New idea for balance

[Particle_Man]

1) Everyone can make full attack actions as standard actions, or at the end of a charge.

2) Whenever a caster does something that overwhelms the rest of the party in effectiveness, the caster can never do it again. That spell (or spell like ability or class feature or extraordinary ability or supernatural ability or magic item or whatever else I have forgotten to mention) disappears from the game world, never to be seen again.

Eventually, I assume this would help even things out.

Thoughts?

[TheDarkSaint]

Describe "overwhelmingly effective" My wizard can currently cause 30 points of damage in a 20 foot radius. No one else in the party can do that. Am I only allowed to cast a fireball once? Since all of my spells make me very effective at doing one thing, I would get one cast.

Example, Charm Person makes the person automatically friendly. That's more powerful than most diplomacy checks at low levels. I only can cast that once? My little wizard is going to be out of spells after the first adventure and can't ever cast them again.

[Suddo]

Describe "overwhelmingly effective" My wizard can currently cause 30 points of damage in a 20 foot radius. No one else in the party can do that. Am I only allowed to cast a fireball once? Since all of my spells make me very effective at doing one thing, I would get one cast.

Example, Charm Person makes the person automatically friendly. That's more powerful than most diplomacy checks at low levels. I only can cast that once? My little wizard is going to be out of spells after the first adventure and can't ever cast them again.

Basically this. If you just say "overwhelmingly effective" you'll ban literal every spell in the game simple because the fighter can't do it. I mean Read Magic is effective when you need to look at some ancient text and the fighter can do that so let's ban that. I'm fine with making a list of spells that people can't use but you can make it subjective.

[Particle_Man]

It will be extremely subjective because it will be based on the other players feeling overshadowed or not. The idea is to see whether a middle ground can be found where the "overshadowing stuff" disappears (after being used once), but the caster can still contribute in the future.

I don't think the caster will be nerfed into oblivion. I am confident that there is a middle ground for casters between "Game breakingly Tier 1" and "Not worth playing at all" and I think this method could be a start at finding it.

[Red_Dog]

Off topic=>

simple because the fighter can't do it.

Abuse WBL and fighter will do them too = ] DMG has guide lines on making your own magic items that not necessarily need UMD at all! Granted, you are no wizard, but still, pick few broken ponies and ride them out like a bad poker hand ^^ Yeah, its no solution at all I am just being semi-humorous ^^

On topic=>

Its much easier to use a House ruling of T3 equalizing. There are 3 metric tons of thread for it[some of which are QUITE nice and well presented]. Pick the one you like and roll with it. Making everyone TX is generally a balance solution. Its not that a Tier makes game not fun, its the difference in them. a Game of all T1s could be fun and will resemble "mutliverse chess", likewise a game of all T4s will resemble Conan Universe, and T5s saving Private Ryan. The D&D's issue is that the system mixes Cosmic Chess w/ Saving Private Ryan, things quickly spin out of control. It shouldn't happen. Even if one want a bizzaro cross over feel[which is all fine and cool, play what you like! ^^], one still needs balance for all players to have fun[direct your attention to T3 equalizing threads again].

IMO, this is a lot better than any and all proposed fixes to fighters/wizards/chickens/commoner/etc. when taken separately. Together, they fix the system, alone they just add issues.

[Particle_Man]

Ok, what are the ways of making the T1, T2 classes into T3, T4 classes that don't involved reducing their abilities?

I want to have a party with (say) a fighter, a rogue, a cleric, a wizard, and a bard, where all 5 players feel that they are contributing, and none feel overshadowed. Can the T3 threads do that for me? If so, do you have a link to the thread that does that?

[Gavinfoxx]

Lets see...

Fighter = Warblade
Cleric = Shugenja
Bard = Bard
Rogue = Factotum
Wizard = Binder

Next question!