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bloodtide
2011-01-30, 01:53 AM
Every week at least, you see a post about this topic. Magic, specific magic spellcasters, are over powered. This always struck me as odd. I like magic and have always run a very, very high magic level game. So I've never seen the 'problem' myself. But I hear about it often and I've watched other peoples games to see what they do. And based on all that, I've noticed a few reasons magic is so powerful.

1.Challenge Ratting, Encounter Levels, and the whole system:I would say that a good half of the DMs out there don't read this section much. While the system itself can be a bit fuzzy, there is a bit of helpful wisdom in the paragraphs. In short it says ''feel free to adjust the level of your game''. In other words, should you have an encounter where a wizard zaps a whole bunch of foes...then the next encounter should be of a bit higher level and challange. A great many DMs stay stuck 'by the book', however. They just sit back with their hands tied(''It's a balanced encounter for their level...it's not my fault the wizard is awesome'').

2.Optimization:Needless to say, the whole encounter/challenge system does not take into account optimization. The Core system is built around the idea of 'average adventures', not optimized super hero adventures. If you compare an 'average' wizard and an 'optimized' wizard, it's not even a contest that the optimized wizard is far, far more powerful. And this leads to the same problem as Number One: the DM does not adjust the rest of the game world for optimized player characters. An optimized character will go through the 'average' monsters in the monster manual like a hot knife through butter. Though the solution is easy, just optimize the monsters.

3.Laid-Back DMingSome Dms just don't have the energy, will or time to do much for the game. They simply use things right out of the book. And against powerful characters, the by-the-book monsters are just fodder. Even simple things, such as giving monsters magic items, templates or even just good feats can really change an encounter. And magic in general is hard to abdicate. It is possible to make a magically secure tower, but knowing all the ins and outs of the rules takes skill, experence and time. And it's not just magic that can counter magic, tons of mundane things can also counter magic. But it does take effort.

4.Passive DMingSome DMs are just not aggressive. In short, they don't go all out to try to kill the characters. I'm sure lots of people will say that ''it's not the DM's job to simply kill the characters''. And that is true, in general.....but it is the DM's job to play the NPCs and monster characters as if they want to kill the characters. This type of DM is very careful, as they don't want to hurt, harm or kill a character. They just want the players to have fun and not be sad or mad at them. So the DM has the monsters pull their punches in encounters and lets the characters beat the monsters easily. The perfect example 1: The group fights a dragon, who simply walks over to the group and attacks with it's claws and bite. The dragon lets it self be surrounded and just sits there and lets the characters pound on it. The dragon uses no tactics, no special attacks, spells, does not move or fly and never even uses it's breath weapon(not even once). After a couple of rounds, the characters kill the dragon.The perfect example 2A beholder attacks the party, and zaps away with it's charm, fear, and cause injury eyes....yet for the whole encounter it 'forgets' to use it's petrification, death and distengerate eyes.


5.The 15 Minuet DayThis is just crazy. The idea that some DMs let the players rest after every 'nova' fight, so that the characters can always be at 100% for nearly every encounter is just crazy. I've seen games where the characters enter a dungeon and get into just three fights and then immediately make camp and rest. And the DM just nods and says 'ok, 8 hours pass, let me know when your ready to go into room number 4'.

6.The loss of Exotic MagicIn classic D&D, all sorts of weird, strange and unknown magic effects happened. The whole game world was full of them. A classic adventure would say things like ''the Doom Portal scrambles all teleportation magic in the temple'' or ''the castle is surrounded by fog that eats magical energy'' or ''the graveyard is under a curse so the souls trapped their interfere with magic''. All of this was exotic magic, and none of it was explained. There was no page anywhere that said ''souls trapped in stone walls make that will immune to transmutation effects'', the DM would just say that it happened. 3x started the whole idea that everything had to be spelled out in the rules. So if a DM said ''the magic lava automatically absorbs all fire type magic'' he had better have a page number ready so the players can read and check and make sure that the lava is rules legal. As 3X does not contain such rules, almost all DMs have simply dropped exotic magic from their games.

7.The Player Centric GameD&D is a very centric game for the players(and player characters). All most everything in the game is goodies for the characters. The rules are full of feats and spells and such. With a couple of minutes, a player can make quite a powerful character. But how much help is there for the DM? Sure the DMG is full of advice, but it's lacking in mechanics. Specifically, it's lacking in mechanics to counter the things a player can do. If you just flip through the PH you will find at least two dozen spells a single wizard can use to take over a world, and yet, there is no counter balance. No where in the rules are there any mechanics or spells or items to prevent this from occurring. The rules just leave the DM high and dry. So an individual DM has to figure out things for himself. And you see thousands of DMs taken advantage of over and over again, when they can't think of something. The Perfect Example 1: rouge type characters are the only ones that can hide/spot concealed weapons. The gate guards are fighter types and have no chance of finding anything. Yet, this makes no sense....why would not a gate guard have some rouge skills, for this very reason? After all, a guard is not a 'fighter', they don't kill stuff all day...they check for dangerous weapons all day. Yet the (core) rules offer you no help here. Perfect Example 2The wizard walks into the back and dominates the banker and asks for all the money. The poor Dm flips through book after book, but there is nothing he can find that will let the poor 2nd level expert banker resist such a powerful spell. So the Dm just shrugs ans says ''Ok you walk out of the bank with all the gold''.

8.The Missing Game WorldThis is where the whole game world is just a sandbox for the characters to play in and have fun. There are no consequences or repercussions. The wizard bank robber from above will always get away clean and free. Nothing in the game will every go against the players. At the extreme, the characters can even kill NPCs and not have it matter(DM-''Ok, you killed tavern owner number 1...ummm, tavern owner number two walks over and asks if you'd like a drink''). This comes up when the players start to do powerful magical effects(''we go to the town of Splat and kill everyone and animate them for my undead army'') or {''we just kill the king and live in his castle and make it our flying castle'').

9.The Ton O' Books D&D 3X has a lot of books and other stuff. In the end there is a huge amount of rules, classes, feats, spells and options. And this can make trouble for a DM that is not ready for them. All of the above problems are exacerbated with all the stuff beyond core. The core rules alone don't have anything to help with the core spellcasters, let alone all the 'new' ones. And this problem goes right to crazy as there are so many poorly worded feats, spells, abilities. And not to mention all the stuff that no sane person can see how putting that into a book was a good idea.

10.The Low Magic World I saved this one for last, as it's the one I have the biggest problem with. To put it simply 3X D&D is not a game designed for a low magic type of game. 3X D&D is a quite high magic type game, with a huge emphasis on magical fantasy. At like 15th, characters should not be fighting orcs in wooden tree forts...they should be fighting rakshasa in a pocket plane of doom. Yet tons and tons of DMs are in love with a low magic world. Maybe they are just big fans of LotR, maybe they are just the laid-back type of DM that thinks magic is too hard, maybe they want a more 'realistic' fantasy game and maybe they just like to see the players struggle to do things the 'hard way' with out magic. The problem that most of these DMs make, is they simply remove magic from the game world, but not the players. So that when the player character is a wizard, there is no magic in the world to oppose them. In the low magic world, the wizard can just walk up to the king and cast charm person on him, and worse. Even low level magic can take over a low magic world. And once the characters get past 10th level, and have normal access to everything, then their magic is all powerful. A lot of DMs are low magic types without even realizing it. They simply think it's 'normal' for there to not be too much magic around. It's not that a low level D&D game can't work, it's that you have to change the whole game....mostly the way spellcasters get spells, plus spell availability and power and such.



Well, that is my list. Anyone of them can imbalance a game, and make magic powerful. But add two or three or more of them together, and magic becomes an awesomely powerful force in the game.

MeeposFire
2011-01-30, 02:04 AM
You missed the biggest reason of all

Magic in 3e and to a lesser extent in pre 3e D&D magic allows characters to break the rules of the world or change the world to their whims. Any time when you have characters that can do that and others cannot the classes will never be truly balanced so long as they (magic users) can use the powers given to them to their potential. That is a big misconception for some 4e players. Some think it was giving fighters and the like daily powers but in reality the balance was achieved by removing the ability to truly change the world from spell casters. For some it is a popular change for others it is a most heinous crime (I happen to like it limitless cosmic power gets boring after a while).

Many of your listed problems are no longer problems if this one issue is addressed. Whether you like the result of wizard nerfing is a whole another issue.

Serenity
2011-01-30, 02:17 AM
Every week at least, you see a post about this topic. Magic, specific magic spellcasters, are over powered. This always struck me as odd. I like magic and have always run a very, very high magic level game. So I've never seen the 'problem' myself. But I hear about it often and I've watched other peoples games to see what they do. And based on all that, I've noticed a few reasons magic is so powerful.

1.Challenge Ratting, Encounter Levels, and the whole system:I would say that a good half of the DMs out there don't read this section much. While the system itself can be a bit fuzzy, there is a bit of helpful wisdom in the paragraphs. In short it says ''feel free to adjust the level of your game''. In other words, should you have an encounter where a wizard zaps a whole bunch of foes...then the next encounter should be of a bit higher level and challange. A great many DMs stay stuck 'by the book', however. They just sit back with their hands tied(''It's a balanced encounter for their level...it's not my fault the wizard is awesome'').

Oh, sure, the DM can throw higher and higher Challenge Rating monsters at the party in an attempt to account for the caster's power. But this just makes the non-casters less and less able to contribute to those battles.


2.Optimization:Needless to say, the whole encounter/challenge system does not take into account optimization. The Core system is built around the idea of 'average adventures', not optimized super hero adventures. If you compare an 'average' wizard and an 'optimized' wizard, it's not even a contest that the optimized wizard is far, far more powerful. And this leads to the same problem as Number One: the DM does not adjust the rest of the game world for optimized player characters. An optimized character will go through the 'average' monsters in the monster manual like a hot knife through butter. Though the solution is easy, just optimize the monsters.

To be more specific, Core was tested on the presumption that Clerics healed and Wizards blasted, so the 'average' caster they had in mind scarcely begins to encompass the potential power of such characters. Or so the story goes, anyway.


4.Passive DMingSome DMs are just not aggressive. In short, they don't go all out to try to kill the characters. I'm sure lots of people will say that ''it's not the DM's job to simply kill the characters''. And that is true, in general.....but it is the DM's job to play the NPCs and monster characters as if they want to kill the characters. This type of DM is very careful, as they don't want to hurt, harm or kill a character. They just want the players to have fun and not be sad or mad at them. So the DM has the monsters pull their punches in encounters and lets the characters beat the monsters easily. The perfect example 1: The group fights a dragon, who simply walks over to the group and attacks with it's claws and bite. The dragon lets it self be surrounded and just sits there and lets the characters pound on it. The dragon uses no tactics, no special attacks, spells, does not move or fly and never even uses it's breath weapon(not even once). After a couple of rounds, the characters kill the dragon.The perfect example 2A beholder attacks the party, and zaps away with it's charm, fear, and cause injury eyes....yet for the whole encounter it 'forgets' to use it's petrification, death and distengerate eyes.

Keep in mind, this cuts both ways; playing monsters to their full intelligence and capability tends to underline the problems of the fighter types--the fighter is supposed to keep people from landing hits on the wizard, but there is no reason for most monsters to bother engaging the fighter.


5.The 15 Minuet DayThis is just crazy. The idea that some DMs let the players rest after every 'nova' fight, so that the characters can always be at 100% for nearly every encounter is just crazy. I've seen games where the characters enter a dungeon and get into just three fights and then immediately make camp and rest. And the DM just nods and says 'ok, 8 hours pass, let me know when your ready to go into room number 4'.

Crazy? Certainly, you'll get no argument from me there. But the players have a strong system incentive to it thanks to most abilities, melee and magic alike, being available limited times per day. And unless the DM puts the party under time constraints, it's hard to stop. A single spell, Rope Trick, allows a party to rest with near-impunity more or less anywhere.

Doc Roc
2011-01-30, 03:29 AM
:smallsmile:
Some day I will get to play Commodore Guff.
His day is 40 hours long, or so.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2011-01-30, 03:47 AM
I understand that the 15 minute work day is crazy, but you have to remember that combats and traps take barely any time at all in character. In my campaign, my party is under significant time constraints, so we dungeon crawl so hard that my wizard gets enough XP to level between every single rest* - thank goodness for Fiery Burst and healing belts - but all of the fighting, trap avoiding and decision making takes less than two hours every time. We're literally going through double digit number of encounters between rests, and still most of those two hours are spent walking, planning, searching and analyzing.

*My DM lets me get the basic HD bumps and spell slots, but the automatic spells come later... Yay metamagic?

Gnoman
2011-01-30, 04:42 AM
6.The loss of Exotic MagicIn classic D&D, all sorts of weird, strange and unknown magic effects happened. The whole game world was full of them. A classic adventure would say things like ''the Doom Portal scrambles all teleportation magic in the temple'' or ''the castle is surrounded by fog that eats magical energy'' or ''the graveyard is under a curse so the souls trapped their interfere with magic''. All of this was exotic magic, and none of it was explained. There was no page anywhere that said ''souls trapped in stone walls make that will immune to transmutation effects'', the DM would just say that it happened. 3x started the whole idea that everything had to be spelled out in the rules. So if a DM said ''the magic lava automatically absorbs all fire type magic'' he had better have a page number ready so the players can read and check and make sure that the lava is rules legal. As 3X does not contain such rules, almost all DMs have simply dropped exotic magic from their games.


8.The Missing Game WorldThis is where the whole game world is just a sandbox for the characters to play in and have fun. There are no consequences or repercussions. The wizard bank robber from above will always get away clean and free. Nothing in the game will every go against the players. At the extreme, the characters can even kill NPCs and not have it matter(DM-''Ok, you killed tavern owner number 1...ummm, tavern owner number two walks over and asks if you'd like a drink''). This comes up when the players start to do powerful magical effects(''we go to the town of Splat and kill everyone and animate them for my undead army'') or {''we just kill the king and live in his castle and make it our flying castle'').


Both of these are specifically discouraged in the ruleset. Rule 0 is an actual rule of the game, and teh DM is free to declare that "this stone over here cannot be worked by magic because it is inhabited by the souls of the dead" without any printed rules giving him the ability to do so. It is reasonable, however, to expect this to be internally consistent. If casting a necromantic spell in a particular graveyard at midnight on the winter solstice makes the spell more powerful, then either this should be true for all graveyards, or the DM should be able to come up with a reason that graveyard is special. No different from any older version of the game. Now, it may be true that this sort of thing is used less nowadays, BUT it is unlikely to be for the reason that "3.x players won't tolerate anything that isn't RAW."

The latter is even more pointedly condemmned in the DMG, which suggests numerous ways to thwart overconfident PCs.

jseah
2011-01-30, 04:55 AM
I have a different theory actually.
While, most of the points I agree with, particularly 10, 8 and 4; I would disagree about the exotic magic.

My explanation for magic in 3.5 being overpowered is precisely because magic is exotic. The player's magic is exotic.

Sure there are rules for it. But how does it work? No reason, it's magic, it just happens.
That's exotic magic right there.

Let me quote a very interesting observation on writing fantasy I read elsewhere:

Sanderson's First Law of Magics: An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.
Essentially, if you do not understand how magic works, it will remain a black box that does things.
Gandalf was a wizard, but you don't see him using magic to solve problems.

You CAN model gandalf as a level 10 D&D wizard nearly perfectly as long as he doesn't use his spells.
Why? Because if a level 10 D&D wizard used his spells, it would look like a bad story. Mr OP wizard solves everything with magic!

Hmm, that is exactly what happens in D&D. Mr OP wizard solves everything with magic!

That is because magic is never explained, thus cannot be limited via the "magical lava absorbs fire magic" route without appearing to be complete fiat.


A question that pops up later if you continue down this line of thinking is that magic is able to do things that require an incredible amount of information. But that gets a bit too nerdy to be useful.

umbrapolaris
2011-01-30, 06:57 AM
to put it simply 3X D&D is not a game designed for a low magic type of game. 3X D&D is a quite high magic type game, with a huge emphasis on magical fantasy. At like 15th, characters should not be fighting orcs in wooden tree forts...they should be fighting rakshasa in a pocket plane of doom.

at last someone who share my POV, i agree with all the OP post. specially this one.

faceroll
2011-01-30, 07:12 AM
Oh, sure, the DM can throw higher and higher Challenge Rating monsters at the party in an attempt to account for the caster's power. But this just makes the non-casters less and less able to contribute to those battles.

Not entirely true. In combat, a caster's power often comes in the form of action advantage, especially control. If you simply put too many things in combat to debuff or control, then the wizard will only be able to disable a handful of them, making the other party members necessary for dealing with the hill giants that weren't webbed or grappled.

caden_varn
2011-01-30, 08:18 AM
Bloodtide, the arguments you put forward are for a caster vs gameworld imbalance. The issue with casters is actually caster vs the other PCs imbalance.
A lot of this is due to the ever-expanding tolbox of options a caster will pick up at higher levels.

Caster vs world inbalance can be overcome by changing the world, completely within the DMs grasp, I agree. However, doing so will generally just highlight the caster vs other PC issue even more. When the caster can consistently eclipse or usurp the role of the non-caster characters, if he chooses, you have a problem. A well-designed and played caster can get that capability at higher levels.

As you say, you can do some things to limit the caster, like blocking certain types of spell in certain areas, but you have to actively manage this, and as casters toolbox gets bigger this gets more difficult (depending on the skill of the player and of the DM). But the reason you have to do this is because the caster is innately more powerful than the fighter, for example. You rarely or never need to worry about setting up an adventure to limit the fighters ability in order to provide a decent challenge to the party.

Mastikator
2011-01-30, 08:39 AM
8.The Missing Game WorldThis is where the whole game world is just a sandbox for the characters to play in and have fun. There are no consequences or repercussions. The wizard bank robber from above will always get away clean and free. Nothing in the game will every go against the players. At the extreme, the characters can even kill NPCs and not have it matter(DM-''Ok, you killed tavern owner number 1...ummm, tavern owner number two walks over and asks if you'd like a drink''). This comes up when the players start to do powerful magical effects(''we go to the town of Splat and kill everyone and animate them for my undead army'') or {''we just kill the king and live in his castle and make it our flying castle'').
If this is how people play sandbox then they're doing it wrong. If this is sandbox then I hate sandbox.

dsmiles
2011-01-30, 08:39 AM
I don't grasp the whole 15 minute workday thing. Never have, probably never will. My players insist on conservation of resources so that their characters can adventure longer. Sometimes going for more then 24 in-game hours at a time. (Of course, if people are using a 15 minute work day, time-sensitive plots can solve that. :smalltongue:) EDIT: I, as a player, have gone long past the point of usefulness as an arcane caster many times. So what if I run out of higher-level spells, I can still do other stuff.

As far as passive DMing, I'm a little bit guilty of that. I try my best not to kill characters unless it'll add something exciting to the story. I'm more of a storyteller DM now than the ruthless, cold-hearted DM, whose only job was to kill the characters that I used to be. See, I play monsters to their full intelligence, using intelligent tactics to try to kill the characters, but I'll also fudge rolls every once in a while to keep the story going. Nobody would want to read a story where the main characters get killed off every other chapter, but a dramatic, important, well-timed death that advances the story, that's another thing entirely. So, no, Orc Mook #12 will probably never get the chance to kill a character, but that Ancient Wyrm Red Dragon probably will.

The Glyphstone
2011-01-30, 09:01 AM
If this is how people play sandbox then they're doing it wrong. If this is sandbox then I hate sandbox.

That's more like a sandbox when you dump it upside down to get rid of all the sand and replace it with pudding.

dsmiles
2011-01-30, 09:12 AM
That's more like a sandbox when you dump it upside down to get rid of all the sand and replace it with pudding.Actually, I thought it was the sandbox that all the feral cats in the neighborhood used. :smalltongue:

Lans
2011-01-30, 09:19 AM
Playing any archtype wizard outside of blaster and oracle is going to bend or break the game.
Necromancer- Save or dies, debuffs from hell, undead army
Enchanter- You have a ton of *friends* to help you
Body Transmuter-Hulk Smash
Battle field transmuter- Solid fogs etc
Summoner- Evards, summon monster, gate, planar binding
Illusionist- Shadow spells, save or dies, invisibility,

The Glyphstone
2011-01-30, 09:23 AM
A buff-transmuter can also make your party love you and your DM hate you. Sure, the Wizard benefits relatively more from being Polymorphed into a hydra than the fighter, but the Fighter does benefit objectively more by having a higher native BAB before equivalent buffs are added. And while you're at it, Polymorph the Rogue too, because getting 5-12 sneak attacks per turn when flanking with your hydra buddy is gravy. Oh, and the party can all fly, and they're invisible. You're a ridiculous force multiplier if you play your spell slots and metamagics right.

SITB
2011-01-30, 10:01 AM
Someone in this forum mentioned it before in another thread. One of the major problems with D&D magic is archtypes. Rogues are the Gray Mouser, Barbarians are Conan, Monks are all those wuxia heroes. Wizards, by contrast, try to cram ALL the archtypes of magical prowess in one class; Merlin AND Gandalf AND Baba Yaga AND...

That's why Wizards are so verstaile, they try to do anything at once.

dsmiles
2011-01-30, 10:06 AM
Someone in this forum mentioned it before in another thread. One of the major problems with D&D magic is archtypes. Rogues are the Gray Mouser, Barbarians are Conan, Monks are all those wuxia heroes. Wizards, by contrast, try to cram ALL the archtypes of magical prowess in one class; Merlin AND Gandalf AND Baba Yaga AND...

That's why Wizards are so verstaile, they try to do anything at once.Huh. I guess I'm different. My rogues are Gord, my barbarians are Guts, and I don't generally use wizards (I prefer sorcerers who are snarky and more like a cross between Sheelba and Ningabaule).

Thorcrest
2011-01-30, 10:07 AM
Well, A lot of these have been addressed already, but I will make a go at them as well, I will note that some are repetitive as they have been mentioned by others.



Every week at least, you see a post about this topic. Magic, specific magic spellcasters, are over powered. This always struck me as odd. I like magic and have always run a very, very high magic level game. So I've never seen the 'problem' myself. But I hear about it often and I've watched other peoples games to see what they do. And based on all that, I've noticed a few reasons magic is so powerful.

1.Challenge Ratting, Encounter Levels, and the whole system:I would say that a good half of the DMs out there don't read this section much. While the system itself can be a bit fuzzy, there is a bit of helpful wisdom in the paragraphs. In short it says ''feel free to adjust the level of your game''. In other words, should you have an encounter where a wizard zaps a whole bunch of foes...then the next encounter should be of a bit higher level and challange. A great many DMs stay stuck 'by the book', however. They just sit back with their hands tied(''It's a balanced encounter for their level...it's not my fault the wizard is awesome'').

This first point has very little to do with OMG MAGIC!!! It has more to do with a bad DM style. Personally, I find the Challenge Ratings and Encounter Levels to be far from close to truth. A GOOD DM, emphasis on GOOD, will be able to effectively measure his party's strengths and weaknesses to create challenges that are both fun and challenging. These can be creatures that he actually creates himself, or that he takes from a book, but they should be a good challenge, with normal encounters being fairly rough, but not usually life-threatening, sometimes players are just dumb, but I digress, and Bosses should be just on the edge of TPK, it's meant to be a hard fight and if you blow through it with ease, it wasn't worth it.


2.Optimization:Needless to say, the whole encounter/challenge system does not take into account optimization. The Core system is built around the idea of 'average adventures', not optimized super hero adventures. If you compare an 'average' wizard and an 'optimized' wizard, it's not even a contest that the optimized wizard is far, far more powerful. And this leads to the same problem as Number One: the DM does not adjust the rest of the game world for optimized player characters. An optimized character will go through the 'average' monsters in the monster manual like a hot knife through butter. Though the solution is easy, just optimize the monsters.

See my point for Number 1.


3.Laid-Back DMingSome Dms just don't have the energy, will or time to do much for the game. They simply use things right out of the book. And against powerful characters, the by-the-book monsters are just fodder. Even simple things, such as giving monsters magic items, templates or even just good feats can really change an encounter. And magic in general is hard to abdicate. It is possible to make a magically secure tower, but knowing all the ins and outs of the rules takes skill, experence and time. And it's not just magic that can counter magic, tons of mundane things can also counter magic. But it does take effort.

See my point for Number 1. In addition, if a DM does not have time or energy to game, I must ask: Why are THEY the DM.


4.Passive DMingSome DMs are just not aggressive. In short, they don't go all out to try to kill the characters. I'm sure lots of people will say that ''it's not the DM's job to simply kill the characters''. And that is true, in general.....but it is the DM's job to play the NPCs and monster characters as if they want to kill the characters. This type of DM is very careful, as they don't want to hurt, harm or kill a character. They just want the players to have fun and not be sad or mad at them. So the DM has the monsters pull their punches in encounters and lets the characters beat the monsters easily. The perfect example 1: The group fights a dragon, who simply walks over to the group and attacks with it's claws and bite. The dragon lets it self be surrounded and just sits there and lets the characters pound on it. The dragon uses no tactics, no special attacks, spells, does not move or fly and never even uses it's breath weapon(not even once). After a couple of rounds, the characters kill the dragon.The perfect example 2A beholder attacks the party, and zaps away with it's charm, fear, and cause injury eyes....yet for the whole encounter it 'forgets' to use it's petrification, death and distengerate eyes.

This depends mostly on the groups playstyle; it might fall under Number 1, but it could be that the players just DON'T want a challenge, which is silly, but some players just like to feel all powerful... like they do when they play HALO :smalltongue:. Now your examples, the first is just BAD! No word other than BAD! It is so BAD that it makes me sick that people actually do this! The only reason for this is if you are teaching new players how combat works and you are using this as an example, i.e. so now it's the dragon's turn, he attacks, then it's your turn little Timmy, etc. It is still BAD though. The Second one can be attributed to three things:
1: Laid Back No-Risk Easy Play Style
2: Bad DMing
3: Beholder has a motive for not wanting to kill his captives, maybe it's Master wants to interrogate them? Good DMs should have a reason they haven't been using their best abilities.


5.The 15 Minuet DayThis is just crazy. The idea that some DMs let the players rest after every 'nova' fight, so that the characters can always be at 100% for nearly every encounter is just crazy. I've seen games where the characters enter a dungeon and get into just three fights and then immediately make camp and rest. And the DM just nods and says 'ok, 8 hours pass, let me know when your ready to go into room number 4'.

Wait a Minute! What? DM's let players just rest? Freely? In the Dungeon? I've allowed players to take rests whenever they want, even after every encounter, but they damn well better have some defenses, a watch set, etc. Or else: I'm sorry Player 1, you don't wake up, the rest of you wake up to a beast ripping your friend apart!

You could also have time sensitive dungeons, and it's not like monsters won't wander around in the dungeon and make it harder for the players either! :smallamused:


6.The loss of Exotic MagicIn classic D&D, all sorts of weird, strange and unknown magic effects happened. The whole game world was full of them. A classic adventure would say things like ''the Doom Portal scrambles all teleportation magic in the temple'' or ''the castle is surrounded by fog that eats magical energy'' or ''the graveyard is under a curse so the souls trapped their interfere with magic''. All of this was exotic magic, and none of it was explained. There was no page anywhere that said ''souls trapped in stone walls make that will immune to transmutation effects'', the DM would just say that it happened. 3x started the whole idea that everything had to be spelled out in the rules. So if a DM said ''the magic lava automatically absorbs all fire type magic'' he had better have a page number ready so the players can read and check and make sure that the lava is rules legal. As 3X does not contain such rules, almost all DMs have simply dropped exotic magic from their games.

This is just bad DMing again! Why is all of this Bad Dming? Here, a DM can do whatever he wants! If they ask for the page and book, point them to the DMG where it says that he can do what he wants! He can change rules, arbitrate rulings, create his own spells (hell, players can do that! (with DM approval) But you won't find those in books!), create the entire game world... he can do ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING!


7.The Player Centric GameD&D is a very centric game for the players(and player characters). All most everything in the game is goodies for the characters. The rules are full of feats and spells and such. With a couple of minutes, a player can make quite a powerful character. But how much help is there for the DM? Sure the DMG is full of advice, but it's lacking in mechanics. Specifically, it's lacking in mechanics to counter the things a player can do. If you just flip through the PH you will find at least two dozen spells a single wizard can use to take over a world, and yet, there is no counter balance. No where in the rules are there any mechanics or spells or items to prevent this from occurring. The rules just leave the DM high and dry. So an individual DM has to figure out things for himself. And you see thousands of DMs taken advantage of over and over again, when they can't think of something. The Perfect Example 1: rouge type characters are the only ones that can hide/spot concealed weapons. The gate guards are fighter types and have no chance of finding anything. Yet, this makes no sense....why would not a gate guard have some rouge skills, for this very reason? After all, a guard is not a 'fighter', they don't kill stuff all day...they check for dangerous weapons all day. Yet the (core) rules offer you no help here. Perfect Example 2The wizard walks into the back and dominates the banker and asks for all the money. The poor Dm flips through book after book, but there is nothing he can find that will let the poor 2nd level expert banker resist such a powerful spell. So the Dm just shrugs ans says ''Ok you walk out of the bank with all the gold''.

Ok, the players are essentially the Main Characters in a Story, but everyone else is also a character! They have all the same abilities that a player does, potentially, and then some as the DM can just create his own abilities, feats, and classes, etc. whereas the players must seek DM approval to do the same. Example 1: Why are they all FIGHTERS? I even LIKE the fighter class, but I would never have my entire guard contingent consist of Carbon copies of eachother, throw in some Wizards, or some Rogues, or anything! HELL, make your own GUARD class with skills such as Spot and Listen, and give them full bad with 4xint modifier for skills per day. Guards are now "fighters" with more skills, less feats, and spot and listen or whatever you want, the DM can do anything! Example 2: Oh how I weep for the players with such Poor DMs! It doesn't make sense that the banker can resist it, so he doesn't, but do you really think nothing will come of this? Someone will notice, and soon enough everyone in that town, possibly the country, will be after the damn bastard that stole everyone's money! He will be wanted throughout the land! Also, carrying so much money can attract unwanted attention from any number of sources, pick pocets, politicians, roughians, gangs, guards, greedy shop keepers, etc.


8.The Missing Game WorldThis is where the whole game world is just a sandbox for the characters to play in and have fun. There are no consequences or repercussions. The wizard bank robber from above will always get away clean and free. Nothing in the game will every go against the players. At the extreme, the characters can even kill NPCs and not have it matter(DM-''Ok, you killed tavern owner number 1...ummm, tavern owner number two walks over and asks if you'd like a drink''). This comes up when the players start to do powerful magical effects(''we go to the town of Splat and kill everyone and animate them for my undead army'') or {''we just kill the king and live in his castle and make it our flying castle'').

What the... how the... what... why... who... I... BAD! BAD DM! BAD! What kind of game is this!

DM speech before Game: Alright everyone you are the most powerful people in the world, no consequences from anything you do since there is no form of communication in this world and everything is weaker than you, enjoy!

BAD! BAD DM! BAD!


9.The Ton O' Books D&D 3X has a lot of books and other stuff. In the end there is a huge amount of rules, classes, feats, spells and options. And this can make trouble for a DM that is not ready for them. All of the above problems are exacerbated with all the stuff beyond core. The core rules alone don't have anything to help with the core spellcasters, let alone all the 'new' ones. And this problem goes right to crazy as there are so many poorly worded feats, spells, abilities. And not to mention all the stuff that no sane person can see how putting that into a book was a good idea.

This can be a genuine concern, but it is not a REASON MAGIC IS OVERPOWERED; This is a problem encountered whenever players have more game knowledge than the DM. This can easily be managed however by simply having the Players clear anything they want to use by him first, simply have him read it and give it a yay/nay and then move on, also ensure that the player follows the DMs interpretation of any ambiguities right from the beginning.


10.The Low Magic World I saved this one for last, as it's the one I have the biggest problem with. To put it simply 3X D&D is not a game designed for a low magic type of game. 3X D&D is a quite high magic type game, with a huge emphasis on magical fantasy. At like 15th, characters should not be fighting orcs in wooden tree forts...they should be fighting rakshasa in a pocket plane of doom. Yet tons and tons of DMs are in love with a low magic world. Maybe they are just big fans of LotR, maybe they are just the laid-back type of DM that thinks magic is too hard, maybe they want a more 'realistic' fantasy game and maybe they just like to see the players struggle to do things the 'hard way' with out magic. The problem that most of these DMs make, is they simply remove magic from the game world, but not the players. So that when the player character is a wizard, there is no magic in the world to oppose them. In the low magic world, the wizard can just walk up to the king and cast charm person on him, and worse. Even low level magic can take over a low magic world. And once the characters get past 10th level, and have normal access to everything, then their magic is all powerful. A lot of DMs are low magic types without even realizing it. They simply think it's 'normal' for there to not be too much magic around. It's not that a low level D&D game can't work, it's that you have to change the whole game....mostly the way spellcasters get spells, plus spell availability and power and such.

This also comes down to the DM. If a DM wants to play "low magic" using DnD rules, he HAS to limit both the availability of magic items and spellcaster magic. This includes spells the players can obtain... maybe rid wizards of the "free spells" rules, but that would be just a start. Many spells would have to be removed from paly, creatures removed, the CR/EL system abandonned, not that that is a bad thing, and many other changes to make this work. Low Magic can be done in DnD, but the biggest thing is that the DM has to be willing to just say NO to his players in most things related to magic. You are correct though in saying that it is not how 3.5 was meant to be played.


Well, that is my list. Anyone of them can imbalance a game, and make magic powerful. But add two or three or more of them together, and magic becomes an awesomely powerful force in the game.

As I have shown, the vast majority of what you say is not that magic is overpowered, which in my opinion it is, but for different reasons that I don't feel like outlining as this is long enough already, but that you have played and observed games where the DMs did not properly play the opponents, and when that happens I can make a Fighter seem like a God!

Aspenor
2011-01-30, 10:10 AM
I have an issue with your statements about exotic magic.

I have never had a situation where I made up something like that where the players asked for a rules quote from a book. Never. Not once. If I say something works some way, they accept that it just works that way and that's it. No explanation required.

If I had a group of players that insisted that I could only use material that's been published, I'd tell them to bugger off and go find another DM.

I don't think that insisting for rules quotes is as common as you make it out to be. Even my group, full of optimizers and power gamers, isn't like that.

The Glyphstone
2011-01-30, 10:23 AM
Someone in this forum mentioned it before in another thread. One of the major problems with D&D magic is archtypes. Rogues are the Gray Mouser, Barbarians are Conan, Monks are all those wuxia heroes. Wizards, by contrast, try to cram ALL the archtypes of magical prowess in one class; Merlin AND Gandalf AND Baba Yaga AND...

That's why Wizards are so verstaile, they try to do anything at once.

Interestingly, that's also why Monks are so scatterbrained and thus weak - they try to cram all the sub-archtypes of 'wuxia hero' into one class. Because Wizards get to pick and choose which archtype they emulate every day, they manage to pull it off.

Pechvarry
2011-01-30, 10:47 AM
Essentially, if you do not understand how magic works, it will remain a black box that does things.
Gandalf was a wizard, but you don't see him using magic to solve problems.

You CAN model gandalf as a level 10 D&D wizard nearly perfectly as long as he doesn't use his spells.
Why? Because if a level 10 D&D wizard used his spells, it would look like a bad story. Mr OP wizard solves everything with magic!

Hmm, that is exactly what happens in D&D. Mr OP wizard solves everything with magic!

That is because magic is never explained, thus cannot be limited via the "magical lava absorbs fire magic" route without appearing to be complete fiat.

<3 Brandon Sanderson.

This problem of magic solving encounters also occurs in a lot of superhero comics, where superman shows off yet another power he's apparently had all along. This sort of thing is why comic books, and to a lesser extent a lot of poor fantasy, have such a hard time being taken seriously from a literary perspective. It's no wonder I hate PCs to do it.

shadow_archmagi
2011-01-30, 12:23 PM
FIFTEEN MINUETS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuet) IN ONE DAY?

Your players must have extremely muscular ankles!


Joke on bad spelling aside, running an extremely high power game for a group of wizards is fine. The problem arises when there are nonwizards who simply can't compete.

As for "Exotic magic," well, that always feels like a direct nerf to the player. To a player, few things say "Bad DMing" like "Suddenly half your abilities may or may not work at my discretion. hint: I'm going to always choose no."

As for your comment on DMs who are too sissified to make any real attempt at murdering players, the problem STILL arises that when laser comes to forcefield, barbarians don't actually have lasers or forcefields.

The Big Dice
2011-01-30, 01:39 PM
See my point for Number 1. In addition, if a DM does not have time or energy to game, I must ask: Why are THEY the DM.
Here's a fact. People have lives away from the gaming table. There are people who like to GM, but don't have time to write adventures and customise every aspect of the gaming experience. This isn't a crime and it's why there are things like pre written modules, as well as people who share their adventure ideas over the internet.

Sometimes everyone wants to play, but nobody really wants to GM. It happens.

But to get back on topic, what I've found in play is, casters might be theoretically powerful. But that doesn't always translate into actual power at the gaming table. For every anecdote of Ultimate Wizardly Power, there are several of wizards and sorcerors failing saves, of people preparing exactly the spells they didn't need and of NPCs making saves.

tcrudisi
2011-01-30, 01:42 PM
The #1 reason why magic is overpowered in 3.5 is...

a wizard did it.

bloodtide
2011-01-30, 01:51 PM
I have an issue with your statements about exotic magic.

I have never had a situation where I made up something like that where the players asked for a rules quote from a book. Never. Not once. If I say something works some way, they accept that it just works that way and that's it. No explanation required.

If I had a group of players that insisted that I could only use material that's been published, I'd tell them to bugger off and go find another DM.

I don't think that insisting for rules quotes is as common as you make it out to be. Even my group, full of optimizers and power gamers, isn't like that.


I mention it, as I do see it all the time. No with my home group, but with a lot of other groups I've seen. Plus it's very common in Cold Groups(where random people sit down with a random DM to play the game).


A Typical Example: DM: ''As you enter the cave a blue wave of magical light flows over you....''
Player 1: "What? I roll my skill check! I got a 40! I demand to know what kind of magic that was and what effect it had!"
DM: "The magic light enhances the connection of illusions with reality and in effect negates the spell true seeing...."
Player 1 "What? WHAT? You can't do that! There is not spell or effect in the rules that can do that! True seeing is sacrosanct! We demand that you only use the official core rules of D&D or we will not play!"
DM: .........


This often is seen with new DMs or one that have less experience. Or simply DMs who won't stand up to the players.

Most classic adventures are full of such exotic magic. As soon as you enter the adventure location, something like a curse effects all the characters. It is something that 3X has lost. Most modern adventures take place in just bland locations.

Jornophelanthas
2011-01-30, 02:16 PM
I must agree with Thorcrest above, who has exhaustively shown that this argument is basically the same thing said over and over again.

I am reminded of this thread (by the same OP):
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184294

Both posts apparently serve to denounce a certain style of DM-ing, which is presented in such an exaggerated way that it is basically a "straw man argument".
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)

Pechvarry
2011-01-30, 02:23 PM
Most classic adventures are full of such exotic magic. As soon as you enter the adventure location, something like a curse effects all the characters. It is something that 3X has lost. Most modern adventures take place in just bland locations.

That doesn't necessarily make it good storytelling. From a plot perspective, unexplained phenomena that directly affect the protagonists is... pretty bad.

Toliudar
2011-01-30, 02:27 PM
Actually, I find that I find a lot more of "because I say so" from DM's who use it as a stopgap when players come up with something interesting that the DM isn't ready for. Of course, there are going to be effects that fall outside of pre-existing spells. Being able to articulate how effect of those changes for those characters who have committed resources to being able to analyze them (and a spellcraft check of 40 would indicate that). When I'm playing a caster, someone who has dedicated myself to understanding the way magic works, I'd at least like to have a chance of understanding why things are the way they are. Putting the counter-argument in the words of someone clearly behaving like an ass, as you do in your example, does not strengthen the argument itself.

However, I agree with most of the posters here: most of your list have less to do with a spellcasting/nonspellcasting balance than with badly behaved players and DM's. The 15-minute day may be an exception to that, but unless you're involved in a story with a strongly time-sensitive plot for the majority of the adventure.

dsmiles
2011-01-30, 02:27 PM
I mention it, as I do see it all the time. No with my home group, but with a lot of other groups I've seen. Plus it's very common in Cold Groups(where random people sit down with a random DM to play the game).


A Typical Example: DM: ''As you enter the cave a blue wave of magical light flows over you....''
Player 1: "What? I roll my skill check! I got a 40! I demand to know what kind of magic that was and what effect it had!"
DM: "The magic light enhances the connection of illusions with reality and in effect negates the spell true seeing...."
Player 1 "What? WHAT? You can't do that! There is not spell or effect in the rules that can do that! True seeing is sacrosanct! We demand that you only use the official core rules of D&D or we will not play!"
DM: .........


This often is seen with new DMs or one that have less experience. Or simply DMs who won't stand up to the players.

Most classic adventures are full of such exotic magic. As soon as you enter the adventure location, something like a curse effects all the characters. It is something that 3X has lost. Most modern adventures take place in just bland locations.I must have extraordinarily good luck, then. I've never once had a player say that the only things I can use are what's in The Book. (All hail The Book!) Those people would be promptly shut down by the people I game with, because the people I game with understand that the book isn't really The Book at all, it's just a bunch of guidelines. (But still, I've never seen/played in/DMed and adventure where the location was 'cursed' or whatever, and I've been playing for *COUGH!*27*COUGH!* years (and played 1e ToH, ToEE, most of the Gygaxian adventures, plus plenty of home-written ones). IMO, a DM should never throw anything at the players that they can't counter. There should be no unbeatable traps, or magic that they can't dispatch. Sure, they may not be able to do it right now, but given time and research/effort they should be able to overcome any obstacle (except encounters, but they can always run from those; running is a perfectly viable solution).

stainboy
2011-01-30, 05:11 PM
5.The 15 Minute DayThis is just crazy. The idea that some DMs let the players rest after every 'nova' fight, so that the characters can always be at 100% for nearly every encounter is just crazy. I've seen games where the characters enter a dungeon and get into just three fights and then immediately make camp and rest. And the DM just nods and says 'ok, 8 hours pass, let me know when your ready to go into room number 4'.


Ok, I can't camp out in a dungeon. Great. I teleport the party to a pre-scouted inaccessible location and then we rest in a scrying-immune Rope Trick pocket dimension. If you have a reason that trick doesn't work, I have others, and I haven't even gotten into timeless-plane cheese. You're the DM; I can't force you to let me rest. But I can easily construct a situation where the only way for you to stop me is blatant "It doesn't work because the DM said so" railroading.

You should really read the wizard spell list before you claim spells are only broken because the DM is lazy.

LansXero
2011-01-30, 05:24 PM
I think they are saying 'sure, you can rest, but whatever you were trying to acomplice just got harder because you ignored it for 8 hours'.

dsmiles
2011-01-30, 05:28 PM
I think they are saying 'sure, you can rest, but whatever you were trying to acomplice just got harder because you ignored it for 8 hours'.Exactly. Time stands still for no man (unless you can cast Time Stop).

The Big Dice
2011-01-30, 06:08 PM
Ok, I can't camp out in a dungeon. Great. I teleport the party to a pre-scouted inaccessible location and then we rest in a scrying-immune Rope Trick pocket dimension. If you have a reason that trick doesn't work, I have others, and I haven't even gotten into timeless-plane cheese. You're the DM; I can't force you to let me rest. But I can easily construct a situation where the only way for you to stop me is blatant "It doesn't work because the DM said so" railroading.

You should really read the wizard spell list before you claim spells are only broken because the DM is lazy.

How did you pre scout an inaccessible location? By definition you couldn't have done that. The location isn't able to be accessed, so you coudn't have scouted it. Congratulations, you just made a random teleport. And no, that's not railroading. It's using a dictionary and applying the concept of "In character actions have in character consequences" to the decision to Teleport.

And if you read the Wizard spell list, it is stupidly broken. In theory. In practise, players tend not to want to have to lug around a sheaf of printouts detailing their favourite summons. With appropriate templates applied to the base creatures. Often, they don't like feeling that they never got to zap anything or blow anything up. They also tend to envy the ability of Monks to make saves against things.

But that's Wizards in real play situations. And yes, some players like to feel that they're "in control" because they use spells to manipulate the battlefield. But they are ignoring the fact that they are not the ones doing the damage it takes to put enemies down permanently

The real problem with discussing Wizards on forums is, people assume that the Wizard is either in posession of every single spell and feat that might be relevant, or that the GM will let the Wizard read his session notes because of a couple of Divination spells.

In other words, players feeling entitled to things they don't really have any right to be entitled to.

The thing a lot of inexperienced GMs forget is, the world isn't a static place that's just waiting for the charcters to get close enough to pull mobs to themselves. Fights are noisy things, and when they start it's not unreasonable for everything within earshot to come running, Especially in an inhabited dungeon. And if the characters have one nova fight, then run away, then the inhabitants of the area are not going to assume "Oh, they came and killed a few of us but now they're gone. We can go back to our spawn points now."

They're more likely to think "Adventuring scum. Let's get ready for when they come back." Because, this isn't a badly locked chest situation. If you're not going to just give everything to the players, every dungeon bash should be treated as if the inhabitants are Tucker's Kobolds. Because these things are fighting to defend their homes and families. And who wouldn't fight their absolute best, including all the dirty tricks you can think of, to protect that?

D&D 3 players have almost convinced the world tha thte GM is there simply to make them look good. But a good GM makes them earn things. Even Wizards.

MeeposFire
2011-01-30, 06:15 PM
Your statement boils down to "players are too lazy or too nice to use all the broken stuff so it is not broken". Just because you do not use broken stuff does not mean it is not broken in the first place.

For instance a company makes a system in their company dealing with money. This system has a flaw that if exploited could lead to somebody stealing money from the company without being detected. Is this system not broken just because I choose not to exploit the system or should I fix this system/replace it?

dsmiles
2011-01-30, 06:24 PM
If you're not going to just give everything to the players, every dungeon bash should be treated as if the inhabitants are Tucker's Kobolds. Wait. There's people out there that don't play encounters as if they're defending hearth and home?

Toliudar
2011-01-30, 06:44 PM
Tucker's Kobolds assumes a level of unity, preparedness, wit, material resources and self-sacrifice that doesn't exist in every single community, dungeon or otherwise. They are not so much a creature as a means of taking the players down a peg. If every opponent acted like Tucker's Kobolds, the game would devolve into two sets of twitchy paranoids in an arms race to eliminate each other. Potentially fun for a while, but not the stuff of most campaigns.

dsmiles
2011-01-30, 06:54 PM
Tucker's Kobolds assumes a level of unity, preparedness, wit, material resources and self-sacrifice that doesn't exist in every single community, dungeon or otherwise. They are not so much a creature as a means of taking the players down a peg. If every opponent acted like Tucker's Kobolds, the game would devolve into two sets of twitchy paranoids in an arms race to eliminate each other. Potentially fun for a while, but not the stuff of most campaigns.Not every single encounter, obviously. Anything that lives in communities (as in racial communities - a bunch of gobbers living with a horde of orcs obviously wouldn't show such loyalty, but a whole warren of those stinky buggers would) gets those benefits (as long as their average INT score is at least, you know, average).

SiuiS
2011-01-30, 07:24 PM
Swords were designed to be sub-par to sorcery.
Initially, magic was important stuff. Not only was it a gamble (magic systems weren't internally consisten, rules-wise) it was dangerous- as a magic user, you had half or less HP than anyone else, and when they all hit 2nd or 3rd level, you were finally getting your second magic missile per day.

Magic, especially Vancian magic, is based off of the "limited resources have more value than unlimited resources" model. At 5th level, fireball does 5d6 once. A sword does 1d8 every round, but can be used over and over. Bardot other variables, the sword is stronger.

Other variables throw out the system. Casters don't have to toil for power now; they advance at the same rate. They can wear good armor. They are no longer a separate system. Being a caster is like applying a template to a fighter,
"Caster template
Your character shoots magic spells instead of arrows. You need components instead of arrows, and a book or holy symbol instead of a bow".

Cool, right? Except the power of magic still runs on "limited resources should be stronger" though the resources are no longer limited. The system is designed with a bunch of preconceptions which do not hold true.

ShneekeyTheLost
2011-01-30, 07:50 PM
The reason magic is overpowered in 3.5 is because none of the other players will be able to contribute if the wizard is appropriately challenged.

In regards to the fifteen-minute day, Rope Trick, and Magnificent Mansion (both Core spells, by the way) make it almost impossible for the GM to prevent this from happening, barring time limits on goals.

The other problem with magic is Action Economy. With one spell, I negate multiple opponents as a serious threat. See also: Slow, Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud, Grease, etc...

That's not even getting into Quicken + Imbue Familiar etc... shennanigans to get something like 6-8 spells off per round. And certainly not taking into consideration things like Time Stop, Celerity, and other action-economy breakers.

Endarire
2011-01-30, 08:51 PM
Powerful Independent Spells
I most strongly agree with caden_varn. Magic is powerful because it can do anything (exhibit 1 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm), exhibit 2 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/miracle.htm), exhibit 3 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/realityRevision.htm)).

Far before these level 9 spells are level 1s (silent image, charm person, hypnotism) and 0s (ghost sound, message, prestidigitation) that can cause havoc in an unprotected world. An Enchanter1 or an Illusionist1 in a low magic world can logically take over due to lack of opposition, if said Wizard is smart about it.

To add to this, most magic is quick to cast. At some point, Problem X can be solved with a caster's standard action. By this point, Caster G probably has many, many more spells able to use. He may even have swift or immediate action spells remaining to cast before his next turn.

Magic Ruling a Setting
Remember, D&D is a game about magic. Casters can wield magic by giving orders to the Multiverse. The Wizard speaks and it is done. Sometimes, the Wizard need not even speak!

Non-casters, at their best, use magic items and innate talents to try to mimic casters. This is usually self-defeating. Non-casters spend their wealth (and wealth by level) trying to be casters. Casters spend their wealth being better casters than the wannabes.

Why hasn't magic overtly taken over setting S? That's for the author to decide. Most likely, it was from not understanding the rules, or from the setting trying to be low magic. The full possibilities are best reserved for another post.

Magic Ruling a Party
Magic wins D&D. As already stated, D&D is a game about magic. Part of the reason magic rules parties is because it's a game where players don't want to be sidelined for weeks or months of game time or real time to heal, have status effects removed, or do fantastic things. Having prevalent magic means people can do more fantastic (sometimes read as foolish) things while still able to play their character.

Note the irony here. By trying not to sideline the non-casters, WotC unwittingly did. Part of the problem is inevitable with this approach.

Casters define level-appropriate abilities. A Wizard1 can learn sleep, grease, color spray, and silent image, and probably will. Nevermind that said Wizard was probably "meant" to learn magic missile and burning hands.

A Wizard must allot his spells and magic items (Scribe Scroll, ahem) between combat and non-combat spells. At some point, running out of spells is not a concern, and some spells become versatile enough to have many applications. From my experience, a Specialist Wizard7 with 20 INT has enough spell slots of levels 1-4 to last him through the adventuring day. A typical encounter can be ended with only a spell or two.

20 INT Specialist Wizard7 Slots Per Day
-Level 4: 2+1
-Level 3: 3+1
-Level 2: 4+1
-Level 1: 6+1
-Level 0: 4+1
15 general spells and 4 specialist spells of level 1 and higher.
OR
19 general spells and 5 specialist spells of any level.

Phases of the Game
See here (http://antioch.snow-fall.com/~Endarire/DnD/Challenging%203.5%20and%20Pathfinder%20Parties%201 %2030%2011.doc). It explains a lot of what you ask.

bloodtide
2011-01-30, 09:46 PM
However, I agree with most of the posters here: most of your list have less to do with a spellcasting/nonspellcasting balance than with badly behaved players and DM's. The 15-minute day may be an exception to that, but unless you're involved in a story with a strongly time-sensitive plot for the majority of the adventure.


I find it true that everyone is locked into the 'balance debate'. People don't want to hear simple things they can do to change the way or style of the game, they only want rule changes.

And worse, everyone's idea of balance is 100% equal. At least that is what everyone is saying right?

So for a 'balanced magic game' a fighter would need to do exactly everything a wizard could do. A wizard can fireball a room full of orcs, so a fighter should be able to slice up a room full of orcs to..exactly the same way, except for flavor.

Round 1 Fighter: A used my Sword ball power to do 10d6 damage to all the orcs in the room.

And people think this is balanced?

umbrapolaris
2011-01-30, 09:48 PM
d&d is an high level magic game since the beginning, Low-magic is an option, like technology.

Analytica
2011-01-30, 10:15 PM
I mention it, as I do see it all the time. No with my home group, but with a lot of other groups I've seen. Plus it's very common in Cold Groups(where random people sit down with a random DM to play the game).


A Typical Example: DM: ''As you enter the cave a blue wave of magical light flows over you....''
Player 1: "What? I roll my skill check! I got a 40! I demand to know what kind of magic that was and what effect it had!"
DM: "The magic light enhances the connection of illusions with reality and in effect negates the spell true seeing...."
Player 1 "What? WHAT? You can't do that! There is not spell or effect in the rules that can do that! True seeing is sacrosanct! We demand that you only use the official core rules of D&D or we will not play!"
DM: .........


I see this more as a problem of players wanting to "win" than the loss of exotic magic. I would prefer where it went...

An (un-)Typical Example: DM: ''As you enter the cave a blue wave of magical light flows over you....''
Player 1: "What? I roll my skill check! I got a 40! I demand to know Can I tell what kind of magic that was and what effect it had!?"
DM: "The magic light enhances the connection of illusions with reality and in effect negates the spell true seeing...."
Player 1 "Oh."
Player 1 (in character) "... Gods above."
Player 2 (in character) "What?"
Player 1 (in character) "... it should be impossible. Nothing is certain here. Dream and reality intermingles! Perhaps we are not even here, but dreaming."
Player 3 (in character) "Calm down, witchling. What IS it?"
Player 1 (in character) "If my calculations are right... (scribbles something on wax tablet) there is even a chance, though small, that our very expectations and fears could manifest if we dwell on them! We are doomed!"
DM: Hmmm, good idea... (adds further dangers to adventure notes)

But as you say, it might be difficult to get this kind of trusting interaction with a group that does not know each other. Lots of communication beforehand so that everyone is on the same page with regards to DM arbitration (such as how much players should expect to have to use suspension of disbelief, or are expected to metagame towards maintaining a semi-linear plot and good intra-party relationships) can probably go a long way, once you are aware that those questions need to be answered.

Toliudar
2011-01-30, 10:22 PM
I find it true that everyone is locked into the 'balance debate'. People don't want to hear simple things they can do to change the way or style of the game, they only want rule changes.

Given that you started this thread with a series of suggestions about why other people are doing it wrong, it would seem reasonable to put forward both examples and reasoning to the contrary.


And worse, everyone's idea of balance is 100% equal. At least that is what everyone is saying right?

I've looked over this and other threads, and can't find anyone saying this.


So for a 'balanced magic game' a fighter would need to do exactly everything a wizard could do. A wizard can fireball a room full of orcs, so a fighter should be able to slice up a room full of orcs to..exactly the same way, except for flavor.

Round 1 Fighter: A used my Sword ball power to do 10d6 damage to all the orcs in the room.

And people think this is balanced?

This is so much a straw man argument that I begin to wonder if you've even read any of the threads about encouraging balance. Most of the serious efforts I've seen to give non-casting classes parity in the game are focused around giving non-casters more alternatives, more versatility in their responses to situations (a la ToB), or restricting the versatility of casters (through techniques like the E6 system or the banning of tier 1 casters). This is, of course, in addition to encouraging the DM and players to work together in collaborative storytelling.

I'm curious. In the games that you're referencing as your baseline for success, have you found that your casters and noncasters are both able to contribute meaningfully - not necessarily equally - to the game at high levels?

ShneekeyTheLost
2011-01-30, 10:27 PM
I find it true that everyone is locked into the 'balance debate'. People don't want to hear simple things they can do to change the way or style of the game, they only want rule changes.

And worse, everyone's idea of balance is 100% equal. At least that is what everyone is saying right?

So for a 'balanced magic game' a fighter would need to do exactly everything a wizard could do. A wizard can fireball a room full of orcs, so a fighter should be able to slice up a room full of orcs to..exactly the same way, except for flavor.

Round 1 Fighter: A used my Sword ball power to do 10d6 damage to all the orcs in the room.

And people think this is balanced?

Fireball is the lamest excuse to use to try and 'balance' the game with.

It's not a matter of doing damage to all the orcs in a room (which a Fighter can do anyways, with Great Cleave and Pounce and a Spiked Chain).

It's a matter of saying "All opponents, DC ZOMGWTFBBQ or dienowkkthx". Case in point: Stinking Cloud. Much better example of why wizards break the game. It's not a matter of doing damage to opponents. It's Fort Save or be unable to do anything meaningful but puke your guts out until you get slaughtered.

In effect, it does infinite damage, because it effectively kills the opponents, or at least makes them so helpless that killing them becomes trivial.

What would you say if you had a fighter wanting to do infinite damage? Then why is it any less broken for a wizard to do the same?

bloodtide
2011-01-30, 10:40 PM
Given that you started this thread with a series of suggestions about why other people are doing it wrong, it would seem reasonable to put forward both examples and reasoning to the contrary.

I would never say other people are 'doing it wrong'.






This is so much a straw man argument that I begin to wonder if you've even read any of the threads about encouraging balance. Most of the serious efforts I've seen to give non-casting classes parity in the game are focused around giving non-casters more alternatives, more versatility in their responses to situations (a la ToB), or restricting the versatility of casters (through techniques like the E6 system or the banning of tier 1 casters). This is, of course, in addition to encouraging the DM and players to work together in collaborative storytelling.


I've read through too many. Everyone wants to turn the game upside down. Yet it looks so simple....if you send your high level character vs half shadow dragon drow warlocks, instead of orc warriors, then suddenly magic is not so over powered. If the beholder the party is fighting uses it's death and distengration eye beams, and not just it's fear and cause wounds ones, suddenly magic is not so over powered.




I'm curious. In the games that you're referencing as your baseline for success, have you found that your casters and noncasters are both able to contribute meaningfully - not necessarily equally - to the game at high levels?

Of course. That is the whole point of the game, to me anyway. That everyone contributes and has fun.

JaronK
2011-01-30, 10:41 PM
I find it true that everyone is locked into the 'balance debate'. People don't want to hear simple things they can do to change the way or style of the game, they only want rule changes.

And worse, everyone's idea of balance is 100% equal. At least that is what everyone is saying right?

So for a 'balanced magic game' a fighter would need to do exactly everything a wizard could do. A wizard can fireball a room full of orcs, so a fighter should be able to slice up a room full of orcs to..exactly the same way, except for flavor.

Round 1 Fighter: A used my Sword ball power to do 10d6 damage to all the orcs in the room.

And people think this is balanced?

No, they don't. Nice straw man.

When people say "balanced" they mean "all members of the party get to contribute in roughly equivalent ways, so nobody's left out." They don't mean everything is the same, or even all that similar. That was 4ed's problem really... everything's the same and that's boring.

Try playing a game sometime with a party that's Crusader, Factotum, Beguiler, Swordsage. It's balanced. Nobody's even all that similar, but it's fun and balanced. Now try a game that's Cleric, Wizard, Druid, Ninja. Notice how at least after about level 5 or so that Ninja character is basically just there to disarm traps, and otherwise is dead weight. Notice how hard the DM has to work to make the Ninja relevant without making everything FAR too easy for the casters. That's unbalanced.

JaronK

Urpriest
2011-01-30, 10:53 PM
The reason "Exotic Magic" died out was because it was poor writing. Most of the examples given in this thread are the DM deciding on some arbitrary (and generally annoying to casters) rules effect with no reasonable in-world explanation. Why no reasonable in-world explanation? Well let's look at the possibilities:

1. The thing generating the "exotic magic" is common and/or replicable. The illusion mist thing is a side effect of a lot of illusions being cast in an area. Necromancy is empowered by graveyards in general. If the "exotic magic" works like this, then it's something players can manipulate, interact with, know about, and anticipate. Whether or not it came from a book, it is now part of the rules, and fair game for player magic to exploit.

2. The thing is extremely rare. The illusions come from a slumbering god of dreams. The necromantic graveyard is the result of a unique epic spell. This kind of explanation works to keep the "exotic magic" out of the realm of rules accessible to the players, but carries the caveat that it will rarely be useful. Mid-level players might be fighting the aboleth that lairs above a mid-sized town, why should there be such unique magical effects? Most of the time as a DM if you want to limit your players' use of magic then you simply won't have access to this kind of explanation.

So most of the time, you're left with no reasonable explanation whatsoever, but rather a cheesy attempt at an explanation. You wouldn't read a book if it indulged in that kind of explanation, if it tailored challenges to its characters rather than to what the plot would naturally provide. So why play a game like that?

nyarlathotep
2011-01-30, 11:00 PM
I've read through too many. Everyone wants to turn the game upside down. Yet it looks so simple....if you send your high level character vs half shadow dragon drow warlocks, instead of orc warriors, then suddenly magic is not so over powered. If the beholder the party is fighting uses it's death and distengration eye beams, and not just it's fear and cause wounds ones, suddenly magic is not so over powered.


No these are the examples of why magic IS overpowered. They are magic using enemies that can only be countered by magic using PCs. Anyone who sends level 1 orc warriors after PCs after level 4 is either a bad DM or has a very good plot reason. Beholders are expected to use whatever eye rays are most useful for its situation, in fact to keep them challenging I usually have my beholders hover upside-down over the party so they can use all of their eye beams, or targeting the party through mirrors strategically placed throughout its lair.

Tell me though, without a wizard what can a fighter do to a beholder. The fighter enters the room, the beholder floats 30ft up and then hits it with its death, fear, and charm beams in that order. If the fighter fails any of them he is effectively dead. Assuming he makes all of the saves what does he do? Unless he focuses entirely in ranged attacks he is boned. Even if he is focused in ranged attacks he is inferior to the archer cleric next door in every way.

Hammerhead
2011-01-30, 11:05 PM
It doesn't help that magic users can make up new spells with open-ended options while non-magic users need to spend some of their finite allotment of feats to be able to grab a monster, follow a trail or throw sand in something's eyes.

shadow_archmagi
2011-01-30, 11:10 PM
Okay, so, the Tier system provides what I feel is the best way to test for versatility and power: In a variety of scenarios, how much can any given character contribute? Let's talk about level 10, a fairly low deal.

Example Scenario: Tracking down and exterminating a cult.

Fighter can: Roll a gather information check, but he's got INT and CHA as dump stats, and doesn't have gather information as a skill. His only class features are feats, and fighter feats can't help with interrogation.

Wizard can: Roll a gather information check. Charm Person will almost certainly be helpful here. Suggestion: Why don't you just tell me everything you know about that? Once a cultist is located, Dominate Person should help for infiltration.
---
Example Scenario: Confronted with a huge chasm

Fighter can: Maybe throw a rope across, and then climb over. Maybe even jump, and grab the opposing cliffside, and then climb up.

Wizard can: Fly across. Dimension door across.
---

Example Scenario: Princess is hidden somewhere in the castle that is rigged to explode

Fighter can: Run from room to room, making Listen checks to try to hear her.
Wizard can: Scry her, Dimension Door straight there. If scrying doesn't work, then the room is shielded from scrying, so it'll show up under detect magic. Wizard can also Fly, allowing him to search faster.




---

And so on

MeeposFire
2011-01-30, 11:11 PM
I find it true that everyone is locked into the 'balance debate'. People don't want to hear simple things they can do to change the way or style of the game, they only want rule changes.

And worse, everyone's idea of balance is 100% equal. At least that is what everyone is saying right?

So for a 'balanced magic game' a fighter would need to do exactly everything a wizard could do. A wizard can fireball a room full of orcs, so a fighter should be able to slice up a room full of orcs to..exactly the same way, except for flavor.

Round 1 Fighter: A used my Sword ball power to do 10d6 damage to all the orcs in the room.

And people think this is balanced?

No as warrior classes do quite well when casters do damage. That is why warmarges are fine in terms of not being overpowered.

The important part of balance is that each class can contribute effectively in a party in a roughly close level of power (it does not have to be exact but it needs to be close).

Innis Cabal
2011-01-30, 11:16 PM
Okay, so, the Tier system provides what I feel is the best way to test for versatility and power: In a variety of scenarios, how much can any given character contribute? Let's talk about level 10, a fairly low deal.

Example Scenario: Tracking down and exterminating a cult.

Fighter can: Roll a gather information check, but he's got INT and CHA as dump stats, and doesn't have gather information as a skill. His only class features are feats, and fighter feats can't help with interrogation.

Wizard can: Roll a gather information check. Charm Person will almost certainly be helpful here. Suggestion: Why don't you just tell me everything you know about that? Once a cultist is located, Dominate Person should help for infiltration.
---
Example Scenario: Confronted with a huge chasm

Fighter can: Maybe throw a rope across, and then climb over. Maybe even jump, and grab the opposing cliffside, and then climb up.

Wizard can: Fly across. Dimension door across.
---

Example Scenario: Princess is hidden somewhere in the castle that is rigged to explode

Fighter can: Run from room to room, making Listen checks to try to hear her.
Wizard can: Scry her, Dimension Door straight there. If scrying doesn't work, then the room is shielded from scrying, so it'll show up under detect magic. Wizard can also Fly, allowing him to search faster.




---

And so on

The tier system is utter garbage because it is only a theoretical look at what can happen in the most extreme cases and does not look at D&D as a game of co-operation and instead only a game on 1 v everything else. Using it to show how the game is over powered is the same as using the Ghost pepper to display how hot all peppers are. It's the extreme and narrow look at a game that is very broad and based on factors a simple tier system can not quantify.

senrath
2011-01-30, 11:20 PM
No, the tier system is more like using the Ghost Pepper to show that this is what peppers can do.

Fox Box Socks
2011-01-30, 11:22 PM
I'm surprised that nobody's talked about AD&D yet.

In 2e, Wizards (and other spellcasters) had to declare what spells they were casting at the beginning of every round. If they got hit (which was a definite possibility, seeing as how initiative was rolled every round), the spell fizzled. If they decided they were casting Hold Person, and their target died, they spent their turn casting Hold Person on a corpse. When casting, hey couldn't move, they couldn't attack, all they could do was stand there and cast.

When the changeover happened from 2e to 3e, the text for most spells was literally copy and pasted. Some of the terminology changed, but the spells were by and large identical. Trouble is, the Wizards weren't: not only could they both move AND cast, not only could they decide what spell they were casting during their turn rather than at the top of the round, but they could get hit and still cast. Or, if they had a high enough Concentration check, they could avoid getting hit entirely.

This.
Was.
A.
Big.
Deal.

So, in my humble opinion, the problem is the spells. The spells were written to be balanced for a completely different system, one that had certain checks in place. With those removed, the spells became more powerful than they were ever intended to be.

umbrapolaris
2011-01-30, 11:23 PM
Fighter can: Roll a gather information check, but he's got INT and CHA as dump stats, and doesn't have gather information as a skill. His only class features are feats, and fighter feats can't help with interrogation.

intimidate, bluff, torture the cultist until he speak? no need magical prowess to do that ^^

why always comparing a magic users with a non-magic user?... do you compare a formula one with a motorbike in a race? of course not, coz u know the F1 will win.


So, in my humble opinion, the problem is the spells. The spells were written to be balanced for a completely different system, one that had certain checks in place. With those removed, the spells became more powerful than they were ever intended to be.

i totally agree, the 3.x edition give more combat option and FEATS, and it drastically upgrade the wizard. in the previous edition, a wizard who is not protected before he cast spells , is dead. (unless he reaches a cetain level where he can cast contingencies on himself)

MeeposFire
2011-01-30, 11:28 PM
It does not do one on one. In many cases a lower tier can beat a higher tier in a 1 on 1 fight. For instance a fighter could kill a druid if he goes first and the druid is unprepared.

The tier system is actually about class contribution to a party. A fighter cannot bring as much to a party precisely because it lacks versatility and the ability to deal with many situations. In addition the tiers do not care about how extreme you take things as the system uses the concept that every class is under the same amount of optimization. If the wizard is average so is the fighter and the wizard is still more powerful in general. Your ghost pepper idea is not analogous since the ghost pepper is an extreme. A wizard using shape shift, gate, or other high level spells is not an extreme it is normal for high level play. Fighters cannot compete with 9th level spells in a party unless the wizard only ever uses blasting spells (which then begs the question why are you not playing a warmage). This would be like every pepper given enough time automatically becoming ghost chillies.

nightwyrm
2011-01-30, 11:29 PM
The tier system is utter garbage because it is only a theoretical look at what can happen in the most extreme cases and does not look at D&D as a game of co-operation and instead only a game on 1 v everything else. Using it to show how the game is over powered is the same as using the Ghost pepper to display how hot all peppers are. It's the extreme and narrow look at a game that is very broad and based on factors a simple tier system can not quantify.

I'm sure someone will come after me and explain in it better terms but the tier system is a measure of how many ways a class can solve in-game problems based on that class' features and abilities. It's a measure of how many tools there are inside that class' "toolbox". As an analogy, a tier 1 craftsman has an entire Home Depot in his toolbox. A tier 4 craftsman only has a hammer. That tier 4 craftsman may have the best hammer in the world and he may be the best hammer-er in the world, but he's still only got one tool.

As for cooperation, would you hire a carpenter with only a hammer in his toolkit or the guy who has an entire hardware store at his disposal?

SiuiS
2011-01-30, 11:34 PM
Player 1 "What? WHAT? You can't do that! There is not spell or effect in the rules that can do that! True seeing is sacrosanct! We demand that you only use the official core rules of D&D or we will not play!"
DM ok guys. I'll see you next week then. Oh, and since all your characters are NPCs now, I'll have a short story of how this delve went if you're interested. So, what are we doing for the rest of the night?

Fixed that for ya :3

MeeposFire
2011-01-30, 11:37 PM
I'm surprised that nobody's talked about AD&D yet.

In 2e, Wizards (and other spellcasters) had to declare what spells they were casting at the beginning of every round. If they got hit (which was a definite possibility, seeing as how initiative was rolled every round), the spell fizzled. If they decided they were casting Hold Person, and their target died, they spent their turn casting Hold Person on a corpse. When casting, hey couldn't move, they couldn't attack, all they could do was stand there and cast.

When the changeover happened from 2e to 3e, the text for most spells was literally copy and pasted. Some of the terminology changed, but the spells were by and large identical. Trouble is, the Wizards weren't: not only could they both move AND cast, not only could they decide what spell they were casting during their turn rather than at the top of the round, but they could get hit and still cast. Or, if they had a high enough Concentration check, they could avoid getting hit entirely.

This.
Was.
A.
Big.
Deal.

So, in my humble opinion, the problem is the spells. The spells were written to be balanced for a completely different system, one that had certain checks in place. With those removed, the spells became more powerful than they were ever intended to be.

Don't forget easy metamagic, alternate action spells (swift actions, etc), buffs being improved (especially in polymorph and the like), bonus spells, and even faster memorization times. That and more were added to wizards and other spell casters.

Warrior classes were weakened just look at the fighter it lost

1) hp bonus from very high con.

2) its extra attacks relative to other classes

3) saving throws are not as good as warriors were overall the best at saving throws in general (at very high levels they often succeeded on a 2+).

4) Moving and attacking was still effective

5) fighters used to be among the best in skills. Fighters received one less non-weapon prof. total than the highest skilled class in the game. How things have changed.

umbrapolaris
2011-01-30, 11:48 PM
Warrior classes were weakened just look at the fighter it lost

1) hp bonus from very high con.

2) its extra attacks relative to other classes

3) saving throws are not as good as warriors were overall the best at saving throws in general (at very high levels they often succeeded on a 2+).

4) Moving and attacking was still effective

5) fighters used to be among the best in skills. Fighters received one less non-weapon prof. total than the highest skilled class in the game. How things have changed.

give him back those and add iterative attack at +3, give him one feat for each level, and one free magic item every 4 levels ^^

MeeposFire
2011-01-30, 11:58 PM
give him back those and add iterative attack at +3, give him one feat for each level, and one free magic item every 4 levels ^^

Still won't make it compete with full casters. Sad face.

umbrapolaris
2011-01-31, 12:06 AM
Still won't make it compete with full casters. Sad face.

yes sure, i have the final solution:

give him magic :smalltongue:

MeeposFire
2011-01-31, 12:08 AM
yes sure, i have the final solution:

give him magic :smalltongue:

I have heard people actually say that. I found it disappointing to say the least.

umbrapolaris
2011-01-31, 12:14 AM
u had ther divine ranger, why not the arcane fighter ^^ or spellsword as a base class.

the magic adventurer party:

1- spellsword
2- wizard
3- spellthief
4- factotum
4- cleric
5- erudite
6- AMF berserker (coz he want to be different ^^)

:smalltongue:

stainboy
2011-01-31, 12:22 AM
How did you pre scout an inaccessible location? By definition you couldn't have done that. The location isn't able to be accessed, so you coudn't have scouted it. Congratulations, you just made a random teleport. And no, that's not railroading. It's using a dictionary and applying the concept of "In character actions have in character consequences" to the decision to Teleport.

Inaccessible as in far enough away that any casters looking for us with See Invisibility won't stumble onto the Rope Trick portal. I'm not talking about teleporting halfway across the world to a sealed cave a mile underground, although in a few levels there wouldn't be much to stop me.

Anyway, you're assuming that all D&D games are dungeon crawls. Try forcing a wizard to do four encounters a day in a more intrigue-oriented urban game.

Lans
2011-01-31, 01:18 AM
In regards to the fifteen-minute day, Rope Trick, and Magnificent Mansion (both Core spells, by the way) make it almost impossible for the GM to prevent this from happening, barring time limits on goals.

He can make it more difficult due to the monsters having a heightened sense of security and planning due to the previous assault.


Unless he focuses entirely in ranged attacks he is boned. Even if he is focused in ranged attacks he is inferior to the archer cleric next door in every way.
He could put 3 feats into hitting people with boomerangs.
The focused archery fighter is better than the cleric at archery for the majority of the levels. I think level 12 is the breaking point with stacking turning rods, and Planar Ally and no Targeteer. Pathfinder fighter would probably push that back a bit, but I don't know the details of all the stealth nerfs they did to really make that call.

I would nerf both of those, but I don't think my nerf would hit the clerics planar ally.



Example Scenario: Confronted with a huge chasm

Fighter can: Maybe throw a rope across, and then climb over. Maybe even jump, and grab the opposing cliffside, and then climb up.

Wizard can: Fly across. Dimension door across.


I can't help think of a party with a Truenamer all chanting together to help the him make his truenaming check.
Party:Red rover red rover send send the monk over!
Truenamer: *rolls dice gets 14* Got it.
Monk: *Moves forward* "AIIII!!!"
Truenamer: "Why was he a level higher than the rest of us?"

Yahzi
2011-01-31, 01:36 AM
Cool, right? Except the power of magic still runs on "limited resources should be stronger" though the resources are no longer limited. The system is designed with a bunch of preconceptions which do not hold true.
Brilliant analysis. Consider scrolls and wands. In 2E they were insanely difficult to acquire, and very limited. In 3E wizards make them from the very first day of their career.

Scrolls and wands destroy the concept of "limited resources." Yet every single published module has a wizard with only 1 fireball spell memorized.

Here's the solution I am going to try next game: Lots and lots and lots of mooks, arriving in waves 10 rounds apart. The idea being that the fighter can fight all day against mooks, but the wizard has to save his spells for the BBEG.

MeeposFire
2011-01-31, 01:38 AM
Brilliant analysis. Consider scrolls and wands. In 2E they were insanely difficult to acquire, and very limited. In 3E wizards make them from the very first day of their career.

Scrolls and wands destroy the concept of "limited resources." Yet every single published module has a wizard with only 1 fireball spell memorized.

Here's the solution I am going to try next game: Lots and lots and lots of mooks, arriving in waves 10 rounds apart. The idea being that the fighter can fight all day against mooks, but the wizard has to save his spells for the BBEG.

Your idea will just change the way the casters will play. Instead of using short term attacks like blasting they will switch to longer lasting stuff like buffs.

Jothki
2011-01-31, 02:51 AM
Looking at it largely from the outside as someone who doesn't play D&D, the thing that strikes me about casters in 3.5e and earlier is the extent to which their powers scale in breadth as they gain levels.

Fighters and the like mostly scale linearly with levels. They can occasionally pick up a new trick or two through feats and the like, but for the most part they're just seeing +1s or +1d6s or whatever on the things that they can already do.

Casters scale somewhat in the same way, getting access to increasingly powerful spells as they level up. However, they also get to keep their lower-level spells, and in many cases those spells will even scale up along with the caster. The result is that high-level casters end up having an absurd degree of flexability in comparison to low-level casters. This would be fine if every class scaled this way, but non-casters don't.

I honestly don't see how such a system could ever wind up balanced. Spells could always be weakened, but there would remain the issue of increasing flexability unless higher-level spells ended up not being much stronger than lower-level ones, meaning that flexability is the power scaling for casters. Which is sort of how the Warlock works, actually.

JaronK
2011-01-31, 02:53 AM
Here's the solution I am going to try next game: Lots and lots and lots of mooks, arriving in waves 10 rounds apart. The idea being that the fighter can fight all day against mooks, but the wizard has to save his spells for the BBEG.

The obvious response is Animate Dead for a bunch of minions, including a few Necrosis Carnexes. Now the Wizard can go all day. The Fighter can't... his HP will just run out eventually. He's not a Crusader. In fact, the only way a Fighter could stay up all day like that is if he had a DMM Persistent Lesser Mass Vigor Cleric behind him... but that same Cleric could just get the job done himself.

JaronK

MeeposFire
2011-01-31, 02:54 AM
Indeed casters like the warlock and the dragonfire adept are much closer to warrior classes than the wizards and such. That is a big reason why I talk them up when I DM (that and the spontaneous themed casters like warmage and dread necromancer).

dsmiles
2011-01-31, 03:55 AM
I can't help think of a party with a Truenamer all chanting together to help the him make his truenaming check.
Party:Red rover red rover send send the monk over!
Truenamer: *rolls dice gets 14* Got it.
Monk: *Moves forward* "AIIII!!!"
Truenamer: "Why was he a level higher than the rest of us?"I so want to play a Trunamer that uses that as his shtick, now. :smallbiggrin:

The Glyphstone
2011-01-31, 07:11 AM
I so want to play a Trunamer that uses that as his shtick, now. :smallbiggrin:

Well, Leadership might actually be balanced for such a character, if you use the followers as his backup dancers/singers to make those Truenaming checks.:smallbiggrin:

The Big Dice
2011-01-31, 09:38 AM
Reading over this thread, a very easy soution for people who complain about casters appeared in my brain cell. Increase the DC of the Concentration checks for preventing spells from fizzling. Or better yet, remove them completely.

IF a spell can be lost to someone throwing a knife or pegging the caster with an arrow, then the balance of power shifts quite considerably. Yes, the castes are still powerful. But they can also be brought down by non casters, and that's a great equaliser.

shadow_archmagi
2011-01-31, 09:55 AM
Reading over this thread, a very easy soution for people who complain about casters appeared in my brain cell. Increase the DC of the Concentration checks for preventing spells from fizzling. Or better yet, remove them completely.

IF a spell can be lost to someone throwing a knife or pegging the caster with an arrow, then the balance of power shifts quite considerably. Yes, the castes are still powerful. But they can also be brought down by non casters, and that's a great equaliser.

Personally, if I were running such a game, I'd be tempted to use the initiative system from the old edition, where instead of having compact "turns" where once it was the wizard's turn he could do whatever without worrying, it'd be like

"Okay so you rolled a 20 for init, and casting a spell takes 10 init. That means anyone rolled higher than 10 will act before your spell finishes."

Fortunately, this never actually comes up in my games.

Kami2awa
2011-01-31, 10:30 AM
In regards to the fifteen-minute day, Rope Trick, and Magnificent Mansion (both Core spells, by the way) make it almost impossible for the GM to prevent this from happening, barring time limits on goals.


Has anyone ever considered having Mordenkainen turn up to evict the PCs from his mansion?

LansXero
2011-01-31, 10:33 AM
Try forcing a wizard to do four encounters a day in a more intrigue-oriented urban game.

Arent those even more time-sensitive than dungeon crawls anyways?

DeltaEmil
2011-01-31, 10:34 AM
Mordenkainen was drunk and made his spell open source. Now everybody's running around with a "Mage's Magnificent Mansion" to avoid paying royalty. :smallamused:

nightwyrm
2011-01-31, 10:39 AM
Arent those even more time-sensitive than dungeon crawls anyways?

But you're also unlikely to force the wizard into enough combat encounters that he would need resting just to replenish his spells.

Roderick_BR
2011-01-31, 10:45 AM
I'll tell why magic is overpowered. It's because it's EASY. Yeah, spend 30 minutes reading a book, and you now have power to tear reality a new one. Fighters can... swing a sword a bit harder.
You give the same ammount of experience to both players, and one gains a bulet proof vest, and a handgun, and the other gains only shorts and a shirt, but he gains machineguns, rocket launchers, grenades... and a portable force field generator.
Magic in 3.5 got too easy to do, and thanks to the multiclass and PrC rules, you can easily multiclass into something else to gain many more abilities without slowing down your spellcasting.
In older versions, a wizard had to work hard for his magic, but when he did, he was the guy with the "big guns" in the group. In 3.5, he starts with all the good stuff at very early levels and gets stronger and stronger.
Seriously, the devs got excited in giving casters more power and lost track of what they were doing.

About the high magic thing, I agree. The problem is that the game's rules for non casters leave them behind, while the casters are playing high level, high fantasy, high magic campaigns.
At higher levels, wizards should be able to reshape reality as they see fit, true, but non-casters should be able to do epic stuff too, not be able to do the same mundane things they were doing 15 levels ago.

LansXero
2011-01-31, 11:51 AM
But you're also unlikely to force the wizard into enough combat encounters that he would need resting just to replenish his spells.

'combat' encounters, sure. But he could deplete his spells trying to avoid RP by spamming suggestion / charm / etc.

nyarlathotep
2011-01-31, 12:07 PM
'combat' encounters, sure. But he could deplete his spells trying to avoid RP by spamming suggestion / charm / etc.

Indeed he can, but that is only if he wants to contribute more that the fighter. He could instead just roleplay and roll diplomacy checks if he's afraid of running low. Besides the party bard has glibness, which lasts over an hour.

druid91
2011-01-31, 12:30 PM
I would like to say something...


Magic is not over-powered!

It is exactly as it should be, They run out of spells, now I know what you'll say, "What about the fifteen minute workday?!"

Rope trick to rest anywhere/ 15 minute work-day. Counter: a) The villain is still doing things as you rest. b) if they do not care about that, the villain is still doing things as they rest, one of these things is rigging the room their rope-trick exits on to explode sky high. Or using a custom spell to simply transport the whole room, rope-trick included 500 miles away.

Anything the players can do? The DM can do better. It may take work, but there are advantages the DM has that the players can't reproduce. Endless resources, Eldritch machines/Rule 0, And finally access to the players character sheets. You have before-hand knowledge of the enemy.

They... Do not.

dsmiles
2011-01-31, 12:36 PM
I'm still not grasping this whole 15-minute workday thing. Why are the characters only working for 15 minutes a day?

Waker
2011-01-31, 12:38 PM
I'm still not grasping this whole 15-minute workday thing. Why are the characters only working for 15 minutes a day?
Union rules.

DeltaEmil
2011-01-31, 12:38 PM
Because the wizards/clerics/druids/sorcerers/spellcasters have exhausted their relevant spells, and the mundane characters are irrelevant and need the spellcasting of the spellcasters too to survive.

nyarlathotep
2011-01-31, 01:00 PM
Honestly I as a caster have not ever had a problem with running out of spells even though I optimize for absurdly unintuitive builds (as in a wizard who is a scarecrow and all of this spells fit within that theme).Two or three spells are all that is needed for most encounters and after level 10 you have over a dozen spells more if you have equipment.

Doug Lampert
2011-01-31, 01:01 PM
Don't forget easy metamagic, alternate action spells (swift actions, etc), buffs being improved (especially in polymorph and the like), bonus spells, and even faster memorization times. That and more were added to wizards and other spell casters.

Warrior classes were weakened just look at the fighter it lost

1) hp bonus from very high con.

2) its extra attacks relative to other classes

3) saving throws are not as good as warriors were overall the best at saving throws in general (at very high levels they often succeeded on a 2+).

4) Moving and attacking was still effective

5) fighters used to be among the best in skills. Fighters received one less non-weapon prof. total than the highest skilled class in the game. How things have changed.

Saves were one of the BIG changes.

In previous editions, a high level fighter saved against a high level wizard on a 2+, and almost everything allowed a save.

Now?

Level 11 wizard, no cheeze, starting Int 16, two increases and a +4 item or spell, no feats to boost DC. His best spells have a save DC of 22 (and I'd have to WORK HARD to get it worse).

Level 11 fighter, 18, Con, Dex, and Wis (yep, all three), Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will (again all three), +5 item of resistance (don't ask where he got that, just live with it the good fighter fairy brought it with the ability scores).

The fighter's saves are +18, +14, +14.
He misses a Will save on a roll of 7. And that's with all the abilities at 18 and all three save boosting feats and a substantial percentage of his WBL on saves.

A straight out of the book Erinyes or Succubus (both allegedly MUCH weaker) can fly overhead and charm monster or suggestion him with a fairly good chance of it working.

Now try it with a more realistic fighter build.

And it only gets worse as level goes up! By level 20 your fighter's GOOD save is only succeeding on a 20 vs. a mildly optimized caster. You need to massively multiclass to stack those +2 bonuses for the first level to have any chance at all.

Doug Lampert
2011-01-31, 01:06 PM
I would like to say something...


Magic is not over-powered!

It is exactly as it should be, They run out of spells, now I know what you'll say, "What about the fifteen minute workday?!"

Rope trick to rest anywhere/ 15 minute work-day. Counter: a) The villain is still doing things as you rest. b) if they do not care about that, the villain is still doing things as they rest, one of these things is rigging the room their rope-trick exits on to explode sky high. Or using a custom spell to simply transport the whole room, rope-trick included 500 miles away.

Good. So that's a custom spell you'll allow that a level appropriate foe can have. Fortunately the WIZARD can now research it, shame about the fighter....

And the enemy wizard has to FIND the ropetrick room to do this, which isn't easy at any reasonable level since it may not be a ropetrick and may not be on the same plane of existence.

DougL

druid91
2011-01-31, 01:21 PM
And how would the wizard be able to research it? Does he have the time to do this? No he does not. HE is busy saving the world. And if he tries to shirk? The call knows where you live.


And where does the fighter come into this? He gets to hit things with pointy bits of metal like I assume he wanted to. You don't want to hit things with pointy bits of metal find a different class.

And why does finding the rope-trick prove to be such a problem? Detect magic.

And if they aren't in a rope-trick... Well then, you reinforce the rooms with stronger mooks and go on being an evil villain. This happens enough and the PC's fail due to being outclassed by mooks.

Also any villain worth his salt that doesn't ethereal solid and Block teleportation in their personal stronghold is a failure.

DeltaEmil
2011-01-31, 02:25 PM
An enemy with all those ressources is a superpowerful spellcaster who cannot be defeated by the party, so they might as well surrender, or they're so high-level that it's still only the spellcasters who matter against the dreaded enemy spellcaster villain.

Lans
2011-01-31, 04:30 PM
I'm still not grasping this whole 15-minute workday thing. Why are the characters only working for 15 minutes a day?
Its not that they only act for 15 minutes, its that they only fight for 15 minutes a day. This would mean they got into 15 fights that lasted 1 minute on average. With enemies dealing 1/3-1/2 of a raging barbarians hp a round your going to need over 50 barbarians.
Though they might take the more reasonable 3 round fights, which means that they will fight 50 encounters in the day.

ShneekeyTheLost
2011-01-31, 04:40 PM
And how would the wizard be able to research it? Does he have the time to do this? No he does not. HE is busy saving the world. And if he tries to shirk? The call knows where you live.


And where does the fighter come into this? He gets to hit things with pointy bits of metal like I assume he wanted to. You don't want to hit things with pointy bits of metal find a different class.

And why does finding the rope-trick prove to be such a problem? Detect magic.

And if they aren't in a rope-trick... Well then, you reinforce the rooms with stronger mooks and go on being an evil villain. This happens enough and the PC's fail due to being outclassed by mooks.

Also any villain worth his salt that doesn't ethereal solid and Block teleportation in their personal stronghold is a failure.

Detect magic might find the rope trick, but opponents still cannot enter it, rendering it impossible to catch a Wizard before he preps his spells. Also, once he gets teleport, it's effectively impossible to ambush him, because he can simply teleport from the rope trick to wherever the party needs to be. So go ahead, camp your minions out under my rope trick, I shall never appear there.

Kami2awa
2011-01-31, 04:52 PM
Surely an easy fix would be; you can't prepare spells when inside extra-dimensional spaces. While it's not in the Core rules, this would surely solve the problem, and it's about as simple as a house rule can possibly be.

ShneekeyTheLost
2011-01-31, 05:08 PM
Surely an easy fix would be; you can't prepare spells when inside extra-dimensional spaces. While it's not in the Core rules, this would surely solve the problem, and it's about as simple as a house rule can possibly be.

And makes no sense at all, not to mention being a completely arbitrary nerf-bat right in the character's face.

Plus, it still doesn't stop spontaneous casters (i.e. sorcerers) in the slightest.

Swordguy
2011-01-31, 05:22 PM
And makes no sense at all, not to mention being a completely arbitrary nerf-bat right in the character's face.

Plus, it still doesn't stop spontaneous casters (i.e. sorcerers) in the slightest.

The second point is valid.

The first...isn't the whole point of this that wizards are OP? A nerf-bat to the face is exactly what's needed.

Jarawara
2011-01-31, 05:23 PM
Surely an easy fix would be; you can't prepare spells when inside extra-dimensional spaces. While it's not in the Core rules, this would surely solve the problem, and it's about as simple as a house rule can possibly be.

Actually, that's not an arbitrary nerf-bat. It's an acceptable solution, (though there may be a way around it, I haven't thought it through).

However, it's only one of hundreds of issues with Wizards. DM fiating a counter to each as the game is in motion is a terrible solution -- rather, they need to be house-ruled away *BEFORE* the game begins, along with your suggested ropetrick rule.

And once we've house-ruled hundreds of fixes... it's not really 3E D&D anymore, which of course was kinda the point of this thread, that 3E magic is too powerful and must be houseruled to fix.

.... if that's even possible.


*~*~*~*~*

As for why magic is so much more powerful in 3E than it was in 2E, I'll just point to Swordguy's quote in my sig.

(Heh, and I was ninja's by the man himself!)

Jayabalard
2011-01-31, 05:30 PM
I skimmed, so I may have missed it... but the #1 reason that magic is powerful in 3.5e is lack of cost; it simply does not cost the caster enough for what you can do with it.

In 1e D&D, casting wish irrevocably aged you. Haste could outright kill you due to system shock; so could raise dead. Wish didn't have any "these items are safe" clause; I always kind of assumed that it worked by calling on powers that were capricious at best, malicious at worst. There was often a good motivation to go with a non-magical solution and only burn magic when there wasn't another option.

Even then, AD&D magic has nothing on, say, the old TSR Conan magic system, or Powers and Perils; both of these stand out in my mind as systems were magic gave the user power, but also came with a terrible price.


And makes no sense at all,Why not? Preparing spells is more than just reading over them; in effect, you have them all cast except the last few words (it's why cast times in 3e + are so short compared to previous editions). It's no so far fetched to rule that wizards can't get hold of the magical energies properly in the quasi-dimensional space of a rope trick to prep spells, that divine casters can't prep their spells due to the extra static one the line; and that spontaneous casters can't recover their spell slots due to having problems recharging the battery due to being cut off from the normal source of their magic.

Yes, it's a nerf, but if your goal is to nerf spell casters it doesn't seem unreasonable one.


And the enemy wizard has to FIND the ropetrick room to do this, which isn't easy at any reasonable level since it may not be a ropetrick and may not be on the same plane of existenceSimple use of divination to the effect of "where did Wizard X and his party last leave this plane of existence" solves that rather handily, no? The low level witchdoctor of that clan of goblins you've been butchering can handle that just fine, and they can rig the room to asplode without any crazy high end spells.

shadow_archmagi
2011-01-31, 05:37 PM
Also, one thing I kinda always wondered:

How do the wizards get a restful sleep while clinging to a rope?

EDIT: Oh, right, they're batman wizards. Of course they can.

Gnaeus
2011-01-31, 05:50 PM
All the discussions of what evil boss wizard can do in a rope trick is really only a corner case.

If you are in a hostile wilderness, fighting monsters, your rope trick (therefore your 1 encounter per day) is safe. Even if the hostile wilderness is on another plane, like in the abyss, unless there is an evil boss actively looking for you, the rope trick is safe.

If you are in a trap & undead filled tomb, rope trick is safe.

If you are fighting savage humanoids or giants or basically anything else without ranks in Spellcraft, rope trick is safe. They may leave, or beef up their defenses, but they won't be waiting at the bottom of the window. Even if they know that you might have rope tricked, they still have to walk around detecting magic until they find it.

I can't speak for everyone, but unless the DM is actively going out of his way to screw casters, rope trick likely to work. In the last 3 campaigns I have been in, I can only think of a couple of instances in which rope trick wasn't effective for getting a rest. YMMV.



Simple use of divination to the effect of "where did Wizard X and his party last leave this plane of existence" solves that rather handily, no? The low level witchdoctor of that clan of goblins you've been butchering can handle that just fine, and they can rig the room to asplode without any crazy high end spells.

Huh? With what spell? Divination is the lowest spell that MIGHT do that that I see. It requires a 7th level caster, who has divination prepared, who succeeds in his roll, and who manages to decipher a short phrase, cryptic rhyme or omen. And then the clan of goblins rolls out their barrel of dynamite? That is implausible in the extreme.

nightwyrm
2011-01-31, 06:12 PM
Its not that they only act for 15 minutes, its that they only fight for 15 minutes a day. This would mean they got into 15 fights that lasted 1 minute on average. With enemies dealing 1/3-1/2 of a raging barbarians hp a round your going to need over 50 barbarians.
Though they might take the more reasonable 3 round fights, which means that they will fight 50 encounters in the day.

You're lucky if you can get a total of 15 minutes of combat a day. 1 minute is 10 rounds. I don't think you can go through 150 rounds of combat in a day with any party.

Doug Lampert
2011-01-31, 06:22 PM
Huh? With what spell? Divination is the lowest spell that MIGHT do that that I see. It requires a 7th level caster, who has divination prepared, who succeeds in his roll, and who manages to decipher a short phrase, cryptic rhyme or omen. And then the clan of goblins rolls out their barrel of dynamite? That is implausible in the extreme.

Their solution to an overpowered level 2 spell, is to use a level 4 spell and give it FAR more power than it has BtB, and then THROW in MASSIVELY overpowered and outright impossible to build in time traps.

(Hint: There are rules for craft trap, a reasonable non-magic trap for a moderate level party takes MONTHS to build. Or it takes a spell. And they people arguing that magic isn't overpowered aren't willing to cite ANY spell that will do it.)

So the reason magic is not overpowered is that the DM can throw even more overpowered magic at it. Boy does that make those fighters useful!

Not! If the only solution to magic is higher level magic then casters rule the world. The COUNTER argument is actually the best argument being presented for magic is overpowered. The only way to beat a level 2 spell is GM fiat!

And then we bring in the level 5 spells...

The Glyphstone
2011-01-31, 06:25 PM
Also, one thing I kinda always wondered:

How do the wizards get a restful sleep while clinging to a rope?

EDIT: Oh, right, they're batman wizards. Of course they can.

They can also breathe in space.

ShneekeyTheLost
2011-01-31, 06:30 PM
Not to mention the fact that the party can simply Teleport out of their rope trick extradimensional space to wherever they really want to go. So good luck camping underneath it, because that's not where we are going to appear.

Hell, rope trick is simply an emergency contingency by that point, considering you can simply Teleport *home* rather than rope trick, for a standard (or swift) action.

But really, what breaks it completely is when the Wizard gets Genesis. Go home to your own plane of existence, rest up, then show back up the following round with no noticeable time elapsed for the opponents. Gotta love being able to define the time flow parameters on your new home.

true_shinken
2011-01-31, 06:57 PM
If this is how people play sandbox then they're doing it wrong. If this is sandbox then I hate sandbox.

Unfortunatelly, I think most sandbox games are like that.

dsmiles
2011-01-31, 07:03 PM
I skimmed, so I may have missed it... but the #1 reason that magic is powerful in 3.5e is lack of cost; it simply does not cost the caster enough for what you can do with it.

In 1e D&D, casting wish irrevocably aged you. Haste could outright kill you due to system shock; so could raise dead. Wish didn't have any "these items are safe" clause; I always kind of assumed that it worked by calling on powers that were capricious at best, malicious at worst. There was often a good motivation to go with a non-magical solution and only burn magic when there wasn't another option.

Even then, AD&D magic has nothing on, say, the old TSR Conan magic system, or Powers and Perils; both of these stand out in my mind as systems were magic gave the user power, but also came with a terrible price.Which is why I so love the BESM d20 Advanced Magic (a.k.a. The Slayers d20 magic system). You could potentially kill yourself casting spells if they manage to get away from you. So much power, but so much hurt if you screw it up. Believe me, it happens more often than you would think, too. :smallwink:

Lans
2011-01-31, 07:07 PM
Detect magic might find the rope trick, but opponents still cannot enter it, rendering it impossible to catch a Wizard before he preps his spells. Also, once he gets teleport, it's effectively impossible to ambush him, because he can simply teleport from the rope trick to wherever the party needs to be. So go ahead, camp your minions out under my rope trick, I shall never appear there.

There is no clause that prevents entry into the Rope Trick by creatures. Or for them to toss alchemist fire into it.
Edit Rope Trick is good, but just not that good.
I'm not sure if you can actually teleport out of a Rope Trick. I think you need to use Plane Shift, with it being in an extradimensional space and all.


You're lucky if you can get a total of 15 minutes of combat a day. 1 minute is 10 rounds. I don't think you can go through 150 rounds of combat in a day with any party.

I know, thats why when people complain about people with a 15 minute work day they are showing ignorance. Some parties can go all day, Persist Clerics, Binders, and Dread Necro's make it possible. To a lesser extent somebody with the healing reserve feat or draconic aura of healing, but the party needs to be tougher on average.

ShneekeyTheLost
2011-01-31, 07:18 PM
There is no clause that prevents entry into the Rope Trick by creatures. Or for them to toss alchemist fire into it.
Edit Rope Trick is good, but just not that good.
I'm not sure if you can actually teleport out of a Rope Trick. I think you need to use Plane Shift, with it being in an extradimensional space and all.

Actually... yes, it is that good. You haul the rope up behind you, and no one can get in.

And it's extradimensional, not extraplanar. Plane shift is not required until you get ahold of Genesis.

Magesmiley
2011-01-31, 07:44 PM
Well, there is one reason I can think of, which I haven't seen mentioned here:

Most players don't start their chracters at level 1.

The survival rate of low-level characters is bad. For a sorcerer or wizard it is outright awful. Being able to jump those first few levels and assume that your wizard/sorcerer is one of the lucky few who made it is much more of a boon than it is for the other classes.

nyarlathotep
2011-01-31, 07:47 PM
Unfortunatelly, I think most sandbox games are like that.

You obviously have not played in many sandbox games. A sandbox game is all about exploring a world that your DM has created.

DeltaEmil
2011-01-31, 08:03 PM
Well, there is one reason I can think of, which I haven't seen mentioned here:

Most players don't start their chracters at level 1.

The survival rate of low-level characters is bad. For a sorcerer or wizard it is outright awful. Being able to jump those first few levels and assume that your wizard/sorcerer is one of the lucky few who made it is much more of a boon than it is for the other classes.At level 1, not even a melee character will survive more than one hit. Almost everybody dislikes the "survival levels" 1-3 (which by old gaming standards you didn't even bother to roleplay and give your characters a name or background story during that phase). There's a reason why there's a "sweet spot" that is somewhere after 6 and before 14 in general. High enough to survive a few hits at least.

dsmiles
2011-01-31, 08:06 PM
At level 1, not even a melee character will survive more than one hit. Almost everybody dislikes the "survival levels" 1-3 (which by old gaming standards you didn't even bother to roleplay and give your characters a name or background story during that phase). There's a reason why there's a "sweet spot" that is somewhere after 6 and before 14 in general. High enough to survive a few hits at least.Consider me a minority then. I love low levels. It's where all the best character development takes place.

true_shinken
2011-01-31, 08:23 PM
You obviously have not played in many sandbox games. A sandbox game is all about exploring a world that your DM has created.
Obviously, different people have different experiences.

druid91
2011-01-31, 08:35 PM
Their solution to an overpowered level 2 spell, is to use a level 4 spell and give it FAR more power than it has BtB, and then THROW in MASSIVELY overpowered and outright impossible to build in time traps.

(Hint: There are rules for craft trap, a reasonable non-magic trap for a moderate level party takes MONTHS to build. Or it takes a spell. And they people arguing that magic isn't overpowered aren't willing to cite ANY spell that will do it.)

So the reason magic is not overpowered is that the DM can throw even more overpowered magic at it. Boy does that make those fighters useful!

Not! If the only solution to magic is higher level magic then casters rule the world. The COUNTER argument is actually the best argument being presented for magic is overpowered. The only way to beat a level 2 spell is GM fiat!

And then we bring in the level 5 spells...

You mention fighters usefullness again.... Which is completely irrelevant. Fighters being useful has nothing to do with magic.

AS for traps... I never mentioned crafting a trap did I? Simply stuff the room full of alchemists fire and explosive runes. Or for a less magical solution oleum and a posted archer with a flaming arrow. they step out and boom. Though personally, if you are making a group with almost no magic... they shouldn't be fought at higher levels.

And if they do have magic they should have an ethereal solid stronghold. perhapps even make it so the actual stronghol is in the astral.

DeltaEmil
2011-01-31, 08:41 PM
Actually, this does point out the complete "usefullness" of fighters (and other non-spellcasters) in this situation. They can't and won't to do anything useful against the enemy superspellcaster, who is needed to shut down the party spellcasters... pointing out to the reasons why magic is overpowered in 3.5E.

druid91
2011-01-31, 09:38 PM
So... your argument is that fighters can't use magic or compete with it.. therefore magic is overpowered?


If so... then that is ridiculous.

bondpirate
2011-01-31, 10:20 PM
Don't forget the different experience points required to advance a level in earlier editions. Warriors/Priests/Wizards/Rogue all had their own unique experience totals, to level up a level 20 thief or bard only needed 2.2 million experience while a wizard took 3.75 million to hit 20. In real game terms this means that not only while the Rogue classes hit 20 while the wizard was still level 15. He could have most or all of his thief skills maxed (How I miss you percentile rolls of awesomeness). This of course doesn't mean a level 20 thief is better than a level 15 wizard side by side, but it does mean that the thief is better at being a thief than the wizard is at being a wizard at this point of adventuring. Also, the thief being so awesome allows the wizard to prepare other spells instead of trying to fill in the thief's lack of versatility or ability. In a good group it's covered.

In 3.X, you have a problem. Everyone levels at the same pace, so the wizard is just as good a wizard as the rogue is at being a rogue. There is also the abundance of magic items to offset what a wizard can cast. Also, being a level behind is not as big a detriment to a wizard as it is for a rogue in terms of versatility at current levels. While the Rogue does get UMD, this takes many levels before it's reliable for regular use. This itself is also a problem, with enough magic for the Rogue to emulate, the function of the Rogue's skill set is relegated to being Wizard lite (TM:smallbiggrin:). While UMD is an awesome skill and in high magic games is a blast, I miss the uniqueness of the classes of earlier editions, but I also love the versatility of 3.X. Catch 22 and all that.

To actually contribute about Fighters versus wizards in the group dynamic lets look at what a fighter gets in 2nd edition as he levels. Iterative attacks (the earliest of all classes), great saves, hp and con bonuses, attack and ac (thaco; the only gaming convention that was both the most intuitive and under appreciative, while still driving men and their gnomes crazy), all weapons and armor that can be used, weapon specialization, good skills, moderate exp progression, and two biggies; built in Leadership at level 9 and the ability to use protective scrolls. Wizards gain spells, period. In 3rd, things changed. They get feats. So do wizards. Wizards also get spells. Remember how spells alone were still better than everything a fighter got in 2nd. Yeah. Why fighters lack in the party dynamic in 3rd has been discussed by people far better than I at explaining these elements, so I'll leave it at that.

I think 3rd edition's main problem is it wanted to be an improved version of 2nd edition instead of being its own game, then at the last minute tried to do just that. Instead it took 2nd edition, removed the carefully placed gates of balance and flooded everything out leaving only the most powerful or versatile on top and then built new gates of it's own to store it's own water till 4th edition came around. Even so, it's still a fun game that we all love. Otherwise, why have we all spent so much time on a forum discussing it if we didn't care?:smallsmile:

Raum
2011-01-31, 10:42 PM
I'm surprised that nobody's talked about AD&D yet.

In 2e, Wizards (and other spellcasters) had to declare what spells they were casting at the beginning of every round. If they got hit (which was a definite possibility, seeing as how initiative was rolled every round), the spell fizzled. If they decided they were casting Hold Person, and their target died, they spent their turn casting Hold Person on a corpse. When casting, hey couldn't move, they couldn't attack, all they could do was stand there and cast.

When the changeover happened from 2e to 3e, the text for most spells was literally copy and pasted. Some of the terminology changed, but the spells were by and large identical. Trouble is, the Wizards weren't: not only could they both move AND cast, not only could they decide what spell they were casting during their turn rather than at the top of the round, but they could get hit and still cast. Or, if they had a high enough Concentration check, they could avoid getting hit entirely.

This.
Was.
A.
Big.
Deal.

So, in my humble opinion, the problem is the spells. The spells were written to be balanced for a completely different system, one that had certain checks in place. With those removed, the spells became more powerful than they were ever intended to be.Basically, this. Mechanics were slightly different (weapons had "speed" ratings and spells had "casting time" requirements, you'd start on your initiative and complete after a number of ticks equal to the speed rating) but spells weren't a sure thing prior to 3.x. Now there seems to be an expectation they'll work every time.

In AD&D an archer was great against mages - he'd pepper them with arrows anytime they tried to cast. Melee fighters were almost as good, though they had to get close and have a relatively fast weapon. (Speed is one reason the basic longsword used to be the best weapon in the game.) Casters generally relied on low level fast spells. They'd set up circumstances as well as possible before attempting a longer spell...moving to concealment or taking out ranged opponents first...or simply hiding behind the meatshield. Casting speed is the real reason most AD&D wizards were blasters.

If you want an easy "fix" to caster's combat power, bring back casting time requirements and make interrupting spellcasting easier.

faceroll
2011-01-31, 10:59 PM
Someone in this forum mentioned it before in another thread. One of the major problems with D&D magic is archtypes. Rogues are the Gray Mouser, Barbarians are Conan, Monks are all those wuxia heroes. Wizards, by contrast, try to cram ALL the archtypes of magical prowess in one class; Merlin AND Gandalf AND Baba Yaga AND...

That's why Wizards are so verstaile, they try to do anything at once.

It's worse than that. If non-casters (outside of ToB) want to be alternative versions of an archetype, they have to spend precious resources in order to mimic that archetype, like feats and skill points. Feats are generally best invested in improving combat options, like picking up power attack as opposed to something flavorful, but relatively useless, or going with a suboptimal fighting style, like weapons finesse and TWF.

Casters, on the other hand, have literally thousands of tiny, modular pieces, of varying power, usefulness, and flavor, to modify their characters. Tier 1 classes could easily stay tier 1 even if they didn't ever gain skill points or feats. When your class features include 10,000 spells, and the barbarian gets uncanny dodge, rage, and 6 or so feats, there is going to be a huge discrepancy.

That's probably what you were saying though, wasn't it?

Jothki
2011-02-01, 01:23 AM
Wizards doing everything also kind of messes with the fluff for psions. If arcane casters just flat out got little to no mind-affecting or divination spells, then half the fictional characters and archetypes that currently map to sorcerers or wizards would easily be psions instead, without any need to muck around with crystals or the like.

stainboy
2011-02-01, 01:28 AM
Don't forget the different experience points required to advance a level in earlier editions. Warriors/Priests/Wizards/Rogue all had their own unique experience totals, to level up a level 20 thief or bard only needed 2.2 million experience while a wizard took 3.75 million to hit 20. In real game terms this means that not only while the Rogue classes hit 20 while the wizard was still level 15.

That XP difference looked like a much bigger deal than it was. I don't remember how it worked in double digit levels, but for the first 10 levels the XP table grew exponentially. If you needed twice as much XP per level as another guy, you were one level behind them. The fastest classes (rogues) had less than a one-level lead on the slowest (wizards).

The big difference is that 2e was designed to stop around 10th level. From 9th-12th level almost every class got followers, land, titles, and all sorts of other stuff to allow the PCs to stop adventuring but still remain a driving force in the campaign world. The books even described how you would play out adventures using your followers rather than calling the 12th level wizard in for every little thing. Even if you didn't play this way, it took a godawfully long time to get to double digit levels and everything but humans had level caps.

High level spells make a lot more sense if they're only in the hands of the DM, who can't use them to full effect because he or she has to play fair.

MeeposFire
2011-02-01, 02:53 AM
That XP difference looked like a much bigger deal than it was. I don't remember how it worked in double digit levels, but for the first 10 levels the XP table grew exponentially. If you needed twice as much XP per level as another guy, you were one level behind them. The fastest classes (rogues) had less than a one-level lead on the slowest (wizards).

The big difference is that 2e was designed to stop around 10th level. From 9th-12th level almost every class got followers, land, titles, and all sorts of other stuff to allow the PCs to stop adventuring but still remain a driving force in the campaign world. The books even described how you would play out adventures using your followers rather than calling the 12th level wizard in for every little thing. Even if you didn't play this way, it took a godawfully long time to get to double digit levels and everything but humans had level caps.

High level spells make a lot more sense if they're only in the hands of the DM, who can't use them to full effect because he or she has to play fair.

The rate XP worked in 2e is a little more complicated than that. At different times different classes were ahead and behind. For instance it is clear many people know that at high levels mages need a ton of XP but did you know that at early mid levels they required little?

At 161000XP (happens to be the XP limit in baldurs gate which is why I remember it) Clerics, fighters, rangers, and paladins could only get to level 8. Mages could get to level 9 and thieves/bards and druids could get to level 10. Later at 2,950,000 (XP cap in BG2) we have an inverted relationship. Mages and druids are at the lowest levels (I think 17 and 15 respectively) paladins and rangers fall behind the fighter, clerics are the second highest at level 21 (this despite the fact that they had spells) and thieves and bards were still the best at level 24.

As you can see the XP tables really were quite varied.

true_shinken
2011-02-01, 07:23 AM
The rate XP worked in 2e is a little more complicated than that. At different times different classes were ahead and behind. For instance it is clear many people know that at high levels mages need a ton of XP but did you know that at early mid levels they required little?

At 161000XP (happens to be the XP limit in baldurs gate which is why I remember it) Clerics, fighters, rangers, and paladins could only get to level 8. Mages could get to level 9 and thieves/bards and druids could get to level 10. Later at 2,950,000 (XP cap in BG2) we have an inverted relationship. Mages and druids are at the lowest levels (I think 17 and 15 respectively) paladins and rangers fall behind the fighter, clerics are the second highest at level 21 (this despite the fact that they had spells) and thieves and bards were still the best at level 24.

You are wrong about which classes needed more amounts of XP. Rangers and Paladins were 'special cookies' and needed a lot of XP. Cleric and Druid I don't remember, but I think it was less than a Wizard as well. Fighter was definitely less than a Wizard.

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 08:56 AM
AS for traps... I never mentioned crafting a trap did I? Simply stuff the room full of alchemists fire and explosive runes. Or for a less magical solution oleum and a posted archer with a flaming arrow. they step out and boom. Though personally, if you are making a group with almost no magic... they shouldn't be fought at higher levels.


Err... Alchemists fire is 10 GP per FLASK. Why do the goblins have a room full of it? I'm not sure what Oleum is. I don't see it in any of my books, so it seems unlikely for the goblins as well. Explosive Runes is a 3rd level spell, which requires another 3rd level spell (dispel magic) to cause it to detonate. When it does detonate, it only does damage in a 10 foot radius. Considering that the Rope Trickers are watching the room through their rope trick, they can easily send out their rogue (Who has evasion) to toss the bomb down the hall, or blast the explosive runes from more than 10 feet away. And this still does nothing to answer how they found the rope trick in the first place.

Edit: and in order to actually stop a mid level party, the bad guy would have to employ multiple explosive runes in a bomb set up. This is legal, but it opens the doorway for the party to use the same trick on everything they fight. Personally, I wouldn't use multiple explosive runes, because I think it is a cheesy trick, but if the DM used it on me, the gloves would be off!

Who said anything about higher levels? I can rope trick all night with a 5th level party, 4th if I have a trick like sudden extend or a metamagic rod or a magic sleeping bag or a ring of sustenance. Also at 5th level, we can Stone Shape an enclosed alcove to hide the rope trick in. By 9th level, we have half a dozen ways to hide the trick, or to go far away to rest.

And again, some foes are magical, some arent. The typical lair of hill giants or fire giants is an appropriate challenge for a 7-11th level party, and they are unlikely to have anything that could locate or stop a rope trick. Even something like a CR appropriate Dragon, (an intelligent spellcaster) may not happen to know the divinations necessary to find a rope trick. A prepared caster may have the ability to find a rope trick, if he knows that he will need to do that when he picks his spells that morning, but most of my evil casting types are more concerned with not getting their arse handed to them in combat than with disabling Rope Trick. By the time most foes will have the ability to shut down rope trick, the party has likely moved on to teleport, plane shift or higher level tricks (genesis).

druid91
2011-02-01, 09:28 AM
It's 10 gp per flask... IF you purchase it. if instead their are a few goblins working away making the stuff...

Oleum is basically oil. It works like alchemists fire if lit.

And again there should always... always be an enemy spellcaster.

and you don't need a dispel magic to explode the runes. Just someone to lok at them and read them. then they explode and shatter the alchemists fire.

again detect magic. permanent arcane sight.

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 10:16 AM
It's 10 gp per flask... IF you purchase it. if instead their are a few goblins working away making the stuff...

Oleum is basically oil. It works like alchemists fire if lit.

Only spellcasters can take craft: Alchemy. Alchemists fire is DC 20, so a goblin spellcaster with a +10 succeeds only 50% of the time, and spoils half his materials 20% of the time. Assuming that he could take 10 it would take 5 WEEKS to make a single flask of alchemists fire.

Neither alchemists fire nor oil EXPLODE. They only burn. A 5th level party can walk through a room of burning oil, take 1 or 2 d6 damage each, and not really care. More importantly, they can see the room. Resist fire laughs at your feeble excuse for a trap.


And again there should always... always be an enemy spellcaster.

3 problems there, Druid:
1. It doesn't always make sense. A 5th level party fighting a tribe of ogres is unlikely to be facing a caster.
2. Not all casters are created equal. A sorcerer is unlikely to have the spells you need to stop rope trick. A gang of hill giants may have a 4th level cleric at CR 9, but that isn't going to even FIND the rope trick that a 9th level party creates.
3. If your answer to "Magic is overpowered" is "No it isn't, because the enemy always has high level casters" That isn't much of an argument, and it makes the melees look even more pathetic, because the enemies always have spellcasters. Based on the spells that you and Jay are throwing around, it would seem that the enemy always has casters 4-6 levels higher than the party.



and you don't need a dispel magic to explode the runes. Just someone to lok at them and read them. then they explode and shatter the alchemists fire.

I can SEE THE GOBLINS PUTTING THE ITEM IN THE ROOM NEXT TO THE BARREL OF OIL! I have never seen a party dumb enough, under those circumstances, to walk within 5 feet and go "Hey! They left a note! I wonder what it says!" Even if I couldn't see the goblins setting the trap, that is still pretty dumb. Explosive runes /= Symbol of Fire. I don't have to walk next to it and read it. I can shrug and toss a blanket over it and walk on.



again detect magic.

Works, if I allow it to work by rope tricking in an obvious place.


permanent arcane sight.
By the time you have an 11th level caster willing to dump 1500 xp on that, I am camping on another plane, or in my castle 500 miles away.

Lans
2011-02-01, 10:47 AM
Actually... yes, it is that good. You haul the rope up behind you, and no one can get in.

Where does it say that the rope is the only way to get in? Or where it prohibits other means of entry?



And it's extradimensional, not extraplanar. Plane shift is not required until you get ahold of Genesis.


an extradimensional space that is outside the multiverse of extradimensional spaces (“planes”)
Its outside of the planes, and


Spells cannot be cast across the extradimensional interface, nor can area effects cross it



At level 1, not even a melee character will survive more than one hit. Almost everybody dislikes the "survival levels" 1-3 (which by old gaming standards you didn't even bother to roleplay and give your characters a name or background story during that phase). There's a reason why there's a "sweet spot" that is somewhere after 6 and before 14 in general. High enough to survive a few hits at least.
There are classes that can 'take' more than one hit. Raging Barbarians can take a 2 good hit, Abrupt Jaunt variant Wizard, dragon blooded Incarnate, and Adamantine Bodied Warforged. And Crusaders.

Jarawara
2011-02-01, 12:05 PM
You are wrong about which classes needed more amounts of XP. Rangers and Paladins were 'special cookies' and needed a lot of XP. Cleric and Druid I don't remember, but I think it was less than a Wizard as well. Fighter was definitely less than a Wizard.

Actually, trueshinken, MeeposFire got it right.

2nd edition D&D, XP needed to get to 2nd level:

Thief: 1250
Cleric: 1500
Fighter: 2000
Wizard: 2500

XP needed to get to 5th level

Thief: 10,000
Cleric: 13,000
Fighter: 16,000
Wizard: 20,000 (Thief would have hit 6th level at this point)

Seems like the Wizard is slower than everyone else.
But then the Wizard starts accelerating.

XP needed to get to 7th level

Thief: 40,000
Cleric: 55,000
Wizard: 60,000, passing up the fighter.
Fighter: 64,000

XP needed to get to 8th level

Thief: 70,000
Wizard: 90,000, zipping past the Cleric now.
Cleric 110,000
Fighter: 125,000. Oh, the Thief lapped him, 110,000 to reach 9th.

XP needed to get to 9th level.

Thief: 110,000. 160,000 to reach 10th, 220,000 to reach 11th.
Wizard: 135,000.
Cleric: 225,000.
Fighter: A whopping 250,000. Wizard reaches 10th by then.

The Wizard hits 11th before the Fighter reaches 10th. Wizard hits 12th as the Fighter hits 11th. Wizard starts lagging again, but the Fighter doesn't catch him till 14th level. The Wizard hits 11th before the Cleric reaches 10th, but the Cleric does reach parity by 13th level. Only the Thief stays consistently ahead of the Wizard.

Once past the mid-teens, everyone else advances faster than the wizard. Or, put another way, once you've all become as gods, the lesser dieties advance faster than the lords of the heavens and earth.

So go ahead and enjoy your speed, Thief. Here, have a lock to pick.

*~*~*

Overall, I think the 3E XP charts were much better (which is why I was using them a decade before 3E came out). It does change the rate in which the Wizard comes into his own (now that he reaches 5th level at the same point everyone else does), but it also restrains his advancement after that point, (keeping him only at 10th when everyone else reaches 10th).

But the problem isn't who reaches what level at what rate, it's that the Wizard goes from 'useful' to 'dominant' at the same rate the fighter goes from 'useful' to 'superfluous' to 'what did I even bother to update my character sheet for'.



So... your argument is that fighters can't use magic or compete with it.. therefore magic is overpowered?

Yes, that is exactly the argument, because that is *exactly* the problem.


*~*~*

I don't know why they lowered the saving throws for fighters from 2E to 3E, but I have always considered that a serious problem. I mean, Fighters with poor will saves? I don't see that at all. They should have minds of iron, able to see through the enchanter's words or the illusionist's tricks. The WARRIOR (NPC class), sure, they exist to be duped. But the FIGHTER? No. They should have high saving throw bonuses. Heck... they should have magic IMMUNITIES as a class feature.

That's how the system should be designed, with the wizard lobbing firery blasts, terrain feature defenses, magical summons, enchantments both personal and AoE... and the fighter just muscling his way through it all to cut the poor schmuck in half.

Wizard: "TIME STOP"
Fighter: *frozen in place for a moment, then snaps out of it, blinks, looks around, then stabs wizard in face.*
Wizard: "Damn, I thought I had more time...." *dies*

druid91
2011-02-01, 12:06 PM
Only spellcasters can take craft: Alchemy. Alchemists fire is DC 20, so a goblin spellcaster with a +10 succeeds only 50% of the time, and spoils half his materials 20% of the time. Assuming that he could take 10 it would take 5 WEEKS to make a single flask of alchemists fire.

Neither alchemists fire nor oil EXPLODE. They only burn. A 5th level party can walk through a room of burning oil, take 1 or 2 d6 damage each, and not really care. More importantly, they can see the room. Resist fire laughs at your feeble excuse for a trap.



3 problems there, Druid:
1. It doesn't always make sense. A 5th level party fighting a tribe of ogres is unlikely to be facing a caster.
2. Not all casters are created equal. A sorcerer is unlikely to have the spells you need to stop rope trick. A gang of hill giants may have a 4th level cleric at CR 9, but that isn't going to even FIND the rope trick that a 9th level party creates.
3. If your answer to "Magic is overpowered" is "No it isn't, because the enemy always has high level casters" That isn't much of an argument, and it makes the melees look even more pathetic, because the enemies always have spellcasters. Based on the spells that you and Jay are throwing around, it would seem that the enemy always has casters 4-6 levels higher than the party.




I can SEE THE GOBLINS PUTTING THE ITEM IN THE ROOM NEXT TO THE BARREL OF OIL! I have never seen a party dumb enough, under those circumstances, to walk within 5 feet and go "Hey! They left a note! I wonder what it says!" Even if I couldn't see the goblins setting the trap, that is still pretty dumb. Explosive runes /= Symbol of Fire. I don't have to walk next to it and read it. I can shrug and toss a blanket over it and walk on.




Works, if I allow it to work by rope tricking in an obvious place.


By the time you have an 11th level caster willing to dump 1500 xp on that, I am camping on another plane, or in my castle 500 miles away.

Wait wait wait a tribe of ogres? A gang of hill gants? your using big thumpers as enemies? And they aren't enslaved by mindflayers or demons or anything?

We obviously have a very different style.

And I will say this again for a third time. devoted melee is bad. Personally the closest I ever get to a pure melee character has been a ranger. The idea that magic is wrong because swinging a sword isn't as effective... well what do you expect? One is stabbing things with a pointy bit of metal. The other is rewriting reality. No matter what you do a sword will not beat turning someone to stone.

As far as I'm concerned fighter is an NPC class.

Perhaps not on you but my players... every time. usually because I try to make a habit of slightly insulting notes for them.

hmm lets knock out this wal and hide behind it. Oh wait how will we reshape the wall in such a manner that it is unnoticible did you take ranks in craft masonry?

A four man party. VS one spellcaster. each party member is fifth level. therefore the spellcaster at minimum should be tenth level one level higher for a challenge.

Doug Lampert
2011-02-01, 12:15 PM
Err... Alchemists fire is 10 GP per FLASK. Why do the goblins have a room full of it? I'm not sure what Oleum is. I don't see it in any of my books, so it seems unlikely for the goblins as well. Explosive Runes is a 3rd level spell, which requires another 3rd level spell (dispel magic) to cause it to detonate. When it does detonate, it only does damage in a 10 foot radius. Considering that the Rope Trickers are watching the room through their rope trick, they can easily send out their rogue (Who has evasion) to toss the bomb down the hall, or blast the explosive runes from more than 10 feet away. And this still does nothing to answer how they found the rope trick in the first place.

And, better than ALL of that. Let's say the bad guys do have the resources for an Instant DEATH trap outside a room where the PCs can WATCH them set it up, and it will work when they KNOW it's there and what it is.

Why don't they just set this trap at the front entrance and blow the good guys away whether or not they rope trick?

Seriously.

All these resources DO NOT EXIST till the characters rope trick. They're not part of the adventure. Otherwise they'd be USED. It's an admission, that your only method of dealing with ONE second level spell, used as plainly intended, is to come up with an arbitrarily large number of third level spells or to add an overwhelming CR trap to any encounter or to add a HIGHER LEVEL spellcaster.

Yep. That sure proves that magic isn't overpowered.


Only spellcasters can take craft: Alchemy. Alchemists fire is DC 20, so a goblin spellcaster with a +10 succeeds only 50% of the time, and spoils half his materials 20% of the time. Assuming that he could take 10 it would take 5 WEEKS to make a single flask of alchemists fire.

And 3.33 GP worth of components. Don't forget that part. It's still not free.

But of course he can and should take 10, craft is a classic use for the ability to take 10.

DeltaEmil
2011-02-01, 12:38 PM
I don't know why they lowered the saving throws for fighters from 2E to 3E, but I have always considered that a serious problem. I mean, Fighters with poor will saves? I don't see that at all. They should have minds of iron, able to see through the enchanter's words or the illusionist's tricks. The WARRIOR (NPC class), sure, they exist to be duped. But the FIGHTER? No. They should have high saving throw bonuses. Heck... they should have magic IMMUNITIES as a class feature.The idea in early 3.0 probably was to get Iron Will, Great Fortitude and Lightning Reflexes with your feats, and the fighter would use his "bonus feats" to focus on becoming a better fighter compared to the paladin and the barbarian.

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 12:41 PM
Wait wait wait a tribe of ogres? A gang of hill gants? your using big thumpers as enemies? And they aren't enslaved by mindflayers or demons or anything?

1. Sometimes enemies should be big thumpers. If all your enemies are the same, that is really boring. Sometimes enemies aren't organized at all. Sometimes they are roguish. Sometimes they are animals, aberrations, or other monsters.
2. Who cares if they are? Aside from the fact that MindFlayers are way too high CR to fight a low level party fighting marauding ogres or tough humanoids, a typical Mind Flayer can't find the Rope Trick either!



hmm lets knock out this wal and hide behind it. Oh wait how will we reshape the wall in such a manner that it is unnoticible did you take ranks in craft masonry?

Stone shape would work nicely. Level 3 cleric or druid spell.


A four man party. VS one spellcaster. each party member is fifth level. therefore the spellcaster at minimum should be tenth level one level higher for a challenge.

1. Thats not how it works. A very tough encounter is CR+4. That would be a 9th level caster, if you want it to risk TPK, just by the bad CR rules. In practice, a 9th level tier 1 caster can pretty easily TPK even an optimized 5th level party. He doesn't need a trap, just an alarm spell to give him a few rounds to pre-buff. Heck, if the enemy caster is optimized at all, he should be able to wipe out one or more PCs of half his level in the first round! (Flame Strike, DMM Quicken Flame strike. 63 damage avg on round 1 with saves at around DC 20-22 or higher. Fight over. Maybe the tank or rogue is still limping around with a few HP) Edit: Heck, a Black Tentacles/quickened Cause Fear on anyone who wasn't grappled (or similar combo) probably ends the fight, without using anything non core or very unusual.

2. You are assuming that the caster is the enemy leader, and he will be fought alone. A tribe of Bugbears (for example) isn't going to have 1 8th level caster who duels the entire party. They will more likely have a martial leader type (a TOB adept if they are super lucky, a Fighter or Barb if they aren't) of around party level, maybe level + 1 or 2, some kind of caster (Maybe a sorc or cleric, more likely an Adept) of party level or below, and a bunch of mooks. That is a much more typical humanoid band (Or mercenary company, or thieves guild, etc) than a single high level caster who goes out to solo their enemies.

Czin
2011-02-01, 12:41 PM
Has anyone ever considered having Mordenkainen turn up to evict the PCs from his mansion?

Considering that Mordenkainen is an epic level wizard and is like the third strongest spellcaster to have ever existed in greyhawk (with Vecna being first and Zagyg second), I think that this would be rather effective; and hilarious.

Aharon
2011-02-01, 01:34 PM
@Shneekey
I agree with Lans.
Extradimensional and Extraplanar are used synonymously. The descriptions of Dimensional Anchor and Dimensional Lock also feature this usage.

Thus, you can't teleport out of a Rope Trick, but you can Plane Shift in.

Jayabalard
2011-02-01, 02:04 PM
That XP difference looked like a much bigger deal than it was. I don't remember how it worked in double digit levels, but for the first 10 levels the XP table grew exponentially. If you needed twice as much XP per level as another guy, you were one level behind them. The fastest classes (rogues) had less than a one-level lead on the slowest (wizards).Hmm, that doesn't sound right. As I recall, in AD&D it was linear after name level (9th for fighter/cleric, 11 for magic user and thief, that is High Priest Lord, Wizard and Master Thief respectively); basically, it took you X amount of exp to get to name level, and then that same X amount of exp for each level after that. That's a linear progression, not even geometric, let alone exponential

And there was a bunch of weirdness as you approached name level... specifically, magic users needed far less exp to level than fighters/clerics from 9-11 (even less proportionally than a thief for some of those levels iirc), and then once you hit wizard (11th magic user) you had a huge leap per level level compared to everyone else.

Aharon
2011-02-01, 02:09 PM
@Jayabalard
You're both correct :smallbiggrin:

It was exponential till the name level, linear after that. As far as I know, most groups seldomly played in the double-digit levels. My own group played a campaign for about 5 years, and we went up from 1st to ~10th level in that time, IIRC.

(That's interesting, considering my current 3.5 group went up from 1 to 12 in about a year, with far less actual gaming sessions.)

Jayabalard
2011-02-01, 02:17 PM
@Jayabalard
You're both correct :smallbiggrin:

It was exponential till the name level, linear after that. As far as I know, most groups seldomly played in the double-digit levels. My own group played a campaign for about 5 years, and we went up from 1st to ~10th level in that time, IIRC.

(That's interesting, considering my current 3.5 group went up from 1 to 12 in about a year, with far less actual gaming sessions.)That's not really exponential either. Googled around and found this: the table in this thread (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4306&start=45) which matches up with what I remember. The amount you need is pretty arbitrary; sometimes it's more than double your current exp total, and sometimes it's far less. For fighters it was always at least double your exp until name level, but clerics had a couple of levels where it was less, and magic users a whole bunch of levels where that wasn't the case. They only really get charged heavily up front, for the first 5 levels, and then again after name level.

if it was really exponential, then a thief would have wound up around double the level Edit:actually it's 1-2 levels up to name lelve and then gets ridiculous (where level 50 rogue has the same exp as an exponential progression lvl 17 wizard), not just one level above. The wizard progression would be:

Exponential MU progression: 2.5, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, and 1280/level after 11
If the MU followed the % increase of the thief per level, it would be 2.5, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 40, 90, 110, 160, 200, and 640/level after 11
Actual MU progression 2.5, 2.5, 5, 12.5, 17.5, 20, 30, 45, 115, 125, and 375/level after 11

That's significantly different.

druid91
2011-02-01, 02:39 PM
1. Sometimes enemies should be big thumpers. If all your enemies are the same, that is really boring. Sometimes enemies aren't organized at all. Sometimes they are roguish. Sometimes they are animals, aberrations, or other monsters.
2. Who cares if they are? Aside from the fact that MindFlayers are way too high CR to fight a low level party fighting marauding ogres or tough humanoids, a typical Mind Flayer can't find the Rope Trick either!



Stone shape would work nicely. Level 3 cleric or druid spell.



1. Thats not how it works. A very tough encounter is CR+4. That would be a 9th level caster, if you want it to risk TPK, just by the bad CR rules. In practice, a 9th level tier 1 caster can pretty easily TPK even an optimized 5th level party. He doesn't need a trap, just an alarm spell to give him a few rounds to pre-buff. Heck, if the enemy caster is optimized at all, he should be able to wipe out one or more PCs of half his level in the first round! (Flame Strike, DMM Quicken Flame strike. 63 damage avg on round 1 with saves at around DC 20-22 or higher. Fight over. Maybe the tank or rogue is still limping around with a few HP) Edit: Heck, a Black Tentacles/quickened Cause Fear on anyone who wasn't grappled (or similar combo) probably ends the fight, without using anything non core or very unusual.

2. You are assuming that the caster is the enemy leader, and he will be fought alone. A tribe of Bugbears (for example) isn't going to have 1 8th level caster who duels the entire party. They will more likely have a martial leader type (a TOB adept if they are super lucky, a Fighter or Barb if they aren't) of around party level, maybe level + 1 or 2, some kind of caster (Maybe a sorc or cleric, more likely an Adept) of party level or below, and a bunch of mooks. That is a much more typical humanoid band (Or mercenary company, or thieves guild, etc) than a single high level caster who goes out to solo their enemies.

IF they are big thumpers without magic I don't see why anyone would complain about ropetrick being effective.

Since when do you throw "typical" anything at your players? Aside from mooks? Anything that's in charge is customized.


Stone Shape
Transmutation [Earth]
Level: Clr 3, Drd 3, Earth 3, Sor/Wiz 4
Components: V, S, M/DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Stone or stone object touched, up to 10 cu. ft. + 1 cu. ft./level
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

You can form an existing piece of stone into any shape that suits your purpose. While it’s possible to make crude coffers, doors, and so forth with stone shape, fine detail isn’t possible. There is a 30% chance that any shape including moving parts simply doesn’t work.
Emphasis mine. Get some of your minions kids to go out there and carve some lines into the wall. Oh look no lines.

uh... Maybe you don't but I level my PC's a few times before they get to the boss. Now if they start acting ridiculous then I might get him to show up to get them to fight, and toss an insult their way before walking off again, chuckling to himself assured of their downfall at the hands of his mooks(not).

At some point every leader ends up alone. And again, when I DM these things always serve some sort of master mage. And if they don't they aren't expected to put up much of a fight against heavy magical resistance.

As I see it their are two ways to fight, one is be sneaky, hit and run.
And two is to use magic in one of it's forms. Be it psionics, maneuvers, Incarnum, Vancian, Binding Or whatever.

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 02:52 PM
Since when do you throw "typical" anything at your players? Aside from mooks? Anything that's in charge is customized.

If everybody is a special snowflake, nobody is. Sometimes an ogre is just an ogre. WSIPs (Wierd, uh...Stuff In Play) only have an impact if they are unusual.


uh... Maybe you don't but I level my PC's a few times before they get to the boss. Now if they start acting ridiculous then I might get him to show up to get them to fight, and toss an insult their way before walking off again, chuckling to himself assured of their downfall at the hands of his mooks(not).

At some point every leader ends up alone. And again, when I DM these things always serve some sort of master mage. And if they don't they aren't expected to put up much of a fight against heavy magical resistance.


So all your Bosses are high level spellcasters, with presumably superhuman brainpower, who all act stupid, throw away their minions and wind up fighting the party alone when they could have killed them at any time.

Wow, that is not only spectacularly repetitive, but it also takes any kind of in game verisimilitude or suspension of disbelief and treats it like a Japanese schoolgirl at a tentacle monster convention. I am in awe. Fortunately, No game I have ever played in or run has done that.

Aharon
2011-02-01, 02:57 PM
@Jayabalard
Huh... I misremembered it, then. Thanks for looking up the actual numbers! :smallsmile:

druid91
2011-02-01, 03:01 PM
Say you were in my gaming group. Would you prefer that I have sane evil wizards? Who just kill you dead in the first five minutes?

Aside from the fact that usually, at first the "heroes" aren't his main problem. It's usually some other guy/group who is opposing him, the heroes are just some people from out of the blue that he doesn't have time to really devote to an actual fight for. He might show up to help his minions. But really. After the first time of this he gets a little more serious. My players have learned this is bad.

And presumably I'd come up with a different adventure. IF my players ever beat this one. They have managed to ruin a few plots. But these are side plots run by higher rank underlings.

I do occasionally switch up details here and there after a TPK, but really. We don't play often enough. It's why I play online.

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 03:03 PM
Say you were in my gaming group. Would you prefer that I have sane evil wizards? Who just kill you dead in the first five minutes?

YES!!!

But I would prefer it even more if the antagonists were reasonably balanced against the party, so they can't kill you in the first 5 minutes.

Even better would be if some antagonists arent evil wizards!

druid91
2011-02-01, 03:06 PM
Gnaeus... You are one strange guy.:smallbiggrin:Not in a bad way... Just that answer was funny.

And that's the whole thing. IF you balance the big evil overlord against the lowly PCs at the beginning the question becomes, why doesn't anyone else go and crush him.

And why would an evil wizard listen to an evil fighter?

Jayabalard
2011-02-01, 03:11 PM
Say you were in my gaming group. Would you prefer that I have sane evil wizards? Who just kill you dead in the first five minutes?I think he's looking more for "believable at all" while saying that the scenario that you've laid out isn't.

The problem with always using some uber powerful arch villain spell caster is that each antagonist is pretty much the same, so it gets tedious doing basically the same game over and over again; based on your post I'm going to guess that you've been gaming for less than 20 years, so this may not be the same sort of issue for you as it is for some people. There are plenty of evil people who aren't spellcasters who would fill the antagonist role quite well.


@Jayabalard
Huh... I misremembered it, then. Thanks for looking up the actual numbers! :smallsmile:not surprising... the exp numbers are one of the weirder bits from AD&D; standardizing like they did in 3e made a lot of sense from a simplicity standpoint, though I'm still of two minds about whether it's a benefit as a whole.


And that's the whole thing. IF you balance the big evil overlord against the lowly PCs at the beginning the question becomes, why doesn't anyone else go and crush him.Why do you need an evil overlord?


And why would an evil wizard listen to an evil fighter?Why wouldn't he?

druid91
2011-02-01, 03:18 PM
Actually gaming since around four years ago.

DMing only within the last year or two.

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 03:29 PM
And that's the whole thing. IF you balance the big evil overlord against the lowly PCs at the beginning the question becomes, why doesn't anyone else go and crush him.

Not every campaign is a quest against a big evil overlord. Some are, some aren't. Even in a campaign that includes a big evil overlord, many encounters and quest goals will not involve him directly. Some may be essentially one-offs. Others may involve PC side goals. Still others may involve traveling to some out of the way location to get the McGuffin from wherever it was hidden long ago for whatever reason.

If we are talking about the campaign level big bad, say a Lich or something similar, there is no need for PCs to ever meet him when they are low level. Having your ubercaster running around quashing their rope tricks is way unnecessary. They may not even know who the big bad is for much of the campaign.

Edit: In the campaign in which I am currently playing, the Big Bad is an evil wizard. At level 12, we have never met him, and I am not sure if he is even aware that we exist. If he knows, I'm sure he doesn't care.


And why would an evil wizard listen to an evil fighter?

Why does the nuclear scientist or the special forces assassin listen to the president? He's the guy in charge. Maybe he pays them. Maybe they like him, and are loyal to him. The scientist is probably smarter, the assassin is definitely more dangerous.

Maybe the fighter is level 20, and his wizard flunky is only level 10. Maybe the wizard doesn't want to lead an empire, he just wants to sit in his lab and make wierd stuff, and the big bad helps that happen. Maybe the fighter is the wizard's father, or lover. There are as many motivations as there are antagonists.

druid91
2011-02-01, 03:40 PM
The overlord is neccesary because otherwise my players have no-one to fight. I have tried other methods.

It does not work. It may for you. But most of us are kick in the door players over in my group. I'm the only one who role-plays and even then the best characters I ever role-play are the lunies.

For the most part it's find out his plan kill/break things until plan stops.

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 03:50 PM
The overlord is neccesary because otherwise my players have no-one to fight. I have tried other methods.

It does not work. It may for you. But most of us are kick in the door players over in my group. I'm the only one who role-plays and even then the best characters I ever role-play are the lunies.

That does sound like a problem. I would suggest a different thread. There are lots of solutions, which work for different groups. Few of them are directly relevant to magic being overpowered in 3.5.

DeltaEmil
2011-02-01, 03:52 PM
I'd say that everybody has by now agreed that magic is overpowerd in 3.5E, at least in this thread.

To fight magic, you need magic, and non-magic users don't use magic. Yo.

druid91
2011-02-01, 04:13 PM
I'd say that everybody has by now agreed that magic is overpowerd in 3.5E, at least in this thread.

To fight magic, you need magic, and non-magic users don't use magic. Yo.

But that's my point. This is exactly the way things are supposed to be!

By over powered you mean that magic should be toned down correct? Personally I think that it's exactly where it should be.

A great swordsman can beat an not so great wizard, But a great wizard should beat a great swordsman.

To quote the guy from ravemaster (seigfried or something, I think)

"Even one who masters the sword must bow before the one who masters magic, And that's all a sword-saint really is... Someone who has mastered the sword."

stainboy
2011-02-01, 04:18 PM
Even better would be if some antagonists arent evil wizards!

Which brings us back on topic, because important antagonists who aren't spellcasters don't work. They don't have the tools to stop PC spellcasters from trivially countering their plots. The only counter to a wizard is a higher level wizard.

If the BBEG is a level 20 fighter, he's a speed bump. The real enemy is whatever wizard or cleric teleport-proofs his lair and casts Mind Blank on him every morning.

DeltaEmil
2011-02-01, 04:21 PM
But that's my point. This is exactly the way things are supposed to be!

By over powered you mean that magic should be toned down correct? Personally I think that it's exactly where it should be.

A great swordsman can beat an not so great wizard, But a great wizard should beat a great swordsman.

To quote the guy from ravemaster (seigfried or something, I think)

"Even one who masters the sword must bow before the one who masters magic, And that's all a sword-saint really is... Someone who has mastered the sword."Your position is not shared by many who wish that non-magic users still matter at higher level, which is why threads about the high power of magic and how to balance it out with the mundane guys pop up at least once every week.

Hammerhead
2011-02-01, 04:23 PM
Which brings us back on topic, because important antagonists who aren't spellcasters don't work. They don't have the tools to stop PC spellcasters from trivially countering their plots.
A level 2 Aristocrat who happens to be The King can be really hard to kill, even if it's within the group's ability.

druid91
2011-02-01, 04:29 PM
Yes, other people want the guy who hits things with metal too be useful.

My response? This is a team game.

You are the damage dealer. Specialize in hurting things that the wizard has shut down, until they die.

The sneaky one is the sneaky one. You sneak mundanely so that you don't show up on magic. Perhaps with some form of antimagic field item.

The other two should be casters of some sort.

The first two function in an antimagic field. The second two bring magic.

Fox Box Socks
2011-02-01, 04:37 PM
Yes, other people want the guy who hits things with metal too be useful.

My response? This is a team game.

You are the damage dealer. Specialize in hurting things that the wizard has shut down, until they die.

The sneaky one is the sneaky one. You sneak mundanely so that you don't show up on magic. Perhaps with some form of antimagic field item.

The other two should be casters of some sort.

The first two function in an antimagic field. The second two bring magic.
Function in an antimagic field? Are you kidding? Antimagic field shuts off magic items. Without his magic sword or his magic armor or his +4 Gauntlets of Ogre Power, the Fighter is done for. I'm not sure where people got the idea that antimagic field is an enormous middle finger to the casters that the non-casters can just ignore, because it isn't. Without their magic items or their buffs or their vaguely magic-like abilities, an antimagic field hurts non-casters significantly more than it hurts casters (some of whom can either break through it, become immune to it, or teleport away).

Eorran
2011-02-01, 04:39 PM
Yes, other people want the guy who hits things with metal too be useful.

My response? This is a team game.

You are the damage dealer. Specialize in hurting things that the wizard has shut down, until they die.

The sneaky one is the sneaky one. You sneak mundanely so that you don't show up on magic. Perhaps with some form of antimagic field item.

The other two should be casters of some sort.

The first two function in an antimagic field. The second two bring magic.


But the only reason this dynamic exists is because of the way the game rules were written. It was not the intentional design of the game that melee << magic. Many other games, books, movies do not share this dynamic. Other editions of D&D do not share this dynamic (at least not to the same extent).

The powerful fighter defeating the evil wizard is a common theme in fantasy stories; this is difficult to do in 3.X without dumbing down the evil wizard.

Fox Box Socks
2011-02-01, 04:45 PM
It was not the intentional design of the game that melee << magic.
Honestly? I think it was. I can't really prove it, but I refuse to believe that a bunch of very smart people put out this very smart game without realizing what could happen with spellcasters at higher levels.

Monte Cook (who's name is on the cover of a solid chunk of 3.X stuff) has gone on record, multiple times, saying that his favorite class to both play and design for are spellcasters. Hell, you could extrapolate from his post about Ivory Tower Game Design; if you want to subtly encourage system mastery, what better way to do it than by making some classes secretly mind-blowingly strong? "Wow, my Monk just got totally outclassed by Dave's Wizard all campaign! Next time, I'm playing a Wizard!".

It's opinion. Maybe I'm wrong. But I have a hard time buying that WotC didn't know exactly what they were doing with spellcasters in 3rd Edition.

druid91
2011-02-01, 04:49 PM
Not really, play a psychic warrior. Play a warblade. Play a barbarian.

Play anything but a fighter.

And why is the fighter done for without his fancy bling? Does it really take a +5 sword to kill an orc? Does it really take a +5 sword to stab a spellcaster without his magic?

Magic armour why is that needed? Why not just get some really good mundane armour.

Fox Box Socks
2011-02-01, 04:55 PM
The only things that cast Antimagic Sphere are things strong enough to survive within it. Orcs don't cast it: Ogre Mages with class levels and high UMD do (from scrolls). Or dragons.

In all my time playing 3rd Edition, as a DM and a player, not once did I ever see anything ever cast Antimagic Sphere that wasn't capable of giving the entire party a run for their money, even with all the magic turned off.

Jarawara
2011-02-01, 04:58 PM
Actually gaming since around four years ago.

DMing only within the last year or two.

Ahh... you're beginning to make more sense to me now...

You're still new enough to the game to not have found "the evil wizard" to be boring and repetative yet.

I remember when I first started out DMing, 30 years ago, I made the "Evil Cabal" of four individuals. A high level evil Wizard, a high level evil Illusionist (they were a separate class back then), a high level evil Cleric, and a high level evil Druid (don't ask. :smallsigh:).

I never thought to make a high level evil Fighter because, well, they looked boring. They just go stabbity stabbity, *really well*. Boring. The spellcasters had so much more fine detail, could do so much more.

And then... I never found much interest in actually *playing* my evil cabal of evil evilness. They looked exciting on paper, but they were boring in execution. They were just like everyone else's high evil baddies. I finally just dumped the concept. (Except the evil Druid, go figure).

Now I make stories and personalities, and I stat out a character to whatever class seems appropriate. Often, I don't have a BBEG at all. Or I have so many, the party can decide for themselves who their own 'BBEG' is, and go after them.

You will find yourself doing all this too, if you play long enough. You might then find yourself wanting to play a high level evil Fighter, and then you'll see the failings of the system of how worthless a high level fighter can be.

*~*~*


But that's my point. This is exactly the way things are supposed to be!

I've seen games where that is true! I was introduced to Ars Magica, told the setting was fantasy-medievel europe, focused on the conflict between the witch's covens of celtic England and the Christian-dominated southern europe. DM then told me to come up with a character.

My first idea: Be a bible-thumping cleric, spreading the word of god by the power of my ideas, and by the blade of my sword if they didn't listen to my ideas. DM says no, I have to make a character on the coven's side, not the christian's side. Ok, I look over the magic system, I'm not impressed and I don't want to have to master it... I'll play a fighter, ready to give life and limb to protect my coven from the advances of previously described bible-thumpers.

DM says no... I have to be a witch. That's the point of Ars Magica (or at least the point of his campaign, but I've heard confirmation elsewhere that the whole system is designed around the idea that the PC's are the witches and warlocks). The fighters and others would be the NPC followers of the PC witches, every player would be a spellcaster, and all others would be mere 'mundanes'. Unless, of course, it turns out the BBEG is from a rival coven, which most of the time was true because the 'Evil non-casting Bishop' shtick is older than the evil wizard shtick.

Meh. I can see the appeal. But for me, it's a richly detailed version of "Been there, done that". Notice that both my original character ideas did not include spellcasting? (well, I thought the bible thumper might have had spells, but apparently they don't). The point is....

...I don't want to play a spellcaster.

...I *want* to play a fighter.

...and so, I don't play Ars Magica, a game designed around the idea that spellcasters rule and fighters are just NPCs.

...Instead, I play D&D, which is designed around the idea that there are many character classes to play. Bible-thumping cleric, Low-life thief. Powerful spellcasting cleric. And yes, strong in will and strong in steel fighter. And it was designed with all four of these classes as being viable, balanced options.

But the problem is, all four are not "viable, balanced options". Only the spellcasters are viable. The others suck. And why is that? Because the designers made spellcasting too versatile, too flexible, too effective, and too easy to use. In essense...

...they made magic overpowered.

If this were Ars Magica, then no, they made magic just right. But this is D&D, where I am supposed to be allowed to play the fighter, and be equally useful in the party, equally effective against enemies, equally capable against spellcasters. But they karked up. They made magic overpowered.

And that's our argument. Does that make more sense to you now?

*~*~*

Oh, and druid91, let me be clear: I am not telling you to "go play Ars Magica, and leave our poor D&D alone". You are perfectly fine to continue to play D&D that way, you're not "doing it wrong". In fact, it looks like you have mastered the magic system and are taking full advantage of it. Plus, if your players are happy, that's the definition of doing it right.

Just try to understand that we are wanting something completely different in our games, and are looking for modifications to make the gamerules better reflect what we are looking to play, and yes, that game will also be D&D. It was balanced for four character archtypes once before, and it can be again if we can nerf the wizard back into line (or puff up the fighter to match). We won't be playing it wrong, and neither will you. We'll just be playing it very differently from each other.

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 05:05 PM
Yes, other people want the guy who hits things with metal too be useful.

My response? This is a team game.

Some games are more "teamish" than others. But the point of having a team game is in letting everyone have a role on the team. A Druid or wizard (or some clerics) can outfight the fighter (or trivially summon or create something that can outfight the fighter), outsneak the sneak, and still have spells left for a fair bit of magic mojo. Just because the roadie carries the speakers doesn't mean he is part of the band.


Which brings us back on topic, because important antagonists who aren't spellcasters don't work. They don't have the tools to stop PC spellcasters from trivially countering their plots. The only counter to a wizard is a higher level wizard.


At what level? level 20? maybe. But most games don't run at that level. Level 8? you could easily have a non-caster baddy. Higher with just a touch of rules tweaking regarding travel and divination spells.

(One common houserule I have seen is that lead or thaumium or some other material will block divination + Teleport. The spells are still useful, but not as overwhelming to deal with for high-powered muggles).

true_shinken
2011-02-01, 05:12 PM
Your position is not shared by many who wish that non-magic users still matter at higher level, which is why threads about the high power of magic and how to balance it out with the mundane guys pop up at least once every week.

I agree with druid91. If magic is as strong as swinging a sword really hard, it doesn't feel like magic to me.
Magic should be stronger than not-magic. That much is pretty obvious for me.
What you could have is more limitations on the use of magic, like AD&D had. But if you end up with 4e magic, basically another flavor for 'swinging a sword really hard', well, I'm really against that.

The_Jackal
2011-02-01, 05:30 PM
This thread really overcomplicates this issue. The reason magic is overpowered in 3.5 (and 3.0) is that it's meant to be a scarce resource in theory, but in practice, it isn't scarce at all. The design for spellcasters is fundamentally flawed in this one, simple principle: Their spells are very, very powerful, but can only be used a few times each day. Except few GMs actually enforce any limits on their players to keep them from simply stopping to get 8 hours of rest at a moment's notice. And even with those that do, a prepared spellcaster can stock up on magic items to provide pinch firepower when the magic well starts running dry.

The basic issue is that being a spellcaster who can't cast spells isn't fun, and so the 'limitation' of magic can be summed up like this: 'When my character is here, he's really awesome'.

4th Ed really tames the spellcasters by giving everyone a similar power curve and resource system. Too bad they forgot to also put an actual Roleplaying game in their boardgame-style combat system.

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 05:31 PM
I agree with druid91. If magic is as strong as swinging a sword really hard, it doesn't feel like magic to me.
Magic should be stronger than not-magic. That much is pretty obvious for me.
What you could have is more limitations on the use of magic, like AD&D had. But if you end up with 4e magic, basically another flavor for 'swinging a sword really hard', well, I'm really against that.

I agree, shinken, but those aren't the only 2 options. Look at World of Darkness, for example. A strong Mage is clearly superior to pretty much anything, but under normal circumstances he wouldn't be a match for a similarly ranked Werewolf in a fistfight. Thaumaturgy and Necromancy are arguably the strongest vampire disciplines with all of their options, but they don't replace Dominate, Obfuscate or Celerity. Magic can be stronger than not-magic, while not completely replacing not-magic.

Reverent-One
2011-02-01, 05:44 PM
This thread really overcomplicates this issue. The reason magic is overpowered in 3.5 (and 3.0) is that it's meant to be a scarce resource in theory, but in practice, it isn't scarce at all. The design for spellcasters is fundamentally flawed in this one, simple principle: Their spells are very, very powerful, but can only be used a few times each day. Except few GMs actually enforce any limits on their players to keep them from simply stopping to get 8 hours of rest at a moment's notice. And even with those that do, a prepared spellcaster can stock up on magic items to provide pinch firepower when the magic well starts running dry.

The basic issue is that being a spellcaster who can't cast spells isn't fun, and so the 'limitation' of magic can be summed up like this: 'When my character is here, he's really awesome'.

Good summary there.


4th Ed really tames the spellcasters by giving everyone a similar power curve and resource system. Too bad they forgot to also put an actual Roleplaying game in their boardgame-style combat system.

*Points to everything in the 4e books about playing a character, interacting with the world your character inhabits, and those sorts of Roleplaying game bits*

true_shinken
2011-02-01, 05:45 PM
I agree, shinken, but those aren't the only 2 options. Look at World of Darkness, for example. A strong Mage is clearly superior to pretty much anything, but under normal circumstances he wouldn't be a match for a similarly ranked Werewolf in a fistfight.
But that only happens because of paradox, like I mentioned before - a strong limitation to the mage, even harsher than the long casting times and ease of disruption in AD&D.
Without Paradox, a Mage would cream a werewolf, even in a fistfight (Entropy -> you can't hit me, Forces-> "you are already dead").
I may have gotten sphere names wrong. I only played Mage in portuguese.

Thaumaturgy and Necromancy are arguably the strongest vampire disciplines with all of their options, but they don't replace Dominate, Obfuscate or Celerity. Magic can be stronger than not-magic, while not completely replacing not-magic.
Among vampires, this becomes a problem kind of like D&D. In OWoD, you could make pacts and rituals for very big powers - including disciplines. A 'min-maxed' Tremere or Ravnos as a lot more powerful than anything else. Of course, vampire being vampire, you would be booted out of any serious game if you tried to min-max at all, so it wasn't that much of an issue...



*Points to everything in the 4e books about playing a character, interacting with the world your character inhabits, and those sorts of Roleplaying game bits*
Oh, please. What he meant is that 4e divorces fluff from crunch completely and you understood it.

Reverent-One
2011-02-01, 05:54 PM
Oh, please. What he meant is that 4e divorces fluff from crunch completely and you understood it.

Not only do I think that statement is also incorrect, but it's also perfectly reasonable to assume that he meant exactly what he said. It's not like it's an uncommon sentiment. Besides, even if it was a mere exaggeration, you didn't have any problem calling out someone who made an exaggerated statement in the "Hopes for D&D 5.0" thread, so what are you doing getting after me for doing that here?

true_shinken
2011-02-01, 05:59 PM
Not only do I think that statement is also incorrect, but it's also perfectly reasonable to assume that he meant exactly what he said.
It's your right to do so, I believe. Fair enough.

stainboy
2011-02-01, 06:05 PM
At what level? level 20? maybe. But most games don't run at that level. Level 8? you could easily have a non-caster baddy. Higher with just a touch of rules tweaking regarding travel and divination spells.

I'm thinking about level 7-12. There's no reason a fighter can't be the Mayor of Eviltown, but without a very powerful spellcaster subordinate he's one Will save away from being the PC wizard's pet. Roleplay-wise he may be very important, but in terms of the game mechanics that challenge the PCs, he's a non-factor.

I guess I should have phrased it "no one without access to high level spells can challenge the PCs," whether access means the BBEG casts the spells or someone else does it for him.

druid91
2011-02-01, 06:07 PM
Ahh... you're beginning to make more sense to me now...

You're still new enough to the game to not have found "the evil wizard" to be boring and repetative yet.

I remember when I first started out DMing, 30 years ago, I made the "Evil Cabal" of four individuals. A high level evil Wizard, a high level evil Illusionist (they were a separate class back then), a high level evil Cleric, and a high level evil Druid (don't ask. :smallsigh:).

I never thought to make a high level evil Fighter because, well, they looked boring. They just go stabbity stabbity, *really well*. Boring. The spellcasters had so much more fine detail, could do so much more.

And then... I never found much interest in actually *playing* my evil cabal of evil evilness. They looked exciting on paper, but they were boring in execution. They were just like everyone else's high evil baddies. I finally just dumped the concept. (Except the evil Druid, go figure).

Now I make stories and personalities, and I stat out a character to whatever class seems appropriate. Often, I don't have a BBEG at all. Or I have so many, the party can decide for themselves who their own 'BBEG' is, and go after them.

You will find yourself doing all this too, if you play long enough. You might then find yourself wanting to play a high level evil Fighter, and then you'll see the failings of the system of how worthless a high level fighter can be.

*~*~*



I've seen games where that is true! I was introduced to Ars Magica, told the setting was fantasy-medievel europe, focused on the conflict between the witch's covens of celtic England and the Christian-dominated southern europe. DM then told me to come up with a character.

My first idea: Be a bible-thumping cleric, spreading the word of god by the power of my ideas, and by the blade of my sword if they didn't listen to my ideas. DM says no, I have to make a character on the coven's side, not the christian's side. Ok, I look over the magic system, I'm not impressed and I don't want to have to master it... I'll play a fighter, ready to give life and limb to protect my coven from the advances of previously described bible-thumpers.

DM says no... I have to be a witch. That's the point of Ars Magica (or at least the point of his campaign, but I've heard confirmation elsewhere that the whole system is designed around the idea that the PC's are the witches and warlocks). The fighters and others would be the NPC followers of the PC witches, every player would be a spellcaster, and all others would be mere 'mundanes'. Unless, of course, it turns out the BBEG is from a rival coven, which most of the time was true because the 'Evil non-casting Bishop' shtick is older than the evil wizard shtick.

Meh. I can see the appeal. But for me, it's a richly detailed version of "Been there, done that". Notice that both my original character ideas did not include spellcasting? (well, I thought the bible thumper might have had spells, but apparently they don't). The point is....

...I don't want to play a spellcaster.

...I *want* to play a fighter.

...and so, I don't play Ars Magica, a game designed around the idea that spellcasters rule and fighters are just NPCs.

...Instead, I play D&D, which is designed around the idea that there are many character classes to play. Bible-thumping cleric, Low-life thief. Powerful spellcasting cleric. And yes, strong in will and strong in steel fighter. And it was designed with all four of these classes as being viable, balanced options.

But the problem is, all four are not "viable, balanced options". Only the spellcasters are viable. The others suck. And why is that? Because the designers made spellcasting too versatile, too flexible, too effective, and too easy to use. In essense...

...they made magic overpowered.

If this were Ars Magica, then no, they made magic just right. But this is D&D, where I am supposed to be allowed to play the fighter, and be equally useful in the party, equally effective against enemies, equally capable against spellcasters. But they karked up. They made magic overpowered.

And that's our argument. Does that make more sense to you now?

*~*~*

Oh, and druid91, let me be clear: I am not telling you to "go play Ars Magica, and leave our poor D&D alone". You are perfectly fine to continue to play D&D that way, you're not "doing it wrong". In fact, it looks like you have mastered the magic system and are taking full advantage of it. Plus, if your players are happy, that's the definition of doing it right.

Just try to understand that we are wanting something completely different in our games, and are looking for modifications to make the gamerules better reflect what we are looking to play, and yes, that game will also be D&D. It was balanced for four character archtypes once before, and it can be again if we can nerf the wizard back into line (or puff up the fighter to match). We won't be playing it wrong, and neither will you. We'll just be playing it very differently from each other.

I understand that. I'm just annoyed that people are near always acting like the very idea that swnging a swrd is less powerful than magic is ciminal.

true_shinken
2011-02-01, 06:07 PM
I'm thinking about level 7-12. There's no reason a fighter can't be the Mayor of Eviltown, but without a very powerful spellcaster subordinate he's one Will save away from being the PC wizard's pet. Roleplay-wise he may be very important, but in terms of the game mechanics that challenge the PCs, he's a non-factor.

I guess I should have phrased it "no one without access to high level spells can challenge the PCs," whether access means the BBEG casts the spells or someone else does it for him.

Fighter-Mayor doesn't need high level casters to get high level spells. He needs money to get items. Perfectly doable, even at high levels.

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 06:11 PM
Without Paradox, a Mage would cream a werewolf, even in a fistfight (Entropy -> you can't hit me, Forces-> "you are already dead").

That is not, in general, my experience. It does depend somewhat on exactly what the DM allows out of the open ended magic system, and what he lets spirits do. It is kind of like predicting who will win a fight between 2 superheroes by looking at the front cover of the comic and reading the title.

[/QUOTE]Among vampires, this becomes a problem kind of like D&D. In OWoD, you could make pacts and rituals for very big powers - including disciplines. A 'min-maxed' Tremere or Ravnos as a lot more powerful than anything else.[/QUOTE]

Pacts are kind of different. Even in D&D, a fighter could make a pact with a deity or extraplanar being to get magic powers or items if the DM let him. Wierd splats seem to always help the casters. In general, at the same exp level, Tom Tremere (who spent all his exp on Thaumaturgy) is not going to be able to replace Bob Brujah as the combat guy or Vinnie Ventrue in mind control or influence (Yes, I know that Tremere get Dominate also. The smart ones actually invest in it). A Min-maxed tremere may be the most powerful character in his party. But he probably can't do all their jobs on any given day better than they can. A wizard or druid can totally do that.

true_shinken
2011-02-01, 06:15 PM
That is not, in general, my experience. It does depend somewhat on exactly what the DM allows out of the open ended magic system, and what he lets spirits do. It is kind of like predicting who will win a fight between 2 superheroes by looking at the front cover of the comic and reading the title.
Well, Forces for 'martial arts master' is even mentioned in the examples. It's what the main character of the introduction does as well, IIRC.


A Min-maxed tremere may be the most powerful character in his party. But he probably can't do all their jobs on any given day better than they can. A wizard or druid can totally do that.

Point conceeded. :smallcool:

stainboy
2011-02-01, 07:18 PM
Fighter-Mayor doesn't need high level casters to get high level spells. He needs money to get items. Perfectly doable, even at high levels.

Problem is they need to be consumable, so the PCs don't gain five billion gold worth of level-inappropriate loot when they kill the guy. Which basically means spell-trigger items, so we're back to needing a spellcaster. (For an expanded definition of "spellcaster" which includes UMD specialists.)

Gnaeus
2011-02-01, 07:31 PM
Well, Forces for 'martial arts master' is even mentioned in the examples. It's what the main character of the introduction does as well, IIRC.


Can an adept of forces use his magic to put extra kinetic energy behind his punches to make them pack a wallop, absolutely! Will that make him able to out-melee an Athro Garou with 9 strength, a klaive, some combat related gifts and the ability to burn rage for extra attacks? No. Of course, depending on his spheres, the mage has vastly more utility, and can probably teleport away from the furry and scry and die him. But spheres are more expensive than gifts (for good reasons) and at an equal exp total the werewolf is likely to be the favorite in melee.

And a "martial arts master", like an akashic, probably has good fighting skills and abilities anyway, maybe a magic melee weapon, and a bunch of rotes focused on combat. It would probably be best compared with a gish or a duskblade. A typical Hermetic or Verbena wouldn't fare nearly as well toe-to-toe. Compare with D&D wizard/druid who needs only 1 round to go from being a Str 6 wimpy caster to a Str 25 spellcasting monster.

true_shinken
2011-02-01, 07:41 PM
Problem is they need to be consumable, so the PCs don't gain five billion gold worth of level-inappropriate loot when they kill the guy. Which basically means spell-trigger items, so we're back to needing a spellcaster. (For an expanded definition of "spellcaster" which includes UMD specialists.)

You could use contingent spells.

stainboy
2011-02-01, 08:02 PM
Akashic Mage vs Ahroun Werewolf:

The akashic force adept loses initiative automatically and takes five unresisted attacks for like 50 dice of damage, because the werewolf has Spirit of the Fray and rage costs 1 freebie point. Or the akashic makes up some reason on the spot why he wins, and the rules don't have anything to say about it one way or another because mage powers are completely open-ended.

If you're talking about Werewolf or Mage as playable games at all, you're talking about a game played with a gentleman's agreement about balance or some serious house rules. Comparing it to D&D-by-RAW is unfair.

umbrapolaris
2011-02-01, 10:55 PM
I agree with druid91. If magic is as strong as swinging a sword really hard, it doesn't feel like magic to me.
Magic should be stronger than not-magic. That much is pretty obvious for me.
What you could have is more limitations on the use of magic, like AD&D had.

i agree, now i just remember when i read the 3E d&d player handbook; and saw that caster can wear armor and had a skill/feats to resist being distracted when casting i said :

SCAAAAANDALOUS the wizard is OVERPOWERED !!!

but my fellows wanted to change to 3E so i followed. now im so used to it than it feel not so overpowered , maybe coz my companion fighter (now warbaled and soon gestalt warblade/warmage) never complained about it and always enjoyed since we played at 3E.

navar100
2011-02-02, 06:14 PM
In 3E, the designers overvalued making an attack and underpowered casting a spell. This was obvious in 3.0 where two-weapon fighting required two feats yet Haste allowed you to cast a second spell in a round. You needed two feats and be 4th level just to get +2 damage with one weapon while at 1st level you can get +2 DC to a school of spells.

3.5 addressed some of these issues but not all. It still overvalues making an attack. Warriors are The Suck if they move more than 5ft. At best that is when they should Trip or Bull Rush or Disarm since they only get one attack anyway but they aren't easier to do than just attack for damage. Wearing heavy armor is also The Suck because you lose movement speed.

That is the issue. It's not so much magic is overpowered but rather non-magic combat is underpowered. Near the end of 3E publishing they were finally starting to get it. Duskblade was made to show a proper gish base class that didn't Win D&D that puts Hexblade to shame. Better feats were created that allowed cool stuff to do in Player's handbook II. Finally Tome of Battle came into being allowing warriors to Not Suck while moving more than 5ft in a round that's not a charge, even improving charging.

3E was finally raising the power of warriors to equal or at least be good enough in comparison to the spellcasters.

Yahzi
2011-02-02, 06:52 PM
The fighters and others would be the NPC followers of the PC witches, every player would be a spellcaster, and all others would be mere 'mundanes'.
You're describing 1E (as evolved from Chainmail)! The "fighting-men" are the mooks that make up the figures in your group army units. The individual minis are the interesting people to play... and they're all casters (or heroes with magic prowess).

D&D just never got rid of the idea that fighters are supposed to be NPC servants of the Important People. By 3.0 they forgot to tell players.

nyarlathotep
2011-02-02, 07:44 PM
You're describing 1E (as evolved from Chainmail)! The "fighting-men" are the mooks that make up the figures in your group army units. The individual minis are the interesting people to play... and they're all casters (or heroes with magic prowess).

D&D just never got rid of the idea that fighters are supposed to be NPC servants of the Important People. By 3.0 they forgot to tell players.

Indeed though back then and through 2nd edition paladins, barbarians, and rangers were individual minis as well.

Jarawara
2011-02-02, 10:37 PM
You're describing 1E (as evolved from Chainmail)! The "fighting-men" are the mooks that make up the figures in your group army units. The individual minis are the interesting people to play... and they're all casters (or heroes with magic prowess).

D&D just never got rid of the idea that fighters are supposed to be NPC servants of the Important People. By 3.0 they forgot to tell players.

1E what? As in, 1E AD&D? Because AD&D, the "1E" that begat "2E" and "3E" and so on, was in fact about the... fourth? edition of D&D.

If you're thinking original D&D, (OD&D), that did evolve from Chainmail. And you're right, there were the heroes and the mundanes. Heroes could be Wizards, Fighters, Clerics... I don't know if Thieves were considered part of the four basic classes.

But it was commonplace for a Fighter PC to have lots of followers, or Clerics to have lots of Adepts following them around. Not so much for Wizards, though it was kind of an archtype thing. The Wizard was supposed to be the mysterious loner. Ars Magica created a new archtype for the Wizard, a coven leader PC with non-magicusing followers.

But in OD&D, yes, when you look at the minis, the game really focused on the heroes -- Fighters, Clerics, and also Wizards. Just like in 3E, but more balanced.

Skjaldbakka
2011-02-03, 12:24 AM
I think the underlying reason for magic being overpowered is because magic is expected to be able to do impossible things. This is why it is called magic. Whereas anyone who doesn't use magic is expected to follow this different set of rules called 'realism'.

So unless you throw one of those out the window, you have spellcasters as overpowered. I don't see that as a bad thing, if you just made spellcasting harder to do... like in older versions of D&D, when the spellcasters actually leveled up more slowly.

The other option in system design would be to make everything effects based, and it being 'magic' is just a descriptive term (take BESM, or 4E, for example).

That or just not care about balance at all, and have everyone play spellcasters (or be voluntarily under-powered).

umbrapolaris
2011-02-03, 01:15 AM
I think the underlying reason for magic being overpowered is because magic is expected to be able to do impossible things. This is why it is called magic. Whereas anyone who doesn't use magic is expected to follow this different set of rules called 'realism'.

So unless you throw one of those out the window, you have spellcasters as overpowered. I don't see that as a bad thing, if you just made spellcasting harder to do... like in older versions of D&D, when the spellcasters actually leveled up more slowly.

That or just not care about balance at all, and have everyone play spellcasters (or be voluntarily under-powered).

+1, all of us know that magic is more powerful and verstaile than a +5 sword. if a sword was as powerful than magic and i fighter as versatile than a wizard, why i should choose to be a wizard ?, better be a fighter with better bab, saves and hp.

true_shinken
2011-02-03, 12:09 PM
+1, all of us know that magic is more powerful and verstaile than a +5 sword. if a sword was as powerful than magic and i fighter as versatile than a wizard, why i should choose to be a wizard ?, better be a fighter with better bab, saves and hp.

Exactly. This is why I just can't DM 4e.

Eorran
2011-02-03, 01:36 PM
The problem with magic automatically being better than mundane is this is a level-based system. The inherent assumption of such a system is that equal level means roughly equal ability to contribute. For instance, the CR system (problematic as it is) specifically references the characters' level, with no mention of class.

2e actually had different XP progression rates for different classes. This could make sense in 3.X - Fighter level 20 equals Wizard level, say, 10-12.

dsmiles
2011-02-03, 02:17 PM
The problem with magic automatically being better than mundane is this is a level-based system. The inherent assumption of such a system is that equal level means roughly equal ability to contribute. For instance, the CR system (problematic as it is) specifically references the characters' level, with no mention of class.If that's what the issue boils down to, the UA had a fix for that with the fast, medium, and slow XP progression tables. Also, monsters worth a set amount of XP rather than CR-based XP.

stainboy
2011-02-03, 02:49 PM
It's not really a secret how strong and versatile wizards are, but people still play non-spellcasters. Some people just like the simplicity; others like being a "normal" person in a world of full of magic and still becoming a hero. It's OK for magic to be more powerful or versatile than nonmagical heroic skill. The problem is the degree.

@Eorran, I like the idea of slowing down spell access, but it'd be better to change the spells/level chart. 3e mudflated lots of monster levels and sped up level gain but kept spell access constant. If wizard gained a new level of spells once per 3 levels or something (2nd at 3rd level, 3rd at 6th, 4th at 9th....) they'd be closer to the saner rate of advancement in 2e.

Tyndmyr
2011-02-03, 02:50 PM
Here's a fact. People have lives away from the gaming table. There are people who like to GM, but don't have time to write adventures and customise every aspect of the gaming experience. This isn't a crime and it's why there are things like pre written modules, as well as people who share their adventure ideas over the internet.

Sometimes everyone wants to play, but nobody really wants to GM. It happens.

These things do happen. However, when they happen, you need to recognize the limitations and prepare accordingly. Prewritten modules are a great boon, yes. I've used them often myself to reduce prep time. However, I find that often these oh-so-busy people instead choose to make their own campaign world and/or adventure, and just muddle through with a lack of preparation instead. Yes, it may be the world's greatest idea for a campaign, but if you don't take the time to prep it, it'll never survive the transition to actual play without loosing a great deal. If you lack the time to do it, you need to adjust to fix this.

Another possible fix is to play a different game than D&D. Some games require extremely little in prep-work. There's nothing WRONG with games with lots of stats and prep-work, like D&D tends toward, but if you can't do it, you can't do it. Pick the game system and campaign to match your needs, instead of trying to force them into what you want them to be.

The same goes for low-magic. D&D is not low magic. Any effort to make it low magic is essentially a system-wide rewrite. Fun if you want such a task. If the goal is merely a campaign without much magic...use a system that does that.


I mention it, as I do see it all the time. No with my home group, but with a lot of other groups I've seen. Plus it's very common in Cold Groups(where random people sit down with a random DM to play the game).


A Typical Example: DM: ''As you enter the cave a blue wave of magical light flows over you....''
Player 1: "What? I roll my skill check! I got a 40! I demand to know what kind of magic that was and what effect it had!"
DM: "The magic light enhances the connection of illusions with reality and in effect negates the spell true seeing...."
Player 1 "What? WHAT? You can't do that! There is not spell or effect in the rules that can do that! True seeing is sacrosanct! We demand that you only use the official core rules of D&D or we will not play!"
DM: .........


This often is seen with new DMs or one that have less experience. Or simply DMs who won't stand up to the players.

This isn't about DMs not standing up to players. It's about removing abilities via fiat. There is a huge difference. For instance, a DM might be very harsh on players who are cheating, but not utilize fiat.

Personally, if the game is advertised as "D&D", I attend under the assumption that we will, in fact, be playing D&D, not "The RPG world of Bob", in which things follow no apparent rules except what the DM wants to happen. Regardless of what said world entails, I'm going to be dissapointed. It's like biting into what you thought was a chicken sandwich and getting fish. Even if you like both...you ordered chicken cause you wanted that, and now you're annoyed.


Most classic adventures are full of such exotic magic. As soon as you enter the adventure location, something like a curse effects all the characters. It is something that 3X has lost. Most modern adventures take place in just bland locations.

Many things evolved. I would not call all 3.5 locations bland merely because they follow the rules. 3.5 rules expanded greatly to cover a great deal of territory. You can have extremely unusual locations while still using the rules, such as flying castles or interplanar mazes.

The rules came to make the ideas make sense to everyone involved...the ideas merely continued.

stainboy
2011-02-03, 03:16 PM
This isn't about DMs not standing up to players. It's about removing abilities via fiat. There is a huge difference. For instance, a DM might be very harsh on players who are cheating, but not utilize fiat.


I gotta go with Bloodtide on this one. The Monster Manual and the spell list in the PHB aren't meant to be exhaustive. A player never has a valid argument when he assumes he has complete knowledge of every possible spell or effect in the campaign world.

Anyway, official TSR material had all sorts of settings where game-breaking spells just didn't work. Can't teleport in the Tomb of Horrors. Can't scry in the Underdark. Can't teleport in Sigil, can't safely Plane Shift anywhere but the Outlands (at least in 2e when clerics got de-leveled on outer planes other than their deities'). You have to wonder why someone didn't notice that half the published settings blocked teleportation and think "maybe PCs just didn't have this."

Aspenor
2011-02-03, 03:23 PM
DM fiat isn't necessarily a bad thing, assuming it is used judiciously. In your example, Tyndmyr, the DM has every right to say that some mysterious effect foils True Seeing. The players have a right, on the other hand, to get upset if this mysterious effect suddenly starts showing up in every place the players go (or even just most of them).

This is especially true for overpowered abilities such as True Seeing, Mind Blank, Freedom of Movement, etc. Blanket immunities such as these are not beneficial to gameplay, nor are they good for campaign immersion. Yes, it's possible to run a game strictly by the rules. This doesn't mean it's bad if you decide to make up some of your own.

So long as a DM uses fiat judiciously and without prejudice, there is no reason for a player to get upset.

stainboy
2011-02-03, 03:43 PM
This is especially true for overpowered abilities such as True Seeing, Mind Blank, Freedom of Movement, etc. Blanket immunities such as these are not beneficial to gameplay, nor are they good for campaign immersion. Yes, it's possible to run a game strictly by the rules. This doesn't mean it's bad if you decide to make up some of your own.


And ironically, Mind Blank has to exist because it lets you make a humanoid BBEG without worrying about dozens of mind-affecting SoL spells. You still have to worry about death effects and a few random ones like Stinking Cloud and Ectoplasmic Cocoon, but Mind Blank at least brings the list of ways to one-round your BBEG down to a manageable number.

Boci
2011-02-03, 04:14 PM
This isn't about DMs not standing up to players. It's about removing abilities via fiat. There is a huge difference. For instance, a DM might be very harsh on players who are cheating, but not utilize fiat.

If it comes out of the blue (no pun intended), then sure. But if it has been hinted at before (regional folklore of illusions so powerful they almost became real, a lesser villain boasting that he was going to learn illusions that not even the eyes of the true seer would be able to pierce, an NPC diviner saying how he could not tell what was there and what wasn't) then the players whining is suddenly far less justifiable.


+1, all of us know that magic is more powerful and verstaile than a +5 sword. if a sword was as powerful than magic and i fighter as versatile than a wizard, why i should choose to be a wizard ?, better be a fighter with better bab, saves and hp.

Tier 3 classes provide a good example of melee and casters being balanced towards each other.

Jayabalard
2011-02-03, 04:16 PM
The same goes for low-magic. D&D is not low magic. Any effort to make it low magic is essentially a system-wide rewrite. Fun if you want such a task. If the goal is merely a campaign without much magic...use a system that does that.D&D doesn't really handles it that badly; pretty much it just requires on

A limitation the available classes; obviously highly magic based classes are generally removed.
Filtering on the opponents in encounters; they'll need to be chosen mostly from the more mundane creatures (advanced in some way) for thematic reasons as well as balance reasons.
Limiting the availability of magic items.

Sure, there are systems that do it better, but if your players are more comfortable with D&D, it's not that big of a deal.


This isn't about DMs not standing up to players. It's about removing abilities via fiat. There is a huge difference. For instance, a DM might be very harsh on players who are cheating, but not utilize fiat.

Personally, if the game is advertised as "D&D", I attend under the assumption that we will, in fact, be playing D&D, not "The RPG world of Bob", in which things follow no apparent rules except what the DM wants to happen. Regardless of what said world entails, I'm going to be dissapointed. It's like biting into what you thought was a chicken sandwich and getting fish. Even if you like both...you ordered chicken cause you wanted that, and now you're annoyed.Adding custom spells, monsters, and effects is not playing "the rpg world of Bob" ... it's still playing D&D, even if you heavily houserule the game.

Boci
2011-02-03, 04:21 PM
D&D doesn't really handles it that badly; pretty much it just requires on
[LIST=1]
A limitation the available classes; obviously highly magic based classes are generally removed.
Filtering on the opponents in encounters; they'll need to be chosen mostly from the more mundane creatures (advanced in some way) for thematic reasons as well as balance reasons.
Limiting the availability of magic items.

I agree with this, and as for the second step, you already had to do that since different levels of optimizing/mechanical choices from party to party altered monsters they could and could not handle.

Lamech
2011-02-03, 04:22 PM
And ironically, Mind Blank has to exist because it lets you make a humanoid BBEG without worrying about dozens of mind-affecting SoL spells. You still have to worry about death effects and a few random ones like Stinking Cloud and Ectoplasmic Cocoon, but Mind Blank at least brings the list of ways to one-round your BBEG down to a manageable number.

Also mind blank makes divinations cry. Including true seeing, since its a divination. So true seeing actually isn't all that sacred. So the anti-true seeing thing is much nicer than simply mind blanking the BBEG and letting the party find out when the wizard dies...

Tyndmyr
2011-02-03, 04:27 PM
Well, there is one reason I can think of, which I haven't seen mentioned here:

Most players don't start their chracters at level 1.

The survival rate of low-level characters is bad. For a sorcerer or wizard it is outright awful. Being able to jump those first few levels and assume that your wizard/sorcerer is one of the lucky few who made it is much more of a boon than it is for the other classes.

Honestly, most campaigns I've played start at level 1. I almost always play a caster. Not all campaigns start at level 1, true...but that's the standard. More start there than at any other level. However, a balance of "no power now, all the power later" is...tricky at best.

Boci, that gets into my point w Jaya. It's all about managing expectations. If your players expect such things in advance, there is little worry, and generally little conflict. If it's sprung on them as some have suggested...to use a prior example, suddenly telling them that their Gate fails if they attempt to summon something inconvenient, well then you have no prior reason why the player would know this. It's not story appropriate, it's just fiat.

You can have rules outside of the ones printed in the books, sure...but abandoning rules altogether is detrimental to the game.

Jaya, magic affects everything in D&D. WBL is based around magic items. Magic items are based around spells. It is possible to remove most magic from D&D, but doing so is not trivial or quick.

There is a point where "heavy houseruling" makes a game into something different. Is pathfinder a different game from 3.5? I would say yes. They are very heavily related, but they are sufficiently different that I would be careful to list the correct system when advertising the game. A system that is extensively changed, such as to make it low magic, is pretty significant. You basically are playing a different, if somewhat related game. This is fine if everyone knows what they're getting into in advance, but if not, well...disappointment is perfectly understandable.

The Big Dice
2011-02-03, 04:43 PM
Jaya, magic affects everything in D&D. WBL is based around magic items. Magic items are based around spells. It is possible to remove most magic from D&D, but doing so is not trivial or quick.
WBL isn't set in stone. Rather, it's a guideline to try and determine what sort of bugdget NPCs are equipped from. And by extrapolations, what sort of budget PCs should be equipped on.

And taking magic out of D&D is very easy. Ban any class that uses spells and spell like abilities. You may as well take out Supernatural abilities too while you're at it. Then go through the Monster Manual. If a creature has access to spells, spell like abilities or Supernatural abilities, it's cut.

When you don't need magic, wealth becomes much less relevant. Once you've got Masterwork gear, what else do you really need if magic isn't a factor?

Some things can make the cut by using alternate class features. But your biggest problem really is healing.

Boci
2011-02-03, 04:46 PM
WBL isn't set in stone. Rather, it's a guideline to try and determine what sort of bugdget NPCs are equipped from. And by extrapolations, what sort of budget PCs should be equipped on.

Your right that its a guideline, but the second part is wrong. There are seperate charts for NPCs and PCs, or maybe that what you meant and I just misunderstood.

Eric Tolle
2011-02-03, 06:41 PM
"Even one who masters the sword must bow before the one who masters magic, And that's all a sword-saint really is... Someone who has mastered the sword."

I prefer this quote:

“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will cramp his style.” - Vlad Taltos

That's why I prefer systems where the mage does indeed have to fear the fighter or rogue getting a bead on him. Call it the "glass cannon" theory of magic.


Thaumaturgy and Necromancy are arguably the strongest vampire disciplines with all of their options, but they don't replace Dominate, Obfuscate or Celerity. Magic can be stronger than not-magic,
while not completely replacing not-magic.

YMMV of course; in the last V:tM game I was in "Has a cell phone" was the most scary discipline of all.


I think the underlying reason for magic being overpowered is because magic is expected to be able to do impossible things. This is why it is called magic. Whereas anyone who doesn't use magic is expected to follow this different set of rules called 'realism'.

I don't see being able to do impossible things as necessarily being overpowered. We have numerous examples from fiction and rpgs where being able to do magic is special, but wizards still have to worry about quite mundane hazards. In the True20 or Reign system for example, mages have a wide array of abilities, but a good solid hit from a sword or arrow will ruin their entire day. In Runequest 3.0 sorcerers have impossible abilities, but if anything, they are underpowered compared to characters who emphasize other skills.


The other option in system design would be to make everything effects based, and it being 'magic' is just a descriptive term (take BESM, or 4E, for example).

FWIW, GURPS and True20 magic can't really be called effects based, but magic users are still fairly well balanced with the other character types. Alternatively, in Jaws of the Seven Serpents, sorcerers can do extremely powerful, reality warping stuff...if they have enough time, and doing so is pretty hazardous to the sorcerer.


That or just not care about balance at all, and have everyone play spellcasters (or be voluntarily under-powered).

On that note, there's Runequest 2nd. edition and Heroquest, where nearly all characters have some small practical magics, and what we would consider mages are people who specialize in binding spirits and religious magic. Most characters eventually go that route, but one doesn't have to.

So basically, there's a lot of alternatives to either having overpowered mages or using an effects-based system.

jseah
2011-02-03, 07:27 PM
Could someone explain what an "effects-based system" is to me? I've never heard of the term before.

Boci
2011-02-03, 07:31 PM
Could someone explain what an "effects-based system" is to me? I've never heard of the term before.

I believe it is like 4th edition D&D, where the source of your power is more of a label than anything else. There are patterns to certain power sources, but mostly people pick them based of a specific class.

jseah
2011-02-03, 08:07 PM
Ah, so a bit more like a top-down version of a magic system.

Instead of going, "This is magic, here's what it can do", it's saying "this is what we want to do, explanations come later"?

Boci
2011-02-03, 08:26 PM
Ah, so a bit more like a top-down version of a magic system.

Instead of going, "This is magic, here's what it can do", it's saying "this is what we want to do, explanations come later"?

To a certain extend yes. One thing I liked about 4E was that it provided less flavour, which reduced the chance of groups becomeing straightjacketed by what WotC thought the ability should be like.
To use another example, in 4E, if someone doesn't know what they want to play, they will generally ask for recommendations based on what role they want to play, rather than the power source. This did happen in 3.5 as well, but I also saw players saying "I want to play an arcane class, which should I choose?" which I have never seen happen in 4E.

MeeposFire
2011-02-03, 08:49 PM
Usually I ask my players, if they do not know what they want to play, what role and what power source. It is usually like this

"Do you want to use magic do you want to use your mind, god given, eldritch secrets, or power given from nature itself?"

Depending on what role and where they want to get their power I can find the exact class they want to play. I do make some exceptions as I do not recommend a new player play a runepriest.

The Big Dice
2011-02-03, 09:37 PM
Your right that its a guideline, but the second part is wrong. There are seperate charts for NPCs and PCs, or maybe that what you meant and I just misunderstood.

If you look in the PHB 2 and the DMG, it has standard gear for each level, sorted by class. With extra money for PCs. Basically, a PC should have the same gear as an NPC, with the extra consumables and other stuff that comes from their proportionally larger budget.

The problem is, people take what you could have to mean this is what you must have. And then completely ignore the lists of equipment given in favour of blowing hteir budget on things they think they should be able to pick up at the local Magic Mart.

Which is a completely ludicrous idea. Think about this objectively. Crafting magic items is a source of both power and money. So it's probably going to be done by a monopoly set up by wizards powerful enough to enforce it but greedy enough to be willing to sell. A guild of mages, if you will. POwerful enough to guarantee a certain level of quility and to be able to protect members from whatever political and business problems they might face.

And every single thing is going to be made to order, not mass produced and left on a shell in the hope that some adventurer comes along to buy it.

And all this means that the GM has a fairly simple method to control the acquisition of magic and magic items. One that doesn't break verisimilitude.

The Glyphstone
2011-02-03, 10:00 PM
If you look in the PHB 2 and the DMG, it has standard gear for each level, sorted by class. With extra money for PCs. Basically, a PC should have the same gear as an NPC, with the extra consumables and other stuff that comes from their proportionally larger budget.


The math doesn't support this though, for as much as the math supports anything. NPCs acquire magical gear several levels later than an equivalent PC would, specifically because of their smaller budget. If you gave a PC NPC gear with extra money to spend on consumables, they'd be underequipped to handle an otherwise appropriate-CR encounter.

kyoryu
2011-02-03, 10:41 PM
You obviously have not played in many sandbox games. A sandbox game is all about exploring a world that your DM has created.

Yes, it is.

But assuming that the world does not respond to your actions, and waits passively for you to do things is rather silly.

Swordguy
2011-02-03, 10:57 PM
Could someone explain what an "effects-based system" is to me? I've never heard of the term before.

An "effects-based system" is best exemplefied in the game Alpha Omega, and first really shown in Mage: the Asenscion.

Basically, you pick the effect you want to generate, and then via a system of charts, you generate the difficulty of the spellcasting roll and the cost to your caster.

For example (using a totally fictional system), say you wanted to generate a spell that caused an area of air to spontaneously combust, dealing 10d6 fire damage to everyone within it, and you need to do it to a group of enemies 100 feet away. You have a "fire-based spellcasting" base TN of 5. You see that 10d6 damage will be a +10 modifier to your TN, a spell that targets something 75-150 feet away adds +5, and the blast radius needed to catch all of the bad guys in the area of effect (say, 15 foot radius) adds another +7. In addition, because you're fighting in a downpour, the GM rules (read: fiats) that the air is hard to make combust, and thus the spell effect is more difficult, and adds an additional ad hoc "environmentally-based" +2 to your TN. Finally, spellcasting takes time. A spell that does 10d6 damage would normally take 10 initiative counts to cast, but you know that if you're standing out there casting a spell for 10 counts, you're likely to get hit and lose the spell. Therefore, you decide to shorten the casting tie to 4 counts, adding a +1 to the TN for each count you shorten it by (+6)

The final TN is 5+10+5+7+2+6=35. You roll your dice and add your modifier, getting a grand total of 40. In four initiative counts, the spell will go off. Luckily, nothing hits you in that time, and so you complete the spell. All but one of the enemies are still in the intended blast radius, and take damage (one went before you could complete the spell and cleared the area). Now, based on the final TN of the spell (35) you take some fatigue damage, but because you rolled a number higher than what was needed to cast the spell, you'll reduce some of the fatigue. You mark down your fatigue damage and note that the spell took a lot out of you - with it being that hard to cast, you can only throw a few more of those before you'll have to rest.


THAT'S how effects-based systems work. Choose an effect, figure out what goes into it, generate a TN, roll against it, pay the cost that spells require.

Honestly, it's how I insist magic work in pretty much every system, ever, anymore. No more exhaustive "spell lists" or what-have-you. Just the player and his creativity to create spells. And a cost to pay for Ultimate Cosmic Power. NO magic should ever be without cost.

Boci
2011-02-03, 11:07 PM
Honestly, it's how I insist magic work in pretty much every system, ever, anymore. No more exhaustive "spell lists" or what-have-you. Just the player and his creativity to create spells. And a cost to pay for Ultimate Cosmic Power. NO magic should ever be without cost.

Isn't that really going to slow down the game if you're not casting. How long would it take for you to use that system to come up with the equivilant to:

Haste
Slow
Summon Monster
Magic Missile
Mirror Image

ect. Could you do that without significantly slowing down combat?

Plus what you just described fits the sorceror to a T, but not really a wizard. (Obviously I am speaking in 3.5 terms, but I am sure the concept carries to other systems.)

olentu
2011-02-03, 11:28 PM
Isn't that really going to slow down the game if you're not casting. How long would it take for you to use that system to come up with the equivilant to:

Haste
Slow
Summon Monster
Magic Missile
Mirror Image

ect. Could you do that without significantly slowing down combat?

Plus what you just described fits the sorceror to a T, but not really a wizard. (Obviously I am speaking in 3.5 terms, but I am sure the concept carries to other systems.)

Eh I could easily see that as wizards if all of that calculation is done in character.

Swordguy
2011-02-04, 12:01 AM
Isn't that really going to slow down the game if you're not casting. How long would it take for you to use that system to come up with the equivilant to:

Haste
Slow
Summon Monster
Magic Missile
Mirror Image

ect. Could you do that without significantly slowing down combat?

Plus what you just described fits the sorceror to a T, but not really a wizard. (Obviously I am speaking in 3.5 terms, but I am sure the concept carries to other systems.)

As long as you're discussing an equal amount of time devoted to system mastery between a "normal" caster and one of these, it doesn't slow the game down much, if at all. That is, it's going to take a while and be clunky when you first start at it - just like a caster flipping through their entire bloody spell list to find a good spell for a given situation. As you get more used to it, it gets faster.

Of the spells you described, the only one I don't think that is generally covered is the Summon Monster one. Haste would be giving yourself extra actions, which in Alpha Omega is a Major Personal Effect (so a very large modifier to your casting roll per each action), while Mirror Image would be a Minor Personal Effect, but the more images you create, the higher the modifier gets. Be aware that with this magic, you will not be able to duplicate some D&D spells because, frankly, they break the game and shouldn't be there in the first place (Genesis a demi-plane where time moves faster so you can rest and remem spells instantly). I do not consider this to be a bad thing. Powergamers may think differently.

More importantly, in all the effect-based systems I've tried, NONE of them allow you to cast for an infinite amount of time. ALL of them have some sort of "cost" associated with casting (fatigue at least, and usually backlashes if you blow your roll by a large enough margin). Again, Ultimate Cosmic Power isn't free; you CHOOSE to cast spells high enough to give yourself the possibility of a backlash. You can always choose to cast a spell with a TN low enough that you "can't possibly fail" (ie, below your static modifier). If you choose to cast bigger spells, you've nobody to blame but yourself when or if it blows up in your face.

That's how magic is supposed to work. Even Merlin had to sleep in exchange for casting spells - why should PCs be exempt?

The whole point of the thread is about "why magic is overpowered". Well, it's because all the weaknesses of it got removed in exchange for more "cool" effects and ways to guarantee "moar power!" for players. It is impossible to bring non-magic up to magic's level and still maintain even the pretense of verisimillitude. Therefore, to bring magic back under control, affixing a price or cost to it of some sort becomes necessary.

Boci
2011-02-04, 12:13 AM
Of the spells you described, the only one I don't think that is generally covered is the Summon Monster one. Haste would be giving yourself extra actions, which in Alpha Omega is a Major Personal Effect (so a very large modifier to your casting roll per each action), while Mirror Image would be a Minor Personal Effect, but the more images you create, the higher the modifier gets.

No summoning makes sense, since there are so many variables. What about battle field control like stone wall, web, tenctecles? Scrying? Detect thought? Sorry about all these questions, I'm trying trying to establish the limits, if any, of such a system.
Edit: Also, shapeshifting, dispel magic, animating dead, reflecting magic back at an enemy caster. Any of those problematic?


Be aware that with this magic, you will not be able to duplicate some D&D spells because, frankly, they break the game and shouldn't be there in the first place (Genesis a demi-plane where time moves faster so you can rest and remem spells instantly). I do not consider this to be a bad thing. Powergamers may think differently.

I doubt that trick was used that often anyway outside the forumes.


The whole point of the thread is about "why magic is overpowered". Well, it's because all the weaknesses of it got removed in exchange for more "cool" effects and ways to guarantee "moar power!" for players. It is impossible to bring non-magic up to magic's level and still maintain even the pretense of verisimillitude. Therefore, to bring magic back under control, affixing a price or cost to it of some sort becomes necessary.

True, although towards the end 3.5 did actually achieve that with the advanced casters. They maintained the concept of magic in D&D 3.5: cheap and risk free, yet were tier 3 classes.

Swordguy
2011-02-04, 12:35 AM
No summoning makes sense, since there are so many variables. What about battle field control like stone wall, web, tenctecles? Scrying? Detect thought? Sorry about all these questions, I'm trying trying to establish the limits, if any, of such a system.
Edit: Also, shapeshifting, dispel magic, animating dead, reflecting magic back at an enemy caster. Any of those problematic?


Most of those are possible - the bigger and thicker the stone wall, for example, the higher the modifiers. The nastier the undead, or the longer you want them to remain animated, the higher the modifiers. Reflecting magic back on a caster would mean you'd have to cast a long-duration spell that would have a chance of doing that, adding modifiers for duration and level of effect - the bigger the spell you can reflect, the higher the modifier.

That's the general rule, actually...the more powerful the effect, the harder it becomes to cast. Most of these systems, in my experience, are very up-front about saying that they can't allow for every possibility within the charts, and thus assist GMs fairly heavily in teaching them appropriate ad hoc rulings. Shapeshifting, for example, would be a Major Personal Effect (which is a known quantity), and then there'd be an additional modifier for more powerful or significantly-different-sized beings (one things shapeshifitng specifically does NOT allow is the ability to take on anything besides the shape a directly body-related abilities of a creature...flying is OK if you've got wings, inherently magical levitation is not).

It's a system that absolutely demands the GM ad hoc rulings, and that the players trust the GM to make those rulings. Since one of the major goals of 3.x is to steal power from the GM and put it in the hands of players since "GM's can't be trusted", I can see problems with switching over.

In any case, this is a system that I feel more accurately represents the spirit of what magic is supposed to be. As a note, magic can be ridiculously powerful in these systems too, but the difference is that it's never free. To create said insanely powerful magic, you'll have to skimp on one of the secondary attributes (duration, range, AOE, time to cast, etc). Sure, you can have a spell that literally automatically extinguishes all life inside a one-mile diameter...but you're going to be taking a half-hour to cast it, and the fatigue is doing to drop you straight into the "your body turns to goo" region, and the odds of your making the die roll are infintesimal compared to the odds of failing the roll with a big enough Margin of Failure to backlash yourself about the head and shoulders. Each spell becomes a compromise, both in effects and cost.

Boci
2011-02-04, 12:43 AM
Thank you Swordguy, you have rekindled my interest in learning more about the World of Darkness gaming systems.


It's a system that absolutely demands the GM ad hoc rulings, and that the players trust the GM to make those rulings. Since one of the major goals of 3.x is to steal power from the GM and put it in the hands of players since "GM's can't be trusted", I can see problems with switching over.

Think of it in reverse though: what is there was a system that said the player should come up with the TN for the spell they describe. Would you agree to GM with such a rule? After all, if players can't be trusted, what makes GMs superior?

Swordguy
2011-02-04, 01:24 AM
Think of it in reverse though: what is there was a system that said the player should come up with the TN for the spell they describe. Would you agree to GM with such a rule? After all, if players can't be trusted, what makes GMs superior?

Because the GM is a neutral party, and the player isn't. :smallamused:

And, to be clear, most of what I'm describing comes from the Alpha Omega game. I know that the Mage system is similar to this (the limiting factor is "Paradox", how badly you damage reality with your reality-defying magic), but I don't know how well it compares. I've never gotten to actually play Mage, while I had to opportunity to play through a one-shot of Alpha Omega and was totally blown away by the open-endedness of their magic system.

JamesonCourage
2011-02-04, 01:24 AM
Think of it in reverse though: what is there was a system that said the player should come up with the TN for the spell they describe. Would you agree to GM with such a rule? After all, if players can't be trusted, what makes GMs superior?

As someone who has made a d20 fantasy point-based magic system (and is still tweaking it constantly as I'm going for balance, which, as we all know, is not easy), it is all in the hands of my players. I say, "here our your tools. Here is how every spell is made. Go ahead, go wild." It's all on them.

I still use spell levels, though I also incorporate "overchanneling" to give them weaker spells once they are out of their spell slots. They make spells. If the system is sufficiently described, in detail, then you can trust players. If the system is sufficiently described, in detail, you can trust an experienced GM in a game like Mage.

Here's the difference between all of them:

In D&D, the spells are set, and everyone is on the same page. Once you're used to it, picking a spell to cast takes some time, but it's not a huge amount. If you compiled all of the spells, it's probably close to a thousand pages long.

In my point-buy game, there are no set spells, and each spellcaster works as a sorcerer-style spellcaster, spontaneously casting spells he wants to craft on the fly. The versatility doesn't really slow the game down. What slows the game down is going through and adding up modifiers for different variables in spells. "If I want to do 3d6 damage as compared to 5d6 damage, how much more does it cost? Let me see that spell area again, one more time..." Spells for experienced caster players can take one minute to three minutes to cast. It's much longer than in D&D. However, the variation of my system is staggering compared to D&Ds, and it's less than 90 pages long, as compared to a thousand.

In a game like Mage, there are no set spells, and each spellcaster works as a sorcerer-style spellcaster, spontaneously casting spells he wants to craft on the fly. The versatility doesn't really slow the game down. You pretty much consult a chart, see what factors you are meeting, and then you add up the TN. It might take a minute to pick your spell (once you're fairly experienced, shorter if the spell is simple and you're very experienced), but it's not that long. If the GM is experienced, you can trust him to ad hoc smoothly. A system like this can be as short as 5-10 pages, with examples ranging into another 40 pages (to give lots of creative ideas to players, ad hoc examples for GMs, etc.).

It's all about preference. I like the D&D 3.5 game system. I've changed it drastically to fit my playstyle, and my players like it. I'd suggest playing what you like, really. But Mage has a good magic system, once you've played some, made mistakes, and learned from them.

Fox Box Socks
2011-02-04, 01:37 AM
Isn't that really going to slow down the game if you're not casting. How long would it take for you to use that system to come up with the equivilant to:

Haste
Slow
Summon Monster
Magic Missile
Mirror Image

ect. Could you do that without significantly slowing down combat?

Plus what you just described fits the sorceror to a T, but not really a wizard. (Obviously I am speaking in 3.5 terms, but I am sure the concept carries to other systems.)
Mage: The Awakening has a nice compromise for this: rotes. A rote is a spell that's tried and true, a specific effect where you know going into it exactly how hard it's going to be and exactly how it's going to work. For game-related reasons, rotes are also safer to cast (less risk of Paradox, etc). The huge spell lists are still there, except the rules say something to the effect of "Here is your large spell list, you can cast any of these as long as you meet the prerequisites, pick a handful to be your rotes".

Boci
2011-02-04, 01:38 AM
Because the GM is a neutral party, and the player isn't. :smallamused:

Not really. The DM plays both the neutral and the opposing parties. I'm sure as a GM you would trust your players to not do something silly like "I make myself immune to everything. Ooo, that one cost me 1 point of fatigue", so why wouldn't you trust them to assign reasonable costs to their spells?

Swordguy
2011-02-04, 01:58 AM
Not really. The DM plays both the neutral and the opposing parties. I'm sure as a GM you would trust your players to not do something silly like "I make myself immune to everything. Ooo, that one cost me 1 point of fatigue", so why wouldn't you trust them to assign reasonable costs to their spells?

Let me put it this way - it is the GM's job to be a neutral party when required. If you are incapable of doing that, then you shouldn't be a GM. A player has no such onus.

Secondarily, the GM may have ideas regarding the difficulty of certain things at a given moment that the player may not know (such as the weather modifier to my previous example). He may even have restrictions regarding what magic can and cannot do that are appropriate to his setting that he intends for the player to discover in-game, not informed of ahead of time.

Finally, in my experience, a statistically significant minority of players WILL "fudge" things when it's in their own best interest. That's a problem for me.

Boci
2011-02-04, 02:08 AM
Let me put it this way - it is the GM's job to be a neutral party when required. If you are incapable of doing that, then you shouldn't be a GM. A player has no such onus.

But if the players are responsible for assigning costs to their spells, then it becomes their job to be neutral when doing so. Players are trusted to be truthful with their rolls, so why is this too much?


Secondarily, the GM may have ideas regarding the difficulty of certain things at a given moment that the player may not know (such as the weather modifier to my previous example). He may even have restrictions regarding what magic can and cannot do that are appropriate to his setting that he intends for the player to discover in-game, not informed of ahead of time.

That perfectly fair, and since the GM would still be the ultimate authority of the game he could inform the player that normally their calculations would be correct, but for some reason the spell's effect is enfeebled.


Finally, in my experience, a statistically significant minority of players WILL "fudge" things when it's in their own best interest. That's a problem for me.

True, but then couldn't you counter that by saying a statistically significant minority of DMs will "fudge" things against the players?

Basically this is just a difference in gaming preferences. I personally would not play with someone who supported the idea of more power to the GM, but was against the opposite because players cannot be trusted.

Swordguy
2011-02-04, 02:34 AM
Basically this is just a difference in gaming preferences. I personally would not play with someone who supported the idea of more power to the GM, but was against the opposite because players cannot be trusted.

Yeah, see, I'm totally the opposite. It's the GM's game, and the players are there to play and have fun and tell their own story, yes, but their say in how the game is run is voted upon only with their feet.

If you wanted to run one of these games where the players can generate their own TNs, then more power to you. If you're the GM, you can make that call. But neither the designers of the games nor myself agree with you.

And, as a side point, GM "fudging" is explicitly allowed within the rules, therefore it's not cheating. Players "fudging", however, is not permissible within the rules, except by the GM's permission. Sure, we trust players to make their own rolls...but ever notice how many threads about players cheating by messing with their rolls pop up around here? Players have a vested interest in ensuring that their die rolls are as "good" as possible...therefore you're going to have dice fudging happen. GMs - good GMs, anyway - aren't personally invested in their die rolls, whether they're rolling for a PC enemy, ally, or the vagracies of the weather.

Boci
2011-02-04, 02:47 AM
Yeah, see, I'm totally the opposite. It's the GM's game, and the players are there to play and have fun and tell their own story, yes, but their say in how the game is run is voted upon only with their feet.

Eek, I'm polarizing enough as it is, I'd hate to imagine what people would think of me if I ran games under the assumption that my interpretations were always correct. Not to say that I have never said "Its X because I say so", but I try to be open to what the players have to say.



If you wanted to run one of these games where the players can generate their own TNs, then more power to you. If you're the GM, you can make that call. But neither the designers of the games nor myself agree with you.

As a DM I would probably prefer it if I set the TN, the topic would be open for discussion, and as a player, again I would play in a game where the DM sets the TN, as long as he didn't seem to think that it wouldn't work the over way around.


And, as a side point, GM "fudging" is explicitly allowed within the rules, therefore it's not cheating. Players "fudging", however, is not permissible within the rules, except by the GM's permission. Sure, we trust players to make their own rolls...but ever notice how many threads about players cheating by messing with their rolls pop up around here? Players have a vested interest in ensuring that their die rolls are as "good" as possible...therefore you're going to have dice fudging happen. GMs - good GMs, anyway - aren't personally invested in their die rolls, whether they're rolling for a PC enemy, ally, or the vagracies of the weather.

Fudge is the wrong word for the situation. A player cannot fudge the TN result, they can just make them unfairly low, whilst the DM can make them unfairly high.

Swordguy
2011-02-04, 02:54 AM
Fudge is the wrong word for the situation. A player cannot fudge the TN result, they can just make them unfairly low, whilst the DM can make them unfairly high.

Ah - I've got you now.

There's no point in worrying about whether the GM is going to make them unfairly high simply via fiat. Since the GM can Rule 0 anything he desires, if you've got a GM who is going to pull that kind of crap and screw over your PC by artificially raising the spell TNs, you're screwed as a player anyway. At that point, your only option is to leave the game. Thus, "trust" for the GM isn't really an issue...he's either a douche or he isn't. A guy who is going to be a douche is going to screw you regardless.

Meanwhile, a PC who fudges a TN artificially low is actively a) cheating, and b) impacting the experience of other players (who ARE following the rules and not deflating their TNs). Since players are expected to play by the rules (while GMs are under no such obligation), there is an expectation that the player will, in fact, play by the rules. That includes not making the TNs unfairly low.



Regardless, I think we've gone a bit off of the topic, wouldn't you say? Effects-based magic provides a much more free-form method of doing things in a way that isn't a clearly overpowered as 3.x magic, but at the cost of potential disagreement between the player and the GM regarding spell TNs. Regrettably, nothing's perfect.

Boci
2011-02-04, 03:17 AM
a clearly overpowered as 3.x magic

In all fairness, they did manage to make the idea of cheap and safe magic work with the advanced casters on a mechanical level. Of course that doesn't help you much if you never even agreed with the idea on a flavour level.

jseah
2011-02-04, 03:18 AM
Ignoring the discussion on fiat or not, has anyone seen an effects-based system that required no GM intervention?

Shameless plug:
I ask because the magic system I'm making has gotten far enough that I'm starting to make spells and find I can do so many things. Often in more than one way.
(It's also not usable since making Fireball took me 1/2 an hour, which is ok for my personal use of the magic system, but not ok if it's a game.
The biggest problem is designing the spell. )

It's also a completely understandable rules system that ends up with the players doing something similar to the effects based systems. IE. What do I want to achieve? Simply because all the stuff you can do in the system are so basic, they assume nothing about what you want to do at all.
Still pretty limited though. Because of the physics sim approach, anything that requires too much information is instantly out. Haste, summoning, animate dead, scrying, etc.
Anyway, rules-primary effect-based system?

Swordguy
2011-02-04, 03:27 AM
Ignoring the discussion on fiat or not, has anyone seen an effects-based system that required no GM intervention?


No. There's a few that require little intervention (Alpha Omega being one), but all of them require it simply because the designers realize that, with enough players attempting to break the system, eventually one will come up with something the designers hadn't allowed for. Thus, a GM is required to act as a "brake" on the system, because any system that is simple enough to be playable WILL, as an inherent quality, have exploitable gaps or loopholes in it.

I'm fine with that. Balance is overrated anyway. I prefer the Catalyst Game Labs method of balancing things:

"Game companies have spent the last 15-ish years trying to build systems that intelligent and highly-motivated people are incapable of "breaking" to screw up a game experience. They have universally failed. Thusly, screw it. We're going to design a game that is concerned with reasonably accurately portraying the game world, and aside from very gross checks and balances, we're not going to bother trying to keep every munchkin out there from gaming the system. No really. Go ahead. You want to have a Pilot/BattleMech skill of +10 (equivalent to a negative Piloting skill in Classic BattleTech) just out of character creation? You can. We feel it's up to the Game Master to decide what power level he would like the game to be run at, and to use his discretion to enforce that power level. That means every game will be house-ruled to an extent, and we support that."

In other words, accurately represent the game world, and let the GM decide where things need to be balanced. You just have to have a GM whom you can trust to not arbitrarily screw over the players. :smallamused:

Jarawara
2011-02-04, 03:57 AM
It's the GM's game, and the players are there to play and have fun and tell their own story, yes, but their say in how the game is run is voted upon only with their feet.

You're my hero Swordguy. I'd totally sig you if I hadn't already sig'd you.

Boci
2011-02-04, 04:31 AM
"Game companies have spent the last 15-ish years trying to build systems that intelligent and highly-motivated people are incapable of "breaking" to screw up a game experience. They have universally failed. Thusly, screw it. We're going to design a game that is concerned with reasonably accurately portraying the game world, and aside from very gross checks and balances, we're not going to bother trying to keep every munchkin out there from gaming the system. No really. Go ahead. You want to have a Pilot/BattleMech skill of +10 (equivalent to a negative Piloting skill in Classic BattleTech) just out of character creation? You can. We feel it's up to the Game Master to decide what power level he would like the game to be run at, and to use his discretion to enforce that power level. That means every game will be house-ruled to an extent, and we support that."

I can't help feeling this misses the point on two points.

1st. The people who screw up a game expirience are not "intelligent and highly-motivated", but lazy munchkins who barrow the thought exercises of others and try and get it into a game where it wouldn't belong.

2nd. The Game Master already decided the power level of the game. By making rule 0 a key component of the game, they will remove a new DMs fear of invoking it (Just look at how many inexpirienced DMs come here to double check if they can say no to a player). That is how this new system changes things.

dsmiles
2011-02-04, 08:13 AM
The math doesn't support this though, for as much as the math supports anything. NPCs acquire magical gear several levels later than an equivalent PC would, specifically because of their smaller budget. If you gave a PC NPC gear with extra money to spend on consumables, they'd be underequipped to handle an otherwise appropriate-CR encounter.That's not entirely true. My friends and I used to use the NPC equipment charts to equip our 2nd-level-and-up characters (who were also what many people on CharOP forums consider "gimped." You know, feats for flavor, and all that), and we never had any problem handling CR-appropriate encounters. Granted, it's not the right way to do it, but it doesn't tremendously underpower the characters. A little bit, yeah, but not too horribly bad.

EDIT: @Boci: Well said.

Tyndmyr
2011-02-04, 11:01 AM
Your position is not shared by many who wish that non-magic users still matter at higher level, which is why threads about the high power of magic and how to balance it out with the mundane guys pop up at least once every week.

There is a difference between "imbalance" and "doesn't matter".

The imbalance really isn't a big deal unless you have wildly different levels of characters within the same party. If we've got a wizard and a guy who wants to go fighter, well...Im gonna recommend classes in the middle. Warblade especially. Head off problems like this in advance, and the easiest way to do is give the guy on bottom some extra power. It's much easier to sell a more powerful character to a player in general.

The exception is people who WANT to play a weak char. Wish granted, no problem exists.

I fully acknowledge that there is a gap between magic and mundane, and more importantly, a huge gap between the top and bottom of the class tier. So long as you ensure everyone is aware of this gap and plays accordingly, there is no problem.

As for NPCs...meh. Personal killing power is only one sort of power. Not even the most important source of power. A man isn't president because he can strangle you with his bare hands. Yes, the power that magic brings is important, and will alter the world. It does not necessitate all non-magical people being slaves to the mages.




WBL isn't set in stone. Rather, it's a guideline to try and determine what sort of bugdget NPCs are equipped from. And by extrapolations, what sort of budget PCs should be equipped on.

No, NPC WBL is separate from PC WBL. Both are important, and both assumptions play into things like loot tables. Or loot given in any published modules. All these things need to be modified extremely heavily if you play low/no magic, because there is very little non-magical stuff with a greater than trivial cost.


And taking magic out of D&D is very easy. Ban any class that uses spells and spell like abilities.

Assuming things like Artificer and psionics are counted as well, you've just banned 31/48 base classes. 17 left. Wow. Note that if we remove NPC classes from the running, you have banned 30/43 classes, leaving a mere 13 options left.


You may as well take out Supernatural abilities too while you're at it.

Well, that guts most of the rest. I hope you're not among those who consider ToB to be "too magical", because that'll tear into your remaining playable classes pretty badly. Note that all non ToB melee classes are tier 4 or worse. This significantly impacts party power levels, and what sort of challenges they can face.

Prestige classes get hit even worse. The vast majority have either SU or magical abilities or prereqs.

How is this still D&D?


Then go through the Monster Manual. If a creature has access to spells, spell like abilities or Supernatural abilities, it's cut.

Or is incorporeal, ethereal, requires magic to create, anything that's extraplanar, since magic is required to cross planes...oh dear, you've gutted about 90% of the monsters.


When you don't need magic, wealth becomes much less relevant. Once you've got Masterwork gear, what else do you really need if magic isn't a factor?

Not much. So, books like MiC? Throw them away. They are now useless.


Some things can make the cut by using alternate class features. But your biggest problem really is healing.

You know how many of the UA ACFs trade off spellcasting for something else, making a formerly magical class viable under your system? None of them.

Yes, you are now playing a wildly different game. It is not D&D. Books sold for D&D cannot be used with the game without first going through them in detail. It is more different than Pathfinder is, and Pathfinder is a different game than 3.5

The Big Dice
2011-02-04, 11:24 AM
No, NPC WBL is separate from PC WBL. Both are important, and both assumptions play into things like loot tables. Or loot given in any published modules. All these things need to be modified extremely heavily if you play low/no magic, because there is very little non-magical stuff with a greater than trivial cost.
There can be more to an RPG than loot and wealth. Take magic out of D&D and yes, you change some fundamental assumptions. You change them to be in line with most of the RPG industry over the last 20 years. You know, based on concepts like narrative and story, rather than loot and pillage.


Assuming things like Artificer and psionics are counted as well, you've just banned 31/48 base classes. 17 left. Wow. Note that if we remove NPC classes from the running, you have banned 30/43 classes, leaving a mere 13 options left.
What do you need 48 base classes for anyway? Seriously, that's way too many to be any use. Contrary to popular belief, more choice isn't always better. In fact, it's often confusing and gives you irrelevant options. And considering Psionics and Artificers both introduce completely new usbsystems to the game, ones that get almost no support outside the books they are published in, they won't be missed.

Not in a no magic game, anyway.


Well, that guts most of the rest. I hope you're not among those who consider ToB to be "too magical", because that'll tear into your remaining playable classes pretty badly. Note that all non ToB melee classes are tier 4 or worse. This significantly impacts party power levels, and what sort of challenges they can face.
I don't consider ToB at all.

Prestige classes get hit even worse. The vast majority have either SU or magical abilities or prereqs.

How is this still D&D?
Forst you have to define what exactly is D&D. Because to my mind, D&D is as D&D does. After all, there is 0E, Holmes edition, B/X, BECMI, RC, AD&D 1, AD&D 2, 3.0, 3.5, 4 and 4 Essentials. That makes ten different games, all claiming to be D&D. Surely they can't all be right.

Or maybe they can. Maybe D&D is whatever you think D&D is.

I'd go even further in making a campaign non magical. I'd give people hit dice up to about 6th level or so, then after that, get 2 per level and no more.

After all, you don't need to worry about massive damage from superntural and magical sources. So you don't need that massive hit point buffer.

Or is incorporeal, ethereal, requires magic to create, anything that's extraplanar, since magic is required to cross planes...oh dear, you've gutted about 90% of the monsters.
Good. The ecosystem couldn't support themall anyway. We're back to humans and humanoids, plus the odd mundane creature populating the landscape.

I know that means that plots will have to deal with people and situations, rather than places. But that's ok, it's kind of expected in most RPGs that that is the way to build campaigns.


Not much. So, books like MiC? Throw them away. They are now useless.
They are indeed, But put them on ebay rather than throwing them away, assuming you'll never want to ue them again. At least if you sell them, they've got a good chance of going to someone who will appreciate them.


You know how many of the UA ACFs trade off spellcasting for something else, making a formerly magical class viable under your system? None of them.
Good job things like the Dragonlance books have ways for you to make things like Rangers work without magic.

Yes, you are now playing a wildly different game. It is not D&D. Books sold for D&D cannot be used with the game without first going through them in detail. It is more different than Pathfinder is, and Pathfinder is a different game than 3.5
What's wrong with experimenting with your games?

Boci
2011-02-04, 11:28 AM
What do you need 48 base classes for anyway? Seriously, that's way too many to be any use. Contrary to popular belief, more choice isn't always better.

It generally is, especially if at least one member of the group has system mastery and can help the others understand their options.

The Big Dice
2011-02-04, 11:32 AM
It generally is, especially if at least one member of the group has system mastery and can help the others understand their options.

Why? The more moving parts something has, the more chances there is of it breaking down. More isn't always better and system mastery is just a polite term for rules lawyering.

Gnaeus
2011-02-04, 11:40 AM
Why? The more moving parts something has, the more chances there is of it breaking down. More isn't always better and system mastery is just a polite term for rules lawyering.

Because the more options a PC has in character creation, the better his chances of being able to play what he wants to play.

Boci
2011-02-04, 11:45 AM
Why? The more moving parts something has, the more chances there is of it breaking down. More isn't always better and system mastery is just a polite term for rules lawyering.

No, system mastery is just an extensive knowledge of the numberous splat books. I have a certain degree of system mastery and I didn't challange my DM when he gave the necromancer an ability that immobilized us on a successful will save.

The Big Dice
2011-02-04, 11:46 AM
Because the more options a PC has in character creation, the better his chances of being able to play what he wants to play.

So how do I play the last scion of a kindgom that was wiped out a century ago? I was taught the history and sensibilities of my noble heritage, but I was also raised on the run in hiding from the people who destroyed the kingdom.

How do I make that as a D&D character? In what way does having 40 or so base classes make it easier to make the character I want, when I'm tied to the concepts put forwards by those classes?

Class/Level systems are, to me, highly restrictive rather than liberating.

Boci
2011-02-04, 11:49 AM
So how do I play the last scion of a kindgom that was wiped out a century ago? I was taught the history and sensibilities of my noble heritage, but I was also raised on the run in hiding from the people who destroyed the kingdom.

How do I make that as a D&D character? In what way does having 40 or so base classes make it easier to make the character I want, when I'm tied to the concepts put forwards by those classes?

Because if you imagined your character as being a rogue but were unsatisfied with SA then you could play a scout, ninja or factotum.



Class/Level systems are, to me, highly restrictive rather than liberating.

I thought we were talking about the merits of a lot of classes, not the merits of classes vs. classless system.

Tyndmyr
2011-02-04, 11:51 AM
Why? The more moving parts something has, the more chances there is of it breaking down. More isn't always better and system mastery is just a polite term for rules lawyering.

This is not always the case.

As an obvious example, consider industrial servers. They have a great deal more moving parts than their economy brethren. However, they have a great deal more redundancy and reliability as a result of these additional parts.

Since your premise is invalid, your conclusions are unsupported.


There can be more to an RPG than loot and wealth. Take magic out of D&D and yes, you change some fundamental assumptions. You change them to be in line with most of the RPG industry over the last 20 years. You know, based on concepts like narrative and story, rather than loot and pillage.

You've missed the point. I did not state that removing magic from D&D makes it not an RPG. I stated that removing magic makes it no longer D&D.

There are plenty of perfectly good RPGs with low or no magic. That is quite irrelevant to the fact that magic is baked into D&D 3.5.

The Big Dice
2011-02-04, 11:59 AM
This is not always the case.

As an obvious example, consider industrial servers. They have a great deal more moving parts than their economy brethren. However, they have a great deal more redundancy and reliability as a result of these additional parts.

Since your premise is invalid, your conclusions are unsupported.
Do I really have to start quoting the second law of thermodynamics?

You've missed the point. I did not state that removing magic from D&D makes it not an RPG. I stated that removing magic makes it no longer D&D.

There are plenty of perfectly good RPGs with low or no magic. That is quite irrelevant to the fact that magic is baked into D&D 3.5.
And I made the counter point that there are no less than ten official versions of what D&D is. You never replied to my request for a definition of what exactly is D&D, so therefore your assertation is just opinion. Almost forty years of published games all bear the official D&D logo. Which one is not D&D?

I still maintain that the use of magic in D&D is optional. It can be removed without making the game "not-D&D" whatever that might be.

Tyndmyr
2011-02-04, 12:07 PM
Do I really have to start quoting the second law of thermodynamics?

I would be fascinated as to how conservation of energy in a closed system justifies your preferences in RPGs.


And I made the counter point that there are no less than ten official versions of what D&D is. You never replied to my request for a definition of what exactly is D&D, so therefore your assertation is just opinion. Almost forty years of published games all bear the official D&D logo. Which one is not D&D?

I still maintain that the use of magic in D&D is optional. It can be removed without making the game "not-D&D" whatever that might be.

They are all different games. Regardless of your preference for 4e over 3.5, I think we can agree that they are very different games. Likewise, a heavily enough modification of a game makes it something different from the original.

For 3.5, removing magic is a very heavy modification indeed. It then has very substantial differences from the original.

Jayabalard
2011-02-04, 12:08 PM
I can't help feeling this misses the point on two points.

1st. The people who screw up a game expirience are not "intelligent and highly-motivated", but lazy munchkins who barrow the thought exercises of others and try and get it into a game where it wouldn't belong.

2nd. The Game Master already decided the power level of the game. By making rule 0 a key component of the game, they will remove a new DMs fear of invoking it (Just look at how many inexpirienced DMs come here to double check if they can say no to a player). That is how this new system changes things.re #1 ... yes, intelligent and highly motivated people screw up game experiences as well. Some times they do it directly, and sometimes they do it indirectly. In the former case, they bring concepts that they've worked out into games where they aren't appropraite. In the latter, the "lazy munchkins who barrow the thought exercises of others" are borrowing them from the "intelligent and highly motivated" people... so even when it's the "lazy munchkins" are doing the actual screwing up of the game, the "highly motivated are still at the source.

I'm not really clear on your point for #2


Because the more options a PC has in character creation, the better his chances of being able to play what he wants to play.I'm not convinced that that's any better than expecting people to want to play what they're able to play. The idea that you should be able to go into a game with a pre-conceived notion of what you want to play, and that the system somehow fails if it doesn't let you do that seems more than a little ludicrous to me.

Perhaps it's true of some games, but that's not the design goal of D&D; it's always been designed to ley people play certain selected archetypes, not every possible specific character.


It generally is, especially if at least one member of the group has system mastery and can help the others understand their options.This isn't a counter argument to his claim, it's simply a contradiction. An argument is a connected series off statements intended to establish a contrary proposition; it's an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.

"it generally is" ... is awfully silly in this context; you're talking about something completely subjective. You prefer more options, so it's only generally better for you.


For 3.5, removing magic is a very heavy modification indeed. It then has very substantial differences from the original.that doesn't necessarily make it not D&D


I would be fascinated as to how conservation of energy in a closed system justifies your preferences in RPGs.That's a the first law; the 2nd law is about entropy.

Tyndmyr
2011-02-04, 12:14 PM
re #1 ... yes, intelligent and highly motivated people screw up game experiences as well.

Well, all types of people can mess up a game experience. That's far too subjective to be able to prevent all methods of that happening.

You can't really prevent someone from intentionally messing up the experience by rules alone. After all, if someone really wants to, they can always ignore the rules. Therefore, there is little value to be gained by avoiding this.

However, you CAN gain a lot from rules in other ways. They help guide people who don't want to break the game in a way that helps them avoid doing it by mistake. They also provide a tool for the GM to use...both for his own use, and as an easy, neutral way to detect people that do not wish to play fairly.

I think much has been made of the GMs power & responsibility, but the same has not been said of players. While yes, a good DM should be just, and avoid anything that would wreck the game, there is also responsibility for good players to do the same. Will a good GM use rule 0 to take away all your class abilities? Of course not. But neither should a good player try to take away all the GMs options, either by cheating, or by deliberate rules lawyering.

Boci
2011-02-04, 12:15 PM
re #1 ... yes, intelligent and highly motivated people screw up game experiences as well. Some times they do it directly, and sometimes they do it indirectly. In the former case, they bring concepts that they've worked out into games where they aren't appropraite. In the latter, the "lazy munchkins who barrow the thought exercises of others" are borrowing them from the "intelligent and highly motivated" people... so even when it's the "lazy munchkins" are doing the actual screwing up of the game, the "highly motivated are still at the source.

Its not your fault what someone else does with what you made as a joke/though excercise.


I'm not really clear on your point for #2

Just that the person was wrong as to why this new system aids DMs.


This isn't a counter argument to his claim, it's simply a contradiction. An argument is a connected series off statements intended to establish a contrary proposition; it's an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.

Nope. He said the multitude of options is potentially confusing, ergo sometimes/often bad. I said someone with system mastery does not find them confusing, and can also filter through the uneccissary options for the other players in the group. Therefore, as long as you have at least one group member with reasonable system mastery, more options are better.


"it generally is" ... is awfully silly in this context; you're talking about something completely subjective. You prefer more options, so it's only generally better for you.

Nope, I just generally have a tendancy to overuse the word generally, since if I don't it sounds like I am speaking for the world, which I obviously cannot.


Perhaps it's true of some games, but that's not the design goal of D&D; it's always been designed to ley people play certain selected archetypes, not every possible specific character.

41 base classes, a lot with a significant amount of ACF and racial substitution level, hundreds of prestige classes and probably over 1,000 feats and numberous other ways to tweak your character. That is a very large amount of "certain selected archetypes".

Tyndmyr
2011-02-04, 12:25 PM
Its not your fault what someone else does with what you made as a joke/though excercise.

Honestly, I don't think it's worth bothering with TO types in game design. They are not your primary market. You make the game to be played. Things that get done in TO have only a very limited relationship to actual play, at best.

In TO terms, the sarrukks ability is game over. In actual play? Pfft. It'll never even come up in the vast majority of games, and when it does, it's almost invariably in the hands of an NPC for plot-device purposes.

Jayabalard
2011-02-04, 12:27 PM
Its not your fault what someone else does with what you made as a joke/though excercise.Without them, it wouldn't happen; how much responsibility they have is really based on specifics in the case.

If, for example, someone posts asking for help, and you, as an intelligent and movitated person, intentionally give them a broken combo to bring int othat game... well you handed them the loaded gun and drove the getaway car... you're partially responsible.


Just that the person was wrong as to why this new system aids DMs.In what way?


Nope. He said the multitude of options is potentially confusing, ergo sometimes/often bad. I said someone with system mastery does not find them confusing, and can also filter through the uneccissary options for the other players in the group. Therefore, as long as you have at least one group member with reasonable system mastery, more options are better.No...that's not his claim. His claim is that the value added by making the system more complicated is negated by other problems, specifically that it confusing, and prone to breakage.

So this is both strawman fallacy (you're arguing against a position he didn't take), and a false dichotomy (presenting this strawman argument as the only possible problem with a complicated system, refuting it, and then claiming this proves your counter claim).

The Big Dice
2011-02-04, 12:27 PM
They are all different games. Regardless of your preference for 4e over 3.5, I think we can agree that they are very different games. Likewise, a heavily enough modification of a game makes it something different from the original. [/qoute]
At what point did I mention 4th ed? I don't even like D&D 4. I'm a Rules Compendium guy at heart. And I still want to know what is and is not D&D.
[QUOTE=Tyndmyr;10304344]For 3.5, removing magic is a very heavy modification indeed. It then has very substantial differences from the original.
The original D&D had three classes. Fighting-Men, Magic User and Cleric. 3.X is lierally worlds away from the original.

And I do agree that removing magic from the game makes a huge difference. Even taking out just spells and spell like abilities, leaving Supernatural stuff in place makes a massive difference.

But I don't think it makes things as different as you make out. I'm actually thinking E6 with no magic could make for an excellent gritty fantasy game.

Gnaeus
2011-02-04, 12:29 PM
Perhaps it's true of some games, but that's not the design goal of D&D; it's always been designed to ley people play certain selected archetypes, not every possible specific character.


Actually, if I could point to one design goal of 3.5 that it did really well, it was exactly in its ability to let people play every possible specific character, not just certain selected archetypes. Thats why there are dozens, maybe hundreds of playable races (including all those monsters with a number by their LA entry), 50ish core classes, and hundreds more prestige classes.

They were looking at their rivals, like GURPS and White Wolf, where players could make their characters into virtually anything. And they thought, how can we do this in D&D, and at that one design goal they succeeded admirably. Other potential design goals (realism, balance, predictability) they didn't do so well on. If you remove its ability to make any character you can think of, I think 3.5 is kind of a failed attempt at a game system. That one quality is why I play it.