Tweaks to prevent Game Degeneracy

[Larkas]

One of the problems with Tier 1 classes is the way they can break a game. Sometimes, it is simply best to ban these classes and play a game with Tier 3 or lower classes. However, I've been wondering if there's a way to fix this with house rules. More precisely, could we avoid some of the game degeneracy by tweaking some spells or tricks? I don't want to balance the game, I don't mind T1 classes being better at most things, what I'm thinking is of a way to ease a DM's mission: namely, create a world where both him and his players can have fun.

It is in that spirit that I made this thread. Before we continue, is there, by any chance, any handbook on this subject and that points towards possible solutions?

In case this doesn't exist, help me out here: which tricks enable Wizards, Clerics, Druids, Archivists, Artificers and Erudites to break the game?

As an example, Teleport is a spell that can simply ignore all the work and planning a DM put into an adventure. But that doesn't mean it should simply be purged from the game. It may be possible to keep it in Incantation/Ritual form, and/or increase its casting time or even give it a less favorable "results table".

[Emperor Tippy]

1) Make a flat requirement that you must have at least 17 HD to cast 9th level spells (and 15 HD for 8th level spells and so on) with the only exception being monsters. This is to shutdown the fast progression classes that end up with 9th level casting at level 11 or so.

2) Remove every spell that allows you to gain the services/abilities of other entities. Alter the polymorph line to do nothing except change appearance. Remove the calling function on gate, remove shapechange, remove simulacrum, remove Ice Assassin, remove the planar binding line, etc. If you want a specific function or ability back in that has been removed, have the DM and player work together to carefully adjudicate how it works and what it is.

3) Remove the spells for breaking action economy, there is no celerity line, no timestop, none of the spells that allow you to cast multiple spells at once.

Do those three things and Tier 1 becomes significantly weaker.

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If you want to shut down Teleportation in an area it's not that difficult, just have a mages guild that can be hired to put up epic wards against teleportation. 1 epic caster with a few hundred lower level casters can shut down teleportation over a massive area, you can relatively easily and cheaply cover a nation in teleportation denial if you feel so inclined.

[Quellian-dyrae]

I have a few ideas...

Teleportation

Three ideas here. First, all teleportation effects that take you to a place that you don't have line of sight to have their casting times increased to three rounds. This just makes it so you can't instantly and perfectly escape any danger in one turn.

Next, teleportation to a place you don't have line of effect to is disorienting, leaving all transporters unable to take standard or swift actions for three rounds. This helps curtail scry-and-die tactics.

Finally, any teleportation to a place you don't qualify as having "studied carefully" can't be precisely targeted. Basically, the DM chooses where you arrive, within a reasonable range of your target (no more than a mile or so), although you never arrive in a dangerous situation unless there is basically no safe place to arrive. This basically means teleportation can get you to and adventure site, but can't just take you through it.

Divination

Honestly, I'd rewrite the main "ask a question" divinations (Divination, Commune, Contact Other Plane, Legend Lore, Speak with Dead, etc) entirely. As they stand they allow too much information if you jump through enough hoops, are not very effective at giving out the kind of information a DM would want to give out, and carry a rather annoying cost.

I'd change them to basically letting the character ask a certain number of questions, limited as normal for the spells (Commune to the deity's portfolio, Speak with Dead to information the corpse knew in life, etc), which the DM responds to as it chooses. The extra costs (Commune XP cost, Contact Other Plane chance of stat loss, massive casting time for Legend Lore, fail chance for Divination, etc) are removed.

At the minimum, the character should be able to expect a hint, clue, or lead that will allow it to come to its own conclusions or give it an idea of what it can do to learn more. It can also get information that will narrow down possibilities, or a direct yes or no answer to a question. The DM can provide more information if it wishes, but such is strictly its prerogative.

Finally, such spells only provide one piece of information on a given subject per week. Convoluted phrasing does not circumvent this limitation.

So these can be used to move the adventure along (providing a plot hook or giving the DM leeway to "skip" information gathering stages), to get a vague glimpse of the future (someone is planning to attack us sometime this week vs. we will be attacked by four elemental-themed dragon-riding sorcerers in three days, six hours, and fifteen rounds in town square), to get clues that the characters might not be able to get without auto-solving a puzzle (what color hair does the killer have vs. who is the killer), or to confirm or refute a conclusion the characters have come to. You can't do a Commune-style exclusion search, though, or at least, not without weeks and weeks of work.

Instantaneous Conjuration/Transmutation

The main thing here is the economy-breaking potential of these spells. Honestly, the big problem here is how wealth is so intrinsically tied to power. The best bet would probably be to separate "gold" in terms of WBL from "gold" in terms of actual in-world money, with the former being simply a standard of measure for magical or otherwise special items. So if there's a magic item economy at all, you can trade them normally, and you could theoretically trade a magic item for gold, but gold and mundane goods can't be traded for magic items.

It's not perfect in the sense that a wizard could still break the actual economy of the world fairly trivially, but it wouldn't do much to the game.

I'm sure there are others, but that's three that kind of jumped out at me.