on the Caster, but the caster's arn't the problem, the problem is the spells.

I agree wholeheartedly. It's also why I'm wary of scaling the non-casters to the casters' level - it ends up as a rocket tag of who gets to do the crazier and more overpowered thing.

[BRC]

I agree wholeheartedly. It's also why I'm wary of scaling the non-casters to the casters' level - it ends up as a rocket tag of who gets to do the crazier and more overpowered thing.
Also, while that may fix the problem in terms of "Who wins in a fight" discussions, but not in actual gameplay. Then instead of one person capable of handing encounters singlehandedly, the entire party suddenly becomes capable of handling the encounter singlehandedly. The Wizard can fly over the monsters, the Rogue can hide behind a speck of dust and sneak by, the fighter can spin his sword around like a helicopter and fly over the battlefield, the Barbarian gets really, really angry and just jumps over the bad guys, and the Bard talks with them until they make him their king.

The problem in actual gameplay isn't the Wizard turning the Fighter into gelatin, it's the wizard flying over the enemies, turning himself invisible, and then making all the monsters into gelatin while the fighter stands there waiting to be useful.

[Fizban]

I don't seem to have it saved and I can't find the old post, but I think the biggest problem has to do with emphasis on party versus emphasis on self. From what I've read, back in 2e the game was a lot more focused on the party, and this carried over into 3e. A lot of magic items in the core books are really expensive for one person, but if the party pools their money they're pretty awesome. This transfers over to charcters. The fighter's hit points aren't just his, he spends them on behalf of the party taking attacks from monsters. The cleric's spells aren't his, he spends them healing and buffing the party. The wizard's spells aren't his, he spends them covering the party's weaknesses and on special situations. Spellcasters were assumed to spend most of their spells on buffing, healing, and helping the party, rather than just winning encounters on their own. The 4 slots per level of the wizard are actually 1 slot for each of 4 people, only 1 of which is the wizard himself, and the special thing about the sorcerer is that you have 2 left to play with after you take care of the whole party.

But, in 3.5, the game shifted towards much more independent characters and wizards started spending all their spells on themselves. So instead of a whole party with magic spread over them, you'd have one magic-less fighter, one magic-less rogue, one over-buffed cleric, and one immune-to-everything wizard with enough save-or-dies to kill all the enemies himself. With casters not wanting to share their spells, magic items got buffed up from artifacts the party shared to magic trinkets the non-casters absolutely needed to keep up with the casters. Then the casters wanted something to do with their money, so they started making magic items that made casters even more powerful (like metamagic rods), and the whole thing just kept spiraling up until the very end.

So how to fix this? Well, if you're playing with later material and everyone's being all independent and covered in bling, with enough magic items to cover all their own healing and buffing, then the casters shouldn't have all those extra spell slots. Subtract 3 spells per day at each spell level of each class (to a minimum of 1, then add bonus spells), to account for not spending spells on the other three people in the party. This should leave the wizard with only enough spells to attack, forcing him to rely on magic items for defense just like everyone else. It should stop the cleric from overbuffing now that he can heal with magic-mart wands instead of spending his own slots-he'll only be able to hulk out once per day. A cut like this will make big magic effects rare again, since with only one or two spells per day at each level casters will actually run out of spells and have to choose when to use them wisely.

Now, if your players are spending their own spell slots on healing and the wizard is spreading his magic around and not just auto-winning, then you don't need to do this, because your party is behaving classically, as the designers expected. This is how a lot of people assume the game is supposed to go anyway, with accepted roles, and it works just fine. But if your players are experienced optimizers that never spend slots on healing and know how to buff themselves invincible while casting no-save-just-lose spells, I'm sure cutting their slots per day down will have the right effect.

There's another way you can look at it, if you don't like thinking of it as "your character is not yours." Since I really don't expect anyone to actually cut down on spells per day thinking like that, you could instead limit them to just their highest two levels of available spells, plus bonus spells from high ability scores. The looks a little wonky, so you might instead go with a hard limit on number of spells. Use the normal tables, but then finish with "to a maximum of X total spells" The point is still to limit the number of extra slots that give casters so much longevity and over-buffability. When looking at it from this direction, the problem is that while their high level slots lets them win major encounters, casters still have tons of lower level slots to make themselves invincible and win all the minor encounters. So, we take those slots away, leaving them with only enough to participate when they're really needed, forcing a choice of when and what to use them on. Something like 6 spells for wizards, 9 for sorcerers, 8 for clerics and 7 for druids might work.

No matter which way you look at it, the reason casters are so crazy in 3.5 is that they have more spell slots than they need. Weather you choose to look at it as magic items filling up old party roles, or as low level spells stacking to be more powerful than they should, either way casters have so many spell slots that they don't have to worry about running out of spells. The solution is therefore to cut down on their spells per day, forcing them to make every spell count.*

Finally, a note on movement spells and such. This is a copypasta from some skills vs. magic threads a while back.
I have a couple posts I saved from a thread about skills vs. magic that might be appropriate:

Skills are eclipsed by magic because magic that invalidates them shows up starting at level 1, but all you have to do is push it back. Jump, Spider Climb, Fly, and Overland Flight are 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th level. If you push them back to 3/4/5/7, it will cost a significant amount of resources to just do it with magic. Extending this to other skills, you could give the same treatment to Levitate, Disguise Self, Alter Self, Invisibility, Silence, and on and on. Kicking back the "utility" magic by 2 spell levels across the board is probably enough to greatly extend the playing field where the casters and the not-casters can play comfortably.

I'd probably leave stuff that helps the whole party, like Secure Shelter, alone, but single target spells that invalidate skills shouldn't start happening till at least 3rd level. Which oddly enough, is the first level you get real mind control with Suggestion, which never felt too ridiculous to me.

The problem with really high skill DCs for ridiculous awesomeness isn't that the DCs are too high, it's that they never get used because the spellcasters have been doing it with magic ever since level 3. If you kick Charm Person, Jump, and Disguise Self all back to 3rd level, suddenly Diplomacy, Jump, Disguise, and Climb are very important skills to have until you get 3rd level spells, and even then it becomes a significant portion of your resources to do something the skillful character has been doing the past 5 levels. Everyone knows about Fly, but even Spider Climb will wreck most ground-bound opponents, but not if it's a 4th level spell. It's well known that by level 10 there are tons of enemies that can fly, but you don't need to fly to fight them, and if you want that kind of advantage then spending a top level slot is the choice you make. When you hit 13th level you're supposed to be the big cheese, so it makes sense that you can fly all day long with Overland Flight. And so on and so on.

As usual it's a lot easier to fix the spells: instead of creating an elaborate skill system to duplicate magic, pushing the spells that invalidate mundane skills (and movement) back by 2 spell levels is a lot easier and should alleviate the problem quite nicely I think.
*Assuming that that's the effect you're going for, which is what it sounded like. Of course, high powered play is fun too, and especially with the later books available it's easy to find a nice balance of power by pumping up all the classes to the same level. But if what you want is a game where both all books are available and spells are a limited resource, then you'll have to cut spell slots. It's probably not perfect (wands and scrolls will get way more powerful by comparison), but nothing is.

[Tyndmyr]

Power in 3.5 comes not from quantity of spells, but from access to spells. This is why the archivist or StP erudite are crazy powerful, while sorcerer and mystic theurge are less so.

[Fizban]

The Archivist actually has more spells per day than the Wizard, and the Erudite has the same number as the Psion. The point is that even the casters with the fewest spells per day (aside from half casters and PrCs) have so many spells they never run out. I challenge someone to make a wizard that can win the whole adventure by himself without any risk using a base of 1 spell/day/level. No fair just doing the whole thing on scrolls either.

[BRC]

The Archivist actually has more spells per day than the Wizard, and the Erudite has the same number as the Psion. The point is that even the casters with the fewest spells per day (aside from half casters and PrCs) have so many spells they never run out. I challenge someone to make a wizard that can win the whole adventure by himself without any risk using a base of 1 spell/day/level. No fair just doing the whole thing on scrolls either.
Well that brings up another reason why discussions inflate the power of spellcasters, yes a Wizard has enough slots to last him all day, but did he prepare them correctly, is he willing to use them.

In actual gameplay, once you encounter a problem, your question isn't "How many spells do I have left", but "How many spells that can help solve this problem do I have left". Also, you never know if this is going to be the most useful time for you to use that spell. 10 goblins are attacking you, you can hit them with a fireball, but later on you might be attacked by 20 goblins, and when that happens you REALLY wish you still had that fireball.
In theoretical discussions, you usually only have one problem to solve that day, and you know what spells are needed to handle it. Theoretical Discusisons never have a wizard wasting slots on a spell that is usually useful, but wasn't in this particular situation, or saving a spell for another encounter that never comes.

[Tyndmyr]

The Archivist actually has more spells per day than the Wizard, and the Erudite has the same number as the Psion. The point is that even the casters with the fewest spells per day (aside from half casters and PrCs) have so many spells they never run out. I challenge someone to make a wizard that can win the whole adventure by himself without any risk using a base of 1 spell/day/level. No fair just doing the whole thing on scrolls either.

But sir, scrolls ARE a class feature of the wizard.

Persisted flight and a reserve feat of choice comes to mind. Use the remaining unused 7 spell slots+all bonus spells for whatever strikes your fancy.

Iot7V is an alternative solution.

[Fizban]

Well that brings up another reason why discussions inflate the power of spellcasters, yes a Wizard has enough slots to last him all day, but did he prepare them correctly, is he willing to use them.

In actual gameplay, once you encounter a problem, your question isn't "How many spells do I have left", but "How many spells that can help solve this problem do I have left". Also, you never know if this is going to be the most useful time for you to use that spell. 10 goblins are attacking you, you can hit them with a fireball, but later on you might be attacked by 20 goblins, and when that happens you REALLY wish you still had that fireball.
In theoretical discussions, you usually only have one problem to solve that day, and you know what spells are needed to handle it. Theoretical Discusisons never have a wizard wasting slots on a spell that is usually useful, but wasn't in this particular situation, or saving a spell for another encounter that never comes.
True, but as mentioned above, there are lots of spells that are always useful in every situation. Even if I wasted the Fireball on the first 10 goblins, a Web or Solid Fog will still be effective on the 20 that show up later. As long as you're preparing the always useful spells, you always have something that can help the situation, and since your number of slots is "enough", there's no problem.

Now, knowing which spells are always useful and being willing to use them is of course the important part of that. I'm definitely not trying to say that schrodenger's wizard is the norm, or that everyone plays nothing but battlefield control/ no save just lose. What I do mean is that I think that those are only possible because the wizard is "hogging" all his spell slots, and that if you cut them down to what is effectively "his" portion, it becomes impossible to do that amount of theoretical optimization (without just going straight to item abuse).


But sir, scrolls ARE a class feature of the wizard.

Persisted flight and a reserve feat of choice comes to mind. Use the remaining unused 7 spell slots+all bonus spells for whatever strikes your fancy.

Iot7V is an alternative solution.

Scrolls are not a class feature, they are an aspect of the inflated magic item system, and trying to live on nothing but scrolls has been proven unsustainable. If you do live on nothing but scrolls then you'll be without any other magic items, and keep in mind the cleric doesn't have any spare slots to keep you alive either. Flight and a reserve feat are not going to defeat everything you fight, unless the DM does so on purpose. And Iot7V is not wizard, it's Iot7V. Yes it's horribly broken, but it has nothing to do with the wizard class by itself.

[Kyeudo]

If you play your fighter as a one trick pony, that's fine. I tend to go for a stabby and cutty melee weapon, a smashy and crushy melee weapon as a backup and a ranged weapon to finish off. Fly or Grease? No poblem, I got me a crossbow right here.

Which I laugh at, because I have Wind Wall up. Seriously, though? A Crossbow? 1d8/x3 damage. No strength added. No bonuses, no special tricks, and one shot a round unless you wasted a feat on Crossbow Reloader.

The Longbow isn't much better. Same problem with Wind Wall, but at least you can get a Strength bonus on the shot and can use your full complement of attacks. Still, going to be very low damage due to a lack of Power Attack and other serious feats.

The Fighter you describe is no less a one-trick pony than any other fighter. He either does one thing (trip, bull-rush, charge, etc.) really well or he pretends to be effective in combat (do to not having enough bonuses in whatever he does). Meanwhile the Wizard and Cleric do the real heavy lifting regardless of what the fighter does.

[Halaster]

Woah, slow down, please.
This is a little different from what I initially heard. So, there's three "factions" now, just for me to get things straight:
1. Magic users are uber, because they have loads and loads of spells they can adapt to a variety of situations
2. Magic users are uber because they have too many slots
3. Magic users are not uber, because they, in fact, don't have very many adaptable spells

Now, 1. vs 2. seems to come down to a matter of style. If your wizard or cleric sees himself as a teamwork kind of guy, he won't solve encounters by himself, because he's prepared spells that work for everyone. That's beside the point though, since it effectively is a self-nerf. Does make the spellcasters more party-friendly of course.

1. vs 3. has me confused, however. Are there lots of spells that fit the description of "always good to prepare", or are there not?

Perhaps it's a matter of definition? I mean, what do you see as solving the encounter "by himself"? Does that mean the wizard alone actually kills every single monster, or do you just mean that he outshines the other characters? I could live with the latter, though it is kinda frustrating. The former, howver is just boring.

As for the scrolls, they're handy to have around, particularly for those spells you don't need most of the time, but when you need them, need them bad. Which of course serves to make the wizard more universal, at a small cost in XP.

[Tyndmyr]

True, but as mentioned above, there are lots of spells that are always useful in every situation. Even if I wasted the Fireball on the first 10 goblins, a Web or Solid Fog will still be effective on the 20 that show up later. As long as you're preparing the always useful spells, you always have something that can help the situation, and since your number of slots is "enough", there's no problem.

Now, knowing which spells are always useful and being willing to use them is of course the important part of that. I'm definitely not trying to say that schrodenger's wizard is the norm, or that everyone plays nothing but battlefield control/ no save just lose. What I do mean is that I think that those are only possible because the wizard is "hogging" all his spell slots, and that if you cut them down to what is effectively "his" portion, it becomes impossible to do that amount of theoretical optimization (without just going straight to item abuse).



Scrolls are not a class feature, they are an aspect of the inflated magic item system, and trying to live on nothing but scrolls has been proven unsustainable. If you do live on nothing but scrolls then you'll be without any other magic items, and keep in mind the cleric doesn't have any spare slots to keep you alive either. Flight and a reserve feat are not going to defeat everything you fight, unless the DM does so on purpose. And Iot7V is not wizard, it's Iot7V. Yes it's horribly broken, but it has nothing to do with the wizard class by itself.

So, you want a wizard build that doesn't use wizard class features, PrCs, or yknow, spells.

In that case, no, wizard is not powerful. I'm just not seeing what the point of this is. If he has access to spells, he can defeat what he wants to defeat. Arbitrarily lowering the # per day merely limits the amount of encounters an optimized wizard obliterates per day. It does not make him more buff prone(standard optimization already makes good use of buffs), nor does it make him more party friendly.

The point of scrolls isn't to live purely off scrolls. It's to use them whenever you don't have the right spell handy. There is NO reason not to scribe scrolls at every available opportunity as a wizard. XP is a river means you'll get the xp back, and you can, by RAW, sell scrolls for the crafting price.

[Eldan]

Solving the encounter by himself generally means "makes it trivial and reduces it to a few rounds of mop-up". Casting sleep on an opponent doesn't kill him, but the three coup de graces from the rest of the party will. Forcecage doesn't kill the melee monster, but makes it easier and a lot safer to do so.
The wizard generally has the ability to reduce a difficult encounter to a trivial one.

[Kesnit]

While this wouldn't work for Cleric or Druid, could a Wizard be nerfed by not having most scrolls show up in Magic Marts or other Wizard's spell books? In other words, limit the Wizard to the spells they choose on level-up.

[JoshuaZ]

While this wouldn't work for Cleric or Druid, could a Wizard be nerfed by not having most scrolls show up in Magic Marts or other Wizard's spell books? In other words, limit the Wizard to the spells they choose on level-up.

Then a wizard is reduced to Tier 2 or slightly weaker. But if they ever encounter another wizard they can still then trade spells or they can plunder spell books from fallen foes.

[Sewercop]

The wizard would just choose the spells that enable him to get the rest of the scrolls\spells he need.
Taking away the magic mart or scrollshops or what you like to call them dont really hurt wizards.

[Kantolin]

Now, if your players are spending their own spell slots on healing and the wizard is spreading his magic around and not just auto-winning, then you don't need to do this, because your party is behaving classically, as the designers expected. This is how a lot of people assume the game is supposed to go anyway, with accepted roles, and it works just fine. But if your players are experienced optimizers that never spend slots on healing and know how to buff themselves invincible while casting no-save-just-lose spells, I'm sure cutting their slots per day down will have the right effect.

There are two problems with this.

One is Clerics, in core. Out of core this becomes more reasonable, but in core it is /difficult/ to play a not-divine-power cleric. I attempted to play a timid backrow goblin cleric, hit level 7, was excited, and then really looked:


Air Walk - Possibly useful? We were in dungeons a lot.
Control Water - Um?
Cure Critical Wounds - yes, that was my goal.
Death Ward - I actually memorized this a bit, and it never got used as we didn't happen to fight any vampires when I had it.
Dimensional Anchor - Who's teleporting at level 7? Maybe when we're much higher level?
Discern Lies - Wha?
Dismissal - Wha?
Divination - I was asked by the DM not to use this.
Divine Power - Is personal.
Freedom of Movement - I tried memorizing it for a bit, and the situations where it came up were rare (although it did come up during a particularly focal grapple-based encounter once)
Giant Vermin - Wha?
Imbue with Spell Ability - I'm trying to be the healer here - this is figuring out 'what do I do with my turns', not 'how can I give other people extremely low level healing'
Inflict Critical Wounds - Not aiming to be a blaster
Magic Weapon, Greater - Everyone who cared had at least a +2 weapon
Neutralize Poison - That happens extremely rarely
Planar Ally, Lesser X - Meh
Poison - Not aiming to be a blaster
Repel Vermin - Wha?
Restoration - Something you memorize after the fact
Sending - This actually came up once, but it's not something you memorize all the time.
Spell Immunity How often do you fight spellcasters for whom this does something, and then see their spells work so you know what to pick?
Summon Monster IV - I ended up using this, but the goal wasn't to be a summoner
Tongues - We had a face who knew a bunch of languages.


I mean... I was unfamiliar with not-core, but the other party members noted how unhappy I was with my fourth level spell selection and were suggesting spells to take.

The cleric class was /designed/ to use Divine Power, Divine Favor, and Righteous Might, and all of those spells are personal - you /can't/ cast them on the party fighter. You have to go out of core if you want your cleric to be a party buffer at all. I spent most of my time memorizing spells that never came up. Using divine power/favor/righteous might is the way it's intended to be used, much like druids are expected to turn into bears and cast spells.

Your argument is then somewhat more true for wizards - they probably weren't expected to spend their slots on save or dies, but that leads to problem two.

Problem two: The Batman wizard, usually, doesn't kill things, and the expected wizard isn't a party-player.

I mean, the (probable) expected wizard was someone who flies and shoots fireballs at things, which is pretty far away from 'spending their spells on their allies' (which was your assertion). If you play a wizard who does this, then while you may be less optimized, you're certainly not playing party support. I mean, V of the Order of the Stick fame just blows things up on his actions (until recently).

And then the batman's wizard's job focuses on battlefield control, then buffing. Use walls of force/stone to corridor off the battlefield, solid fog to trap big threats, then buff up the party fighter so he's effective, and permit him to mop up. Save or dies/loses are used less frequently.

The trouble is that, say, the fighter doesn't bring as much to the table as the cleric. A fighter can go smack something (Kind of hard). A Cleric, say, can go smack something (extremely hard) and then when it smacks him back, cure critical wounds away the problems. That, at its core, is the source of the imbalance.

And then you haveproblmes where, say, the bad guy flies. The fighter turns to the wizard, and the wizard states, "I can cast fly on you, or I can dimensional anchor the bad guy so he doesn't teleport awy and then wall of force away his big scary henchman over there and ready a dispel against the dominate person coming your way. I'm kind of busy."

When this happens for awhile, the fighter's player might begin to feel like he chose to play a boring class, as his turns consist of 'wait until the wizard lets me do things'.

Also! Why does the wizard /have/ to nanny other people? I can understand playing a 'healer' the class and being expected to heal, or playing a 'fighter' and being expected to go fight things, but why does the wizard have to cover the inadequacies of someone else? Now personally, I enjoy playing party buffers and thus tend to do that, but the wizard's spells don't belong to the fighter either - the fighter's allowed to get a glorious kill clearing the room of kobolds with great cleave, and the wizard's allowed to clear the room of kobolds by blowing them up with fireball or meteor swarm or whatever.

The complaint about fighters is that they're not capable of doing things in most of these cases.

[Kesnit]

And then you haveproblmes where, say, the bad guy flies. The fighter turns to the wizard, and the wizard states, "I can cast fly on you, or I can dimensional anchor the bad guy so he doesn't teleport awy and then wall of force away his big scary henchman over there and ready a dispel against the dominate person coming your way. I'm kind of busy."

That is more than 1 round of spells. Why can't the Wizard take one round and cast Fly on the Fighter?

[Koury]

That is more than 1 round of spells. Why can't the Wizard take one round and cast Fly on the Fighter?

I believe the point was that casting Fly on the Fighter is pointless if any of the other things happen.

BBEG port away? Well, good thing you can fly...
Henchmen join the fight? We need you on the ground to distract them anyway.
Fighter about to get Dominated? Buffing him with Fly isn't the best idea.

[Fizban]

So, you want a wizard build that doesn't use wizard class features, PrCs, or yknow, spells.

In that case, no, wizard is not powerful. I'm just not seeing what the point of this is. If he has access to spells, he can defeat what he wants to defeat. Arbitrarily lowering the # per day merely limits the amount of encounters an optimized wizard obliterates per day. It does not make him more buff prone(standard optimization already makes good use of buffs), nor does it make him more party friendly.

The point of scrolls isn't to live purely off scrolls. It's to use them whenever you don't have the right spell handy. There is NO reason not to scribe scrolls at every available opportunity as a wizard. XP is a river means you'll get the xp back, and you can, by RAW, sell scrolls for the crafting price.
Arbitrarily lowering the number of times per day exactly fixes the problem. If the wizard can only auto-win one fight per day, then he by definition will need the rest of the party for the other three fights that day. I never said it would make them use more buffs, I said the opposite: fewer spells per day will mean that they can't buff themselves into invincibility. I'm assuming that the wizard in this case will use his remaining spells to shut down at least one foe every encounter, but if he uses them to buff the party that's fine too.

Scrolls are fine if you're using them because none of your spells can help the situation, but if you're using more scrolls than you have spell slots each day, you're just a bag of magic items pretending to be a wizard. Sustainability isn't about xp, it's about the gp: Doc Roc started a campaign journal a while back where he tried to optimize an aritficer enough to play wizard only using scrolls. While it never finished, he said himself that he was going to run out of money in a few levels, and that's after reducing costs to around 1/4 normal.


While this wouldn't work for Cleric or Druid, could a Wizard be nerfed by not having most scrolls show up in Magic Marts or other Wizard's spell books? In other words, limit the Wizard to the spells they choose on level-up.
This actually leaves you with the same number of spells as the psion has powers. They get the exact same number at the same rate, except the psion can't add more to his "spellbook." If I remember right, psion is supposed to be tier 2, so I agree with JoshuaZ's evaluation.


There are two problems with this.

One is Clerics, in core. Out of core this becomes more reasonable, but in core it is /difficult/ to play a not-divine-power cleric. I attempted to play a timid backrow goblin cleric, hit level 7, was excited, and then really looked:


Air Walk - Possibly useful? We were in dungeons a lot.
Control Water - Um?
Cure Critical Wounds - yes, that was my goal.
Death Ward - I actually memorized this a bit, and it never got used as we didn't happen to fight any vampires when I had it.
Dimensional Anchor - Who's teleporting at level 7? Maybe when we're much higher level?
Discern Lies - Wha?
Dismissal - Wha?
Divination - I was asked by the DM not to use this.
Divine Power - Is personal.
Freedom of Movement - I tried memorizing it for a bit, and the situations where it came up were rare (although it did come up during a particularly focal grapple-based encounter once)
Giant Vermin - Wha?
Imbue with Spell Ability - I'm trying to be the healer here - this is figuring out 'what do I do with my turns', not 'how can I give other people extremely low level healing'
Inflict Critical Wounds - Not aiming to be a blaster
Magic Weapon, Greater - Everyone who cared had at least a +2 weapon
Neutralize Poison - That happens extremely rarely
Planar Ally, Lesser X - Meh
Poison - Not aiming to be a blaster
Repel Vermin - Wha?
Restoration - Something you memorize after the fact
Sending - This actually came up once, but it's not something you memorize all the time.
Spell Immunity How often do you fight spellcasters for whom this does something, and then see their spells work so you know what to pick?
Summon Monster IV - I ended up using this, but the goal wasn't to be a summoner
Tongues - We had a face who knew a bunch of languages.


I mean... I was unfamiliar with not-core, but the other party members noted how unhappy I was with my fourth level spell selection and were suggesting spells to take.

The cleric class was /designed/ to use Divine Power, Divine Favor, and Righteous Might, and all of those spells are personal - you /can't/ cast them on the party fighter. You have to go out of core if you want your cleric to be a party buffer at all. I spent most of my time memorizing spells that never came up. Using divine power/favor/righteous might is the way it's intended to be used, much like druids are expected to turn into bears and cast spells.

Your argument is then somewhat more true for wizards - they probably weren't expected to spend their slots on save or dies, but that leads to problem two.
Using Divine Favor, Divine Power, or Righteous Might alone is just fine, it's using them all together that's the problem. One of them is enough to let you fight, the problem is that a normal cleric has enough slots to use all of them at once every fight, which makes him better than the fighter.


Problem two: The Batman wizard, usually, doesn't kill things, and the expected wizard isn't a party-player.

I mean, the (probable) expected wizard was someone who flies and shoots fireballs at things, which is pretty far away from 'spending their spells on their allies' (which was your assertion). If you play a wizard who does this, then while you may be less optimized, you're certainly not playing party support. I mean, V of the Order of the Stick fame just blows things up on his actions (until recently).

And then the batman's wizard's job focuses on battlefield control, then buffing. Use walls of force/stone to corridor off the battlefield, solid fog to trap big threats, then buff up the party fighter so he's effective, and permit him to mop up. Save or dies/loses are used less frequently.
Before magic items got cheaper, there were a lot of threats that you needed a wizard (or cleric, depending) buff just to survive. When they got easy to find in magic item form, those slots shifted from defense to offense, and the wizard could afford do drop save or dies and massive battlefield control in every fight, instead of just the one where it was really needed. People refer to mop-up as the fighter's role, but mopping up after the wizard has locked everything down isn't any more fun than just standing around after the wizard kills them outright. Providing just one buff, or damaging or locking down one group of enemies in order to even the odds for the rest of the party means they still have to fight to win, and that means they still get to have fun.


The trouble is that, say, the fighter doesn't bring as much to the table as the cleric. A fighter can go smack something (Kind of hard). A Cleric, say, can go smack something (extremely hard) and then when it smacks him back, cure critical wounds away the problems. That, at its core, is the source of the imbalance.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying: casters just bring more to the table than non-casters. Spellcasters have enough spell slots that they can smack something really hard and then also heal themselves afterwards, or make themselves invincible before making things die instantly. If you cut their spells per day, the cleric can smack something really hard, or heal someone back up to full, but can't do both at the same time. A wizard could cast a couple spells that end the whole fight, but he'll have to rely on the party to protect him while he does it. Cutting their spell slots means they can only do as much as one person.


And then you have problems where, say, the bad guy flies. The fighter turns to the wizard, and the wizard states, "I can cast fly on you, or I can dimensional anchor the bad guy so he doesn't teleport awy and then wall of force away his big scary henchman over there and ready a dispel against the dominate person coming your way. I'm kind of busy."

When this happens for awhile, the fighter's player might begin to feel like he chose to play a boring class, as his turns consist of 'wait until the wizard lets me do things'.
See above.

Also! Why does the wizard /have/ to nanny other people? I can understand playing a 'healer' the class and being expected to heal, or playing a 'fighter' and being expected to go fight things, but why does the wizard have to cover the inadequacies of someone else? Now personally, I enjoy playing party buffers and thus tend to do that, but the wizard's spells don't belong to the fighter either - the fighter's allowed to get a glorious kill clearing the room of kobolds with great cleave, and the wizard's allowed to clear the room of kobolds by blowing them up with fireball or meteor swarm or whatever.

The complaint about fighters is that they're not capable of doing things in most of these cases.
It's not nannying, it's acting as part of a group. Why does the fighter have to take hits, why does the cleric have to heal, why does the wizard have to cover everyone's butts? Because that's the whole point of working as a team! Casters have lots of spell slots because before the magic item creep, they were the source of magic for the entire party, so they needed lots of slots to get everyone the help they needed. You're right, the fighter can't do anything in a lot of situations, which is why he turns to the wizard to help him out, with a fly, battlefield control, or whatever spell. And as always, the wizard is supposed to be squishy, so that when he's being attacked, it's the fighter's job to get between the wizard and the fighting. The problem is that when the wizard turns all those spell slots on himself, he becomes not squishy, and solves problems so well that the fighter doesn't get to fight.

I haven't heard anyone argue that my solution wouldn't fix the problem. I've heard that it makes wizards useless, I've heard arguments against how I came to my conclusion (which I can't really refute other than saying "look at it my way", since it's a perfectly valid play style), but I haven't heard that it doesn't fix it. Every, single, problem I've ever heard about casters can boil down to the ability to both defeat foes and cover their own weaknesses in every fight. Reducing their spell slots means that they can not do both in every fight, and will have to carefully weigh their options, like they're supposed to.

[Tyndmyr]

Arbitrarily lowering the number of times per day exactly fixes the problem. If the wizard can only auto-win one fight per day, then he by definition will need the rest of the party for the other three fights that day. I never said it would make them use more buffs, I said the opposite: fewer spells per day will mean that they can't buff themselves into invincibility. I'm assuming that the wizard in this case will use his remaining spells to shut down at least one foe every encounter, but if he uses them to buff the party that's fine too.

That makes for terrible gameplay. For one fight per day, the rest of the party is useless. For the rest, the wizard is useless. Either way, you have bored people sitting around the table twiddling their thumbs.

Balance is not a goal for it's own sake, it's a goal for the sake of ensuring that everyone has fun.


Scrolls are fine if you're using them because none of your spells can help the situation, but if you're using more scrolls than you have spell slots each day, you're just a bag of magic items pretending to be a wizard. Sustainability isn't about xp, it's about the gp: Doc Roc started a campaign journal a while back where he tried to optimize an aritficer enough to play wizard only using scrolls. While it never finished, he said himself that he was going to run out of money in a few levels, and that's after reducing costs to around 1/4 normal.

How so? As a wizard, it's a rare time when I don't have half a dozen wands and 30+ scrolls in my pack. Sure, I use my prepared spells first, if they're appropriate. A wise player never throws money away for no reason. But having a ridiculous amount of options on hand is generally great. I frequently use pearls of power for the same reason. Look, now I have another of those spells that are perfect for this situation.

I do favor Eternal Wands, because I tend to plan for the long term. Using them, you can negate the long term costs of any spell 3rd level or lower. But even just using scrolls, you can do quite a lot. We'll assume you only have scribe scroll and one of the -25% GP cost feats.

Spell level: Cost
Level 1: 9.375 GP
Level 2: 56.25 GP
Level 3: 140.625
Level 4: 262.5

And so forth. Look at WBL and note that you can pack a rather good supply of scrolls. Doing so is sub-optimal, of course, as wands are more efficient, and relying too much on scrolls will impact your ability to buy better magic items. If you ever run too low, though, you can make scrolls cheaper than you can sell them. Problem solved.


Before magic items got cheaper, there were a lot of threats that you needed a wizard (or cleric, depending) buff just to survive. When they got easy to find in magic item form, those slots shifted from defense to offense, and the wizard could afford do drop save or dies and massive battlefield control in every fight, instead of just the one where it was really needed. People refer to mop-up as the fighter's role, but mopping up after the wizard has locked everything down isn't any more fun than just standing around after the wizard kills them outright. Providing just one buff, or damaging or locking down one group of enemies in order to even the odds for the rest of the party means they still have to fight to win, and that means they still get to have fun.

Nope. Magic items are most expensive in core, but this does nothing to put a damper on the tier 1 classes found there. Basically, casters don't really need much in the way of magic items. I generally buy a ring of counterspelling, some interesting magic items to put my int, con and dex stat boosts on. Then, I goof off with the rest. Melee people NEED magic items to compete.


Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying: casters just bring more to the table than non-casters. Spellcasters have enough spell slots that they can smack something really hard and then also heal themselves afterwards, or make themselves invincible before making things die instantly. If you cut their spells per day, the cleric can smack something really hard, or heal someone back up to full, but can't do both at the same time. A wizard could cast a couple spells that end the whole fight, but he'll have to rely on the party to protect him while he does it. Cutting their spell slots means they can only do as much as one person.[/quote[

If the cleric has to choose between smacking someone really hard and healing someone back to full, healing is not the smart choice.

Likewise, if the caster is shorn of spell slots and defense, his best move is not to buff, but to end or trivialize the encounter immediately.

Your solutions lead to less party cooperation, not more.

[quote]I haven't heard anyone argue that my solution wouldn't fix the problem.

I've already said that.


Every, single, problem I've ever heard about casters can boil down to the ability to both defeat foes and cover their own weaknesses in every fight.

That IS the problem yes. Why is that the problem? Because spells are more awesome that hitting things with a pointy stick. The broken part is not the spells/day, but the actual spells themselves.

[kyoryu]

How so? As a wizard, it's a rare time when I don't have half a dozen wands and 30+ scrolls in my pack.


I guarantee if a wizard in a game I ran tried that, they'd have to tell me exactly how they were organizing close to 50 different items so that they could find them quickly in the heat of combat.

[Koury]

I guarantee if a wizard in a game I ran tried that, they'd have to tell me exactly how they were organizing close to 50 different items so that they could find them quickly in the heat of combat.

Most likely a Handy Haversack. I know its the 1st think I buy, even before Int boosting gear and such.

[Tyndmyr]

Most likely a Handy Haversack. I know its the 1st think I buy, even before Int boosting gear and such.

Exactly. I routinely purchase one of those early on. They're surprisingly inexpensive, and given that looting things is sort of what adventurer's do, and you want to be able to carry that loot, you need extradimensional storage anyway.

I'm also a fan of using an inexpensive weapon with a wand socket. So, I have an emergency wand already in my hand, and I threaten. That, with appropriate clothing, makes you look like someone not obviously a wizard, plus, threatening helps out your melee folks at no real cost to you.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The true power of a Wizard lies thusly:

*The wizard has a theoretically limited spell selection.
-This is obviated by scrolls being scribed into spellbooks, or any number of other ways to get spells in your spellbook.

*The wizard must 'guess' ahead of time what he will need, with wasted slots if he guesses wrong
-Unfortunately, the entire Divination school is designed to let him *know* what he will need that day, but see below for the other real reason

*The wizard has limited number of spell slots, thus when he runs out, he's just a commoner
-Unfortunately, with Rope Trick and MMM available, this will never happen. Or simply Teleport the party back to a common base to R&R. Likewise, if a Wizard finds himself with the wrong spell set, or running low, he will simply evacuate, re-memorize spells, and come back perfectly prepared, even without divination.

The wizard is simply too versatile, too flexible, and has way too many 'I win' buttons available to him.

This is why I use an Invocation-based system for casting in my homebrew games. Unlimited use but limited power works much better than limited use but unlimited power, when you can hit a reset on the use counter whenever you want.

[Halaster]

I increasingly get the feeling that the whole idea of casters being overpowered does depend on play style. For example, I've never used the whole encounter distance thing according to RAW. Combat in my games frequently begins when the PCs and their opponents stand face to face, because it's more exciting that way. That, of course, leaves the spellcasters with virtually no time to cast all those dozens of spells they could in theory use. Since a fighter or rogue can generally do whatever he does with zero preparation, he tends to shine more in such situations. Likewise, whether a spellcaster can dominate the game to the point described, where when he runs low, he just tells the party to go home and wait for him to recover (in a rope trick room, if need be), depends a lot on the way the game is played. If a wizard in my games spent 8 hours recovering his spells, because he pwned every single encounter to the point if making it a cakewalk, the bad guys win in that time. Wizards especially tend to be way more careful about throwing spells at every situation if they know they can't just wait however long they wish. Of course, if I now told them to make do with half their slots or whatnot, nobody would play those classes anymore.

It would seem then, that the whole problem rests on a mechanical and static approach to gameplay, which is of course encouraged by the game. Encounters come nicely prepackaged, separated by lots of downtime, if possible conveniently arranged in some kind of dungeon. Sure, that's kinda the default style, but why go with it?

If the story is dynamic, with the bad guys constantly playing their own game, trying to get somewhere and do something, like catch the characters, steal the macguffin, take over the kingdom and deep-fry those baby kittens, so there's no time to lose in stopping them, spellcasters will prepare differently and use their spells with more restraint. You also get a funnier game - for everyone.

[Kantolin]

Using Divine Favor, Divine Power, or Righteous Might alone is just fine, it's using them all together that's the problem.

My point was also to point out that, if you remove those options, you don't have too much of a character. I was consciously attempting to play a heal-buffer cleric, and you really have to step out of core to allow that. If those powers were touch, then the cleric using them on himself would have become more in question.

It was also to counter your statement on 'because your party is behaving classically, as the designers expected', which is untrue for clerics and druids at least.


Providing just one buff, or damaging or locking down one group of enemies in order to even the odds for the rest of the party means they still have to fight to win, and that means they still get to have fun.

I think you're misreading the intent of that. I'm pointing out again that the 'designer intent' was for wizards to run around fireballing everything and this would be effective. I'm then noting that the contrary (the batman wizard), by its nature, is a party-friendly option and not the horror you're thinking of, which are generally thought-exercise 'god' wizards.



Why does the fighter have to take hits,

He doesn't. The archer-fighter is a perfectly viable build even in core, and tends to chill waaay over there shooting arrows at things.


why does the cleric have to heal,

He doesn't. He can instead be your frontliner taking the hits and dishing them out.


Because that's the whole point of working as a team!

There's a difference between 'help your friends' and 'I demand you use your actions for me because I'm incompetent'. Also, on a team, everyone gets to shine - having played the dedicated buffer quite a few times (Again, I enjoy it), you don't shine hardly ever. There is no 'Wizards must not shine' rule. Teamwork can be the fighter grapples the enemy to free up the wizard so the wizard can kill everything.

Edit: You certainly don't shine as much as the lucky roll on the empowered fireball taking out the entire room of pseudo-threatening things, or the lucky critical hit taking out a boss before he caused more pain


The problem is that when the wizard turns all those spell slots on himself, he becomes not squishy, and solves problems so well that the fighter doesn't get to fight.

Again we get to the 'Sorry fighter, I can't let you fly, I have to use dimensional anchor.' problem. Personally, if flying is what's necessary, I'm all for the fighter letting himself fly rather than being a useless lump until the wizard (who is, in fact, just an augmentation on the fighter's sword) fixes this rather than slinging fireballs.

(again, I enjoy buffing and buffing is outrageously effective. And again, I can totally understand other people not enjoying buffing).


I haven't heard anyone argue that my solution wouldn't fix the problem.

Limiting spell slots of wizards will make them be more careful with those slots and try to use them maximuly effectively. LImiting to the point where they can't function means nobody will play a wizard, and yes banning wizards does ensure that wizards aren't overpowered in your game. (It also means that any of these situations where you insist 'the wizard must help the fighter for the party to succeed' are unsolveable now).


Every, single, problem I've ever heard about casters can boil down to the ability to both defeat foes and cover their own weaknesses in every fight.

Hey, when there /is/ a fighter there, most wizard PCs I'm aware of accept the fact that said fighter is present and pleasantly cooperate to try to get the most out of 'fighter wants to tank'. The fighters rush forward, the wizards stay back and cast spells. Just when the fighter becomes useless, the wizard usually isn't, and forcing the wizard to take actions to help the fighter is lame - he signed on to be more than an augmentation on the fighter's sword.


Reducing their spell slots means that they can not do both in every fight, and will have to carefully weigh their options, like they're supposed to.

I really don't think, unless they become completely useless, that this will in any way aid team play. It will encourage ending combats immediately and then being unable to contribute, and if your goal is 'I don't want wizards to be able to contribute very often' then that's not exactly a pleasant goal (Or you could just rename wizards 'fighters' and fighters 'wizards' and have a similar effect).

[Tyndmyr]

I increasingly get the feeling that the whole idea of casters being overpowered does depend on play style.

Well, you can play casters badly, sure. You can play anything badly.


For example, I've never used the whole encounter distance thing according to RAW. Combat in my games frequently begins when the PCs and their opponents stand face to face, because it's more exciting that way. That, of course, leaves the spellcasters with virtually no time to cast all those dozens of spells they could in theory use. Since a fighter or rogue can generally do whatever he does with zero preparation, he tends to shine more in such situations.

Casters are very amenable to init pumping. Between that and long duration buffs, they don't NEED to spend multiple rounds casting before the adversaries close to range. All you've really done is make spot and listen comparatively unimportant, and allowed the casters to not worry about the range on their spells.


Likewise, whether a spellcaster can dominate the game to the point described, where when he runs low, he just tells the party to go home and wait for him to recover (in a rope trick room, if need be), depends a lot on the way the game is played. If a wizard in my games spent 8 hours recovering his spells, because he pwned every single encounter to the point if making it a cakewalk, the bad guys win in that time. Wizards especially tend to be way more careful about throwing spells at every situation if they know they can't just wait however long they wish. Of course, if I now told them to make do with half their slots or whatnot, nobody would play those classes anymore.

Honestly, I've never had to resort to rope trick simply because I was out of spells. Typically, the entire party runs dry on resources before I hit empty on just my slots. I also tend to pack a reserve feat, and I've got scrolls on backup, so my endurance is, like the fighter, limited solely by my hp. The actual amount of spell slots is not terribly relevant. This is true even though my groups frequently dramatically exceed four encounters per day.

And if the bad guys win because the entire party was out of resources, they were going to win anyways. Pushing ahead while out of spells and hp is death.


It would seem then, that the whole problem rests on a mechanical and static approach to gameplay, which is of course encouraged by the game. Encounters come nicely prepackaged, separated by lots of downtime, if possible conveniently arranged in some kind of dungeon. Sure, that's kinda the default style, but why go with it?

No, no, back to back encounters are MUCH better for casters. Minute/level and shorter buffs wear off otherwise. Sometimes even 10min/level ones wear off in a slow dungeon crawl. Rapid back to back encounters are more efficient for generating xp and gold. Well, for casters, anyhow. Lack of opportunity to heal may make your melee people cry.


If the story is dynamic, with the bad guys constantly playing their own game, trying to get somewhere and do something, like catch the characters, steal the macguffin, take over the kingdom and deep-fry those baby kittens, so there's no time to lose in stopping them, spellcasters will prepare differently and use their spells with more restraint. You also get a funnier game - for everyone.

Er, I have difficulty imagining a game where the above doesn't happen. Bad guys are always doing things, sure. That's why the wizard is obliterating things.

A more optimally played wizard results in parties chewing through encounters faster, not slower, and with less overall risk. Putting a time limit on adventures doesn't discourage optimization, it merely discourages "do one encounter, rest to regain all spells", which in practice, doesn't really happen. In practice, optimized casters only use a fraction of their power on an encounter, and are generally capable of taking on quite a lot of encounters in a day. More so, than say, a generic blaster wizard would be.

And yes, blaster wizard was the WoTC template for them. Not buff wizard.

[Hague]

The DM has lots of options for dealing with teleportation. In Eberron, the encouraging factor is to simply say that in some areas teleportation simply doesn't work. You can't, for instance, teleport into the City of the Dead on Aerenal.

If you want to keep PCs grounded, add a trap element that dispels flight effects. The trap element can be disabled or destroyed, but it can't be easily bypassed. Also, since many magic traps reset, it can become a battle of spell-attrition to keep encountering these traps. Another route is to make the objective related to the movement of a character or object to a specific destination. If Jerraen Beldegan, the famous Linguist needs to study the carvings in various spots of a shattered cliff ruin, then it won't be efficient because Jerraen needs to take time to study each area thorughly, stalling the PCs efforts.

[Fizban]

That makes for terrible gameplay. For one fight per day, the rest of the party is useless. For the rest, the wizard is useless. Either way, you have bored people sitting around the table twiddling their thumbs.
Yes, it is terrible gameplay. But it's better than having bored people sitting around the table twiddling their thumbs in every fight.

How so? As a wizard, it's a rare time when I don't have half a dozen wands and 30+ scrolls in my pack.
I'm not saying you shouldn't have options, I'm saying that if the spells per day were reduced and you tried to use scrolls to play as if they weren't, it wouldn't work forever.

Nope. Magic items are most expensive in core, but this does nothing to put a damper on the tier 1 classes found there. Basically, casters don't really need much in the way of magic items. I generally buy a ring of counterspelling, some interesting magic items to put my int, con and dex stat boosts on. Then, I goof off with the rest. Melee people NEED magic items to compete.
I think you're reading my meaning backwards. Melee isn't supposed to NEED all those magic items: the casters are supposed to provide those effects, which is why the items are so expensive in core. The problem is that casters started hogging spells first, which led to the price reductions that make it even possible for melee to afford all the different effects that the casters stopped giving them. Basically, since people make single character builds instead of whole parties, the teamwork the game used to be balanced on is thrown out of whack, and the magic item system changed to compensate.

If the cleric has to choose between smacking someone really hard and healing someone back to full, healing is not the smart choice.

Likewise, if the caster is shorn of spell slots and defense, his best move is not to buff, but to end or trivialize the encounter immediately.

Your solutions lead to less party cooperation, not more.
I am aware that healing is suboptimal, and that casters will not want to buff with so few spell slots. The whole point of reducing the spell slots is because in this model they aren't doing it in the first place. With magic items taking the role of healing and buffing/utility, casters have too many spell slots left over that they can use to trivialize encounters to the point where it's not fun for the rest of the party. My solutions assume that the party already doesn't cooperate, and are meant to force them to do so.

I've been assuming a heavily optimized wizard who has spells with either save DCs so high they never fail, or using spells that otherwise always work. In this situation, they only need one spell to contribute to an encounter, and giving them any more than that allows them to trivialize all encounters while removing any need for party assistance. The default spells per day give them more than enough to do both with this level of optimization, therefore the easiest solution is to cut spells per day.

I've already said that.
My apologies, it sounded more to me like you were saying that it would make the wizard too weak to play, and as such they would have to rely on magic items and broken prestige classes. So you think they could still break every encounter in half with a base of 1 spell/day/level?

That IS the problem yes. Why is that the problem? Because spells are more awesome that hitting things with a pointy stick. The broken part is not the spells/day, but the actual spells themselves.
Of course spells are more awesome than hitting things with a pointy stick: that's why they're magic, and being able to cast them every round of every fight is going to be broken even if you nerf the problem spells. And that's not just obviously broken things like polymorph, we're talking Slow and Solid Fog here: spells that are good in every situation like that would need to be nerfed across the board. It's much easier to cut the spells per day than change half the spells in the game, just as it's easier to cut Shapechange than to rewrite the whole magic system if you want to keep a more normal game sane.


My point was also to point out that, if you remove those options, you don't have too much of a character. I was consciously attempting to play a heal-buffer cleric, and you really have to step out of core to allow that. If those powers were touch, then the cleric using them on himself would have become more in question.

It was also to counter your statement on 'because your party is behaving classically, as the designers expected', which is untrue for clerics and druids at least.
I can agree with that, there definitely aren't many nifty cleric spells in core for a buffer, and the personal only spells were added because cleric were sick of healing all the time. I'm still fairly confident that the "designer's intent" was the tank/skillmonkey/healbot/blaster setup, however. There's a post somewhere quoting one of the designers that seemed pretty credible, basically saying what little playtesting they did was of that style of party (shame on me for not having links, I know :smallfrown:).

I think you're misreading the intent of that. I'm pointing out again that the 'designer intent' was for wizards to run around fireballing everything and this would be effective. I'm then noting that the contrary (the batman wizard), by its nature, is a party-friendly option and not the horror you're thinking of, which are generally thought-exercise 'god' wizards.
Blasters actually get the best of this: they directly help out by dealing damage that stacks with damage from everyone else, but they don't stop everyone else from getting a change to fight. A maximized batman wizard on the other hand, leaves his opponents dead or completely helpless, which is no fun to mop up after. I am indeed assuming an even higher level of optimization, but that's what people talk about when they say the magic system needs fixing, isn't it?

He doesn't. The archer-fighter is a perfectly viable build even in core, and tends to chill waaay over there shooting arrows at things.
He doesn't. He can instead be your frontliner taking the hits and dishing them out.
There's a difference between 'help your friends' and 'I demand you use your actions for me because I'm incompetent'. Also, on a team, everyone gets to shine - having played the dedicated buffer quite a few times (Again, I enjoy it), you don't shine hardly ever. There is no 'Wizards must not shine' rule. Teamwork can be the fighter grapples the enemy to free up the wizard so the wizard can kill everything.
The archer fighter and the tank cleric still don't have any fun if the wizard already ended the encounter all by himself. I think there might have been some confusion, I didn't mean that wizards are supposed to be nothing but buffers, that would be silly. What I'm saying is that the 4 slots should be divided amongst the 4 man party, because they're sharing their talents with you (be they hp, dps, or whatever). So that's 3 buffs/ utilities for the other guys, and then 1spell at each level for being awesome yourself. The wizard still has plenty of chance to shine, he's just not supposed to spend all his spells shining on his own. One spell at each level means there should be at least two fights per day (your top two spells) where you get to pull something awesome and kill half the guys in the room by yourself, and the lower level spells let you contribute without stealing the spotlight. While the level breakups might be different, I'd bet that a buffer/batman wizard that gets along well with the party (and thus does not need any rule changes), spends about 3/4 of his spells on the rest of the party, and the last 1/4 on breaking up encounters.

Again we get to the 'Sorry fighter, I can't let you fly, I have to use dimensional anchor.' problem. Personally, if flying is what's necessary, I'm all for the fighter letting himself fly rather than being a useless lump until the wizard (who is, in fact, just an augmentation on the fighter's sword) fixes this rather than slinging fireballs.

(again, I enjoy buffing and buffing is outrageously effective. And again, I can totally understand other people not enjoying buffing).
Huh? You've lost me. Yes, the fighter can make himself fly, because magic items for that are very cheap now. Back when they weren't, the wizard used to have to spend a spell slot on it, and now that slot is free for making the wizard harder to kill, so he doesn't need a fighter.

Limiting spell slots of wizards will make them be more careful with those slots and try to use them maximuly effectively. LImiting to the point where they can't function means nobody will play a wizard, and yes banning wizards does ensure that wizards aren't overpowered in your game. (It also means that any of these situations where you insist 'the wizard must help the fighter for the party to succeed' are unsolveable now).
That's one of the things I'm asking: is there a level of optimization so high that a wizard can break the game even with only 1 slot/day/level? If not, then that problem is solved. I believe that a wizard (or other caster) can still contribute effectively to the party with that many spells, and yes I would play one in that game (obviously this is still untested so I'd be a bit nervous, but I'd be willing to try). Yes they would have to make every spell as lethal as possible, but they were already doing that, which is why we cut the spells known.

Hey, when there /is/ a fighter there, most wizard PCs I'm aware of accept the fact that said fighter is present and pleasantly cooperate to try to get the most out of 'fighter wants to tank'. The fighters rush forward, the wizards stay back and cast spells. Just when the fighter becomes useless, the wizard usually isn't, and forcing the wizard to take actions to help the fighter is lame - he signed on to be more than an augmentation on the fighter's sword.
I'm getting lost again. If the players in your game already work together like this, then the magic system is already working just fine, so why would you even consider a change? I would only suggest a fix like this for a game where people want to maximize their characters as much as possible, but don't want the wizard to outshine everyone. I'm not sure where you got the idea that the wizard is nothing more than a sword ornament: in a game with normal spells, the wizard should have some spells left over after he helps the rest of the party. In a game with high optimization and reduced spells, the fighter doesn't need the wizard because his magic items are giving him all the buffs, so the wizard can spend all of his reduced spells however he wants. Other than that, they still need each other, because the wizard can attack things in ways the fighter can't, while the wizard is squishier than the fighter.

I really don't think, unless they become completely useless, that this will in any way aid team play. It will encourage ending combats immediately and then being unable to contribute, and if your goal is 'I don't want wizards to be able to contribute very often' then that's not exactly a pleasant goal (Or you could just rename wizards 'fighters' and fighters 'wizards' and have a similar effect).
The system already encourages ending combat immediately because every round of combat is a chance to get hurt and/or die. That's why save or dies are better in the first place: because they kill someone in a single action. I wouldn't say that wizards won't contribute very often: they would still have enough spells to cast one or two every fight which, since they're heavily optimized, will be enough to seriously impact every fight. Outside of combat, they should have extra spell slots from a high int score that will give them low level spells to spend on all the skill-invalidating spells, and if the expect more combat on a given day they can bring more combat spells. Encouraging teamwork? Well, if your players aren't working together because they don't need each other, taking away the excess resources that make them capable of winning on their own is the only way I can think of to get them to do so, mechanically speaking.

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

Again, my proposed solution is for a specific type of game. A game where the casters have already optimized themselves to the point that no spell fails, and non-casters rely solely on items for needed magic effects because the casters are using all their spells to hog the spotlight. In this game, the casters have more spell slots than they need to contribute reasonably, so I suggest removing 3 spell slots/spell level/day (minimum 1, then add bonus slots). This means that casters will have to rely more on their magic items and party members, and will not be able to win every encounter of the day without help (hopefully). If your group already works well together and doesn't have a problem with casters outshining everyone else, then this is not for you. It is meant as a solution to levels of optimization that most people don't even play with, but many discuss. I suggest it, asking if it would solve the problem of casters outshining the rest of the party in a heavily optimized game and only that, because if applied to a party where the casters already function as part of the group, it will obviously make them far more difficult to play. If you don't have a problem, you don't need to fix it. That should be the first rule of any debate on if something is broken.

[Shatteredtower]

The main problem is how little effort is required for spellcasting. As I see it, this could be managed by using Concentration checks to limit the duration and accumulation of spells, and increasing the standard DCs (save for casting defensively) by 5.

Invisibilty then gets a DC 12 check to sustain it past the initial round, +1 per round after that. If you're also maintaining Fly and Solid Fog, the DC starts at 19, with things having to give according to how badly a check fails. It won't matter if the source was scroll or staff either. Potions would be an exception to avoid making them worthless, though some measure for limiting their stacking should also be considered.

The problem with this system is it renders some spells (e.g. control weather) useless if applied each round, while it has little effect on, say, Sleep if checks are made at the end of each duration increment. Still the latter option can generally be just restrictive enough in the long term.

[Halaster]

Well, you can play casters badly, sure. You can play anything badly.

Yeah, right. Not what I meant, though.



Casters are very amenable to init pumping. Between that and long duration buffs, they don't NEED to spend multiple rounds casting before the adversaries close to range. All you've really done is make spot and listen comparatively unimportant, and allowed the casters to not worry about the range on their spells.

Quite the contrary. Spot and Listen are supremely important, because you never know when an encounter will happen. And I don't know of any spell that would last long enough to just cast it and wait for the point when you need it. I've frankly never seen a caster buff himself invincible and just walk around like that, because chances are he will be debuffed and spell-less when the fun begins. I'm not a mean DM, but if anyone did that, I'd make sure to start whatever I have planned moments after his buffs run out.



Honestly, I've never had to resort to rope trick simply because I was out of spells. Typically, the entire party runs dry on resources before I hit empty on just my slots. I also tend to pack a reserve feat, and I've got scrolls on backup, so my endurance is, like the fighter, limited solely by my hp. The actual amount of spell slots is not terribly relevant. This is true even though my groups frequently dramatically exceed four encounters per day.

What is a reserve feat? I know and play almost exclusively core, so that simply never came up. And yes, if all a wizards spells apply, by level 7 or so he can last all day. But that is the point, I'm still not convinced they necessarily do. I more frequently see wizards entering at least one encounter a day with mostly spells they can't use.


And if the bad guys win because the entire party was out of resources, they were going to win anyways. Pushing ahead while out of spells and hp is death.

True enough, but then there is nothing special about the wizard again. He's out of spells, the fighter is low on hp, everyone agrees not to forge ahead, and a nice DM won't force them to, or he'll and up with a TPK.


No, no, back to back encounters are MUCH better for casters. Minute/level and shorter buffs wear off otherwise. Sometimes even 10min/level ones wear off in a slow dungeon crawl. Rapid back to back encounters are more efficient for generating xp and gold. Well, for casters, anyhow. Lack of opportunity to heal may make your melee people cry.

I'm not talking about back to back, just more or less randomly spaced. Unpredictable. There's a long road ahead and the bad guys have a lair somewhere along that road. There are also monsters in the wilderness along the road. You don't know if and when they attack. You don't know what exactly they are. You don't know when you will reach the bad guys' lair. Will there be patrols around it? There is time between encounters, but you never know how much. That's how I play.


Er, I have difficulty imagining a game where the above doesn't happen. Bad guys are always doing things, sure. That's why the wizard is obliterating things.
A more optimally played wizard results in parties chewing through encounters faster, not slower, and with less overall risk. Putting a time limit on adventures doesn't discourage optimization, it merely discourages "do one encounter, rest to regain all spells", which in practice, doesn't really happen. In practice, optimized casters only use a fraction of their power on an encounter, and are generally capable of taking on quite a lot of encounters in a day. More so, than say, a generic blaster wizard would be.
And yes, blaster wizard was the WoTC template for them. Not buff wizard.
Again, it's not about time constraints, but about unpredictability. If you don't know when or what will happen beforehand, you can't possibly optimize to match, nor can you just rely on some spells lasting long enough to just cast them ahead of time.

As for the fractions, I wonder:
A 10th level wizard with no obscure specials has something like 20 spells in any given day (counting out 0 level). A 10th level fighter, again with no funny stuff from splatbook X, has, on average, something like 90hp. Even assuming that the wizard could literally use every spell in his list on a given day, that would mean he goes through 2 spells for every 9hp the fighter loses (assuming that hp are the only resource the fighter brings to the group). I can see that happening, depending on the spells and encounters. Besides, a cleric for example would shift that balance by losing spells while others gain hp. And, even if you assume that a cleric is better off buffing himself insensible, only a jerk would deny another party member spontaneous healing based on the assumption that he might need the slot to buff up later.

[Koury]

My apologies, it sounded more to me like you were saying that it would make the wizard too weak to play, and as such they would have to rely on magic items and broken prestige classes. So you think they could still break every encounter in half with a base of 1 spell/day/level?
*snip*
That's one of the things I'm asking: is there a level of optimization so high that a wizard can break the game even with only 1 slot/day/level? If not, then that problem is solved. I believe that a wizard (or other caster) can still contribute effectively to the party with that many spells, and yes I would play one in that game (obviously this is still untested so I'd be a bit nervous, but I'd be willing to try). Yes they would have to make every spell as lethal as possible, but they were already doing that, which is why we cut the spells known.
*snip*
Again, my proposed solution is for a specific type of game. A game where the casters have already optimized themselves to the point that no spell fails, and non-casters rely solely on items for needed magic effects because the casters are using all their spells to hog the spotlight. In this game, the casters have more spell slots than they need to contribute reasonably, so I suggest removing 3 spell slots/spell level/day (minimum 1, then add bonus slots). This means that casters will have to rely more on their magic items and party members, and will not be able to win every encounter of the day without help (hopefully). If your group already works well together and doesn't have a problem with casters outshining everyone else, then this is not for you. It is meant as a solution to levels of optimization that most people don't even play with, but many discuss. I suggest it, asking if it would solve the problem of casters outshining the rest of the party in a heavily optimized game and only that, because if applied to a party where the casters already function as part of the group, it will obviously make them far more difficult to play. If you don't have a problem, you don't need to fix it. That should be the first rule of any debate on if something is broken.

If you go by the standard 4 encounters a day, an optimized Wizard should be able to end all of them (end defined as land a Save or Lose or Save or Suck and most or all of the enemies) with only 1 spell/level/day.

I'm fairly certain it would involve use of Uncanny Forethought. At least, I would if I were to attempt to do that.


Quite the contrary. Spot and Listen are supremely important, because you never know when an encounter will happen. And I don't know of any spell that would last long enough to just cast it and wait for the point when you need it. I've frankly never seen a caster buff himself invincible and just walk around like that, because chances are he will be debuffed and spell-less when the fun begins. I'm not a mean DM, but if anyone did that, I'd make sure to start whatever I have planned moments after his buffs run out. You're not a mean DM but you'd wait for all his spells to run out? Seems kinda mean to me.

And when people talk about all day buffs, I'm under the impression they are refering to hr/level duration spells. In 12 hours, when the spell wears off, you're usually done for the day anyway.

[Halaster]

OK, maybe I am mean. :smallcool:
No, seriously, I think that kind of playing should be discouraged. If the wizard thinks it's no problem to cast a buff with limited duration, because "obviously" something just has to happen while that buff lasts, that is an imposition on my DMing that I'm not going to support. It amounts to telling me how to space my encounters. And that kind of thing can really ruin the game for everyone, because then the wizard turns it into his one-man show.

As for the hour-based buffs, sure they exist, but their number is limited, as are their effects. If a wizard wants to have mage armor and protection from arrows on and read to all detections like the party pack mule for the entire day, so be it. But a spell like Stoneskin, that lasts 2 hours, when those spells last 12 hours, I suggest you wait until you need them if I'm your DM, cause casting them out of the blue will get you in trouble.

It's all fine and well if you can see something coming. Casting Stoneskin a few minutes before you kick down the evil temple's main gate is just good sense. But casting it after lunch, because you haven't had an encounter all day, so there's bound to be one in the next two hours, that's just plain exploitative and will be dealt with accordingly.

[Emmerask]

The true power of a Wizard lies thusly:

*The wizard has a theoretically limited spell selection.
-This is obviated by scrolls being scribed into spellbooks, or any number of other ways to get spells in your spellbook.

*The wizard must 'guess' ahead of time what he will need, with wasted slots if he guesses wrong
-Unfortunately, the entire Divination school is designed to let him *know* what he will need that day, but see below for the other real reason

*The wizard has limited number of spell slots, thus when he runs out, he's just a commoner
-Unfortunately, with Rope Trick and MMM available, this will never happen. Or simply Teleport the party back to a common base to R&R. Likewise, if a Wizard finds himself with the wrong spell set, or running low, he will simply evacuate, re-memorize spells, and come back perfectly prepared, even without divination.


I agree those are most of the issues, though in my games these are no issue anymore due to modifications.

The main issue I still have, which are not wizard specific but spellcaster specific, without any universal solution are the plot breaking spells like speak with dead and its like. Yes you can circumvent them some of the time with elaborate plots but with all those spells you are bound to forget one or more without extreme prep time^^

[Koury]

As for the hour-based buffs, sure they exist, but their number is limited, as are their effects. If a wizard wants to have mage armor and protection from arrows on and read to all detections like the party pack mule for the entire day, so be it. But a spell like Stoneskin, that lasts 2 hours, when those spells last 12 hours, I suggest you wait until you need them if I'm your DM, cause casting them out of the blue will get you in trouble.

From a current character of mine, a copy/paste of her all day buffs that are always active.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ~*~*~
Elemental Body (Air) (14 hrs)
----------------------------
Fly 40 ft (Perfect)
Immune: Poison, Paralysis, Sleep, Stunning, Flanking, Critical Hits
Air Mastery - Airborne creatures take a -1 penalty on attack rolls and damage rolls against you.
[Air] Subtype
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ~*~*~
Heroes Feast (12 hrs)
-------------------
1d8+7 Temp HP
+1 Morale to Attack Rolls and Will Saves
Immune: Fear
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ~*~*~
Greater Mage Armor (14 hrs)
---------------------------
+6 Armor Bonus
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ~*~*~
Greater Magic Weapon (14 hrs)
-------------------------------
+3 Enhancement Bonus
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ~*~*~
Divine Insight (14 hrs or discharged)
-------------------
Discharge for +10 competence to one skill check
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ~*~*~
Heart of Water (14 hrs or discharged)
-------------------
Swim Speed equal to land speed.
+8 Swim
+5 Escape Artist
Discharge for 1 round/lvl Freedom of Movement
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ~*~*~
Heart of Fire (14 hrs or discharged)
-----------------
+10 ft movement speed
Gain 20 Fire Resist
Discharge for Fire Shield
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ~*~*~

Those are just what I personally use on that charater. There are many others, I'd assume.

[Halaster]

Actually, I welcome the "plot breakers", because I prefer not to hang my plots on secrets that need some more or less specific trick to uncover them. If I do hide some information, I'll need to find a way, or several ways, my players can ultimately uncover it. Then it turns out they can't think of those ways, and I end up handing them the secret ex machina or watching them stumble around. Some DMs like that, I get bored rather quickly. So if my group has some way of digging up the secret themselves, all the better. Spellcaster players rarely forget their spells, and look for ways to use them, so here's one thing they are guaranteed to think of. *sigh of relief*

As a non-D20 example: my Trinity party contains one Clairsentient and one Telepath, plus a Shapeshifter. There's virtually nothing they can't dig up - appropriate, as they are private investigators. It's acting on the knowledge that makes for the adventure.

@Koury:
I stick with core, that knocks out like 90% of your list

[The Glyphstone]

OK, maybe I am mean. :smallcool:
No, seriously, I think that kind of playing should be discouraged. If the wizard thinks it's no problem to cast a buff with limited duration, because "obviously" something just has to happen while that buff lasts, that is an imposition on my DMing that I'm not going to support. It amounts to telling me how to space my encounters. And that kind of thing can really ruin the game for everyone, because then the wizard turns it into his one-man show.

As for the hour-based buffs, sure they exist, but their number is limited, as are their effects. If a wizard wants to have mage armor and protection from arrows on and read to all detections like the party pack mule for the entire day, so be it. But a spell like Stoneskin, that lasts 2 hours, when those spells last 12 hours, I suggest you wait until you need them if I'm your DM, cause casting them out of the blue will get you in trouble.

It's all fine and well if you can see something coming. Casting Stoneskin a few minutes before you kick down the evil temple's main gate is just good sense. But casting it after lunch, because you haven't had an encounter all day, so there's bound to be one in the next two hours, that's just plain exploitative and will be dealt with accordingly.

Where do you draw the line, though? Would you extend that policy to long-duration buffs like, say, the list above? If the wizard has a slew of buffs that last 14 hours, are you going to delay the day's first encounter until 14 hours and 5 minutes after they start their day? Not letting players dictate encounters by the presence of their buff spells is just smart GMing. Deliberately forcing them to expend resources and waiting till they've done so before giving an encounter is exactly the opposite.

EDIT: Caught the edit. Core helps, but even stuff like Foresight, with the aid of a metamagic rod, can last for 8-9 hours once they're capable of casting it. The general concept stands regardless of exactly what buffs are active - sadistically building encounter timing around when the players are unbuffed is just as bad as meekly building it around when they are.

[Koury]

@Koury:
I stick with core, that knocks out like 90% of your list

Eww, just core is so boring. :smallyuk:

I really don't like playing Wizards if at least Spell Compendium isn't in play. The 350 or so spells just isn't enough. Especially once you realize there are 100 or so spells that are the same thing. Invisibility and Invisibiliy, Greater. Summon Monster I-IX, Owl's Wisdom and Owl's Wisdom, Mass, etc, etc.

Yeah. Not my thing. :smallredface:

[Halaster]

Like I said, 1hr/level buffs are OK, anything less, not so much. Basically, if it lasts for a full day of traveling/adventuring, who am I to nerf it? Likewise, if there is a reasonable expectation of trouble within the duration of the buff, it's fine. I only object to buffing "for good measure" and then complaining if the encounter takes place after that time.

[The Glyphstone]

Players with that sort of entitlement complex deserve to have their spells drained.:smallwink:

The solution, of course, is to be a War Weaver...not only can you buff the entire party with one action, you can apply multiple short-duration spells in the process.:smallbiggrin:

[Emmerask]

Actually, I welcome the "plot breakers", because I prefer not to hang my plots on secrets that need some more or less specific trick to uncover them. If I do hide some information, I'll need to find a way, or several ways, my players can ultimately uncover it. Then it turns out they can't think of those ways, and I end up handing them the secret ex machina or watching them stumble around. Some DMs like that, I get bored rather quickly. So if my group has some way of digging up the secret themselves, all the better. Spellcaster players rarely forget their spells, and look for ways to use them, so here's one thing they are guaranteed to think of. *sigh of relief*


Yes, I don´t deny that sometimes the "plot breakers" have its uses especially if the group doesn´t get any of the million hints you throw at them explaining where it is they so desperately want to go.
But they also limit the variety of stories you are able to tell, the king was murdered by one of the lords? you either have to give the murderer extreme powers, he must be able to act without gods knowledge, his murder must be done in a way to circumvent speak with dead, he must be able to resist zone of truth and detect evil to an extend, he must be very skilled in bluff etc which make this character a bit unrealistic being able to do all that.

Or else the story which was intended to be an epic journey becomes a half and hour episode.
Well you could also have the party know who the murderer is but they have to collect evidence but that is a different style of gameplay.

So those spells really are a double edged swor, sometimes I thank god that they have it and I don´t have to narrate 20 more hours of them stumbling around doing very little and sometimes I course them for making my life so difficult :smallbiggrin:

[Maralais]

well, probably this idea is introduced before, but, what if we made it so that those buffs that made the caster invincible when used together have backfiring effects?

What I mean is, what if using a divination spell like Foresight allows you to prepare for what's to come, yet after its effect wears off, your senses are less powerful than normal? This could be applied to buffs as well, like having an ability score drop after getting it increased by a buff, which, when one uses many buffs together, would make that person incredibly powerless after their effect wore off, resulting with the caster thinking twice about using overpowered spells.

[Tyndmyr]

Yes, it is terrible gameplay. But it's better than having bored people sitting around the table twiddling their thumbs in every fight.

Look, if you're gonna try to fix things, fix them. Don't just shuffle around who gets to be bored this time.


I'm not saying you shouldn't have options, I'm saying that if the spells per day were reduced and you tried to use scrolls to play as if they weren't, it wouldn't work forever.

Lets consider all consumables. Yes, yes I could. Every time I buy an eternal wand, that's 2/day casts of that spell until the end of time. Those handle the things I want to cast all the time, up till third level. There's a lot of handy spells at third level and before.

Then we grab regular wands. These cover things that are cast frequently, but not every day. Also, things we may need to cast MORE than twice per day.

Scrolls fill the gaps. Let's consider a hypothetical 9th level mage. He has 36000 WBL to play with. We'll get him eternal wands of detect magic and mage hand(A hand of the mage is probably better, and smart use of other items can decrease consumable use, but we're just doing consumables for now). This costs him about 300g to craft.

For first level, he wants two eternal wands of various handy spells that will scale well. This'll cost him about 600g to craft.

For second level, he has two eternal wands for another 1600ish gold.

For third level, he has...you guessed it, two more eternal wands. 4000ish gold.

Grand total to gain 4 slots per level per day? 6500 gold. In fact, it's a reasonable use of WBL, and compares very favorably to pearls of power. As regular wands are slightly cheaper than eternal wands, you can continue this at 4th level with them. It's only spell levels 5+ that require scrolls. Any scrolls you elect to use prior to that level are entirely optional, and in addition to a roughly normal compliment of spells.

Side note: Eternal wands are not limited to your spell list. So, further abuse is possible. We also haven't touched on the money making potential of crafting these.


I think you're reading my meaning backwards. Melee isn't supposed to NEED all those magic items: the casters are supposed to provide those effects, which is why the items are so expensive in core. The problem is that casters started hogging spells first, which led to the price reductions that make it even possible for melee to afford all the different effects that the casters stopped giving them. Basically, since people make single character builds instead of whole parties, the teamwork the game used to be balanced on is thrown out of whack, and the magic item system changed to compensate.

But they do need all those items. And they have gold. The fighter is supposed to buy magical gear to pump himself up. This is actually in the book, unlike your theory regarding casters supposed to divide their casting among the entire party. That really isn't supported well by the books themselves, or the playtesting of 3/3.5.


I am aware that healing is suboptimal, and that casters will not want to buff with so few spell slots. The whole point of reducing the spell slots is because in this model they aren't doing it in the first place. With magic items taking the role of healing and buffing/utility, casters have too many spell slots left over that they can use to trivialize encounters to the point where it's not fun for the rest of the party. My solutions assume that the party already doesn't cooperate, and are meant to force them to do so.

It doesn't force them to do so. It's merely a penalty you've imposed for them not playing the way you think they should.


I've been assuming a heavily optimized wizard who has spells with either save DCs so high they never fail, or using spells that otherwise always work. In this situation, they only need one spell to contribute to an encounter, and giving them any more than that allows them to trivialize all encounters while removing any need for party assistance. The default spells per day give them more than enough to do both with this level of optimization, therefore the easiest solution is to cut spells per day.

Assuming it's the right spell, one spell can trivialize an entire encounter. The flaw in your philosophy is that at high levels of optimization, "contribute" and "end the encounter" may not actually be different #'s of spells at all.

After all, if you've just gated in a solar, anything else you intend to cast in this encounter is probably redundant anyway.


My apologies, it sounded more to me like you were saying that it would make the wizard too weak to play, and as such they would have to rely on magic items and broken prestige classes. So you think they could still break every encounter in half with a base of 1 spell/day/level?

Highly optimized, yes. Unoptimized, no. They either remain powerful or worthless, with very little ground in between.


Of course spells are more awesome than hitting things with a pointy stick: that's why they're magic, and being able to cast them every round of every fight is going to be broken even if you nerf the problem spells. And that's not just obviously broken things like polymorph, we're talking Slow and Solid Fog here: spells that are good in every situation like that would need to be nerfed across the board. It's much easier to cut the spells per day than change half the spells in the game, just as it's easier to cut Shapechange than to rewrite the whole magic system if you want to keep a more normal game sane.

It's easier, sure. But it's obviously vastly inferior. You can't get balance without directly addressing the problem of the spells themselves.


Blasters actually get the best of this: they directly help out by dealing damage that stacks with damage from everyone else, but they don't stop everyone else from getting a change to fight. A maximized batman wizard on the other hand, leaves his opponents dead or completely helpless, which is no fun to mop up after. I am indeed assuming an even higher level of optimization, but that's what people talk about when they say the magic system needs fixing, isn't it?

A blaster won't benefit from your system. One nuke per level isn't exactly great. Even worse, many of those are probably single target nukes. So, he what...hurts a single opponent in a fight, then stops casting and watches? He's gimped compared to the batman wizard, who casts one spell, then knocks off for a break since the fight is over anyway.


That's one of the things I'm asking: is there a level of optimization so high that a wizard can break the game even with only 1 slot/day/level? If not, then that problem is solved. I believe that a wizard (or other caster) can still contribute effectively to the party with that many spells, and yes I would play one in that game (obviously this is still untested so I'd be a bit nervous, but I'd be willing to try). Yes they would have to make every spell as lethal as possible, but they were already doing that, which is why we cut the spells known.

Yes. You will hit it by default even in core, if you reach 9th level spells. With use of items, PrCs, etc, it will be quite accessible. Fact of the matter is, high level wizards only use a fraction of their spells now, and the limiting factor is not spell slots, but actions to cast them with. This is why spells such as nerveskitter and celerity are popular. They are horrible for conserving slots, but nobody cares.

The only time spell slots matter is for the very early levels. Yeah, playing a level 1 wizard with your rules would suck pretty hard.

[BRC]

well, probably this idea is introduced before, but, what if we made it so that those buffs that made the caster invincible when used together have backfiring effects?

What I mean is, what if using a divination spell like Foresight allows you to prepare for what's to come, yet after its effect wears off, your senses are less powerful than normal? This could be applied to buffs as well, like having an ability score drop after getting it increased by a buff, which, when one uses many buffs together, would make that person incredibly powerless after their effect wore off, resulting with the caster thinking twice about using overpowered spells.
Then you need to go and add these effects to every "Unbalanced" spell, a massive undertaking in of itself. Also, you need to make sure the side effects are balanced out depending on the brokenness of the spell. It's a big task, and the outcome relies alot on personal opinions.

[Maralais]

Then you need to go and add these effects to every "Unbalanced" spell, a massive undertaking in of itself. Also, you need to make sure the side effects are balanced out depending on the brokenness of the spell. It's a big task, and the outcome relies alot on personal opinions.

Well I was thinking about doing this for my future campaign, which will probably only use pathfinder core material(which has 3.5 core material, which has unbalanced spells in itself), so I guess it wouldn't take that long?

[Killer Angel]

Eww, just core is so boring. :smallyuk:

I really don't like playing Wizards if at least Spell Compendium isn't in play. The 350 or so spells just isn't enough. Especially once you realize there are 100 or so spells that are the same thing. Invisibility and Invisibiliy, Greater. Summon Monster I-IX, Owl's Wisdom and Owl's Wisdom, Mass, etc, etc.

Yeah. Not my thing. :smallredface:

This needs its own thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9354609#post9354609)! :smallsmile:

[Fizban]

(Eternal Wands)
Nitpick: consumables are consumed when used, eternal wands are not consumables. Otherwise, that's just the kind of thing I'm looking for, thank you. So, eternal wands, when personally crafted, are cheap enough you can buy one for every spell level you can cast. I'd say that's a problem with the magic item creep myself, but I guess they managed to get casters to benefit too. Eternal wands aren't as good as your own spell slots since they use the minimum save DC and duration, so you couldn't rely on them to end fights anywhere near as reliably as your own spells. Which means you'd have to use them for buffs that don't care about caster level or save DC, just like the fighter is already doing with wondrous items... which is just fine with me. And you can't craft them yourself until at least 5th level, and it requires two feats.

But they do need all those items. And they have gold. The fighter is supposed to buy magical gear to pump himself up. This is actually in the book, unlike your theory regarding casters supposed to divide their casting among the entire party. That really isn't supported well by the books themselves, or the playtesting of 3/3.5.
But the core items cost far more than those in the MiC, and core assumed people would be spending their money on +10 swords and armor instead of using GMW and ignoring armor. I don't deny that even core assumes fighters will buy items to cover their weaknesses, but they're not supposed to afford those items until after they become available as spells, while monsters start attacking those weaknesses as soon as you have the spells to counter them (and often before even that). Since you can't afford core items to cover those weaknesses until later, you have to rely on the wizard until you can-or you did until wizards started being builds instead of party members and magic item creep came to the rescue. And I would like to point out: of course my theory isn't "actually in the book." If it were in the books, it wouldn't be a theory now would it? I maintain that casters who get along well with their parties do so because they're spending 3/4 of their slots on things other than save or lose, at least until someone shows me a character sheet that says I'm horribly wrong :smallbiggrin:

It doesn't force them to do so. It's merely a penalty you've imposed for them not playing the way you think they should.
If the players don't like the idea then you shouldn't use it, that goes for all rules variations. Force was probably the wrong word, but I'll try to give an example. A wizard with 4 level 4 slots can have Greater Luminous Armor, Stoneskin or Heart of Earth, and Heart of Water active while adventuring. This gives him an effective +12 AC, DR 10/adamantine, and lets him escape grapple without fail in one fight, while leaving him one more slot for his save or lose of choice (not counting the 9 extra slots he has at 1st through 3rd). With those defenses, he doesn't need to rely on the fighter to protect him, because his buffs can take the hits while he focuses on escape (or escapes with yet another spell). If he only has one 4th level slot, he can still throw an encounter winning save or lose, but he has to rely on the fighter to protect him before that, and afterward if he used it poorly.

Assuming it's the right spell, one spell can trivialize an entire encounter. The flaw in your philosophy is that at high levels of optimization, "contribute" and "end the encounter" may not actually be different #'s of spells at all.

After all, if you've just gated in a solar, anything else you intend to cast in this encounter is probably redundant anyway.
I admit that I've been fuzzy with my wording, but it's a fuzzy issue. At low levels one spell is more of a contribution, and at high levels it's more of an immediate end to the encounter. However, even at lower levels you can stack multiple "contributions" to the point that there's no reason for anyone else to bother, and at higher levels there's more chance for something to be immune or resist your spell, or have something else teleport in to attack. The point of reducing spell slots is so that if you do choose wrong, it actually matters, because default spell slots gives you enough spells that you don't have to choose the right one: you can just prepare everything and keep casting if you miss.

Highly optimized, yes. Unoptimized, no. They either remain powerful or worthless, with very little ground in between.
Alright, that's one vote for "still horribly broken," given by someone better at optimizing than me, so that means a lot. Plainly, for this variant, I don't care if it makes unoptimized casters useless, because it's not meant for use without optimization.

It's easier, sure. But it's obviously vastly inferior. You can't get balance without directly addressing the problem of the spells themselves.
Obviously I don't think it's that obvious, or I wouldn't have suggested it now would I :smallamused: ? So would you suggest going through every save or X and battlefield control spell in the game and nerfing them individually? At that point it's no longer a fix: with how much is based on spells in 3.5, it's practically a new system.

A blaster won't benefit from your system. One nuke per level isn't exactly great. Even worse, many of those are probably single target nukes. So, he what...hurts a single opponent in a fight, then stops casting and watches? He's gimped compared to the batman wizard, who casts one spell, then knocks off for a break since the fight is over anyway.
That's me putting foot in mouth again. What I meant to say is that blasters work the best of being party friendly, since they work in the same way as everyone else by using damage. I did not mean to say that a blaster would benefit from spell slot reduction, they would definitely take the biggest hit (although I wouldn't be surprised if someone could pull it off at all). Reducing spell slots is not meant for blasters, it's meant for people casting insta-win spells every round.

Yes. You will hit it by default even in core, if you reach 9th level spells. With use of items, PrCs, etc, it will be quite accessible. Fact of the matter is, high level wizards only use a fraction of their spells now, and the limiting factor is not spell slots, but actions to cast them with. This is why spells such as nerveskitter and celerity are popular. They are horrible for conserving slots, but nobody cares.

The only time spell slots matter is for the very early levels. Yeah, playing a level 1 wizard with your rules would suck pretty hard.
See, this I don't understand. You're saying yourself that spellcasters have too many slots, but then you say that reducing their slots won't solve anything. I know I say "end the fight with one spell", but no one actually expect to do that: enemies will occasionally roll high on their saves, or there will be other enemies you didn't notice. That small chance for failure on a given spell is enough to play the game in, but it is negated by excess spell slots, and negated further by extra actions with which to use those slots. How would getting rid of those slots not at least help the problem? If nothing else, among the arbitrary nerfs I've seen for casters it's not something I've seen before, and it addresses the problems I see evidence of more effectively than any I have.

Oh, and a level 1 wizard would lose nothing but cantrips, so nyeh :smalltongue:

[Tyndmyr]

Nitpick: consumables are consumed when used, eternal wands are not consumables. Otherwise, that's just the kind of thing I'm looking for, thank you. So, eternal wands, when personally crafted, are cheap enough you can buy one for every spell level you can cast. I'd say that's a problem with the magic item creep myself, but I guess they managed to get casters to benefit too.

Not really. They exactly match the x/day use magic item costs in the DMG. I doubt this is a coincidence.

They are commonly considered UNDERPOWERED as compared to regular wands(though Im personally a fan of them), due to the fact that regular wands are slightly cheaper, and 50 charges of most spells will last an entire campaign.


Eternal wands aren't as good as your own spell slots since they use the minimum save DC and duration, so you couldn't rely on them to end fights anywhere near as reliably as your own spells. Which means you'd have to use them for buffs that don't care about caster level or save DC, just like the fighter is already doing with wondrous items... which is just fine with me. And you can't craft them yourself until at least 5th level, and it requires two feats.

Buffs, things without saves, etc. It's least viable for nukers, since the static CL on any given wand is an issue, though you can of course get feats to boost this. However, your batman/god wizard is going to use relatively few of those anyhow. Those very few he does use are gonna still go in his regular slots.


But the core items cost far more than those in the MiC, and core assumed people would be spending their money on +10 swords and armor instead of using GMW and ignoring armor. I don't deny that even core assumes fighters will buy items to cover their weaknesses, but they're not supposed to afford those items until after they become available as spells, while monsters start attacking those weaknesses as soon as you have the spells to counter them (and often before even that). Since you can't afford core items to cover those weaknesses until later, you have to rely on the wizard until you can-or you did until wizards started being builds instead of party members and magic item creep came to the rescue. And I would like to point out: of course my theory isn't "actually in the book."

Your theory is pretty much destroyed by the fact that my example costs exactly the same as the DMG items. I merely chose it because it doesn't rely on DM permission.

Far more effective ways exist. You can get by focusing entirely on Craft Wonderous Item if you so choose, including, yes, consumables. Splatbooks that offered more item creation options didn't start only after 3.5 core was published, either. Look at the 3.0 materials. Plenty of good stuff. Arms and Equipment is an excellent source of cheap goodies.


I admit that I've been fuzzy with my wording, but it's a fuzzy issue. At low levels one spell is more of a contribution, and at high levels it's more of an immediate end to the encounter. However, even at lower levels you can stack multiple "contributions" to the point that there's no reason for anyone else to bother, and at higher levels there's more chance for something to be immune or resist your spell, or have something else teleport in to attack.

Low levels are where casters are already most balanced. An optimized level 3 wizard is not out of place in an equally optimized party. Taking spells away at the early levels WILL hurt them badly then, and it won't balance them later.

At higher levels, you shouldn't be using things that allow spell resistance anyway. Or, you pump your CL to the point where it's irrelevant. I favor the first option. After all, what IS immune to a searing spelled orb of fire?

I suppose wings of flurry would also be fairly hard to gain immunity to, though evasion and great reflex saves would help.


The point of reducing spell slots is so that if you do choose wrong, it actually matters, because default spell slots gives you enough spells that you don't have to choose the right one: you can just prepare everything and keep casting if you miss.

In short, it screws over the people who are not yet good at optimizing. The person who does pick the right spells happily continues along being ridiculously broken. It hurts the very people who are not causing problems.


Obviously I don't think it's that obvious, or I wouldn't have suggested it now would I :smallamused: ? So would you suggest going through every save or X and battlefield control spell in the game and nerfing them individually? At that point it's no longer a fix: with how much is based on spells in 3.5, it's practically a new system.

There are other options. Sure, a few extremely broken spells may need to be banned or nerfed. Another option is boosting weaker classes to be closer in power level. ToB is great for this reason.

And of course, there's the fact that balance is not always the most important criteria.


See, this I don't understand. You're saying yourself that spellcasters have too many slots, but then you say that reducing their slots won't solve anything.

They have so many currently that they don't use most of them. Taking away what they don't use won't reduce power.


I know I say "end the fight with one spell", but no one actually expect to do that: enemies will occasionally roll high on their saves, or there will be other enemies you didn't notice.

It's not about killing every single opponent with one spell...it's about making the encounter no longer a threat. If there are four opponents, and two hidden ones, and I cast wings of flurry, well...I may miss the hidden ones, but the main group is doomed. Even those who make their save take half. Or I get everyone grappled in tentacles. Sure, the encounter isn't actually over, but it might as well be. In general, if you can remove half or more of an encounter from the fight in a standard action, it's no longer a problematic fight. The occasional lucky roll does almost nothing to negate this.

Plus, you have spells like forcecage that don't allow any sort of save at all. Chance plays no part in those fights.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Players with that sort of entitlement complex deserve to have their spells drained.:smallwink:

The solution, of course, is to be a War Weaver...not only can you buff the entire party with one action, you can apply multiple short-duration spells in the process.:smallbiggrin:

Or just Incantatrix and a high Spellcraft check to apply Persist on the shorter ones for free...

[Kantolin]

I can agree with that, there definitely aren't many nifty cleric spells in core for a buffer, and the personal only spells were added because cleric were sick of healing all the time. I'm still fairly confident that the "designer's intent" was the tank/skillmonkey/healbot/blaster setup, however.

The point is, however, that a cleric played very normally uses various buffs and... well, goes nuts on things being better than the fighter.

This is not a case of people playing clerics improperly or something, that's really really what it was meant to do. Druids too.

Playing a backrow buffer-cleric is kinda hard in core. Using 3/4 of your spells on other people is also kind of hard for a cleric when most of the cleric's useful spells are personal.


Blasters actually get the best of this: they directly help out by dealing damage that stacks with damage from everyone else, but they don't stop everyone else from getting a change to fight.

That actually has elements that can be much worse than normal. If the fighter is consistantly doing ~20 damage, and the wizard is consistantly doing ~50 damage, then the fighter is likely to feel worthless. If the wizard is consistantly doing ~20 damage, and the fighter is consistantly doing ~50 damage, then the wizard is likely to feel worthless. People feeling worthless is lame in general.


A maximized batman wizard on the other hand, leaves his opponents dead or completely helpless, which is no fun to mop up after. I am indeed assuming an even higher level of optimization, but that's what people talk about when they say the magic system needs fixing, isn't it?

You also hear about twinned admixtured shenanigans orbs doing 500 damage out of fourth level spell slots, so not really. A blaster wizard is less powerufl than a not-blaster wizard, but is still tier 1.

(And a buffer wizard, in fact, is still just as tier 1).


The archer fighter and the tank cleric still don't have any fun if the wizard already ended the encounter all by himself.

The wizard also isn't having much fun if the fighter one-rounds the Balor before he gets a turn.

The point was, you said 'Why does the fighter have to take hits'? And the answer is: He doesn't. The fighter does not have to be a guy holding a sword and shield and standing up front tanking. He can be an archer, or any of many ubercharer builds which tank their AC to nothing, or whatever.

You said: Why does the cleric have to heal? He doesn't. 3.5 is very good at offering an increasingly large amount of ways to heal the party. You don't have to have someone who just sits around casting healing spells, and the cleric is extremely good at /not/ using healing spells.

Why does the wizard have to buff? He doesn't - he can be a blaster, or a battlefield controller, or a save-or-die-er which doesn't have a nifty title behind it.

All of these people can be team players. Saying 'all wizards have to buff' is saying 'I don't want a wizard player who doesn't want to buff to have fun'. Most wizards want to throw fireballs around.


I'd bet that a buffer/batman wizard that gets along well with the party (and thus does not need any rule changes), spends about 3/4 of his spells on the rest of the party, and the last 1/4 on breaking up encounters.

What is 'spending spells on the rest of the party', and which are 'breaking up encounters'?

Does wall of force/stone count - those are popular spells? How about solid fog? Slow? Grease? Sleep? Glitterdust?

None of those spells actually kill anyone, and thus the remainder of the party is doing the killing, and those are very much batman spells - a batman wizard using exclusively them is getting -zero- kills.

It's really sounding more and more like you're saying 'All wizards must use only one offensive spell, and the remainder must be buffs'. Imagine saying the fighter is only allowed to swing his sword once every four rounds - he's not here to swing his sword, he's here for his AC, so the party expects three rounds of him saying 'I take full defensive' for every round of swinging. That would lead to the bored player sitting around reading a book or playing Wii or something until his active turn happened.


Huh? You've lost me. Yes, the fighter can make himself fly, because magic items for that are very cheap now.

You make it sound like this is a bad thing. O-o

Anyway, your complaint seems to be that wizards aren't spending their actions buffing up the fighter. And, beyond having a limited amount of spells, wizards frequently have better things to do than buffing up the fighter. This is a problem with the fighter.


Back when they weren't, the wizard used to have to spend a spell slot on it, and now that slot is free for making the wizard harder to kill, so he doesn't need a fighter.

Wizards aren't considered generally better than fighters due to having better defenses (Most use 'flying, and way over there', sometimes mixed with invisibility, and call it a day). They're considered better than fighters because they can solve their problems, and fighters can't.

The wizard doesn't need the fighter because the fighter can't /do/ anything.
Now, if casting fly on the fighter were the solution to all the wizard's problems, that becomes fairly obviously the best thing to do. But the wizard has a bunch of things to do, and casting fly on the fighter so he sucks less isn't nearly as focal as /preventing the bad guy from teleporting away/, or dispelling magic, or walling off those balors, or solid fog.


I'm getting lost again. If the players in your game already work together like this, then the magic system is already working just fine, so why would you even consider a change?

Because this doesn't negate the fact that the wizard is infinitely more useful than the fighter. The fighter is existing as, at best, a damage shield, but generally doesn't contribute anywhere resembling as much. The wizard can accept the damage shield (and thus doesn't have to summon something to take his place), but is also aware that the fighter can't solve many problems and he has to. The wizard thus has to solve all the problems.

This is lame.

Note: Save or Dies are less popular than you seem to assume. Battlefield control and no-saves are far more popular around here.


If your group already works well together and doesn't have a problem with casters outshining everyone else, then this is not for you.

My group works well together; I have a problem with casters outshining everyone else.

It then won't solve the problem. Either the wizard won't be optimized enough and will suck and be useless with his one spell per day, in which nothing he can do will help him have effect against encounters, or he'll be fine and end one encounter / slot / day. In either case, the wizard won't feel like he's allowed to help his allies - I mean, you get one third level slot a day. Do you want to spend it doing something fun, or casting fly on someone else?

A lot of the problems go away when you become closer in tier. The wizard is /better/ than the sorceror, but the sorceror has a heck of a lot of power behind him, and conversations can be something like, "I ready a dimensional anchor." "Wait, I'll do that! You wall off the balor!" "But then what about the Marilith?" "The druid and his companion can go beat it up"

Or "Quick, cast fly on me!" "I have to dimensional anchor the bad guy!" "I'll do that then - if you can get me in the air I can deal with the Balor".

...um, unless you mean the 'I stay at home and scry on everythign and never leave my house' style of theoretical wizard, in which having only one spell slot per day will simply discourage him further from leaving home and not actually change him any. He'll still paranoidly solve his problems.


I maintain that casters who get along well with their parties do so because they're spending 3/4 of their slots on things other than save or lose, at least until someone shows me a character sheet that says I'm horribly wrong.

My most recent battelfield controller-mage was fond of Evard's Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, and Slow. Everyone liked him as this helped out the party tremendously; we also were in a party that collectively could /do things/.

And for your defensive example, +12 AC and DR 10/adamantine generally still involve the wizard staying way over there and flyinginvisible. It doesn't obviate his desire not to be swung at in the first place, it just means if it happens he's in better shape. Usually, when people make gishes, they do other things to ensure they can hit things and tank a bit better (Or polymorph).

A wizard who didn't have those defenses would still attempt to be flying invisible and over there, and casting spells that end battles. You're missing the problem.

Really - what you're suggesting is neither the problem nor the solution. The solution is either to solve individual spells (a lot of them), try to bolster the weaker classes (There are fixes about), or just use similarly tiered characters (If the fighter becomes a cleric instead, most of his problems go away).

[Jallorn]

One method I am currently working on is making a set of six tier 3 advanced casters. We already have the beguiler, dread necromancer and a tweaked warmage, so that leaves a summoner (conjuration), spellweaver (transmutation) and an oracle (abjuration/divination).

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95336

There you go.

[Aotrs Commander]

I find a good way of dealing with buffs is the remind the players that the bad guys are buffing as well. Any tactic the players can do, the NPCs can do too. Granted, this makes high-level combat rather rocket tag - but I like it that way. And, you, as the DM, have to know the rules as well as and be at least as good an optimiser as the players are.

(It also helps that in my games, any encounter I actually care about - i.e. one not just thrown in for the PCs to splatter - will be full combined arms with spellcaster support, often out-numbering the PCs quite a bit. And opposition is usually classed humanoids rather than monsters in any case.)

I also have a fairly wide slew of houserules that pump up the effectiveness of the weaker classes that are adequate to allow everyone to contribute even at high level. (Terrain also plays a factor. In my 3.5 16-Epic level conversion of Dragon Mountain, flight is more-or-less worthless to the PCs in 90% of the encounters (but not all, obviously); since when the ceiling is only 4-5' high, flight just doesn't cut it!)

[The Big Dice]

What I always find with Clerics and buffs is, by the time the Cleric finishes buffing, the fight is pretty much all over bar the mopping up.

Three rounds can be a long time. And even with Quickened spells, by the time the Cleric is at full power, all he ends up doing is putting the finishing blow in. And doing enough damage to put the bad guy to around -30 hit points.

[Endarire]

Magic balancing doesn't work, because at its core:

-Non-casters hit stuff.

-Casters alter reality.

These two are not reconcilable by any reasonable stretch of imagination.

History has shown that if you attempt to reduce a person's power, he will struggle for everything he's worth to keep or regain said power. In D&D, casters have more options than non-casters, and a caster who uses more than 3 spells in one fight is already in trouble. (Even 3 is pushing it.)

Characters become superheroes. The party halfling picked up a building and threw it at the mayor? The party Wizard bound some outsiders for long-term pets? The party Druid walks around and animates plants to worship him? The party noncaster does something epic and nonmagical?

Again, playing by the rules limits what stories the GM can tell, but that's true for any rules system. Also, consider this. If your casters spend resources on Divinations, they're getting info that you as GM would probably be feeding them for free.

Restricting Wizards to only their spells gained upon leveling turns them into INT-based Sorcerers. I recommend against it.

[Esser-Z]

What I always find with Clerics and buffs is, by the time the Cleric finishes buffing, the fight is pretty much all over bar the mopping up.

Three rounds can be a long time. And even with Quickened spells, by the time the Cleric is at full power, all he ends up doing is putting the finishing blow in. And doing enough damage to put the bad guy to around -30 hit points.
There is a reason people tend to use DMM persist.

[Hague]

So the solution is to introduce training costs that deliberately force casters to spend time and money on learning how to alter reality, thereby reconciling the difference between the starting ages of wizards and casters and those of the martial bent?

[Thrawn183]

The core of the problem is that wizards have too little HP. They're just so easy to kill. A reasonable opponent stands a decent chance of killing them with a single full-round attack. This creates the necessity of spells that can alter the outcome of an entire fight all on their own.

Example: So long as a wizard is completely unable to defend himself against grappling without his spells, writers will keep coming up with stuff like Freedom of Movement.

[Fizban]

Your theory is pretty much destroyed by the fact that my example costs exactly the same as the DMG items. I merely chose it because it doesn't rely on DM permission.
Yes, before Eternal Wands were printed, you needed DM permission to make a similar item.

Low levels are where casters are already most balanced. An optimized level 3 wizard is not out of place in an equally optimized party. Taking spells away at the early levels WILL hurt them badly then, and it won't balance them later.

At higher levels, you shouldn't be using things that allow spell resistance anyway. Or, you pump your CL to the point where it's irrelevant. I favor the first option. After all, what IS immune to a searing spelled orb of fire?
When I said lower levels/ higher levels I was going for more below 10th/ above 10th. A the lowest levels, they don't actually lose that many spells: your 3rd level wizard is only losing one 1st level spell, probably leaving him with 3 after ability scores. What is immune to searing spelled orb of fire? Anything with a high touch AC, anything with Ray Deflection active, anything with a miss chance and some luck...

In short, it screws over the people who are not yet good at optimizing. The person who does pick the right spells happily continues along being ridiculously broken. It hurts the very people who are not causing problems.
How many times do I have to repeat that this is not for people who are not good at optimizing! I can accept that you don't think it will help, but at least stop telling me that I'm creating a new problem in this regard. It's like a hot cup of coffee that I've plastered with warning stickers which everyone is ignoring, even though they already know coffee is hot.

There are other options. Sure, a few extremely broken spells may need to be banned or nerfed. Another option is boosting weaker classes to be closer in power level. ToB is great for this reason.

And of course, there's the fact that balance is not always the most important criteria.
And if they wanted to boost the other classes in power level, they wouldn't be looking for a quick fix to the whole magic system. I think ToB is great and an excellent way to fix things, but some people don't like it and want another solution. Of course balance isn't the most important criteria, but if we're creating a fix then it should probably try to do that, yes? If your players are good enough optimizers to want a global fix, I would almost expect them to take it as an additional challenge. Trying to play through the game with 25% max ammo is far from the worst extra mode I've heard of.

They have so many currently that they don't use most of them. Taking away what they don't use won't reduce power.
Until they make a mistake or get unlucky and miss, at which point unlike a caster with full slots, they can't just do it again next round.

It's not about killing every single opponent with one spell...it's about making the encounter no longer a threat. If there are four opponents, and two hidden ones, and I cast wings of flurry, well...I may miss the hidden ones, but the main group is doomed. Even those who make their save take half. Or I get everyone grappled in tentacles. Sure, the encounter isn't actually over, but it might as well be. In general, if you can remove half or more of an encounter from the fight in a standard action, it's no longer a problematic fight. The occasional lucky roll does almost nothing to negate this.
Cutting off half the foes still leaves half in full health to fight, and they can still be a threat to the squishy members of the party if those members actually used an appreciable amount of resources to remove the first half. The challenge then is not killing a reduced number of foes, because that's easy: the challenge is killing them while protecting the people that reduced their numbers. With full spell slots, the wizard can just keep casting until they have more than divided, but instead completely incapacitated all the foes, or buff themselves invincible, leaving no challenge at all for the rest of the party. I want to put some challenge back in the fight not by nerfing the spell effects, but changing the environment they are used in, and the best way I see to do that is to reduce the amount that are available. I don't think anyone denies that challenge is fun, so if your players are too powerful then you make the game harder. One solution is using tougher monsters, another solution I think could be cutting down spell slots. That's not what started my line of reasoning, but it seems like a suitable end.
If cutting spell slots cannot achieve this environment, than what can? Altering half the spells in the game could, but it's a huge undertaking that doesn't match the word "fix". Ramping up everyone's power to the same level can, but normally when people ask for a fix it's because they don't want to use existing material. Increasing casting times might help, but wouldn't stop pre-combat buffs without yet another system for managing how many buffs you can have, and with enough buffs the increased casting time doesn't make you vulnerable.
--------------------

The point is, however, that a cleric played very normally uses various buffs and... well, goes nuts on things being better than the fighter.
That's one of the reasons I'd think they didn't do very much playtesting, otherwise it would have eventually become obvious that all they did was let the cleric steal the fighter's spot.

That actually has elements that can be much worse than normal. If the fighter is consistantly doing ~20 damage, and the wizard is consistantly doing ~50 damage, then the fighter is likely to feel worthless. If the wizard is consistantly doing ~20 damage, and the fighter is consistantly doing ~50 damage, then the wizard is likely to feel worthless. People feeling worthless is lame in general.
Theoretically, it's supposed to balance out because the wizard can hit multiple foes, leaving them all easier to kill for the fighter. Or maybe because the wizard is only supposed to do it some of the time. I don't mean to claim blasting is perfectly balanced, but a lot of situations in the game were intentionally "balanced" so that on person would be awesome, then later they would be lame and someone else would be awesome (like fighter/wizard power curves). A difference in damage between party members is something that will happen often though, as long as it isn't too big it usually isn't a problem.

You also hear about twinned admixtured shenanigans orbs doing 500 damage out of fourth level spell slots, so not really. A blaster wizard is less powerful than a not-blaster wizard, but is still tier 1.
You're right, at full optimization they aren't very different. The party-friendly part is more with the spells themselves, where a save or die or crippling combo leaves nothing but a husk to fight, while a blast leaves an angry foe with hopefully more manageable hit points.l

The wizard also isn't having much fun if the fighter one-rounds the Balor before he gets a turn.

The point was, you said 'Why does the fighter have to take hits'? And the answer is: He doesn't. The fighter does not have to be a guy holding a sword and shield and standing up front tanking. He can be an archer, or any of many ubercharer builds which tank their AC to nothing, or whatever.

You said: Why does the cleric have to heal? He doesn't. 3.5 is very good at offering an increasingly large amount of ways to heal the party. You don't have to have someone who just sits around casting healing spells, and the cleric is extremely good at /not/ using healing spells.

Why does the wizard have to buff? He doesn't - he can be a blaster, or a battlefield controller, or a save-or-die-er which doesn't have a nifty title behind it.

All of these people can be team players. Saying 'all wizards have to buff' is saying 'I don't want a wizard player who doesn't want to buff to have fun'. Most wizards want to throw fireballs around.
It doesn't matter what they're doing, as long as it contributes to party victory without sidelining everyone else. If you're playing the tank, then your role is to share hit points and defense. If you're playing an archer, then your role is to put damage where it's needed even if you think it would be cooler to attack something else. If you're role is agreed upon as healer, then you heal, so if you don't want to then don't say you're a healer. I don't think we disagree on teamwork.

What I think happened is that you misinterpreted what I said about "your spell slots are not yours." I use this line because it sounds catchy and controversial to attract attention, but I'm beginning to think I should have just said "try massive resource constriction."

When I say "you spell slots aren't yours", I'm not saying that you shouldn't be allowed to play how you want, that would be dumb. What I'm saying is that from what I've seen, it looks like at the start of 3.0/3.5, the game was designed and tested with parties that functioned like that. Where the only reliable source of magic was the party casters, so when other players needed magic, they shared their spell slots. Yes, 3.5 offered more and more alternate ways to heal and buff as it progressed, but at the start, when the spell slot and magic system were designed, the cleric and wizard were the only ones that could do it, so the designers made sure they had enough extra spells to do it while still having fun.

What is 'spending spells on the rest of the party', and which are 'breaking up encounters'?

Does wall of force/stone count - those are popular spells? How about solid fog? Slow? Grease? Sleep? Glitterdust?

None of those spells actually kill anyone, and thus the remainder of the party is doing the killing, and those are very much batman spells - a batman wizard using exclusively them is getting -zero- kills.
Spells spent on the party are spells that give them abilities they need in order to survive and fight monsters. Spells like Energy Resistance, Death Ward, and Fly. Monsters get a lot of crazy attacks and movement modes for free, and the game assumes that your casters will be countering those abilities with their spells. This is even supported by a passage in the books stating that 11th level parties are assumed to have access to Disintegrate because it is available at 11th level. Of course this passage comes at the start of the magic item chapter, so obviously they knew that there would need to be some leeway, but the first line is always "ask the caster."

Spells that break up encounters are save or lose, battlefield control, and generally anything that affects your opponents rather than your allies. At high levels they switch from breaking up to killing outright, but even mid and low levels have spells that can change an encounter from a fight to a single coup de gras, which isn't fun for the rest of the party. Spells that literally break up encounters, like wall spells, aren't as bad because they don't win on their own, and require the rest of the party to fight the divided foes.
Spells that render opponents effectively useless but still able to move and try to fight, like Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud, or Slow on melee foes, are in the middle. Used in moderation they can be a welcome bail out for the party, but used exclusively they leave no challenge: fighting a blinded or nauseated target, or kiting a slowed opponent has very little risk. It is these spells that I hear about most often, and they take the fun out of the fight for the rest of the party, while still requiring them to hang around and play mop up. It doesn't matter if they aren't lethal on their own.


It's really sounding more and more like you're saying 'All wizards must use only one offensive spell, and the remainder must be buffs'. Imagine saying the fighter is only allowed to swing his sword once every four rounds - he's not here to swing his sword, he's here for his AC, so the party expects three rounds of him saying 'I take full defensive' for every round of swinging. That would lead to the bored player sitting around reading a book or playing Wii or something until his active turn happened.
Well, if the wizard class was designed assuming that he would spend 3/4 of his spell slots on his allies (as I think), and their offensive spells were then designed assuming they would only cast one powerful copy per fight, then if they spend all their spell slots on offense (and make sure that offense never fails), then they are going to be far more powerful than expected.

As for the fighter not swinging: well, if "he's there for his AC," then he should be focusing on blocking enemy movement and soaking attacks, which could very well mean he doesn't get to make an attack every round. Now, if he didn't sign up as a tank, then the party shouldn't assume he won't move to attack. Either way, you cannot compare the effects of an attack action with a spell. Wizards are supposed to have limits because spells are powerful, the problem is that they were given wide enough limits to cast spells on the party without any actual reason to do that.

You make it sound like this is a bad thing. O-o
It's not a bad thing, but it's not how the game worked when the spell system was set up. At that point, the fighter was supposed to get Fly from the wizard, so they made the item expensive. The fact that the wizard wanted to cast Stinking Cloud instead is why the item is now cheap (heck. fly is probably the wrong example. Try teleports instead). And no, the wizard is not supposed to cast Fly when his spell slots have been cut: his spell slots have been cut because the fighter doesn't need him to any more.

Anyway, your complaint seems to be that wizards aren't spending their actions buffing up the fighter. And, beyond having a limited amount of spells, wizards frequently have better things to do than buffing up the fighter. This is a problem with the fighter.
I never said anything about actions. Medim and long duration buffs are usually assumed to already be up, so the only buffs you should cast in a fight are 1 round/level, and then only if it's really powerful. Wizards were designed with enough spells to buff up the fighter, the problem is that those spells are better put to use on other things, and the fighter doesn't need them anymore, so we take them back. Incidentally, I think buff up is a poor choice here, even though I've used it: buff is more for making someone kill things faster, but what I'm referring to are spells that you need just to survive wacky monster abilities.

Wizards aren't considered generally better than fighters due to having better defenses (Most use 'flying, and way over there', sometimes mixed with invisibility, and call it a day). They're considered better than fighters because they can solve their problems, and fighters can't.

The wizard doesn't need the fighter because the fighter can't /do/ anything.
Now, if casting fly on the fighter were the solution to all the wizard's problems, that becomes fairly obviously the best thing to do. But the wizard has a bunch of things to do, and casting fly on the fighter so he sucks less isn't nearly as focal as /preventing the bad guy from teleporting away/, or dispelling magic, or walling off those balors, or solid fog.
I was using that example in terms of party reliance, but if he's not using it to be harder to kill and not need the fighter, he's using it to solve even more problems than the fighter can't solve. Either way, reducing the number of slots means he is much more likely to run out and actually need the fighter.

Because this doesn't negate the fact that the wizard is infinitely more useful than the fighter. The fighter is existing as, at best, a damage shield, but generally doesn't contribute anywhere resembling as much. The wizard can accept the damage shield (and thus doesn't have to summon something to take his place), but is also aware that the fighter can't solve many problems and he has to. The wizard thus has to solve all the problems.

This is lame.
I don't see how a fix to the magic system would make the fighter any more able to solve problems. If you want fighters to be more powerful, then you use ToB or another fighter fix. Making the fighters stronger is never going to make them solve as many problems as casters, so I don't see how this matters. I'm trying to put enough squeeze on the casters that they will be stretched every encounter, at which point the fighter's ability to swing all day matters again.

Note: Save or Dies are less popular than you seem to assume. Battlefield control and no-saves are far more popular around here.
They're just as reliable as save or lose, so once you have them you might as well cut out the middle man, and before that the save or loses are nearly as bad. Battlefield control isn't usually too bad, because it only divides the encounter. No-save depends on the effect, since some are BC and some are "just lose". Anything spell that makes a foe completely unable to fight is likely to make the rest of the "fight" boring for the players that didn't cast the spell.

My group works well together; I have a problem with casters outshining everyone else.
I didn't really mean those as separate statements, though rereading them it does easily look like that. If your group can agree to work well as a group, I would hope they could agree to tone it down so everyone still has fun. If they can't optimize to work with 1 spell, try 2 or 3 and see if it works. Other than that, well I'm assuming that a group considering this variant can optimize well enough to manage it. Tyndmyr says not enough so I think it can be done, but it's not a very middle ground solution. If your group isn't optimizing so hard they can work under my suggested conditions, then they probably aren't optimizing so hard that it would take a new rulebook's worth of changes to fix them, so for that situation I'd take the time to make measured changes instead of a blanket quick fix. Really, most of the time if the group is already friendly and works together, it usually doesn't seem like a problem to tone it down: I've come up with a harsh fix for a harsh game.

My most recent battelfield controller-mage was fond of Evard's Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, and Slow. Everyone liked him as this helped out the party tremendously; we also were in a party that collectively could /do things/.
That was waay to blanket of a statement on my part, and should probably just be ignored for sake of my pride :smallredface:. Anyway, I would ask: did every Black Tentacles you cast crush every enemy without help, and were your Slow targets the kind that could still fight back? You seem like a quite reasonable fellow, so I assume you used them in moderation and didn't dominate every fight on your own, hence the party liked your contributions. I'm sure at some point though, if you got more and more extreme with it, eventually your party would not like fighting what was left after your spells.


And for your defensive example, +12 AC and DR 10/adamantine generally still involve the wizard staying way over there and flyinginvisible. It doesn't obviate his desire not to be swung at in the first place, it just means if it happens he's in better shape. Usually, when people make gishes, they do other things to ensure they can hit things and tank a bit better (Or polymorph).

A wizard who didn't have those defenses would still attempt to be flying invisible and over there, and casting spells that end battles. You're missing the problem.
Flying and Invisible, two of the 9 extra spell slots they have to spare. Of course he doesn't want to be swung at, but if spends his extra spells on defense, he doesn't need to avoid it. Saph has a campaign journal with an sorcerer based on just staying alive that could take attacks better than the whole rest of the party. If it had been a wizard, the effort spent on extra spells known could have gone to save DCs, and then you'd have a tank that could end battles with a single spell.

Really - what you're suggesting is neither the problem nor the solution. The solution is either to solve individual spells (a lot of them), try to bolster the weaker classes (There are fixes about), or just use similarly tiered characters (If the fighter becomes a cleric instead, most of his problems go away).
You haven't given an option for "fix the people casting the spells", does that mean you think it's not possible? Then I will have to disagree because I still think it is possible. Although apparently I don't have enough hope to do more than a "quick fix", so even if it is I'm not likely to find out for sure :smalltongue:

Wow, I just spent two hours on that. Much as I like debating with you guys, I think I'm gonna have to call it quits. Short answers only from now on.