d20 Modern, magic underpowered?

[Incorrect]

I am about to join a game of d20 Modern in a few days, and I have really been looking forward to it. Last night I met some of the other players, and we ended up talking about how they all played martial characters and that magic were so weak in Modern. This bugged me quite a bit because I love casters, and I was really planning on playing one, either arcane or psionic.

I can understand that you have to "waste" three levels before entering a caster class, and the very limited spell list, but are they really so much worse?
And can anything be done to help their powerlevel?
Maybe some constructive tips on how I can make an effective caster?


Relevant houserules:
All books allowed (no extreme sci-fi stuff)
No material components for spells.
Natural 1 always fail, and natural 20 always success, on all tests (attack, skills, saves…)
To cast a spell you must succeed on a concentration check.

We are level 6 atm, and I can understand that many of the challenges are direct fights.

[JadePhoenix]

Thing is, in Modern, many of the stuff you can do with magic you can also do with technology, sometimes better. Some stuff are still magic-only though, specially in a non-sci-fi environment (say, invisibility).

[DigoDragon]

I'd like to point out the second part of what JadePhoenix said. Yes, magic is weaker in d20 modern, but it does still have a few tricks that technology can't easily duplicate. Healing spells and Invisibility are quite awesome when opponents have access to guns that can hit you for 2d6 - 2d8 points of damage per shot.

[Clawhound]

For all practical purposes, magic is either "better" or "worse" in the system. [Yeah, too simplistic, but we'll ignore that for now.]

In D&D, magic is better, so the Tier 1 characters are all magic wielding classes. In Star Wars, the force wielders are strictly better. In d20 modern, if we kept the analogy going, magic would be better, and so there would be a drift of character entering the magical classes.

Does that feel like d20 modern?

I don't think that lots of magic feels like d20 modern. So they have magic, and it can do some interesting things, but so can modern devices, and modern devices are the core of d20 Modern.

In order to keep the system feeling like d20 Modern, I think that the designers pulled back on magic on purpose. It's still a fun choice, but it's not necessarily the only choice.

[Giegue]

Magic is not as bad as some make it out to be. The REAL value of magic comes in non-si-fi settings. Why? Because most of the "whatever magic can do, tech does too" comes from D20 Modern's si-fi content. Strip away the si-fi content and stuff like invisibility and such is much harder to come by without magic. Also, without si-fi tech, magic is basically the only way to play a "pet class" because without the si-fi bots your only worthwhile pet options are magic-based(Animate Dead being the classic.).

Anyway...if you like magic in D20 Modern but want some spellcasting with a more "evil" flair I HIGHLY recommend the Blood and Brains 3rd party supplement. While it is primarily aimed at the horror genera, and in particular zombie films, it has a modern Necromancer class, as well as a divine necromancy-focused class with a "voodoo" flavor to it. Both classes are equally awesome and the Necromancer allows you to play an arcanist who messes with the dead instead of always having to default to acolyte for any kind of necromantic shenanigans.