Eliminating spells above lvl 5

[Balor01]

So, I have a few questions, playground:

- What do you think of non-existence of spells above lvl 5 in a campaign?
- what do you think of monsters keeping their spell-like abilities that imitate spells above lvl 5?
- what is the strongest creature (by CR) a lvl 20 full caster, limited to lvl 5 spells (including items) could take down?
- how would this spell accessibility limitation affect CR of say, great wyrms? Would they get scaryer because of their fine stats or weaker due to loss of some spell casting abilities?

Any additional thoughts on this are welcome.

[Flickerdart]

Stripping high level spells for the game means that, largely, nobody has level-appropriate tools for more than half of the game, forcing people deeper into cheese in order to survive. Metamagic users, for instance, won't terribly much care about this change, and will continue to slap infinity negative levels and force damage on whatever they please. Psions would just augment low level powers. Conjurers would start planar binding all the time. Antimagic field will be gone from the world. A bunch of flavours of ethergaunt would become completely invincible.

[Madara]

It seem that in that case, you'd have more people Theruge-ing to have more options, since they'd be able to cast 5th level arcane and divine.

Although, with enough fixes I think this could make many other things more viable: Biting the LA for a cool race, playing a gish, taking a non-full casting PrC.

I don't think it would level the playing field too much, but it would make options somewhat reasonable.

[Lateral]

Well, first of all, people stop playing Wizards and start playing Mystic Rangers.

[Infernalbargain]

There a problem with just simply stripping higher level spells from the game. How will the wizard progress beyond level 9? Now if you rework the progression to 1,5,9,13,17 then things be made to work, but now you wll have to poke around with all the medium and slow casters to get them to line up. Fifth level spells still give scry and die and binding. So I suggest that you still go through and pluck out problematic spells.

[Coidzor]

There a problem with just simply stripping higher level spells from the game. How will the wizard progress beyond level 9?

Casters are now obligated to PrC out rather than better off PrCing out.

[Elric VIII]

This would make an interesting idea, but your players have to be on board with it. Implementing it is still not going to create any reasonable sense of balance between classes.

Some recommendations:

Keep slots or level 6+ spells in the class progressions, and give a free MM feat when they would have gotten a new spell level.
Keep advanced versions of lower level spells in the game (Greater Dispel Magic/Teleport/Restoration), perhaps restrict access by requiring reserch or questing for them.
Switch Bard and other 2/3 caster progressions to one similar to Duskblade or Mystic Ranger.

[Coidzor]

- how would this spell accessibility limitation affect CR of say, great wyrms? Would they get scaryer because of their fine stats or weaker due to loss of some spell casting abilities?

Most dragon killers are not that high of level, as in the case of Shivering Touch and Lesser Shivering Touch.

Poisons are now the source of the highest save DC SoD/SoL/SoSes, IIRC...

Most essential items, from what I recall, don't require all that many high level spells to be able to make, and e6 mostly castrates crafting by making the caster level entry into a harder requirement than it generally is.

So they'd mostly be weaker due to not having access to the spells that they should have to make themselves more credible, but stillnot push overs. Sort of like Xorvintaal Dragons if it just cut off the top of their casting rather than completely.

[Silva Stormrage]

The Enchantment school becomes amazing. Especially if the DM isn't using that many undead or constructs (Which screws them over anyway). No mind blank is a god send for enchanters. Dominate Person becomes amazing especially if the DM is the type to send lots and lots of humanoid with class levels (Mine is :smallsigh:)

[sonofzeal]

I don't think it's nearly as dire as some people here are suggesting. Metamagic'd lower level spells fit right in, giving the Wizard room to grow and reasons to advance spellcasting, but limiting a lot of utility effects since Metamagic is mostly just useful for combat. You can't Metamagic Teleport to make it function half as well as Greater Teleport, for example.

I don't think this will substantially decrease a Wizard's combat pwnage potential, but it might decrease their campaign-destroyage potential. They still get a lot of campaign-destroying spells like Teleport and Knock and Invisibility/Silence and Contact Other Plane, but in a high level game this might help a prepared DM keep the PCs from completely prancing over everything. Somewhat.

[candycorn]

Dragons become much nastier, actually. Considering the majority of dragons don't get above level 6 spells by CR 20, limiting them to level 5 and lower doesn't hinder them a bit. Add on that they still get loads of feats, and a sturdy combat frame, and they could cause some serious damage.

For example, a dragon with Scintillating scales (persisted, via a few instances of the improved metamagic epic feat, practical metamagic, and maybe easy metamagic), Ray deflection (persisted), nightshield, and a few other choice spells (such as greater invisibility), and the limited access that players have to True Seeing, and things can get ugly.

I mean, Rapidstrike and Improved Rapidstrike can give a dragon as many as 14 attacks on a full attack, pounce is trivial to get (Shape soulmeld: Sphinx Claws and Open hand chakra, or Child of Eberron + Lion's Charge persisted, or any of several other ways), and greater blink is within a dragon's reach at these levels.

No, a low op dragon may be killed easily, but not one built to the op level of the kind of PC's we're talking about here. Those dragons are going to have +30 saves, good SR, touch AC around 50, and a hefty offense. Not to mention that the majority of metabreath spells have a duration of 1 round, and a range of personal, which makes them eligible to persist.

Add on that all those casters that PrC'd out, or theurged, have lower caster levels now, and the Dragon SR has been going up (it's not hard to have a dragon SR of 50+ at CR 20), and many of those spells are going to fall short.

[Randomguy]

Beguilers see a new golden age, since the biggest counters to enchantment (mind blank) and illusion (true seeing) are now gone. (No one would be a beguiler for more than 10 levels though.)

Blaster wizards and sorcerers don't care that much: The best blasting spells tend to be level 4 and bellow anyway, they'd just continue using metamagic.

Transmuters weep at the loss of polymorph any object, disintegrate and shapechange, but aren't affected too much since they've still got a few save or dies (baleful polymorph) and the best buffs of most schools.

Conjuration (summoning) really takes the biggest hit. Even when metamagicked up, low level summons can't face higher level creatures.

If monsters keep their spell like abilities, they become unstoppable. At higher levels it would be the same as pitting level 20 wizards against level 10 wizards. Full casters just wouldn't keep up unless they prestiged out, unless they spent all their feats on metamagic feats, and even then it would be iffy.

[DonutBoy12321]

If this were the case, then SotAO Mystic Rangers would literally be the Lightning Warrior. Seriously.
A build for this could be something like Mystic Ranger 6/Abjurant Champion 5/WhirlPounceBarian 1/Full BAB class or PrC 8 would destroy everything in sight.

[sonofzeal]

If this were the case, then SotAO Mystic Rangers would figuratively be the Lightning Warrior. Seriously.
A build for this could be something like Mystic Ranger 6/Abjurant Champion 5/WhirlPounceBarian 1/Full BAB class or PrC 8 would destroy everything in sight.
Fixed.

But yes, this is basically the same problem E6 has. SotAO Mystic Ranger rocks low/mid level games way too hard. And Whirling Frenzy on Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian is devastating on melee builds in any game, especially with Extra Rage. Who needs full Barbarian progression, when you get the best features at lvl 1?!?

I find the easiest solution is simply not get into the arms race to that extent. SotAO is okay, and Mystic Ranger is okay, but mixing them both isn't. Whirling Frenzy is okay, and dipping Barb1 with Extra Rage is okay, but not both. At a certain point you just have to agree not to aim for Real Ultimate Power, or else every character is Pun-Pun and the game grinds to a halt.

[navar100]

Do what you want, but hypothetically speaking I wouldn't play the game because such a rule tells me the DM hates his players doing nifty things if he's so afraid of high level spells. Yes, yes, I know all about Gate-chaining and all other spellcaster shenanigans. You can still acknowledge the broken while dealing with it. If you resent it, stop playing 3E already.

[Tyndmyr]

So, I have a few questions, playground:

- What do you think of non-existence of spells above lvl 5 in a campaign?

I hate it.


- what do you think of monsters keeping their spell-like abilities that imitate spells above lvl 5?

I hate it even more. It makes no sense.


- what is the strongest creature (by CR) a lvl 20 full caster, limited to lvl 5 spells (including items) could take down?

Any. Orb of Fire is level 4. See also, the mailman.


- how would this spell accessibility limitation affect CR of say, great wyrms? Would they get scaryer because of their fine stats or weaker due to loss of some spell casting abilities?

Yes. Depends on what's facing them. They become vastly more scary against low op parties, and vastly less scary against high op parties.

So, the opposite of balance, really.

[Prime32]

Consider eliminating spells above lv6 (to be fair to bards) while keeping the spell slots, and allowing characters to learn lv7+ spells through the Extra Spell feat.

[FMArthur]

First of all, no SLAs above 5th level or things look pretty egregiously unfair. Don't give caster-monsters an absurd advantage like that or it will be irritating to players.

In addition, you need to have a way, in-class, to keep lower level spells scaling beyond where they normally would. Giving them the higher level spell slots but not the higher level spells themselves is a decent starting point, but you have to let them have Heighten Spell without costing them a feat. You also need to do something about spells with CL-based effects being capped too low to stay relevant. You could give them something similar to PF's Intensify Spell metamagic, like increasing the maximum of a spell's growth by 5 caster levels for a +1 adjustment, applicable repeatedly if desired. This too would need to be free.

I think it can work, really.

[Doxkid]

- What do you think of non-existence of spells above lvl 5 in a campaign?
Bump that up to level 6 and it sounds tolerable.

- what do you think of monsters keeping their spell-like abilities that imitate spells above lvl 5?
Pretty unfair, unless that specific spell-like is the most important aspect of the monster.

What are you doing to make up for the lost high level spells? Typically a better BAB, better HP per level, more skills, better form of casting…something like that comes with lower spell progression.

Consider this:

Whenever you can learn a new spell (when you pick up additional spell slots as a wizard or when you get additional spells known as a sorcerer) you may instead gain a spell that is at least 4 levels lower than your new one as an SLA.

Expensive costs associated with the SLAs should typically be waived. At the pace these SLAs come up, they will just barely be relevant compared to the spells the caster could be casting instead, so meta magic use and min maxing should be encouraged; having the SLAs be 3 level lower than the new spell would also be usable and would let the player cap out with a few level 6 spells as SLA.

This even keeps bards at a lower power level than primary casters; despite having 6th level spells like other casters, bards wont have powerful SLAs (they would have to trade their very limited number of level 6 spells known for level 2 SLAs) and will never get their best spells as SLAs(capping at level 2 SLAs)