hobbling magic users

[The Reverend]

Thinking about running a 3.5 game and I'm looking for ways to keep the wizaaaaarrrrd under control, possible cleric, and sorcerer as well. I would like to stay away from massive rules changes to kepp them from running the game at higher levels, my group are Very Experienced players.

my favorite control of a wizards power level was done by a DM who kinda tricked the player a little, ok a lot. The world had very few wizards meaning the wizard learned very few spells and in fact had to engage in Research for long periods of time to get some spells he needed. He let tje player know that his world had few spellcasters and the player never asked about the implications of this statement. While I dont plan to just not tell folks I would like to....moderate spellcasters powers at higher levels.

thoughts?

[umbergod]

I played in a semi low magic campaign once where the DM didn't allow caster classes as your 1st level, and you could only have 8 levels max in a caster class, and if you took a caster progression PrC, it couldnt have full progression, basically limiting casters to 6th level spells

[sirpercival]

Doing things like "tricking the players" will only lead to aggravation. If you want to limit spellcasters, then don't let them play anything above tier 3.

[Yora]

Easiest solution is to just keep it a low-level campaign. As long as your under 11th level, spellcasters will probably not be much of a problem. And that's still a very long campaign until you get nearly that far.

Second would be to come up with a list of spells that you think are just so bad that you don't want them in your game, and give it to the players who play spellcasters, so they know what they can work with.

And third just tell the very experienced players who make well optimized spellcasters to tone it down a bit. People who just play a spellcasters for the first or third time and look at new spells as the character level up won't be a problem.

And in any case, many of the most outrageous stunts shouldn't really work. When you think the player wants to do things, that the person who wrote the spell, feat, or ability did not intend to be possible, you don't have to allow it because technically the literal meaning of the written words could be interpreted in that way.

[Coidzor]

If you're really that worried, there's always E6 and its cousins as a way to keep the players low powered in terms of the spells they can bring to bear.

[Hoddypeak]

Well, my houserules for 3.5 do a few things to keep casters in check. Much of this is to bring back some of the feel of AD&D though.

1. No defensive casting.
2. Casting a spell with a somatic component means you lose your dex bonus to AC for a round, including during the AoO.

I also limit their spell selection. But that's a much more involved set of house rules, especially for sorcerers. My players had these rules from the start, and it has certainly cut down on the wizards dominating. I also haven't had any complaints from casters that they feel too weak. But if they ever make it up to really high levels, the only way to limit them is to control spell availability.

[Fitz10019]

Here's an idea I've toyed with but never implemented.

Caster characters of tiers 1 or 2 are required to choose two classes, one with prepared casting and one with spontaneous casting, at a specific ratio, like 1/3 or 1/4. The player chooses whether the character's preparation heavy or spontaneity heavy, and the two classes have to have different stat-bases (like Wiz(Int) and Sorc(Char)).

This would give them slow progress toward higher-level spells, a glass ceiling below 9th level, but more spells-per-day than a normal one-class character.

Alternately, if you simply plan a mid-range campaign as suggested above, let the players know the upper range you plan to go to, so they can plan their characters properly.

[SamBurke]

Why would you want to hobble magic-users? They are sooooo woefully underpowered, and, indeed, need HELP to keep up with the fighter and other solid classes. Everyone talks about optimization and the myriad of options available to a wizard, but they can't take all those options all the time; when they do, they lose all their power. Thus, magic needs a BOOST in 3.5.

/Sarcasm.

There are innumerable fixes on these boards. I'd suggest looking through homebrew or asking around.

[Gnaeus]

If a world has very few high level wizards, what does that mean?

1. He has more difficulty getting spells. He is limited to 2 spells per level + what he researches. This is a small nerf to the power of a wizard. Aside from research, there are ways to get around this restriction (like PRCs), but you could always ban the classes that give more spells. Also note that by RAW a high level wizard can use wish (or gate or planar binding to duplicate wish) to wish for a scroll of (desired spell).

2. Most people would never have met a high level wizard. There would be no defenses in place to stop a high level wizard. People may not even know what a high level wizard is capable of. If he decides to, say, conquer a kingdom, he is virtually unstoppable. This is a huge boost to the power of a wizard.

3. Few high level wizards means few high level wizards creating items. This means that items that use high level effects are hard to come by. This is a large nerf to the party Rogue, and a moderate nerf to most other muggles, and another boost to the power of the party wizard, who can craft what he needs.

[Deepbluediver]

IMO, the way magic works in D&D 3.5 is fairly broken, and you won't really manage to balance wizards and everything else with fixing some 200 (approx.) spells.

However, if you don't have a couple of months to devote to that, identify the most easily abusable and just limit or rework them. For example, Rich Burlew has a fairly decent fix for Polymorph and druid Shapeshifting, which is an excellent place to start since those are the spells that casters tend to use to be better at melee than melee classes. If you don't have the time or expertise to fix them, just ban them outright, but be sure to tell your players ahead of time.

Also, consider giving everything, and I mean EVERYTHING some level of spell resistance. Virtually everything requires an attack roll to beat its AC, why not a spellcraft check to beat its resistance? Any creature that already had spell resistance can get some magical damage reduction to compensate.

Thats about as far as you can go, without starting in on homebrewed fixes for the entire class.

[Gavinfoxx]

Why not just only allow Tier 3 and Tier 4 classes, and allow the homebrew variants that are in that power range?

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174628

Like those, perhaps?

[navar100]

If the player wants to chain Gate or Wish, sell Walls of Iron for cash, or create demiplanes of infinite time, just use a simple word pronounced "no".

If the player wants to cast Solid Fog then next round Evard's Black Tentacles or Stinking Cloud, one of them Quickened at high level play to cast both in the same round, congratulate him on the tactic and let him do it.

It's not a crime for a player character to be powerful, even when playing a wizard, cleric, or druid. Obvious brokenness is obvious. Just say no to that.

[The Reverend]

To SamBurke

Slow golf clap

Congratulations ......for saying exactly what I was doing. Asking around, you 're the only one without helpful information or advice. double congrats and -.5 internets for you

[Tyndmyr]

Thinking about running a 3.5 game and I'm looking for ways to keep the wizaaaaarrrrd under control, possible cleric, and sorcerer as well. I would like to stay away from massive rules changes to kepp them from running the game at higher levels, my group are Very Experienced players.

Don't do that.

Just ask your players to play nice, and to keep at around the same power levels.

It's about a thousand times easier and less problematic.

[Randomguy]

A house rule I've run across once or twice is don't let people have more than half of their character levels as levels for the same tier one or two caster class. So At level four, you could have at most 2 levels of wizard, but it would be possible for the other 2 levels to be cleric or sorcerer instead.

This limits tier one casters without making them unplayable, but lets the players still have some magic via lower tier casters, like beguilers, warmages, warlocks and duskblades, which are powerful but don't break the game.

The downside is when it comes to spell resistance, since caster levels for tier 1 casters will be fairly low. You may want to consider giving out practiced spellcaster as a bonus feat every four-eight levels to people with a tier 1 casting class or something.