What do you think of JaronK's tier balance?

[danzibr]

So I read this a long time ago, and always kind of wanted to do it (as a DM).

In my game, I wanted a low magic game, with characters using skills and martial abilities to solve problems instead of spells. So, I did the following:

Psionics don't exist (not familiar enough with them)

When preparing a spell (or preparing a spell slot, which spontaneous casters must do), you must take 1 hour per level of the spell. At the end, the DM makes a hidden DC 10*spell level check, where any D20 roll equal to or less than the level of the spell is an automatic failure. The skill for the check is Knowledge Nature for nature casters (Druids, Rangers, etc), Knowledge Religeon for divine casters (Clerics, Paladins, etc), and Spellcraft for arcane casters (Wizards, Bards, etc). When you try to cast the spell, if you've succeeded on the check it goes off normally. If you fail, the spell fails and you take a backlash effect, randomly chosen depending on the school of the spell you tried to cast (so failed necromancy spells do things like cause permanent wisdom decreases and negative energy damage, failed conjurations summon powerful things that attack you or teleport you into physical objects, etc). The save DC against backlash effects, if there's a save at all, is 5*spell level. Every time you cast a spell there's a chance of dying. As such, spellcasters are HEAVILY nerfed, and not expected to be played. When creating magic items, the spells required must be cast every day... so bad idea!

No humanoids or monsterous humanoids (which includes all PCs) can use Spell Like abilities, except for those granted by the Binder and Warlock classes (since those classes draw their power from outside sources).

The game is Gestalt.

All players get the benefits of Vow of Poverty, plus the bonus feats from that are any bonus feat you want (not just exalted), without the drawbacks (you can still use gear). However, there are no useful magic items in the game, so it's all mundane gear. As such, gear is far less important in my game... any random sword works as well as any other, so you can lose all your stuff, punch out a guard, steal his sword, and rock out.

All players heal rapidly when out of sight and no one's after them (fast healing equal to your HD, only when I as the DM decide you're between encounters).

Classes that had casting can, with DM permission, swap out their casting for any one other class substitution ability... for example, the Bard can swap casting for an Animal Companion because of the UA Fey Varient Bard.

Basically, it's a low magic heroic fantasy game. And remember, I like Tier 3 as a balance point. So what do these house rules do to balance?

Well, Tier 1 and 2 are completely gone. All of them depend on spellcasting which is now nerfed, so most of those classes drop to Tier 5-6 (except the Druid, who's Tier 3... yeah, Wild Shape is that powerful). The top tier classes are now the normal Tier 3 guys plus the Druid, except that the Beguiler drops to around Tier 5/6 and the Dread Necromancer does too. Sadly, the Healer and Warmage are also nerfed, but they didn't fit in the campaign world anyway.

The gear changes mean certain specialized equipment dependent builds don't work (Warblade Crossbow archers, for example), and Wild Shape based classes get pumped up (Druids and Wild Shape Rangers) but otherwise changes are minimal as far as balance is concerned.

Healing classes are basically unnecessary, though still handy, so Crusaders are useful to have.

Warlock and Binder invisibility powers are awesome against other humanoids.

Overall, that's about the effect I wanted. The entire party can optimize like crazy and they're still maxing out at Tier 2 if they really work at it, and are usually Tier 3 otherwise.

The current party at this time (we just added two players) is I believe:

Warblade//Swordsage, Barbarian//Swordsage, Factotum//Bard (with a gecko familiar), Binder//Ninja/Rogue, Scout//Warlock.

Conveniently enough, all of them are basically Tier 2-3 (gestalt raises them up a bit).

JaronK
Has anyone (other than JaronK of course) done this in a game, or something similar? I'll be running another PbP game on the forums at some point, and I want it to be sort of high-power, but I plan on the campaign lasting a while so I don't want there to an imbalance in the high-powerness.

[kitcik]

I've never tried it, but now I want to.

I would get rid of the fast healing, too 4E for me, but that's just a preference. (As an offset, I would not give the fail chance to healing spells.)

[Tyndmyr]

When preparing a spell (or preparing a spell slot, which spontaneous casters must do), you must take 1 hour per level of the spell. At the end, the DM makes a hidden DC 10*spell level check, where any D20 roll equal to or less than the level of the spell is an automatic failure. The skill for the check is Knowledge Nature for nature casters (Druids, Rangers, etc), Knowledge Religeon for divine casters (Clerics, Paladins, etc), and Spellcraft for arcane casters (Wizards, Bards, etc).

10* spell level? Really? That scales terribly. Consider, people gripe about a truenamer having to make a DC 55 check at level 20 to have a 100% chance of it going off successfully.

In comparison, at level 17, a wizard would have to make a DC 90. And it's not automatic. There's an unmitigated 45% failure chance, even with all the +knowledge in the world.

When you've hit "significantly less balanced that a truenamer", you've probably done something terribly wrong. I would seriously advocate playing a truenamer LONG before playing a caster under these rules.


When you try to cast the spell, if you've succeeded on the check it goes off normally. If you fail, the spell fails and you take a backlash effect, randomly chosen depending on the school of the spell you tried to cast (so failed necromancy spells do things like cause permanent wisdom decreases and negative energy damage, failed conjurations summon powerful things that attack you or teleport you into physical objects, etc). The save DC against backlash effects, if there's a save at all, is 5*spell level. Every time you cast a spell there's a chance of dying. As such, spellcasters are HEAVILY nerfed, and not expected to be played. When creating magic items, the spells required must be cast every day... so bad idea!

Look, if you don't want people to play casters, just say "no casters". It's hella simpler, and will result in far less tears.


No humanoids or monsterous humanoids (which includes all PCs) can use Spell Like abilities, except for those granted by the Binder and Warlock classes (since those classes draw their power from outside sources).

The game is Gestalt.

Low powered and Gestalt should never be used in the same game description. That's not what Gestalt does. Additionally, gestalt will increase differences in optimization between players.


All players heal rapidly when out of sight and no one's after them (fast healing equal to your HD, only when I as the DM decide you're between encounters).

Yay for fiat, and illogical, inconsistent rules.


Classes that had casting can, with DM permission, swap out their casting for any one other class substitution ability... for example, the Bard can swap casting for an Animal Companion because of the UA Fey Varient Bard.

So casters still suck...this is terrible.


Basically, it's a low magic heroic fantasy game. And remember, I like Tier 3 as a balance point. So what do these house rules do to balance?

Look, the tier system is interesting, but this is using it entirely wrong.


Well, Tier 1 and 2 are completely gone. All of them depend on spellcasting which is now nerfed, so most of those classes drop to Tier 5-6 (except the Druid, who's Tier 3... yeah, Wild Shape is that powerful). The top tier classes are now the normal Tier 3 guys plus the Druid, except that the Beguiler drops to around Tier 5/6 and the Dread Necromancer does too. Sadly, the Healer and Warmage are also nerfed, but they didn't fit in the campaign world anyway.

If healer and warmage both can't fit into your campaign world because they're too powerful, you probably shouldn't be playing D&D.


The gear changes mean certain specialized equipment dependent builds don't work (Warblade Crossbow archers, for example), and Wild Shape based classes get pumped up (Druids and Wild Shape Rangers) but otherwise changes are minimal as far as balance is concerned.

Wild shape basically becomes ridiculous. Likewise, the Bo9s classes. So, you have a few classes that definitely dominate the game. In other words, not really that different from how it was before the changes.

And seriously, Factotum is probably the best gestalting choice for almost any class.

[Flickerdart]

If you're going to do that, you might as well just ban spellcasting classes altogether, because unless someone has a huge stiffy for magic, they're not going to play that. The caster rules actually encourage people to use the most broken spells they can find, because every spell takes forever to prepare and has a chance of murdering them when cast. Even if they cast only one spell per encounter, past level 7, the amount of spells they need to prepare (four 4th level spells) to do that, plus the 8 hours of sleep, outstrips the total amount of hours in a day. 15 minute adventuring day? Try 15 minute adventuring month.

If you don't want people to play casters, ban casters. Don't bother with an elaborate set of houserules that will never come into play.

[Tyndmyr]

I admit, the malevolent side of me said "do a warforged(or necropolitan) artificer/factotum".

See, the artificer doesn't cast. They infuse. Sure, he'd likely rule it as a casting for creating items...but using a wand isn't casting. The casting happens every day when making it. Gleefully invest in necromancy stuff and the like. Point out that you're immune to the negative effects, and cast until you get it right every day.

Proceed to be the only tier 1 in the world with magic items AND vow of poverty, and break the game into tiny, tiny little pieces.

[Kesnit]

If healer and warmage both can't fit into your campaign world because they're too powerful, you probably shouldn't be playing D&D.

I think you are misreading the comment. Saying "Healer and Warmage are also nerfed" does not mean "I also made rules to nerf them." It means "Healer and Warmage were nerfed because they fall under the same rules I used to nerf other casters." In other words, they were an unintentional side effect.

[Kish]

Yes, as other people have said, this amounts to five unrelated rules:

1) I ban spells while pretending I'm not banning spells.
2) You all heal like you were in an MMORPG no matter how goofy and immersion-disruptive it is.
3) It's a gestalt game.
4) No magic items exist in this world.
5) You all gain the benefits of the Vow of Poverty feat, only slightly better, and none of the drawbacks.

[Kelb_Panthera]

This is just plain terrible. If you really want a low magic campaign, here are two, imo, solid options:

1) No Psionic manifesting classes (soulknife and psionic races are fine.) Divine casting is handled by adepts and arcane is handled by mage-wrights. Nothing that gets 9th level spells exists, including artificer and shadowcaster. Bard only exists as Prestige Bard. Ranger and Paladin must choose a non-spellcasting variant. Magic items are made primarily by warlocks and PrC's that get secrets of the forge. Otherwise, anything goes.

2) E6. That is all.

Either of these options works far better than the presented. Although, E6 is low power in general rather than just low magic. I do, solidly, advocate #1 though.

[Flickerdart]

1) No Psionic manifesting classes (soulknife and psionic races are fine.) Divine casting is handled by adepts and arcane is handled by mage-wrights.
Why no psionics? Divine Minds and Psychic Rogues don't have any more casting ability than adepts and magewrights.

[Gavinfoxx]

Wasn't this one of JaronK's earlier attempts at balance?

[Madara]

I can't wait to try out e6.

Hopefully it'll bring as much balance as some are suggesting.
On account of having only 3 PCs, I'm fine with them doing T1 since its e6. So we have a Druid and a Wizard so far, but I don't know what the third player will pick.
as for the OP, I really don't like the broad "No casting". I'm fine with dropping T1s, but my Ideal balance keeps T3 casters.

Quick question, semi-related: Is there a tier system for E6? Because some of the classes become stronger (I.E. Warlock). So I'd think standard tiers don't apply as much.

[Answerer]

Warlock doesn't particularly become stronger IMO.

Tome of Battle characters probably move up quite a bit, though honestly by 6 things have normalized pretty well.

[eggs]

Sounds dreadful.

Almost every change exaggerates the difference in players' optimization abilities (gestalt, making casting optimization-dependent, applying the Fighter's "feat-not-feature" element to every character, hugely rewarding splatbook diving for casters who can't muster the bonuses).

And character skill is already more problematic for character balance than class choice.

[Toliudar]

I think this works just great for a Conan/Fritz Lieber kind of campaign.

Casters don't actually become terrible until you're dealing with second level spells and up, since it's not terribly difficult to auto-succeed on the checks for 1st level spells. This means that having characters with just a dash of magical ability is easier to model. In a game like this, having one level of beguiler or druid would potentially be flavourful and useful.

It certainly does drive up the appeal of binders, wildshape rangers, warlocks and DFA's.

Clearly, anything that retains a bunch of SLA's becomes terrifying. Fiends, aberrations and angels become dramatically more challenging. Again, if you're going for Conan style low fantasy, that might be perfect.

[kitcik]

For all those people who just commented "you might as well ban casters" - did you see the following quote from the OP?

"The game is Gestalt."

[Tvtyrant]

I would play a Planar Shepard and be Tier 1 using bubbles and SLAs anyways, just to prove a point.

If you want to fix spellcasting that badly, I suggest ridding the game of all level 8 and 9 spells, and moving the spell progression so they get level 7 spells/powers/casting at character level 18. 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18. There, full casting and Artificer's fixed. Kill metamagic reducers and grant most of the casters better class features and you're done.

I am being serious, BTW. If you remove all of the spells, SLAs, and items that rely on them for 8th and 9th level casting you automatically haul every full caster down to tier 3 (albeit high up it), and get rid of a lot of the abuses built into the game. No Wish, no Miracle, no Polymorph Any Object, etc.

[Flickerdart]

For all those people who just commented "you might as well ban casters" - did you see the following quote from the OP?

"The game is Gestalt."
So what? The best you could hope from having a caster class on one side is a good Will save progression, since it doesn't make magic any less useless.

[Tyndmyr]

For all those people who just commented "you might as well ban casters" - did you see the following quote from the OP?

"The game is Gestalt."

That makes it worse, not better.

Aright, think of it this way. I'm playing a wizard/barbarian(presumably because I hate life and optimization. My bud is playing a barbarian/fighter(also not a great combo, but at least no casting). We're both human.

If we both swing swords, he's more effective than me, because he's got more things boosting his sword stabby.

If I try to cast...well, I certainly don't cast successfully. That's not reasonably possible after about second level spells. The saves, where they exist, are such that I will normally fail them. I gain essentially nothing from my wizard side, and the miscasting penalties actively hurt me.

No, gestalt doesn't fix this at all.

I can get around most of these restrictions, using high cheese, but then I'm an unrestricted high-cheese using caster in a world where nobody can reasonably even play on my level. Ever seen a tainted scholar dialed up to eleven? That's bad enough even if there ARE functioning tier 1s to pose a threat. Nerfing the people who try to play nice disproportionately hard? That's a very undesirable outcome.

[Wonton]

It sounds like it would be kinda interesting at early levels - level 1 and 2 spells still have a chance of being cast, at least. And I do like the idea of finding mundane solutions to problems instead of spell solutions - an Invisibility spell suddenly becomes very a risky proposition. This not only lets the Rogue who maxed Hide shine most of the time, but also suddenly makes it really cool if the party DOES manage to successfully use Invisibility.

Having said that, it's true that after that, it pretty much breaks down and casters become near-useless. So in terms of balance, this has an even smaller "sweet spot" than E6 - it only really works levels 1-4 or so.

[erikun]

This might be interesting to play as a Fighter or Crusader with a couple of levels in Cleric, although that's perhaps it. I guess that means Crusader//Fighter/Cleric is about the only think I'd play with this system. I hope lethal DMs don't mind seeing the same character repeatedly.

As others have mentioned, there are ways around the rules. Artificer is probably the most obvious, anything with energy drain immunity + Necromancy, and so on. Warforged Planar Shepards can use SLA freely, as they aren't humanoids and so don't run into the common restriction. For that matter, Beguiler / Dread Necromancer / Warmage classes never prepare spells, and so ignore the biggest restriction - hurray for Rainbow X-Snake classes for still breaking the game!


So yeah, perhaps as a curiosity, but you're trying to push the D&D system into territory that it doesn't really handle well. Expect high-level combat to be exceedingly annoying.

[Featherman]

I am not sure are these all good changes for that game and definitely not for every game but those requirements to use magic aren't completely prohibitive. Some things obviously need extra attention (like initiators) but the magic changes can be fine and the intent is clear.

If someone takes a level of wizard and studies some arcane knowledge they could try to cast Magic Weapon in order to overcome DR pretty reliably for example. At higher spell levels magic becomes very unpredictable and the time spent preparing spells might become prohibitive but that could very well be intentional. Many spell effects become much more potent and powerful if there are no magic items and generally can't be replaced (the things that can replace them but aren't affected by the changes are those that need the extra attention).

Gestalt makes things better for magic users as using magic is not their only option and because magic is often used to support other activities. By taking a few levels of a spellcasting class at the side you can get that support and perhaps even create a few of the valuable magic items. A barbarian/wizard 1 can overcome DR, summon a mount, disguise or charm someone while a barbarian/fighter 1 can fight better and more consistently. Second level spells are more unpredictable but they might be the only way to get some effects and you might be able to get something out of Craft Wondrous Item. And last but not least CL and spells known can give you access to something which again might be very useful and not easily replaced. Taking high levels in spellcasting is explicitly not intended but even then it gets you CL and spells known for prereqs.

Also of course you can break the rules if you try. D&D has a lot of content and if you want to try to make up some meaningful rules you risk breaking something. Trying to skip the penalties for spells or using the numerous spells-but-not-spells is most likely against the RAI however. Just because the rules are pretty limited and easily circumventable doesn't make them bad.

[Novawurmson]

I think an easier way to nerf spellcasters is to essentially treat the whole world as having spell resistance - to cast a spell, you need to make a caster level check equal with a DC of 10+(Effective Spell Level x2). Sure, your level 17 Wizard can cast 9th level spells, but it'll fail pretty frequently. Suddenly, low-level spell slots become your most useful abilities.

Alternatively, give all spells a failure chance of (spell level [min. 1])x5%. Level 1 spells only fail on a natural 1, 5th level spells fizzle a quarter of the time, and ninth level spells are a crapshoot.

[kitcik]

I think an easier way to nerf spellcasters is to essentially treat the whole world as having spell resistance - to cast a spell, you need to make a caster level check equal with a DC of 10+(Effective Spell Level x2). Sure, your level 17 Wizard can cast 9th level spells, but it'll fail pretty frequently. Suddenly, low-level spell slots become your most useful abilities.

Alternatively, give all spells a failure chance of (spell level [min. 1])x5%. Level 1 spells only fail on a natural 1, 5th level spells fizzle a quarter of the time, and ninth level spells are a crapshoot.

These suggestions have the virtue of simplicity. It would be difficult to significantly optimize these checks (depending on how you actually write them).

JaronK's suggestion is based on allowing the player to optimize their chance. Is a DC 90 spellcraft check really that hard at level 20? With proper optimization (which would cost the caster in terms of using up valuable feat, level and item resources), one would think it could be made automatically. That is why he has the fall-back of auto-failure on a roll of spell level or less. This basically means that if you optimize Spellcraft, JaronK's suggestion will exactly equal your second suggestion.

There might be a difficult bump at mid levels, like trying to get the DC 50 check for 5th level spells at 9th level, but overall is it really that hard to optimize the appropriate skill?

[Rubik]

Do note that factotums can't use their spellcasting abilities, since they're (Sp).

And yet factotum still kicks ass in gestalt.

[eggs]

There might be a difficult bump at mid levels, like trying to get the DC 50 check for 5th level spells at 9th level, but overall is it really that hard to optimize the appropriate skill?
If you've already done the splatbook-diving and already know all the places to turn for a skill increase, it's not bad at all. But for someone who hasn't put in the time to find all the crap that trivializes the check, like Improvisation, Guidance of the Avatar, Divine Insight, Item Familiars, etc., DC 90 is pretty forbidding. People complain about the Truenamer's relatively humble DC 55-75 checks.

So for the players who'd gravitate to Factotum//Incantatrixes already, I don't imagine this would be more than a hurdle (even the die roll can be skipped with skill mastery, aura of perfect order, etc.); but the players who would go for something less synergistic like Barbarian//Warmage, level 5+ spells probably just aren't happening.

[kitcik]

If you've already done the splatbook-diving and already know all the places to turn for a skill increase, it's not bad at all. But for someone who hasn't put in the time to find all the crap that trivializes the check, like Improvisation, Guidance of the Avatar, Divine Insight, Item Familiars, etc., DC 90 is pretty forbidding. People complain about the Truenamer's relatively humble DC 55-75 checks.

So for the players who'd gravitate to Factotum//Incantatrixes already, I don't imagine this would be more than a hurdle (even the die roll can be skipped with skill mastery, aura of perfect order, etc.); but the players who would go for something less synergistic like Barbarian//Warmage, level 5+ spells probably just aren't happening.

You're right of course, my point being that I fully expect JaronK's group to have done the splatbook-diving, etc. and that is who he wrote it for.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Why no psionics? Divine Minds and Psychic Rogues don't have any more casting ability than adepts and magewrights.

It comes down to the way psionics scales. Most of the powers with save DC's have built in heighten via augmentation. Damage dealing powers also don't run up against damage caps as often as spells do. I also forgot to say that you should nix hexblade and duskblade. The general idea is to remove all but the most basic spell effects unless they're tied to a PrC. You actually could get psionic manifesting via Psionic fist, war-mind, xerth cenobite, etc.

[Quellian-dyrae]

I think the rules are fine for what they're trying to be. Magic exists in the game world, but is not something adventurers are likely to use routinely. The rules also lend themselves nicely to saying high-level magic is possible using "ritual casting" type tactics. They take a long time (one hour per spell level), require substantial help (a lot of Aid Another actions to hit the high DC), and still carry a significant risk. And you need to be an experienced mage to cast them, which will be rare, since magic is so difficult and dangerous.

The healing rule could stand to be given some actual fluff, but that's not that difficult to add. As far as the mechanical goal of making healing less critical, it does what it's meant to do.

[Psyren]

To be fair, the "hidden check" for spellcasting isn't quite as painful in a gestalt situation when everyone can do other things. (Except theurges, they're screwed.)

But as others have said, this is still a terrible fix since it boils down to a functional ban on spellcasting. The arbitrary ban on psionics doesn't help.

But this certainly looks like a very dated "fix" to me, so I don't think it's fair to simply slap JaronK's name on it while ignoring that context. We all thought monks were cool at some point, after all.

[Spuddles]

But as others have said, this is still a terrible fix since it boils down to a functional ban on spellcasting. The arbitrary ban on psionics doesn't help.

"As such, spellcasters are HEAVILY nerfed, and not expected to be played."

Uh, I mean, it looks like he's going for that, you know?

[Psyren]

"As such, spellcasters are HEAVILY nerfed, and not expected to be played."

Uh, I mean, it looks like he's going for that, you know?

Uh, I mean, that's what makes it terrible, you know?

Basically, what Flickerdart said.

[Quellian-dyrae]

But as others have said, this is still a terrible fix since it boils down to a functional ban on spellcasting. The arbitrary ban on psionics doesn't help.

But this certainly looks like a very dated "fix" to me, so I don't think it's fair to simply slap JaronK's name on it while ignoring that context. We all thought monks were cool at some point, after all.

Why are these rules being looked at as a "fix" at all? Unless I'm wildly misinterpreting the post, they aren't trying to "balance" the tiers or "fix" magic or anything of the sort - they are explicitly trying to create a low-magic setting. As it happens, they are also being used as an example house rules that change the tiers and balance point of the game (in this case, making the otherwise top-tier classes bottom-tier by intentionally crippling their primary ability).

There's nothing wrong with house rules that massively nerf magic in a low-magic setting.

[ahenobarbi]

It's asking for geststalted tier 1 caster with benefits of VoP (and no drawbacks of it) in low-magic world.

Getting skill check high enough to cast should be easy. Preparation time would be annoying until plane shift.

[Togo]

It's interesting... I'm not sure I'd want to play it though.

First off, if you're going to make a whole load of rules changes to change the balance, encouraging players to optimise and min-max the system back again doesn't make much sense. Even something simple like a fighter master of many forms, or planar shepard, is going to be a high tier 2, and something more complex, like a gestalt drunken master with lots of templates, is still going to warp things in a way that will seem less acceptable now that tier 1 casters aren't around to take the blame.

Secondly it also hammers low tier classes heavily too. Things like fighter, which rely on stat specialisation and minor bonuses to hit combat, were already in trouble, but giving everyone VoP and taking away their ability to specialise with items hits them harder. Skill monkey classes don't have to compete with spells, but they still play second fiddle to skill boosting class abilities, which look like they are intended to dominate the game. Which means everyone ends up playing a book of 9 swords + factotum or similar, in an effort to max out class abilities in a world where combat ability is ubiquituous and spellcasting has all but been eliminated.

What Jaronk appears to want is a party of warrior/swashbuckler types. Everyone can fight, everyone has flavourful class abilities, magic isn't a theme. My approach would be simply to ask people to create characters like that, and then use my role as DM to ensure that magic and tier powers generally don't come up, either in character generation or on the other side. You don't need to change the game rules to change the style of play.

[Rejakor]

Why are people treating this set of rules designed to mimic a sword and sandals world where magic is weird, hard, but possibly incredibly powerful as some sort of general fix to DnD? It's obviously not intended as that.

Spell Level * 10 Spellcraft DC is actually perfectly appropriate IF YOU ARE TRYING TO PRIORITIZE THE USE OF LOW LEVEL SPELLS.

and derr, sword and sandals characters aren't fighting 4 CR appropriate encounters every day - conan fights like, one big ape guy per adventure, and that's his 'epic fight', everything else is climbing and dueling with like a bunch of mooks on a crumbling ledge, or having to flee from 30 bandits on his camel.

You'd also see a lot less uberchargers and whatever because the campaign model wouldn't require superhuman levels of optimization from melee classes to keep up, and there would be more fights against groups of crappy enemies or enemies with a strong weakness and strong attack form rather than 'generic thing with 150 hp and bite/claw/claw' thanks to the setting/trope being fulfilled.

[Psyren]

Fair enough, I missed the part about trying to create a low magic setting. I had thought this was another misguided attempt to bring casters "in line."

Though I still think you'd be better off with another system entirely in that case. You may as well make all spells rituals as try this.

[ahenobarbi]

Why are people treating this set of rules designed to mimic a sword and sandals world where magic is weird, hard, but possibly incredibly powerful as some sort of general fix to DnD? It's obviously not intended as that.

But it doesn't make magic "weird, hard, but possibly incredibly powerful". It makes casters optimize knowledge checks and go for most broken spells (because of preparation time).

[Killer Angel]

they are explicitly trying to create a low-magic setting.

Then I'll simply use Conan d20.


Though I still think you'd be better off with another system entirely in that case.

...

[Kish]

Why are people treating this set of rules designed to mimic a sword and sandals world where magic is weird, hard, but possibly incredibly powerful as some sort of general fix to DnD? It's obviously not intended as that.

Spell Level * 10 Spellcraft DC is actually perfectly appropriate IF YOU ARE TRYING TO PRIORITIZE THE USE OF LOW LEVEL SPELLS.
...Except for the thing where you auto-fail on a 1, even if you're a level 1 million caster casting a first-level spell, and any failure on one of those checks results in things like permanent Wisdom drain.

[Tyndmyr]

Why are these rules being looked at as a "fix" at all? Unless I'm wildly misinterpreting the post, they aren't trying to "balance" the tiers or "fix" magic or anything of the sort - they are explicitly trying to create a low-magic setting. As it happens, they are also being used as an example house rules that change the tiers and balance point of the game (in this case, making the otherwise top-tier classes bottom-tier by intentionally crippling their primary ability).

There's nothing wrong with house rules that massively nerf magic in a low-magic setting.

Sure there is. They nerf it in a terrible fashion. High-cheese options can still function basically the same as always, while low-cheese options are nerfed into worthlessness.

It increases the divide between the optimizers and the non-optimizers. This is wildly undesirable.

If you don't want casters in the party, just say "no casters". Done.


...Except for the thing where you auto-fail on a 1, even if you're a level 1 million caster casting a first-level spell, and any failure on one of those checks results in things like permanent Wisdom drain.

So, I'm a necropolitan incantatrix with metamagic reducers. I cast all my spells once every two days thanks to extend and persist. If one of my buff list fails, I sit down, prepare from my empty slots over fifteen minutes, and do it again. None of my spells are higher levels due to metamagic reducers, and hell, I'm cheesing spellcraft already anyway. May as well fold in know(Arcana).

I'm gleefully immune to things like wisdom drain, have all the buffs of the most broken T1 wizards ever, and have a buff list the length of my arm. Offense? Why, twinned and quickened twinned orbs, obviously. Even if the minor failure chance kicks in...I'm firing four orbs a turn, losing one or two is no big thing, and getting hit by an orb is basically death.

Oh, and on the other side, I take factotum and feat-granting classes, pumping font of inspiration a lot. Both sides are int-based. I now take basically arbitrary number of turns whenever I feel like it. Oh hey, factotum also allows my Know(arcana) checks to be ridiculously boosted.

Meanwhile, you're a fighter/barb with no magic items. This is why this is broken.

[Piggy Knowles]

Eh, I think people are overreacting.

Yes, it may have been more genuine to just say, "OK, spellcasters are banned." However, this is a proposal for a SETTING, not for a specific level of game balance. If the flavor of that setting is that magic exists, but is unreliable, dangerous and difficult to use, then this gets that across. It makes it functionally impossible for a high-level mage to work, but if someone REALLY wants to try, I guess they can.

If he's both eliminating magical gear and yet still planning on having standard monsters exist, then the pseudo-VoP is actually pretty essential to make sure that the characters aren't immediately shut down by most enemies. Since most monsters are (theoretically) designed with WBL in mind, it's an alternative to completely redesigning or re-CRing every single enemy they face. Some redesigns will still probably be necessary, but it helps. If he fluffed it as "PCs will automatically gain enhancement bonuses to their attacks as they level, as well as level-based bonuses to AC and saving throws, and the ability to bypass damage reduction, to compensate for the lack of magical gear" it would have sounded better.

Gestalt just gives players more options, since they won't have as many thanks to the (effective) lack of casting.

I think that it's honestly a pretty clunky solution in places, but I don't really get why people are reacting like this is the WORST THING THEY'VE EVER HEARD PROPOSED. Low magic settings are hard to implement well; this one does about as well as many others I've seen.

[Tyndmyr]

Eh, I think people are overreacting.

Yes, it may have been more genuine to just say, "OK, spellcasters are banned." However, this is a proposal for a SETTING, not for a specific level of game balance. If the flavor of that setting is that magic exists, but is unreliable, dangerous and difficult to use, then this gets that across. It makes it functionally impossible for a high-level mage to work, but if someone REALLY wants to try, I guess they can.

But it isn't low magic.

It produces overpowered god-casters, and gimped basically-commoners. Both of those are fine. Everything in between is dead.

I JUST posted a high-level mage build that would be ridiculously broken. It is not "functionally impossible".

[ahenobarbi]

Eh, I think people are overreacting.

Yes, it may have been more genuine to just say, "OK, spellcasters are banned." However, this is a proposal for a SETTING, not for a specific level of game balance. If the flavor of that setting is that magic exists, but is unreliable, dangerous and difficult to use, then this gets that across. It makes it functionally impossible for a high-level mage to work, but if someone REALLY wants to try, I guess they can.

But that's the problem. It widens the gap. By making optimized T1 even stronger.

[Featherman]

But it isn't low magic.

It produces overpowered god-casters, and gimped basically-commoners. Both of those are fine. Everything in between is dead.

I JUST posted a high-level mage build that would be ridiculously broken. It is not "functionally impossible".

As I said a few posts back that there is a lot of content and rules in D&D and trying to come up with pretty much any meaningful rules means that something is overlooked or broken. And this is not the case with just JaronK's ruling but many, many things in first party D&D as well. He didn't outright ban casters as he didn't want to do that. He made higher level spells unreliable and potentially dangerous as that was what he wanted to do. Because he implemented those things he probably wants people go through them in order to use magic. You can't play the sort of D&D people usually want to play with an attitude like that. Just as those rules can be bypassed so can almost any other rule in D&D as well.

There is a reason that the Players vs. DM is discouraged as not only does it prevent any sort of gameplay it just devolves into players trying to get around the rules. It is also a good thing to remember that it is not really player cleverness that enables many of these "rules breaches" and optimizations but assuming certain conditions and the cooperation of the DM with starting as high level characters being the most common.

[eggs]

If DC 90 is intended to be unreachable, why not just ban those spells? By leaving checks with that high of DC, it doesn't seem unfair to infer that some characters are supposed to be making those checks. And for an optimizer who wants to make them, auto-succeeding isn't hard at all - even with the secondary failure chance.

[Mr.Moron]

This system strikes me as... silly.

It breaks down like this, for the average game where someone isn't going into TO territory to max out their skill check.

1st Level Spells : Auto Pass
2nd Level Spells : Auto Pass
3rd Level Spells : Risky
4th Level Spells+: Auto Fail

However those 1st and 2nd level spells still add an amazing amount of utility. With gestalt, there is pretty much no reason not to take a 3/4 level investment into casting on one side in any build. Some casting is always the right choice and has minimal opportunity cost since you're still getting so much (BaB, HD, Saves) from your "Main" side.

[Tyndmyr]

As I said a few posts back that there is a lot of content and rules in D&D and trying to come up with pretty much any meaningful rules means that something is overlooked or broken. And this is not the case with just JaronK's ruling but many, many things in first party D&D as well. He didn't outright ban casters as he didn't want to do that. He made higher level spells unreliable and potentially dangerous as that was what he wanted to do. Because he implemented those things he probably wants people go through them in order to use magic. You can't play the sort of D&D people usually want to play with an attitude like that. Just as those rules can be bypassed so can almost any other rule in D&D as well.

The rules do not produce anything like the stated desired outcome. They also treat balance like a redheaded stepchild. Therefore, the rules are bad.

It's not about attitude. It's about if you want higher level spells to be "unreliable", then you are expecting me to have a possibility of pulling off DC 90 checks. I am not pulling off DC 90 checks with the sort of nice, friendly, unoptimized wizard that goes nicely with the party and poses no problem for the DM.

No, that kind of wizard just can't cast most levels of spells at all, and is basically worthless. This system actively punishes the caster who wants to play nice.

[Yora]

I join the crowd that says "E6".

Or Dragon Age RPG.

[Man on Fire]

10* spell level? Really? That scales terribly. Consider, people gripe about a truenamer having to make a DC 55 check at level 20 to have a 100% chance of it going off successfully.

In comparison, at level 17, a wizard would have to make a DC 90. And it's not automatic. There's an unmitigated 45% failure chance, even with all the +knowledge in the world.

When you've hit "significantly less balanced that a truenamer", you've probably done something terribly wrong. I would seriously advocate playing a truenamer LONG before playing a caster under these rules.



Look, if you don't want people to play casters, just say "no casters". It's hella simpler, and will result in far less tears.



Low powered and Gestalt should never be used in the same game description. That's not what Gestalt does. Additionally, gestalt will increase differences in optimization between players.



Yay for fiat, and illogical, inconsistent rules.



So casters still suck...this is terrible.



Look, the tier system is interesting, but this is using it entirely wrong.



If healer and warmage both can't fit into your campaign world because they're too powerful, you probably shouldn't be playing D&D.



Wild shape basically becomes ridiculous. Likewise, the Bo9s classes. So, you have a few classes that definitely dominate the game. In other words, not really that different from how it was before the changes.

And seriously, Factotum is probably the best gestalting choice for almost any class.

That post had reminded me what I hate about D&D. It promises us system that can recreate any type of fantasy, but utterly and completely fails at doing so. It's impossible to play game in climate of Conan or Black Company in it, not without massive homebrewing and/or banning, because it's constructed the way to make everybody suck wizard's wiener.

[kitcik]

If DC 90 is intended to be unreachable, why not just ban those spells? By leaving checks with that high of DC, it doesn't seem unfair to infer that some characters are supposed to be making those checks. And for an optimizer who wants to make them, auto-succeeding isn't hard at all - even with the secondary failure chance.

DC 90 is not intended to be unreachable - hence the autofail on a check of spell level or lower. DC 90 forces you to use resources to achieve it (that could have otherwise made you more powerful), while still giving 9th level spells a 45% chance of failure (not to mention long prep time).

Does it work perfectly? No, several people above have mentioned ways around it (spells that are treated as SLAs, Plane Shift to a different time continuum, etc.). However, it seems like an interesting and potentially workable (if the players agree of course) system.

[kitcik]

The rules do not produce anything like the stated desired outcome. They also treat balance like a redheaded stepchild. Therefore, the rules are bad.

It's not about attitude. It's about if you want higher level spells to be "unreliable", then you are expecting me to have a possibility of pulling off DC 90 checks. I am not pulling off DC 90 checks with the sort of nice, friendly, unoptimized wizard that goes nicely with the party and poses no problem for the DM.

No, that kind of wizard just can't cast most levels of spells at all, and is basically worthless. This system actively punishes the caster who wants to play nice.

Maybe these rules would not produce the desired outcome with your group, but that does not mean they would not produce the desired outcome with any group, like, say, JaronK's group.

If the players agreed to the system and did not try to ruin its goals through SLA / time cheese (even though not banned), but rather weighed the cost/benefit of trying a caster side in their gestalt under these rules (costs: unreliability, use of resources to overcome DC, chance of backfire // benefits: duh, casting), then I think it could work {"work" in the sense of reducing caster domination in this low magic world).

But, like any game, playtesting would be required. I would be curious if he ever used it and what the outcome was.

[Wyntonian]

Wasn't this one of JaronK's earlier attempts at balance?

I imagine it must be. This strikes me as more of a mind-dump than a well-thought-out constitution of gamerhood, as epitomized by a devotion to the concepts of balance and fun for all.

[Menteith]

That post had reminded me what I hate about D&D. It promises us system that can recreate any type of fantasy, but utterly and completely fails at doing so. It's impossible to play game in climate of Conan or Black Company in it, not without massive homebrewing and/or banning, because it's constructed the way to make everybody suck wizard's wiener.

So just ban the Wizard and other Tier 1s? Most games I've run, Beguilers, Bardic Sages, and Warmages are used in lieu of the balance shattering ones, and it's been fine. I don't love the idea of banning content, but the system is fine so long as everyone's clear on how powerful their character should be. This holds true for both the DM and players, naturally. It doesn't matter what's written on your sheet, if you're throwing around Fireballs, casting Solid Fog, or Summon Monster X, you can be treated as a Wizard without altering a setting's fluff most of the time.

[eggs]

DC 90 is not intended to be unreachable - hence the autofail on a check of spell level or lower. DC 90 forces you to use resources to achieve it (that could have otherwise made you more powerful), while still giving 9th level spells a 45% chance of failure (not to mention long prep time).
Have you met the Incantatrix? Forcing the Wizard to crank spellcraft isn't going to rein its power in even slightly.

(Skill Mastery might force a level dip or multi-feat investment, but that's still not a meaningful weakness.)

[kitcik]

Have you met the Incantatrix? Forcing the Wizard to crank spellcraft isn't going to rein its power in even slightly.

(Skill Mastery might force a level dip or multi-feat investment, but that's still not a meaningful weakness.)

Once you reach the DC, you still have a {spell level} x 5% chance of failure, with backfire. And a 1 hour per spell level prep time for each spell.

You really don't think a 45% chance of backfire on a 9th level spell reins in power?

As I said in a prior post, I am assuming that if you actually agreed to play this system with your DM, as an ongoing campaign and not as some "beat my system" challenge, you:
- WOULD crank your spellcraft to the max
- would NOT find a way to cheesily ignore the restrictions (in the same way that you do not try to play Pun Pun under standard rules)

[eggs]

You really don't think a 45% chance of backfire on a 9th level spell reins in power?
It's more that I really don't think someone who casts spells won't find a way to take 10.

[Tyndmyr]

That post had reminded me what I hate about D&D. It promises us system that can recreate any type of fantasy, but utterly and completely fails at doing so. It's impossible to play game in climate of Conan or Black Company in it, not without massive homebrewing and/or banning, because it's constructed the way to make everybody suck wizard's wiener.

That is...probably an overstatement. You can easily play such a game at low levels with no adjustments whatsoever. Wizards are not a major problem at all at say, level four.


Maybe these rules would not produce the desired outcome with your group, but that does not mean they would not produce the desired outcome with any group, like, say, JaronK's group.

If the players agreed to the system and did not try to ruin its goals through SLA / time cheese (even though not banned), but rather weighed the cost/benefit of trying a caster side in their gestalt under these rules (costs: unreliability, use of resources to overcome DC, chance of backfire // benefits: duh, casting), then I think it could work {"work" in the sense of reducing caster domination in this low magic world).

But, like any game, playtesting would be required. I would be curious if he ever used it and what the outcome was.

If they didn't, then they either just didn't play a caster, or only dipped caster. The same results could be had by a one sentence restriction without the possibility for imbalance.

And yes, any group, if they REALLY try, can make any set of rules work, more or less. That does not make those rules good. It takes more compensation to make these rules work than for core D&D. That makes them a net change for the worse.


I imagine it must be. This strikes me as more of a mind-dump than a well-thought-out constitution of gamerhood, as epitomized by a devotion to the concepts of balance and fun for all.

I'm sure of it...Jaron's usually pretty decent for balance, and has a good general understanding of the game. I can only imagine that this was created prior to gaining that.

[Menteith]

As I said in a prior post, I am assuming that if you actually agreed to play this system with your DM, as an ongoing campaign and not as some "beat my system" challenge, you:
- WOULD crank your spellcraft to the max
- would NOT find a way to cheesily ignore the restrictions (in the same way that you do not try to play Pun Pun under standard rules)

I would do what the DM wanted. The thing is, I would already do that without completely gutting a number of appropriate character concepts. This makes fair casters like the Bard, Paladin, Ranger, Beguiler, Warmage, Healer, Dread Necromancer, Duskblade - or even toned down Tier 1s (yes, it's entirely possible to intentionally tone down optimization) completely unplayable while not actually doing enough to stop the high end abuses that it's designed to stop. It effectively bans the fair options while leaving the grossly overpowered options viable. It removes a substantial part of the game (the problem with banning) without actually giving the benefits of a well thought out banning (decent game balance, opening up new characters who are now viable, allows a campaign to run without Speak to Dead/Teleport/Gate ruining it, etc). This is why it's a really bad idea.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That post had reminded me what I hate about D&D. It promises us system that can recreate any type of fantasy, but utterly and completely fails at doing so. It's impossible to play game in climate of Conan or Black Company in it, not without massive homebrewing and/or banning, because it's constructed the way to make everybody suck wizard's wiener.

The system can recreate your fantasy setting of choice with fairly minimal adjustment, as long as the playgroup agrees on which type of fantasy environment they want. E.g. conan: group, including DM, agrees to avoid casters and monsters of significant supernatural power. If conan types don't get magic items (I have only the vaguest knowledge of the setting) then you adopt UA's class based Ac and there you have it. You don't have to use any part of the system you don't like. This is why some groups ignore ToB, for example.

[Featherman]

The rules do not produce anything like the stated desired outcome. They also treat balance like a redheaded stepchild. Therefore, the rules are bad.

It's not about attitude. It's about if you want higher level spells to be "unreliable", then you are expecting me to have a possibility of pulling off DC 90 checks. I am not pulling off DC 90 checks with the sort of nice, friendly, unoptimized wizard that goes nicely with the party and poses no problem for the DM.

No, that kind of wizard just can't cast most levels of spells at all, and is basically worthless. This system actively punishes the caster who wants to play nice.

It's not about the DC 90 check really but more about using something like a necropolitan incantatrix (which might not be possible as the Negative Energy Plane IIRC doesn't exist in Faerun anymore, though I don't really know) to avoid having to deal with the consequences of the failed spells. But it is an attitude problem if you try to abuse the rules in order to prove a point or something especially in ways that rely on DM cooperation, agreements and the world. Just because there are ways to abuse the rules in some circumstances doesn't mean that they are bad for all games.

I don't know what you mean with punishing casters who play nice. Adding risk and difficulty to spellcasting is obviously intentional. It just doesn't cover every loophole and substitute.

[Goggalor]

No humanoids or monsterous humanoids (which includes all PCs) can use Spell Like abilities, except for those granted by the Binder and Warlock classes (since those classes draw their power from outside sources).

For those saying they would get around the rules/stick it to the DM by using SLAs, the above quote is from the original post.

[Man on Fire]

So just ban the Wizard and other Tier 1s? Most games I've run, Beguilers, Bardic Sages, and Warmages are used in lieu of the balance shattering ones, and it's been fine. I don't love the idea of banning content, but the system is fine so long as everyone's clear on how powerful their character should be. This holds true for both the DM and players, naturally. It doesn't matter what's written on your sheet, if you're throwing around Fireballs, casting Solid Fog, or Summon Monster X, you can be treated as a Wizard without altering a setting's fluff most of the time.

As I said, if I have to ban several classes to make the game do what it promised me to do when I bought it, then the game's rules are broken.


That is...probably an overstatement. You can easily play such a game at low levels with no adjustments whatsoever. Wizards are not a major problem at all at say, level four.

Problem is when you want to play games where wizards are not on a low level and you don't want them to dominate the game. Playing D&D in setting of Black Company and trying to bring up it's style and the way they deal with wizards would be impossible. In this series wizards are very powerful, especially guys like Ten Who Were Taken, who could be at least epic levels in D&D, yet are defeated by bunch of normal soldiers or people very under their level of power, by using tricks and opportunity that wouldn't work in D&D without me banning half of the wizard's spell list. Conan the Barbarian and similiar heroic fantasy characters often face powerful wizards which they kill, something that's not possible in D&D, where wizard at their level of power would rape them at ten different reasons in one minute.

[Menteith]

As I said, if I have to ban several classes to make the game do what it promised me to do when I bought it, then the game's rules are broken.

Then just run the game and ask people not to abuse TO strategies? I can find a way to break almost every system if I work at it long enough; D&D has simply had the most people working at breaking it long enough that common ways have become well known. If you're determined to not enjoy the game, then more power to you I guess, but I can say that I haven't had an issue with people heavily optimizing when I ask them not to. The more I think about your statement, the more confused I get....the game is broken because potentially a player could create a character that wouldn't fit into the game type you'd want to play, so the game must suck because of it? Could you explain your thought process a bit more to me here, because I'm really confused....

[Man on Fire]

Then just run the game and ask people not to abuse TO strategies? I can find a way to break almost every system if I work at it long enough; D&D has simply had the most people working at breaking it long enough that common ways have become well known. If you're determined to not enjoy the game, then more power to you I guess, but I can say that I haven't had an issue with people heavily optimizing when I ask them not to. The more I think about your statement, the more confused I get....the game is broken because potentially a player could create a character that wouldn't fit into the game type you'd want to play, so the game must suck because of it? Could you explain your thought process a bit more to me here, because I'm really confused....

D&d's appeal is that I can play game in tone similiar to any kind of fantasy I ever seen. But rules support only the high-powered high-fantasy type of game, in order to play low-powered game, game reflecting low-fantasy or heroic fantasy, I need to ban or change so many things that it becomes too much work to even bother. It's not my problem that the game allows what you says, my problem is that it promises to give me tools to create any type of fantasy game I want and doesn't do it, most of subgenre gets no support at all, game supports only the most known one. It would be fine if that was D&D's appeal, but it's not. Earthdawn doesn't support any low-fantasy game, but it's clear it's created especially for people who wants to play higly-powered mix of high and heroic fantasy, so game gives us what it promised. D&D does not.

[eggs]

d20/D&D is pretty far from generic. Levels create a pulpish atmosphere where the best scientists also have the best kung-fu, rules and character traits gravitate to hacking up monsters, the rules crumble numerically without characters accumulating magic items, chase scenes just don't work, the difference between success and failure is binary and swingy and noncombat problemsolving is trivialized by flippant mechanics. And that's before getting into details like what specific classes exist, and what they do.

I hold that against d20 Modern, since it poses as a generic all-purpose system, and is subpar for most of the purposes where I've seen it applied.

But I've never seen D&D posed as a generic fantasy system. Just picking up the PHB, it's pretty clear that it's a game where an orc with a mohawk, an Eldritch Abomination wizard and a man dressed entirely in belts run into holes, shuffle around on battlegrids, then cart out big piles of swag. If it does that well and doesn't pretend to be Conan, I don't know why not being Conan would be a problem.

[Menteith]

D&d's appeal is that I can play game in tone similiar to any kind of fantasy I ever seen. But rules support only the high-powered high-fantasy type of game, in order to play low-powered game, game reflecting low-fantasy or heroic fantasy, I need to ban or change so many things that it becomes too much work to even bother. It's not my problem that the game allows what you says, my problem is that it promises to give me tools to create any type of fantasy game I want and doesn't do it, most of subgenre gets no support at all, game supports only the most known one. It would be fine if that was D&D's appeal, but it's not. Earthdawn doesn't support any low-fantasy game, but it's clear it's created especially for people who wants to play higly-powered mix of high and heroic fantasy, so game gives us what it promised. D&D does not.

I would say that there is far more in D&D that supports a low power game than a high power game. Entire sections of the rules - most combat maneuvers (including mounted combat), most classes, both base and PrC, most skills, most feats, and most magic items aren't very high power. The game is much better at supporting a lower power campaign than a high powered one, simply because most stuff isn't high power.

Now, if a player or DM is seeking a way to break the power level of a game, they'll technically have the means available to do so. But if everyone wants to play a lower power game, the game supports that just fine.

[ahenobarbi]

For those saying they would get around the rules/stick it to the DM by using SLAs, the above quote is from the original post.

But the problem isn't SLA's. The problem is that you have:

1. Non casters, weakened by the "fix".
2. Sucking casters, weakened by the "fix" a lot.

and

3. Optimized casters not caring about the "fix", even more powerful than usually.

so this "fix" widens power gap. Of course you could play it "as intended" (rare, powerful, unreliable magic) but there are better, easier, cleaner ways to do it ("guys play casters, it's ultra-rare in this campaign. BTW not I'll flip a coin every time they cast to check if it worked").

[Goggalor]

But the problem isn't SLA's. The problem is that you have:

1. Non casters, weakened by the "fix".
2. Sucking casters, weakened by the "fix" a lot.

and

3. Optimized casters not caring about the "fix", even more powerful than usually.

so this "fix" widens power gap. Of course you could play it "as intended" (rare, powerful, unreliable magic) but there are better, easier, cleaner ways to do it ("guys play casters, it's ultra-rare in this campaign. BTW not I'll flip a coin every time they cast to check if it worked").

How are optimized casters not caring about the "fix"? To work with the "fix", you are applying resources (feats, items, etc.) to increase a check instead of using those resources to boost your magic (metamagic, applying for prestiges, etc.). Even then, it is not all that reliable for the higher spell levels.

Edit: Reworded the second sentence.

[ahenobarbi]

How are optimized casters not caring about the "fix"?

Because you get more out of it than you invest (lots of extra feats, gestalt, bonuses vs optimizing skill check).

Because you can easily undo negative effects of failure with minimum effort (restoration, turn undoing & rememorizing spell).

EDIT: As for non reliable high level spells - turn undoing, scry & die, summoning/calling someone with reliable SLAs, polymorph cheese + no one around can do this.

[kitcik]

Because you get more out of it than you invest (lots of extra feats, gestalt, bonuses vs optimizing skill check).

Because you can easily undo negative effects of failure with minimum effort (restoration, turn undoing & rememorizing spell).

EDIT: As for non reliable high level spells - turn undoing, scry & die, summoning/calling someone with reliable SLAs, polymorph cheese + no one around can do this.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that everything in your email except "calling someone with reliable SLAs" is ok and intended, but that totally cheesing around the rules or using time acceleration is not.

Now, you are a 15th level wizard/factotum gestalt in a party where everyone else is gestalted melee / skill monkey (no other casters). You generally partake of the "typical" adventuring day, where you spend a good part of the day actively adventuring and using resources. You have optimized your spellcraft and can reliably make DC 70 and reasonably make DC 80 checks.

What spells do you prep? Keep in mind:
- each spell requires 1 hour of prep time per spell level
- your party is not going to wait 7+ days for you to memorize your spells, they have a schedule dammit!
- even assuming you make your DCs, your spells have the following chance of not just failing but backfiring on you (potentially when the party is under duress): 1st 5%, 2nd 10%... 6th 30%, 7th 35%, 8th 40%
- some of the non-spell resources you could have used to get around the potential backfires have been used to optimize spellcraft

It seems to me that this is a non-trivial, although not terminal, nerf on casters - which is what I think it was intended to be. Although, as I said above, playtesting is required.

[Man on Fire]

But I've never seen D&D posed as a generic fantasy system. Just picking up the PHB, it's pretty clear that it's a game where an orc with a mohawk, an Eldritch Abomination wizard and a man dressed entirely in belts run into holes, shuffle around on battlegrids, then cart out big piles of swag. If it does that well and doesn't pretend to be Conan, I don't know why not being Conan would be a problem.

I, however, did seen D&D posing as generic fantasy game, first commercials for the game I ever seen claimed openly that you can everything from Conan to Lord of the Rings. That turned out to be a lie, you can play Lord of the Rings, but Conan will end up as a sad middle finger to the spirit of entire heroic fantasy genre, when lame wizard f***s Conan in the anus. If game is adversized as allowing me to play any king of fantasy subgenre and it's not, then it failed to do, what it was cleary made for and I was lied to. I don't play Talisanta, because it adversizes itself with large "NO ELVES!" sing and yet has three races of Elves with changed names, either.


I would say that there is far more in D&D that supports a low power game than a high power game. Entire sections of the rules - most combat maneuvers (including mounted combat), most classes, both base and PrC, most skills, most feats, and most magic items aren't very high power. The game is much better at supporting a lower power campaign than a high powered one, simply because most stuff isn't high power.

Now, if a player or DM is seeking a way to break the power level of a game, they'll technically have the means available to do so. But if everyone wants to play a lower power game, the game supports that just fine.

Wizards still exist in Low Fantasy, they are just much weaker or in other way limited. In berserk Shrieke is very powerful, but it takes her forever to cast a stronger spell. In D&D it's very hard to reflect that without making casters inplayable and rules doesn't help at all.

More than that, in low fantasy magic items should be rarer and you clearly couldn't be able to just enchance your sword or buy one already enchanced in a shop. Yet the futher in levels you go, the more and more monsters require you to have magic items, more of them and stronger as you progreses. Most of low-fantasy games in D&D ends up as stories about bad DM who tried to keep unfair advantage over party for that reason.

With Heroic Fantasy it's similiar. In stories like Conan most of times character i either only partially magical (like Gray Mouser from "Fahrd and Gray Mouser" series, Elric from "Elric Saga") or knows no magic at all (Conan, Fahrd, Thorgal), yet defeats powerful wizards with his wits, skill or strength of body and will. In D&D you have to heavily nerf casters for it to work, because as they are now the only good way to kill a caster is to be a caster.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Sure there is. They nerf it in a terrible fashion. High-cheese options can still function basically the same as always, while low-cheese options are nerfed into worthlessness.

It increases the divide between the optimizers and the non-optimizers. This is wildly undesirable.

I'd argue this point for two reasons. First, this is basically the DM saying, "This next game is going to be low-magic. Magic isn't intended for PCs; it's simply not a viable option. Here are the mechanics of it." If there's really a player in the group who is saying, "Hmm, I can super-charge my Knowledge checks and exploit metamagic reduces to be able to cast basically without problem and be the most powerful character in the setting!" you have a problem that extends way beyond your setting house rules.

Second, even if you pump your Knowledge through the roof (which I wasn't sure was even doable under these rules, but pushing my knowledge of skill-optimization to its limits, I could come up with a +60-70 with some amount of generosity on the DM's part), you're still looking at a flat 5%/spell level chance of a serious backlash. There's...not much wiggle-room there.


If you don't want casters in the party, just say "no casters". Done.

That's a perfectly viable option, as is E6, or playing another system entirely. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of this system is that it creates a low-magic setting, defines why magic is so rare mechanically, and doesn't restrict the potential power of other classes.

[Menteith]

Snip

Can we assume that I'm an Incandrix who's using Persist Spell and Extend Spell to create 48 long buffs of horrifying power on themselves, cast back at their sanctum? Because no one's going to be able to remove any of those now, given the huge problems with in combat casting, but that doesn't stop me from Persisting enough effects to make me unstoppable.

[ahenobarbi]

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that everything in your email except "calling someone with reliable SLAs" is ok and intended, but that totally cheesing around the rules or using time acceleration is not.

Now, you are a 15th level wizard/factotum gestalt in a party where everyone else is gestalted melee / skill monkey (no other casters). You generally partake of the "typical" adventuring day, where you spend a good part of the day actively adventuring and using resources. You have optimized your spellcraft and can reliably make DC 70 and reasonably make DC 80 checks.

What spells do you prep? Keep in mind:
- each spell requires 1 hour of prep time per spell level
- your party is not going to wait 7+ days for you to memorize your spells, they have a schedule dammit!
- even assuming you make your DCs, your spells have the following chance of not just failing but backfiring on you (potentially when the party is under duress): 1st 5%, 2nd 10%... 6th 30%, 7th 35%, 8th 40%
- some of the non-spell resources you could have used to get around the potential backfires have been used to optimize spellcraft

It seems to me that this is a non-trivial, although not terminal, nerf on casters - which is what I think it was intended to be. Although, as I said above, playtesting is required.

It depends on negative effects of failed spell - I might need some cleric levels for undoing negative effects of failed spells. Also some scrolls for recovery (in case prepared spells fail). And contingent spells for when I really need to cast.

15 level so I have polymorph any object... yeah. I don't think there would be a problem with breaking a game. Since you know it's kind of permanent buff :smallcool:

[Goggalor]

Because you get more out of it than you invest (lots of extra feats, gestalt, bonuses vs optimizing skill check).

Because you can easily undo negative effects of failure with minimum effort (restoration, turn undoing & rememorizing spell).

EDIT: As for non reliable high level spells - turn undoing, scry & die, summoning/calling someone with reliable SLAs, polymorph cheese + no one around can do this.

When preparing a spell (or preparing a spell slot, which spontaneous casters must do), you must take 1 hour per level of the spell. At the end, the DM makes a hidden DC 10*spell level check, where any D20 roll equal to or less than the level of the spell is an automatic failure. The skill for the check is Knowledge Nature for nature casters (Druids, Rangers, etc), Knowledge Religeon for divine casters (Clerics, Paladins, etc), and Spellcraft for arcane casters (Wizards, Bards, etc). When you try to cast the spell, if you've succeeded on the check it goes off normally. If you fail, the spell fails and you take a backlash effect, randomly chosen depending on the school of the spell you tried to cast (so failed necromancy spells do things like cause permanent wisdom decreases and negative energy damage, failed conjurations summon powerful things that attack you or teleport you into physical objects, etc). The save DC against backlash effects, if there's a save at all, is 5*spell level. Every time you cast a spell there's a chance of dying. As such, spellcasters are HEAVILY nerfed, and not expected to be played. When creating magic items, the spells required must be cast every day... so bad idea!

How are you going to get around 1 hour PER SPELL LEVEL to prepare? The DM and the group are just going to give you time to do so?

Also, how are you going to pump your spellcraft and/or knowledge checks to reliably cast your spells? Use magic items? Which need to be recharged every day to use by the same spells you need to prepare?

Simply speaking, any player that would play typical spellcasters in this setting would/should be left by the party as they went along their merry way, while the player sits around preparing his/her spells.

[ahenobarbi]

I'd argue this point for two reasons. First, this is basically the DM saying, "This next game is going to be low-magic. Magic isn't intended for PCs; it's simply not a viable option. Here are the mechanics of it."

If you don't have OOC problem the bold part should be enough.

[Menteith]

Wizards still exist in Low Fantasy, they are just much weaker or in other way limited. In berserk Shrieke is very powerful, but it takes her forever to cast a stronger spell. In D&D it's very hard to reflect that without making casters inplayable and rules doesn't help at all.

More than that, in low fantasy magic items should be rarer and you clearly couldn't be able to just enchance your sword or buy one already enchanced in a shop. Yet the futher in levels you go, the more and more monsters require you to have magic items, more of them and stronger as you progreses. Most of low-fantasy games in D&D ends up as stories about bad DM who tried to keep unfair advantage over party for that reason.

With Heroic Fantasy it's similiar. In stories like Conan most of times character i either only partially magical (like Gray Mouser from "Fahrd and Gray Mouser" series, Elric from "Elric Saga") or knows no magic at all (Conan, Fahrd, Thorgal), yet defeats powerful wizards with his wits, skill or strength of body and will. In D&D you have to heavily nerf casters for it to work, because as they are now the only good way to kill a caster is to be a caster.

That's fair enough. I'd point out that there are lower power classes who can still be decent casters (With Bard alone, I can be a Savage Divine Bard as a shaman or spiritual caster, a Bardic Sage as a more urbane, bookish caster with lots of esoteric knowledge, or a Bardblade who's capable of using magic to enhance martial prowess, all of whom are reasonable), but you're absolutely right that it's hard to make certain classes play well with others (especially from the PHB alone, worst book in D&D yes/yes?). Good points Man on Fire - D&D, without substantial changes made is really bad about supporting low magic.

[ahenobarbi]

When preparing a spell (or preparing a spell slot, which spontaneous casters must do), you must take 1 hour per level of the spell. At the end, the DM makes a hidden DC 10*spell level check, where any D20 roll equal to or less than the level of the spell is an automatic failure. The skill for the check is Knowledge Nature for nature casters (Druids, Rangers, etc), Knowledge Religeon for divine casters (Clerics, Paladins, etc), and Spellcraft for arcane casters (Wizards, Bards, etc). When you try to cast the spell, if you've succeeded on the check it goes off normally. If you fail, the spell fails and you take a backlash effect, randomly chosen depending on the school of the spell you tried to cast (so failed necromancy spells do things like cause permanent wisdom decreases and negative energy damage, failed conjurations summon powerful things that attack you or teleport you into physical objects, etc). The save DC against backlash effects, if there's a save at all, is 5*spell level. Every time you cast a spell there's a chance of dying. As such, spellcasters are HEAVILY nerfed, and not expected to be played. When creating magic items, the spells required must be cast every day... so bad idea!

How are you going to get around 1 hour PER SPELL LEVEL to prepare? The DM and the group are just going to give you time to do so?
When DM says this will be low magic campaign:
- I'll agree to do it, no weird house rules needed
- I'll try to munchkin 'round and not care about DM and don't care about that time

both ways the house rule doesn't matter.


Also, how are you going to pump your spellcraft and/or knowledge checks to reliably cast your spells? Use magic items? Which need to be recharged every day to use by the same spells you need to prepare?

Factotum gestalt. Magic items (I need to cast only at creation time! And I can wish for them in late game to reduce failure chances...) And feats (I get tons of them now thanks to improved VoP and gestalt) And spells (you know some schools may have not so bad penalties for failure) And help another...


Simply speaking, any player that would play typical spellcasters in this setting would/should be left by the party as they went along their merry way, while the player sits around preparing his/her spells.

Soooo....? DM could just have said "we're playin' low-magic game, don't play casters"

[Goggalor]

When DM says this will be low magic campaign:
- I'll agree to do it, no weird house rules needed
- I'll try to munchkin 'round and not care about DM and don't care about that time

both ways the house rule doesn't matter.

How does it not matter? The DM is just going to hand-wave it away only for your character, even though he is enforcing for the rest of the game world? The rules are there and the other people around the table are not going to wait.


Factotum gestalt. Magic items (I need to cast only at creation time! And I can wish for them in late game to reduce failure chances...) And feats (I get tons of them now thanks to improved VoP and gestalt) And spells (you know some schools may have not so bad penalties for failure) And help another...

-Read the original post again: it states very clearly you have to recast the spells for the magic item every day, so that negates that plan. This would also apply to scrolls as they are magic items.

-Help another over the course of the entire preparation of the spell? I guess if you hire a mook that has a high enough check.

-Which feats specifically, as many do not stack with themselves because of being of the same bonus?


Soooo....? DM could just have said "we're playin' low-magic game, don't play casters"

The DM could also say, "don't play melee", "don't play humans", or any number of other rules, but this is what was decided by the DM. You are not bound by the DM to have play in his/her game. The door will be in the same place that you came through it (unless, of course, you're in some crazy mansion, but then you have other issues besides disagreeing with the rules).

[Kelb_Panthera]

Okay. If my admittedly limited knowledge of conan's setting is correct, how's this:

Core + UA

All full casters banned except adept. This includes Brd, Clr, Drd, Src, and Wiz.

Adept refluffed as arcane. The only mechanical change being the addition of asf.

If magic items are out, use UA's class based ac variant.

Done.

[kitcik]

Can we assume that I'm an Incandrix who's using Persist Spell and Extend Spell to create 48 long buffs of horrifying power on themselves, cast back at their sanctum? Because no one's going to be able to remove any of those now, given the huge problems with in combat casting, but that doesn't stop me from Persisting enough effects to make me unstoppable.

Yeah, sure. Remind me not to DM for you. After we agree on a low-magic game where casters are inhibited, this is really what you'd do? Based on my prior post, which you snipped so I have reproduced a portion below, you wouldn't consider this "cheesing around the rules"? Sure, there are broken things in D&D which this campaign suggestion does not fix - did you expect a miracle in 1/2 page? Does the fact that you can lay on the cheese show that this system is any more or less broken than 3.5 already is? Are you playing Pun Pun in your current campaign "because you can"?

"Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that everything in your email except "calling someone with reliable SLAs" is ok and intended, but that totally cheesing around the rules or using time acceleration is not."

[Menteith]

Yeah, sure. Remind me not to DM for you. After we agree on a low-magic game where casters are inhibited, this is really what you'd do? Based on my prior post, which you snipped so I have reproduced a portion below, you wouldn't consider this "cheesing around the rules"? Sure, there are broken things in D&D which this campaign suggestion does not fix - did you expect a miracle in 1/2 page? Does the fact that you can lay on the cheese show that this system is any more or less broken than 3.5 already is? Are you playing Pun Pun in your current campaign "because you can"?

"Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that everything in your email except "calling someone with reliable SLAs" is ok and intended, but that totally cheesing around the rules or using time acceleration is not."

Please don't snipe at me when I'm trying to prove a point. As an aside - I've never actually run a straight Wizard in any campaign; my last three characters have been an optimized Paladin, a Divine Bard Geomancer/Sand Shaper with Southern Magician, and an Ashworm Dragoon, because I enjoy playing at that power level.

Here's why I asked if I could play an Incandrix. The rules are designed to inhibit the game breaking aspects of casting. They do so to the point that they completely remove the effectiveness of the balanced magic classes. They do far too little to impact to effectiveness of the absurdly powerful magic classes (like Incandrix). This results in a system that doesn't actually stop the problems with D&D3.5 balance, as it's still totally possible to cheese out classes. It also removes a huge amount of lower powered, fair classes in the name of stopping overpowered magic (which it doesn't do effectively, which was my point in bringing up the Incandrix). Players who are looking to crush game balance are still going to be able to, and it has limited every other player who wanted to play a caster, and who didn't intend to break the game.

Just saying "but that totally cheesing around the rules is off limits" to the players will actually fix the problem without removing half of the game.

[ahenobarbi]

After we agree on a low-magic game where casters are inhibited, this is really what you'd do?

Nah. "After we agree on a low-magic game" you need not introduce any house rules to hinder casters.

[ahenobarbi]

-Read the original post again: it states very clearly you have to recast the spells for the magic item every day, so that negates that plan. This would also apply to scrolls as they are magic items.

Nah it says "When creating magic items, the spells required must be cast every day... so bad idea!" (bold mine)


As for the rest of the post: those things should be handled by players (including DM) talking not by setting some weird house rules. Because


"Technical solutions for social problems almost never work"

[Quellian-dyrae]

If you don't have OOC problem the bold part should be enough.

It can be enough, sure. But in a low-magic game, presumably magic does exist and there are practitioners of it. If the DM intends for any of those practitioners to have any role in the story, it's good to have some rules worked out regarding how magic does work.

It's like the difference between saying, "Okay, this is a highly political game taking place in a city" and saying that and then having an outline of the various factions and major players in the city. The first method establishes the parameters of the game, the second does that but also helps detail the setting.

[kitcik]

Please don't snipe at me when I'm trying to prove a point. As an aside - I've never actually run a straight Wizard in any campaign; my last three characters have been an optimized Paladin, a Divine Bard Geomancer/Sand Shaper with Southern Magician, and an Ashworm Dragoon, because I enjoy playing at that power level.

Here's why I asked if I could play an Incandrix. The rules are designed to inhibit the game breaking aspects of casting. They do so to the point that they completely remove the effectiveness of the balanced magic classes. They do far too little to impact to effectiveness of the absurdly powerful magic classes (like Incandrix). This results in a system that doesn't actually stop the problems with D&D3.5 balance, as it's still totally possible to cheese out classes. It also removes a huge amount of lower powered, fair classes in the name of stopping overpowered magic (which it doesn't do effectively, which was my point in bringing up the Incandrix). Players who are looking to crush game balance are still going to be able to, and it has limited every other player who wanted to play a caster, and who didn't intend to break the game.

Just saying "but that totally cheesing around the rules is off limits" to the players will actually fix the problem without removing half of the game.

OK, I get your point. I just happen to be of the opinion that it hits the vast majority of high tier classes pretty hard. The ability to find a few exceptions does not, in my opinion, make this a bad system.

I don't play with people who fall in this category: "Players who are looking to crush game balance are still going to be able to" since that is no fun for anyone.

Players who fall in this category "every other player who wanted to play a caster, and who didn't intend to break the game" should be lauded, but cannot help overshadowing melee'ers at high levels. This would cut them back a notch. Or two. IMHO. Without playtesting.

[Menteith]

OK, I get your point. I just happen to be of the opinion that it hits the vast majority of high tier classes pretty hard. The ability to find a few exceptions does not, in my opinion, make this a bad system.

I don't play with people who fall in this category: "Players who are looking to crush game balance are still going to be able to" since that is no fun for anyone.

Players who fall in this category "every other player who wanted to play a caster, and who didn't intend to break the game" should be lauded, but cannot help overshadowing melee'ers at high levels. This would cut them back a notch. Or two. IMHO. Without playtesting.

I don't (willingly) play with people out to crush game balance, no one does. But I'm assuming that this system was suggested as a mean to fix that, as for the most part, the lower tier casters really don't overshadow melee at high levels. Tome of Battle Melee, Factotum, Wildshape Rangers, even Uber Chargers are all about as powerful (if not more so) than a Warmage or caster Bard (Or Paladin, or Ranger, or Beguiler, or Healer, or whatever). The only big casters who frequently pop up as problems are the big 5, and people who have full access to the Sorc/Wiz list. Even a character using the Cleric spell list sans domains is probably going to be fine until the very high levels. This change hits those well balanced, interesting, and fun classes WAY harder than it hits a cheesed out Tier 1. And the only reason one would actually need to put a system like this in place is because you want to stop the crazy overpowered classes, right? If that's the goal, this is the wrong way to do it.

@Quellian-dyrae
So just use lower level casters, or a different class to represent the casters? Classes like the Bard, Adept, Healer, Warmage, and so on are probably less powerful than a Factotum is anyway, and are still magical.

[ahenobarbi]

It can be enough, sure. But in a low-magic game, presumably magic does exist and there are practitioners of it. If the DM intends for any of those practitioners to have any role in the story, it's good to have some rules worked out regarding how magic does work.

It's like the difference between saying, "Okay, this is a highly political game taking place in a city" and saying that and then having an outline of the various factions and major players in the city. The first method establishes the parameters of the game, the second does that but also helps detail the setting.

Not quite. It's like "the difference between saying" "Okay, this is a highly political game taking place in a city" and just "having an outline of the various factions and major players in the city" you should say first. Saying second might be a good idea. The "fix" says second without saying the (more important) first.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Not quite. It's like "the difference between saying" "Okay, this is a highly political game taking place in a city" and just "having an outline of the various factions and major players in the city" you should say first. Saying second might be a good idea. The "fix" says second without saying the (more important) first.

It...does? The first line of the quote in the OP states:


In my game, I wanted a low magic game, with characters using skills and martial abilities to solve problems instead of spells.

Then at the end of the very paragraph that describes the nerf, it adds:


As such, spellcasters are HEAVILY nerfed, and not expected to be played. When creating magic items, the spells required must be cast every day... so bad idea!

And when finishing the rules portion of the post:


Basically, it's a low magic heroic fantasy game.

I...think it makes abundantly clear that the basic premise of the game is that it's low magic and magic is not intended for PC use.

[ahenobarbi]

@Quellian-dyrae

Ah. Ya got me :smallwink:

The "fix" could be ok if DM said "there is no magic for ye, PCs. In case you wanna know how it works for NPCs ...."

If it's introduced as "so magic works like that...." with hope PCs will figure out the intention it's wrong (I understood the "fix" this way).

[Rejakor]

In a sword and sandals setting, a Wizard//Warblade who can, if he really, really, really needs to, whip out a Alter Self, is a worthwhile character.

A Wizard//Warblade who alter selfs for every combat, and wraithstrikes, and arcane strikes, is not a sword and sandals character.




To the people saying that it doesn't halt T1 casters from being the bomb-diggety and make them rely on meatshields a hell of a lot more, because necropolitan incantatrix, I have this to say: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHA OH GOD YOU FOOLS YOU POOR FOOLS

Guess what; if you need to be an undead incantatrix to use the magic system as easily as basic dnd, that's a PRETTY HARD NERF RIGHT THERE WOO BOY NELLY

That's like saying that Tome of Battle didn't help melee, because Casters can use Pun Pun. Yeah. Right. Okay.

Good argument



That 5% or whatever failure chance is there to make you NOT WANT TO USE SPELLS - the wizard is like a dude carrying a backpack full of explosives on a short fuse.. yeah, you can use it, but it's goddamn dangerous to the dude carrying the explosives. Instead of being the paranoid preparation mongerers that they are in standard DnD, the wizard is now that dude who charges at the Ancient Wyrm Black Dragon at level 3. He's taking a huge risk, but it's actually kind of worth it because Magic is still hella powerful, it's just now hella dangerous as well.

[ahenobarbi]

Guess what; if you need to be an undead incantatrix to use the magic system as easily as basic dnd, that's a PRETTY HARD NERF RIGHT THERE WOO BOY NELLY

No it is not a hard nerf. There will be ways to get around the problem (restoration, immunities, turn undoing, ...). So a caster will have to invest some resources into handling failed spells. However the caster gets a lot more than usually (gestalt, improved VoP, everyone else around is weaker).

This is a huge boost in caster power.

And if you want a "sword & sandals" setting the proper way to do this is talking to players and making a world that can do this. Maybe giving them some SLAs 1/week if you feel like it.

Or as Quellian-dyrae suggested you could talk to players and use this "fix" for magic but this strikes me as unnecessarily complex.

[Flickerdart]

In a sword and sandals setting, a Wizard//Warblade who can, if he really, really, really needs to, whip out a Alter Self, is a worthwhile character.
Uh, no. What actually happens is when he needs to, he tries to whip out an Alter Self, but the invisible arbitrary failure chance sneaks up behind him and turns his head into a toad. And because he couldn't bring Alter Self to bear when he needed to, he is now probably dead.

These rules encourage sitting at home raising massive suites of buffs, which, guess what, is what the best casters already do.

[Goggalor]

Uh, no. What actually happens is when he needs to, he tries to whip out an Alter Self, but the invisible arbitrary failure chance sneaks up behind him and turns his head into a toad. And because he couldn't bring Alter Self to bear when he needed to, he is now probably dead.

These rules encourage sitting at home raising massive suites of buffs, which, guess what, is what the best casters already do.

A massive suite of buffs that takes a massive amount of time each to prepare before use. While the caster is spending his hours preparing just to have it wiped because the day is drawing to a close, the rest of the party that went with the low-magic theme has already traversed across the countryside, gleefully enjoying the adventure.

[Flickerdart]

A massive suite of buffs that takes a massive amount of time each to prepare before use. While the caster is spending his hours preparing just to have it wiped because the day is drawing to a close, the rest of the party that went with the low-magic theme has already traversed across the countryside, gleefully enjoying the adventure.
Right, because as we all know, spells cast all magically disappear when the day is done, and no spell effects extend beyond 24 hours. Furthermore, there definitely aren't ways to recover spell slots other than preparing them, nosirree.

[eggs]

It's hard to get the time advantage on the guy with the Teleport, Dominate and Summon A Whole Bunch of Demon Henchmen spells.

[demigodus]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but there is a lvl 6 Devoted Spirit stance that lets you take 11 on any d20 roll once per round. So you take 11 on your roll to prepare your spells. Congrats you auto-succeed on preparing lvl 10 or lower spells.

Given that this is a gestalt, you could get this at lvl 11~13, without losing any caster levels on one side, depending on your build.

Now your only problem is spells taking forever to prepare. So you only prepare the most game breaking spells, because nothing else is worth it.

[Tyndmyr]

How are optimized casters not caring about the "fix"? To work with the "fix", you are applying resources (feats, items, etc.) to increase a check instead of using those resources to boost your magic (metamagic, applying for prestiges, etc.). Even then, it is not all that reliable for the higher spell levels.

Edit: Reworded the second sentence.

My resources consisted of a few skill points. And, yknow, font of inspiration and a few metamagics. All of which I would be taking anyway, even without those rules in place, because seriously, wizard/incantatix//factotum is a pretty easy gestalt build to optimize.

It would be a powerful combo without those rules, it's only very, very marginally less powerful with them. On the flip side, the rest of the world is VASTLY weaker. Therefore, it is a relative power gain.


Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that everything in your email except "calling someone with reliable SLAs" is ok and intended, but that totally cheesing around the rules or using time acceleration is not.

Now, you are a 15th level wizard/factotum gestalt in a party where everyone else is gestalted melee / skill monkey (no other casters). You generally partake of the "typical" adventuring day, where you spend a good part of the day actively adventuring and using resources. You have optimized your spellcraft and can reliably make DC 70 and reasonably make DC 80 checks.

What spells do you prep? Keep in mind:
- each spell requires 1 hour of prep time per spell level

I'll probably run flight, superior invisibility, ironguard, and all heart of X spells, as well as superior resistance at all times. In addition, I will permanency the entire list of permanciable spells. Probably also a contingent teleport. There are a LOT of spells available as buffs. Orbs will suffice for 99.9% of adversaries.


- your party is not going to wait 7+ days for you to memorize your spells, they have a schedule dammit!

A. They don't always have a schedule. Whenever there is nothing pressing, I can basically prep up anything I want.
B. A teleport takes five hours to prep, and can kill days or even weeks of travel time. I am the best way to keep the schedule.
C. If any fast time plane exists, my access to planar travel ensures I can prepare my entire loadout in less time.


- even assuming you make your DCs, your spells have the following chance of not just failing but backfiring on you (potentially when the party is under duress): 1st 5%, 2nd 10%... 6th 30%, 7th 35%, 8th 40%

Immunity to the backfire effects listed is fairly trivial. Quicken + Twin + Extra actions = a giant pile of spells per round. Given that taking one orb is death, I don't really care if half of the backfire in a given round. And being that they're level 4(3 if I want to use sanctum spell), that's not likely.

If I want to dial the cheese'o'meter higher, I can fire arbitrary numbers of orbs per round without depleting my spells prepared, or even prepare arbitrary numbers of spells as a swift action. Or both. It's all complementary, and is limited solely by my willingness to play nice.


- some of the non-spell resources you could have used to get around the potential backfires have been used to optimize spellcraft

I'm an incantatrix. My class features run off spellcraft anyway. I'd be optimizing this anyhow.


To the people saying that it doesn't halt T1 casters from being the bomb-diggety and make them rely on meatshields a hell of a lot more, because necropolitan incantatrix, I have this to say: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHA OH GOD YOU FOOLS YOU POOR FOOLS

Guess what; if you need to be an undead incantatrix to use the magic system as easily as basic dnd, that's a PRETTY HARD NERF RIGHT THERE WOO BOY NELLY

I'm not sure you're picking up what I'm saying. I'm saying that the undead incantatrix(Not the only way to do this, mind you, just one example) rocks just as hard as an undead incantatrix does in a normal game.

You, on the other hand, do not. I don't "rely on you" more. You are a weaker mortal, with a lack of magic to buff you, and a severe difficulty in getting magic items. Windwall, fly, and ironguard alone will negate about 99% of non-magical threats. I don't need you. You're just useless to me except as XP.

Casters not playing at my level will be unable to pose the threat they do in a normal game. A dispeller in regular D&D can be a problem even for a high-op caster. Certainly, I would have to devote resources to countering or avoiding this. In here? Pfft, a regular dispel magic has at LEAST a 15% to fail without me doing a single thing, and how many dispels are going to be prepped? And frankly, at level 15, a regular dispel is pretty terrible, you'll want the big version. Good luck getting that off.

So, you haven't nerfed me at all. You've nerfed all the opposition.

[kitcik]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but there is a lvl 6 Devoted Spirit stance that lets you take 11 on any d20 roll once per round. So you take 11 on your roll to prepare your spells. Congrats you auto-succeed on preparing lvl 10 or lower spells.

Given that this is a gestalt, you could get this at lvl 11~13, without losing any caster levels on one side, depending on your build.

Now your only problem is spells taking forever to prepare. So you only prepare the most game breaking spells, because nothing else is worth it.

Do you actually play D&D? If yes, do you play Pun Pun? If no, why would you do the above? Saying "hey, I can break the system" and saying "hey, this system is terrible" are two different things. See where I am going with this?

No one postulated that this was an unbroken / unbreakable system. What was postulated was that it is a severe nerf on casters. Saying "it is not a nerf on casters because I can break it" doesn't seem to be a valid argument to me.

I would make the same argument against Incantrix and Plane Shifting to an accelerated time plane - ok, if you think that it would be fun for the group to watch you break the system, see how that works for you...

It seems to me that:
- requiring high DCs to prep spells forces casters to use resources
- escalating chances of failure and backfire on spells which become significant at mid- to high-levels (up to 45%), which cannot be optimized except by finding WOTC mistakes where they allow metagame feats like "take an 11 on any die roll"
- massive time investments even to fill your 1st & 2nd level slots (if you hqd 4 1st and 4 2nd level spells, that's 12 hours right there)

...are a severe nerf on casters. Period.


Buffing

Could you spend a week buffing (taking long periods to mem spells, only to have some of them fail requiring more mem time)? Yes. but life and the adventure goes on. I am not hand-waving this time passage as DM if this is the system we agreed to.

Even fully buffed, what spells are you bringing on the adventure? None? That, in itself, would be a de facto severe nerf. If you do bring spells, you have a chance to backfire mid-adventure, just when a spell is needed most and a backfire is needed least.


Backfire

The results of the backfire are not clearly written out, but they do say "chance of dying." I don't think the RAI is, "get a few items and you will be protected from the backlash." I think the RAI is, "cast a spell and you could be screwed." I am assuming that is JaronK actually played this sytem, he spelled out the backlash RAW more clearly, and that it conformed to the RAI I just described. I could be wrong.

[kitcik]

snip

See above. Enjoy playing Pun Pun, I hope your group appreciates this.

[Morph Bark]

This thread is relevant to my interests, for obvious reasons.

*starts digging through it*

[Menteith]

See above. Enjoy playing Pun Pun, I hope your group appreciates this.

Here's the thing you keep missing - most groups would be fine with just playing reasonable characters that don't require massive houserules to fix. Ergo, these houserules are suggested as a way to cut back the excessive cheese possible by disruptive players. They fail to do that and hurt the rest of the game by removing fair, interesting options in the process (and actually make the stinkiest cheese even worse, as it can't really be fought anymore). You've repeatedly made that argument that just because a person shows you how powerful optimization makes these houserules fail, they must be an incredibly munchkin and they're not worth listening to. It's insulting, rude, and shortsighted. If you want to actually have a discussion, I'm all for it, but stop posting single lines and dismissing people's arguments because you don't feel like disputing them, and would rather insult them.

[Tyndmyr]

See above. Enjoy playing Pun Pun, I hope your group appreciates this.

I am currently playing an incantatrix orb-wizard in a game. He's level 14. The rest of the party is of similar optimization levels. This is normal and accepted at the table.

Not every game played is at this optimization level. Sometimes, someone will propose a game like "hey, let's all play rogues this next game". Then, we all do that. That's it. That's all that's required.

If your players refuse to keep to a theme, then these rules will do nothing to stop them. If they CAN play to the theme, the rules are unnecessary.


No one postulated that this was an unbroken / unbreakable system. What was postulated was that it is a severe nerf on casters. Saying "it is not a nerf on casters because I can break it" doesn't seem to be a valid argument to me.

It doesn't require unique or hard to manage exploits. Immunity to penalties is fairly easy to pick up in any number of ways. As it happens, a couple of types(undead and construct) happen to fix the problem outright. Spells can also do the same thing. Adding limits to spells that the spells circumvent is...pointless.

Skill checks are pumpable in any number of ways. Skill pumping is encouraged by this system, and frankly, that's probably not a good thing.

Slow prep time is never really an issue.

So, they only thing that actually requires any attention to mitigate is the flat failure chance. But, yknow, since everyone suffers it, and magical items are going to be abysmally rare, you could just take the hit, and still have a net power gain as a spellcaster.

I mean, seriously, taking SLAs away from all monsters makes a lot of them MUCH less scary.


...are a severe nerf on casters. Period.

This indicates mostly that you've not played high-op casters. Or even medium-op T1 casters.


Could you spend a week buffing (taking long periods to mem spells, only to have some of them fail requiring more mem time)? Yes. but life and the adventure goes on. I am not hand-waving this time passage as DM if this is the system we agreed to.

Look, three days gives me a cumulative 72 spell levels. That's kind of a lot of spells. I shouldn't ever need a full week unless I've really drained myself dry. A single teleport means I've saved more time than prepping took.

If the adventure is too urgent for me to prep, it's far too urgent for me NOT to prep.

[Flickerdart]

No one postulated that this was an unbroken / unbreakable system. What was postulated was that it is a severe nerf on casters. Saying "it is not a nerf on casters because I can break it" doesn't seem to be a valid argument to me.
The point is that it's a nerf on low and mid-op casters, as in the casters that didn't need nerfing. Caster builds that are optimized enough to need this sort of nerf don't care about this nerf because they can circumvent it easily, and since everyone else is nerfed they're even more godlike than before.

[eggs]

Saying "it is not a nerf on casters because I can break it" doesn't seem to be a valid argument to me.
The argument is not that casters aren't nerfed, it's that optimized casters aren't hugely nerfed (and in a nerfed gameworld, that might even be a buff). The point of the argument is the difference in optimization levels being exaggerated with these rules, for exactly the reasons your post illustrates. In that context, the argument is perfectly valid.

Throwing a level dip into a build and spending a day or two crafting would not be unreasonable for a player to do in a campaign. It is not implausible. As you might have noticed in this thread, it's not something every player is going to shy away from.

And you're right. For the casters who do all the "playing nice" mentioned earlier in the thread, the changes here are a huge nerf.

This matters because if the goal is improved game balance (as strongly supported by the OP and Jaron's post), this exaggerates what's probably the single biggest factor in a character's optimization level: its player's goals and aptitude.

[demigodus]

Do you actually play D&D? If yes, do you play Pun Pun? If no, why would you do the above? Saying "hey, I can break the system" and saying "hey, this system is terrible" are two different things. See where I am going with this?

Yes, I do play D&D. 3.5 even.

No, I have never played Pun Pun. Or anything in the TO range really.

I would only do the above, if this system was presented as a set of house rules, without a very good explanation for them. The entire thing comes off as the DM claiming that he doesn't trust players to play nicely with casters, so he is going to preemptively nerf them. What he actually does, is nerf non-broken casters. Broken casters, go "trololololol" on his game anyways. Without a good explanation for these house rules, they say, to me, that the DM doesn't trust the players, or is unable to properly communicate with them. Even just asking people to not play spell casters is better.

Also, you missed my point a bit. I can literally go "I'm going to go straight Crusader up one side of my gestalt", or "Crusader 10/Ruby Knight Vindicator 1" up one side, if the other side had turn undead, and fix the problem. That is not a cheesy build. That is not splat book diving. There isn't even a shred of optimization up that side of the gestalt. And yet it still apparently triggers your pun-pun-o-meter. If going straight crusader one side of a gestalt triggers pun-pun-o-meters because of a house rule that does nothing but nerf casters, maybe there is something wrong with the house rules?


No one postulated that this was an unbroken / unbreakable system. What was postulated was that it is a severe nerf on casters. Saying "it is not a nerf on casters because I can break it" doesn't seem to be a valid argument to me.

Well, isn't it a good thing I never said this is not a nerf on casters then?

Really, the issue with this fix is the same as with a ton of other "caster fixes". It assumes that everyone playing a spell caster is broken, and tries to apply a blanket nerf. It ends up nerfing those who don't have the knowledge, interest, or willingness to put in the amount of work to break the system, into utter and total ineptitude with magic. It does jack diddly squat to those that have been posing a problem in the high magic setting.

It makes casters that were not posing a problem utterly useless. It doesn't really do much against casters that WERE posing a problem. A system that has a ton of collateral damage, and minimal effect on those it is supposed to target, is a bad system.

THAT is my argument, I believe plenty of argument has been presented for that case, and it IS a valid argument to say the system is trying to fix the wrong problem.


I would make the same argument against Incantrix and Plane Shifting to an accelerated time plane - ok, if you think that it would be fun for the group to watch you break the system, see how that works for you...

Hey, comparing Crusader // Druid, or Crusader // Cleric to Incantrix // ??? is unfair. That already uses a broken class. The whole point of my build is to use a perfectly balanced, non-magical class, in a gestalt with one of the two base classes who were supposed to get the ever loving crap nerfed out of them, with the two classes having just about no synergy what so ever.

I mean, if you are bringing out the Incantrix, I would like to point out that the Planar Shepherd can acquire Spell Like Abilities, even with these rules, at lvl 14, and then proceed to discover that it doesn't need spells to win the game with magic. And gestalts with Truenamer up the other side, just to make a point about how awesome he is... That is breaking this system because the class is broken. My suggestion is breaking the system using nothing broken what so ever.


It seems to me that:
- requiring high DCs to prep spells forces casters to use resources

This is true. The problem is, those DCs are so high, a non-optimizer literally can't hit them for level 4~5 spells. At all. The optimizer, the people who are likely the problems, lose a few resources, and then proceeds to never care about those DCs in a game. Hitting the wrong target.


- escalating chances of failure and backfire on spells which become significant at mid- to high-levels (up to 45%), which cannot be optimized except by finding WOTC mistakes where they allow metagame feats like "take an 11 on any die roll"

Except it isn't a metamagic feat. It is a martial stance. And it isn't a mistake. Pretty sure it was done on purpose. Nor is it broken, considering how I have never seen people use it in any TO build before. Or even high OP builds. It is a perfectly balanced, possibly even underpowered stance in regular 3.5.


- massive time investments even to fill your 1st & 2nd level slots (if you hqd 4 1st and 4 2nd level spells, that's 12 hours right there)

This I agree with. The problem is, if you know what spells are completely bonkersly broken, you can still use those. Again, nerfing the wrong end of the problem.


...are a severe nerf on casters. Period.

Did you completely miss about how HIGH OP CASTERS ARE NOT NERFED? I'm not arguing that the non-op casters are nerfed. I just consider those to not be the actual problems.


The results of the backfire are not clearly written out, but they do say "chance of dying." I don't think the RAI is, "get a few items and you will be protected from the backlash." I think the RAI is, "cast a spell and you could be screwed." I am assuming that is JaronK actually played this sytem, he spelled out the backlash RAW more clearly, and that it conformed to the RAI I just described. I could be wrong.

You know, providing incentives to optimize like crazy is a bad way to convince people to not optimize...

[Doug Lampert]

Here's the thing you keep missing - most groups would be fine with just playing reasonable characters that don't require massive houserules to fix. Ergo, these houserules are suggested as a way to cut back the excessive cheese possible by disruptive players.

The main point of these rules is to define how NPC casters work in setting! JaronK is perfectly capable of saying, no Tier 1 or 2 classes for PCs. He also gives an example party from an actual campaign, and the only one with any caster levels is a bard.

The characters presented would be fine without any nerf. But the point of ANY rules for an RPG with a gamemaster is to define a common reference for the setting. If the rules don't do that then "lets pretend" is actually a BETTER system.

"Everyone play nice" might work for all PCs, but it doesn't tell my player squat about how the world works and what he should expect and why casters don't totally dominate. If the game rules are how the world works then rules that nerf casters are IMPORTANT even if there is never a single caster PC in the entire history of the campaign.

Seriously, the big problem with Scry Buff Teleport type play is not when PCs use it, it's when the GM cares enough about setting integrety to worry about why the NPCs DON'T do it to the PCs.

[kitcik]

You know, providing incentives to optimize like crazy is a bad way to convince people to not optimize...

Well, if there's one thing I agree with, it's this.

Yes, I do see that the system nerfs non-optimized casters more than optimized ones, and therefore presents an incentive to optimize.

My responses to that are:
- non-optimized casters still "require" nerfing in comparison to non-optimized melee characters, particularly to achieve the objectives of this system
- there are other incentives at play than "how do I make my character the most powerful?" for instance, if the idea is for a low-magic campaign, and you decide to play the caster whose spells sometimes spectacularly fail, great. if you decide to play the caster who dominates the campaign through optimization, not so great (for anyone at the table). this is also a powerful incentive.

[Menteith]

Seriously, the big problem with Scry Buff Teleport type play is not when PCs use it, it's when the GM cares enough about setting integrety to worry about why the NPCs DON'T do it to the PCs.

Which could already be handled by using safer magic classes - Bard, Beguiler, Warmage, Dread Necromancer, Duskblade, Healer, Adept - and not having T1 classes be around at all. Which doesn't require a massive overhaul of the entire system which renders a significant amount of the game nonfunctional, which will still result in some classes (demigodus's Crusader/RKV, for example) running over classes anyway.

EDIT
- Non-optimized casters still "require" nerfing in comparison to non-optimized melee characters who are built from the worst classes in the game. A Bard, a Warblade, a Factotum, and a Dread Necromancer are all going to play together nicely. A Barbarian gets along great with a Healer. Even a well build tripper Fighter is going to be fine protecting his Adept buddy. If you're playing with T1s, and someone else is running a Fighter, you're right - but why on earth would you do that when there are other options?

[Tyndmyr]

My responses to that are:
- non-optimized casters still "require" nerfing in comparison to non-optimized melee characters,

Nah. I've seen many a low level party, with dual wielding half elf warriors, and wizards with a crossbow and a smattering of random spells, and a cleric stocked full of heals.

It works perfectly fine.

[killem2]

I have stern opinions of the whole "tiered' system, so much so, the friendly folks here gave me an infraction for daring to speak ill of it. lol.

I think that balance is something the DM should handle with its players. Classes themselves are not unbalanced, or overpowered, they are just pandora's boxes waiting to be opened and possibly abused.

Its the players that make them crazy or harmful to a game state. That's about as far as I'm going to go on the subject, I don't feel like angering the gods today.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Here's the thing you keep missing - most groups would be fine with just playing reasonable characters that don't require massive houserules to fix. Ergo, these houserules are suggested as a way to cut back the excessive cheese possible by disruptive players.

That...seems like a very faulty conclusion. The rules explicitly state they are intended to create a low magic setting. They never refer to themselves as a fix, rebalance, or anything of the sort. Indeed, they only discuss balance as an addendum, likely due to the fact that they were originally posted as an example in the thread about tiers. They even go so far as to point out that they are nerfing certain weak options (warmage, healer) just as much as strong ones, again for setting purposes.

The assumption made throughout is that the rules are so crippling to casters that casters aren't meant to be played - which is the intended result, not because casters are bad or too powerful, but because (as stated with regards to the healer and warmage) they don't fit the intended game style. Most of the other rules (healing and VoP specifically) are pretty clearly not intended as a power up, but rather, to deal with certain mechanical implications of not having the D&D-expected level of magic.

I think the post makes it very clear that the rules are not intended to fix casters or curtail cheese, but to set up a low-magic game. However, as I type this, I notice that the title of this thread calls them "JaronK's tier balance", which may be where this pervasive notion that the rules are a "fix" is coming from.


They fail to do that and hurt the rest of the game by removing fair, interesting options in the process (and actually make the stinkiest cheese even worse, as it can't really be fought anymore). You've repeatedly made that argument that just because a person shows you how powerful optimization makes these houserules fail, they must be an incredibly munchkin and they're not worth listening to. It's insulting, rude, and shortsighted. If you want to actually have a discussion, I'm all for it, but stop posting single lines and dismissing people's arguments because you don't feel like disputing them, and would rather insult them.

To be fair, though, what we're talking about here is a DM who explicitly says "I [want] a low magic game, with characters using skills and martial abilities to solve problems instead of spells" and then goes on to outline mechanical changes in support of that goal. Now, no, here on these boards, showing how optimization would make these house rules fail does not make one a munchkin, a bad player, or anything or the sort. It's a worthwhile thought experiment and shows off the poster's optimization chops, so hey, cool.

I do, however, think that any player who responded to that situation by building a character specifically designed to circumvent the rules in play would be hard to define as anything other than a munchkin and problem player. These rules are not encouraging optimization at that level. They are explicitly encouraging non-magical options.

As an aside, it also would be fairly trivial for the DM to remove the loopholes. I'd probably say to just make the result of a backlash a reduction in current and maximum hit points equal to the DC of the check (stacks, fades at the rate of one per day), causing all prepared spells and spell slots to instantly be wiped from the caster's mind and causing all beneficial spells currently active on the caster to expire. Also add that the check must always be rolled; one cannot Take 10 or use abilities that define an automatic roll result to alter the check, nor can it be rerolled, and the results of the backlash cannot be prevented, mitigated, or removed except by normal recovery. Theoretically you could also change the nature of the check, but really, I think the backlash is sufficient.

[Tyndmyr]

As an aside, it also would be fairly trivial for the DM to remove the loopholes. I'd probably say to just make the result of a backlash a reduction in current and maximum hit points equal to the DC of the check (stacks, fades at the rate of one per day), causing all prepared spells and spell slots to instantly be wiped from the caster's mind and causing all beneficial spells currently active on the caster to expire. Also add that the check must always be rolled; one cannot Take 10 or use abilities that define an automatic roll result to alter the check, nor can it be rerolled, and the results of the backlash cannot be prevented, mitigated, or removed except by normal recovery. Theoretically you could also change the nature of the check, but really, I think the backlash is sufficient.

"If you play a caster, I will poop on your char sheet" is much shorter, and leads to the same result.

[eggs]

However, as I type this, I notice that the title of this thread calls them "JaronK's tier balance", which may be where this pervasive notion that the rules are a "fix" is coming from.
This thread is about balance.

Has anyone (other than JaronK of course) done this in a game, or something similar? I'll be running another PbP game on the forums at some point, and I want it to be sort of high-power, but I plan on the campaign lasting a while so I don't want there to an imbalance in the high-powerness.

[eggs]

However, as I type this, I notice that the title of this thread calls them "JaronK's tier balance", which may be where this pervasive notion that the rules are a "fix" is coming from.
This thread is about balance.

Has anyone (other than JaronK of course) done this in a game, or something similar? I'll be running another PbP game on the forums at some point, and I want it to be sort of high-power, but I plan on the campaign lasting a while so I don't want there to an imbalance in the high-powerness.

[HunterOfJello]

Shadowcasters would be pretty good in a world like that, assuming they aren't nerfed like the rest

[ahenobarbi]

The assumption made throughout is that the rules are so crippling to casters that casters aren't meant to be played

Only they are not as a few folks pointed out.



To be fair, though, what we're talking about here is a DM who explicitly says "I [want] a low magic game, with characters using skills and martial abilities to solve problems instead of spells" and then goes on to outline mechanical changes in support of that goal.

But the " and then goes on to outline mechanical changes in support of that goal" doesn't matter at all, does it?

[Menteith]

If the goals of the changes are to simply discourage magic, then just don't have those classes in the game. It can still be run with every other rule, but just blanket banning every single class capable of casting a spell (with the exceptions of a few specific NPCs or something) is going to accomplish it much more smoothly, without still allowing TO builds to run wild.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If the goals of the changes are to simply discourage magic, then just don't have those classes in the game. It can still be run with every other rule, but just blanket banning every single class capable of casting a spell (with the exceptions of a few specific NPCs or something) is going to accomplish it much more smoothly, without still allowing TO builds to run wild.

This is what I do for a low-magic setting. :smallcool:

[Quellian-dyrae]

"If you play a caster, I will poop on your char sheet" is much shorter, and leads to the same result.


But the " and then goes on to outline mechanical changes in support of that goal" doesn't matter at all, does it?


If the goals of the changes are to simply discourage magic, then just don't have those classes in the game. It can still be run with every other rule, but just blanket banning every single class capable of casting a spell (with the exceptions of a few specific NPCs or something) is going to accomplish it much more smoothly, without still allowing TO builds to run wild.

See, don't get me wrong, a blanket ban will also work. And yes, it is shorter and simpler, which is its advantage. Its disadvantage is that it does less to define the magic that does exist in the world. Which of these advantages matter will vary based on the game and the group.

Yes, if the only goal is to disallow magic, you are all absolutely correct, everything else is superfluous. If there are other goals, such as defining how what little magic there is works in the world, then it is not.

Just because these rules suit the second goal better than the first does not make them inherently bad.


Only they are not as a few folks pointed out.

I differ. A few folks have pointed out that builds designed to get around these rules can ignore them, which is true. And indeed, those builds being, ya know, optimized gestalt wizards, they're still strong builds on their face. That doesn't change the fact that to the vast majority of spellcasting builds, these rules are too crippling to be viable in an adventuring scenario.

Now, one can argue that all this does is ensure that everyone who wants to play a caster has to play one of these highly optimized builds, but that's kind of missing the forest for the trees, to me. It's the same as a DM who says, "Okay, for this game, all the characters start out as friends who are part of the kingdom's elite group of heroes" and one of the players decides "Well, I'm going to be a CE assassin and secretly plot everyone's downfall, because the DM didn't explicitly say I couldn't be evil."

That's a problem, yeah, but not with the rules.


This thread is about balance.

Well and good, but I'd argue that the existence of loopholes that make certain overpowered builds which are not even intended for play still technically mechanically possible (and which are closed easily enough) does not make the entire rule base imbalanced.

[demigodus]

-snip

If as you say, the approach is to ask the players not to play casters, and then use these rules to define the capabilities of NPC casters, then these rules do seem mostly fine.

Although I would still argue that this doesn't necessarily create a low magic system, when I can have a Druid / Prc to advance wildshape // Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian 1 / Martial Adept, who runs around turning into animals that rip things to shreds. That still looks pretty decently magical to me :)


Well and good, but I'd argue that the existence of loopholes that make certain overpowered builds which are not even intended for play still technically mechanically possible (and which are closed easily enough) does not make the entire rule base imbalanced.

I specifically went Crusader // Caster because that isn't some overpowered build. Unless you claim going pure base caster up one side of a gestalt is overpowered, in which case there aren't op builds that circumvent these rules since any build these rules are intended to effect are by definition op.

Tryndamere pointed out that he IS currently in a game where Incantrix hax exists.

So maybe the existence of overpowered builds not intended for play being still possible does not make the rules imbalanced. What about builds that aren't overpowered, and not intended for play though? Like some examples provided here?

[ahenobarbi]

@Quellian-dyrae

This doesn't need any crazy optimization. There are many obvious ways around if you know the system. Still that doesn't matter if DM asks players to not play casters. But then rules did nothing for PCs.

So you say the rules are for NPCs. But they are horrible at that. Because you don't want to spoil your plot when BBEG blows up instead of teleporting out or what ever he was supposed to do. And if DM fudges rolls to avoid that then why bother with them? Better tell players you'll blow up caster up from time to time.

[eggs]

Do you really consider casting something like Moment of Prescience or Guidance of the Avatar to boost a skill check to be a loophole?

[Piggy Knowles]

Do you really consider casting something like Moment of Prescience or Guidance of the Avatar to boost a skill check to be a loophole?

And how do you plan to cast Moment of Prescience with any great reliability? Guidance of the Avatar helps, sure, assuming the DM has no problems with a 3.0 spell printed on WotC's website without much forethought. But that requires clerical casting, would need to be prepped in advance (taking two hours), and STILL boasts a 10% chance of failure itself.

Can all of these problems be circumvented? Probably. But it's not as cut-and-dry easy as everyone seems to be making it out to be.

(By the way, I'm operating under the assumption that you CANNOT circumvent the 1 hour/spell level prep time by leaving a spell slot open and spending 15 minutes to fill it. I know it wasn't posited in the OP, but if that IS possible, then the whole 1 hour/spell level restriction is practically meaningless).

Similarly, for the people who argue that the long prep time just encourages spellcasters to cast spells that last a day or more, for a 20th-level generalist wizard to prepare all of her spells, not including bonus spells, it would take just over a week. That's assuming no breaks for sleeping, crapping or eating - just 180 hours of straight spell preparing. Sure, a necropolitan won't have to do any of those three, but that's still one heck of a restriction, and no number of levels in Incantatrix will prevent that from being a tremendous pain in the rear end.

And no spell-like abilities means that the SLA abuse that's been brought up won't work, either.

It's still possible, sure. But it's not as easy as people seem to be making it out to be. DC 90 is not a trivial check, especially when "there are no useful magic items in the game" and you can't reliably use spells to get you there.

[Quellian-dyrae]

I specifically went Crusader // Caster because that isn't some overpowered build. Unless you claim going pure base caster up one side of a gestalt is overpowered, in which case there aren't op builds that circumvent these rules since any build these rules are intended to effect are by definition op.

Tryndamere pointed out that he IS currently in a game where Incantrix hax exists.

So maybe the existence of overpowered builds not intended for play being still possible does not make the rules imbalanced. What about builds that aren't overpowered, and not intended for play though? Like some examples provided here?

Well, I dunno. That is getting very subjective. I agree, the builds probably aren't problem builds on their face. Do they become so when used to get around the house rules in play? And if so, is that then the fault of the player for creating the build, or the rules for not doing enough to prevent it?

I see your point, and your post was indeed a weakness in the rules, and one that would need to be fixed. I'm not saying the rules are flawless by any means. I'm saying they aren't terrible, and they do the job they intend to do well enough (although, as your crusader points out, they could be improved).


@Quellian-dyrae

This doesn't need any crazy optimization. There are many obvious ways around if you know the system. Still that doesn't matter if DM asks players to not play casters. But then rules did nothing for PCs.

So you say the rules are for NPCs. But they are horrible at that. Because you don't want to spoil your plot when BBEG blows up instead of teleporting out or what ever he was supposed to do. And if DM fudges rolls to avoid that then why bother with them? Better tell players you'll blow up caster up from time to time.

To that I would ask...why is the BBEG in a setting where magic is this risky, a spellcaster? Shouldn't it be, like, a powerful warlord with an army, or something? I wouldn't expect casters to have major, story-driving roles, because as you say, the rules really make it a bad idea to do that.

That's part of their strength; it's not "magic in this world is rare, difficult, and dangerous, except when the DM wants to use magic, in which case it works just fine." It really makes magic rare, difficult, and dangerous, and the way the world and the story are set up are going to reflect that.


Do you really consider casting something like Moment of Prescience or Guidance of the Avatar to boost a skill check to be a loophole?

Honestly, the really big loophole is the Aura of Perfect Order Demigodus presented (and any similar abilities I'm forgetting/not aware of). All the check optimization in the world doesn't matter if there's a flat 5% per spell level of a backlash (well, depending on how severe the backlash is...I don't believe the specific results were stated, unless I missed them, other than being a chance of death).

Moment of Prescience itself probably doesn't even matter; it's DC 80, 40% backlash chance, and since it works for one skill check, it adds eight hours of prep time per spell. If you're able to reliably use that, you've already broken the house rules. I'm not familiar with Guidance of the Avatar, so can't comment there. Divine Insight is the one I'd worry about, but even it only allows +1-2 spell levels, and the cost of two additional hours of prep per spell. That's really good, in this instance, but not necessarily setting-breaking.

[eggs]

And how do you plan to cast Moment of Prescience with any great reliability? Guidance of the Avatar helps, sure, assuming the DM has no problems with a 3.0 spell printed on WotC's website without much forethought. But that requires clerical casting, would need to be prepped in advance (taking two hours), and STILL boasts a 10% chance of failure itself.
Taking 10 isn't a problem. Rogues do it. Exemplars do it. Crusaders do it. Psychic Assassins/Hoardstealers/Shade Hunter/Artificers/Dungeon Delvers/Evangelists/Temple Raiders/Court Heralds/Half-Elf Rangers do it.

And anyone with rerolls can cover for a couple botch jobs.

The skill roll is not a problem.

If a non-Cleric needs a Cleric spell, there's always planar binding, UMD, item crafting and the same skill boosts that can be put toward the Spellcraft/Knowledge rolls.

I've played plenty of games with time crunches, but that's not most of them, and never for an entire campaign. If a caster has time to prep a spell slot, it doesn't automatically empty the next day, and if the caster has time to build an item, I don't see any indication that it will have any problems in activation.

These are hurdles. They might be annoying, but unless the DM makes indirect bans to prevent this sort of thing, the spells will be perfectly usable. And if the DM is willing to make that sort of ban, I have to wonder what the point of this whole backward soft-ban is in the first place.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Taking 10 isn't a problem. Rogues do it. Exemplars do it. Crusaders do it. Psychic Assassins/Hoardstealers/Shade Hunter/Artificers/Dungeon Delvers/Evangelists/Temple Raiders/Court Heralds/Half-Elf Rangers do it.

And anyone with rerolls can cover for a couple botch jobs.

The skill roll is not a problem.

If a non-Cleric needs a Cleric spell, there's always planar binding, UMD, item crafting and the same skill boosts that can be put toward the Spellcraft/Knowledge rolls.

I've played plenty of games with time crunches, but that's not most of them, and never for an entire campaign. If a caster has time to prep a spell slot, it doesn't automatically empty the next day, and if the caster has time to build an item, I don't see any indication that it will have any problems in activation.

These are hurdles. They might be annoying, but unless the DM makes indirect bans to prevent this sort of thing, the spells will be perfectly usable. And if the DM is willing to make that sort of ban, I have to wonder what the point of this whole backward soft-ban is in the first place.

Really the only ban needed is "No taking automatic results on this check". That covers Take 10, Aura of Perfect Order, and any similar abilities or tactics. Rerolls are already covered; the check is made in secret, so you don't know whether or not to reroll.

Assuming the results of a backlash are sufficiently detrimental, I think that closes any potential for getting around the restrictions.

[navar100]

Oh dear lord not again. Not a week goes by without the Tier Holy Bible getting proselytized by a new post. Help make (insert class) Tier 3. Raising the (insert class) to Tier 1. Taking Tier 1 down a peg. About the Tier System . . . (paraphrasing, not quoting)

Gah!

[ahenobarbi]

To that I would ask...why is the BBEG in a setting where magic is this risky, a spellcaster? Shouldn't it be, like, a powerful warlord with an army, or something? I wouldn't expect casters to have major, story-driving roles, because as you say, the rules really make it a bad idea to do that.

So PCs don't use magic because DM asked them not to. BBEGs don't use magic because this is that kind of world. So who does? Because if no one then you don't need those rules...

[demigodus]

So PCs don't use magic because DM asked them not to. BBEGs don't use magic because this is that kind of world. So who does? Because if no one then you don't need those rules...

Minions of the BBEG?

There are a few lvl 5~7 spells on the Druid list that are of the "I blast away a city" category. So a BBEG could have, say, 4 druid minions who's job isn't to fight, but to go to an incredibly safe place, at full health, with attendants ready to instant heal them, and proceed to try and destroy a city. If we go with Control Winds, with sufficient skill optimization, you can have a 75% success rate per caster, or a 1 in 256 chance of none of the 4 succeeding. Assuming they only prepare one of it. And that is the only spell they prepare, maybe with as many copies as they can in their downtime.

In combat, they are less of a threat then taking something other then Druid up the gestalt. However, they would make horrifyingly effective minions for the BBEG. In fact, the entire campaign could turn into hunting down and killing these 4, rather then the BBEG, because they are a bigger threat, even if they are a lot easier to take down in a fight.

In a regular combat encounter though? Very few people should be blasting spells. Likely those that could afford to turn out to have wasted their entire turn.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Well, it depends a lot on how the backlash rules actually work, but I'd see it going one of two ways. If the backlashes are the sort of thing that you can recover from given time (that is, days, maybe even weeks), but as long as you are at full strength, a single one isn't going to kill you, magic is still a powerful resource, but one that has to be used sparingly and with care.

Still, you could have NPCs who can cast spells infrequently on the party's behalf; a priest who they can go to for things like Lesser Restoration, or, if it's a powerful priest, Remove Disease and Remove Curse, if they really need it. You could also have challenges based on spells that are used very infrequently. A druid who can use Pass Without Trace could help make sure a group of bandits can't be tracked back to their lair, even if the druid can only do so once or twice a week. A master thief might dabble in magic so that it can fall back on Knock or Invisibility when it needs to most.

Most casters are going to be dabblers, but just a couple low-level spells, even used infrequently, can have a significant impact in this sort of setting.

The other possibility I imagine, would be if the primary result of a backlash is a major complication. This makes magic more a form of adventure-fodder. The PCs won't generally be fighting magical foes or receiving magical aid; they'll be cleaning up the mages' messes. Or maybe every so often some problem will come along that they do use magic to solve, but if they do, there's always the chance that their spell creates an even worse problem for them.

[Tyndmyr]

Tryndamere pointed out that he IS currently in a game where Incantrix hax exists.

This is actually the second incantatrix I've played long-term. The first was an abjurer, and was Incantatrix/Iot7v. This one's a conjurer at level 14.

It's in a party with an Ultimate Magus utilizing theurge specialist and other CL boosters to routinely put out spells at a CL of roughly double his caster level, plus a bunch of metamagics.

And a Favored Soul/Diplomancer.

Hell, there's a specialized item crafting artificer....as a cohort. The rest of the party is similarly powered.

Some people play at much lower power levels. Nothing wrong with that. But don't assume that everyone HAS to play your way.


And how do you plan to cast Moment of Prescience with any great reliability? Guidance of the Avatar helps, sure, assuming the DM has no problems with a 3.0 spell printed on WotC's website without much forethought. But that requires clerical casting, would need to be prepped in advance (taking two hours), and STILL boasts a 10% chance of failure itself.

Can all of these problems be circumvented? Probably. But it's not as cut-and-dry easy as everyone seems to be making it out to be.

Wand. You cast the spell when making the wand. Using the wand is a spell trigger. Now, this means that making wands is marginally annoying(not so much if you're an artificer, tho), but this is actually a pretty solid way to transfer all the downsides to non-combat days, when they don't matter.

Use of wands, at all, breaks the entire system.


(By the way, I'm operating under the assumption that you CANNOT circumvent the 1 hour/spell level prep time by leaving a spell slot open and spending 15 minutes to fill it. I know it wasn't posited in the OP, but if that IS possible, then the whole 1 hour/spell level restriction is practically meaningless).

That is another flaw in the original rules, to be sure. However, note that this only matters for prepared spells. ACFs like Spontaneous Divination seriously shortcut this.


Similarly, for the people who argue that the long prep time just encourages spellcasters to cast spells that last a day or more, for a 20th-level generalist wizard to prepare all of her spells, not including bonus spells, it would take just over a week. That's assuming no breaks for sleeping, crapping or eating - just 180 hours of straight spell preparing. Sure, a necropolitan won't have to do any of those three, but that's still one heck of a restriction, and no number of levels in Incantatrix will prevent that from being a tremendous pain in the rear end.

Not entirely true. For instance, Incantatrix lets you apply metamagics after casting. So, you cast a level 1 buff spell. Then you apply persist. Then extend. That short term buff now lasts two days, but took you only one hour to prepare.

A lower op caster would have to spend many more hours memorizing that same spell. So, in addition to the slot cost(which was already a difference), we have a larger time cost for not being optimized.

More practically, a level 20 wizard does not typically burn all her spell slots in a single day of adventuring. Not even close.


I'm not familiar with Guidance of the Avatar, so can't comment there. Divine Insight is the one I'd worry about, but even it only allows +1-2 spell levels, and the cost of two additional hours of prep per spell. That's really good, in this instance, but not necessarily setting-breaking.

It's a level two spell that gives +20 to the next single skill check. So, expect this spell to be cast after each combat.

Skill stacking is pretty easy though. There's a lot of ways to get massive bonuses to a single skill.

[ahenobarbi]

Minions of the BBEG?
...

Or you could just build the minions to do the same thing (able to destroy cities but relatively easy to take down in direct fight) with standard rules.


If the backlashes are the sort of thing that you can recover from given time (that is, days, maybe even weeks), but as long as you are at full strength, a single one isn't going to kill you, magic is still a powerful resource, but one that has to be used sparingly and with care.

(...) A druid who can use Pass Without Trace could help make sure a group of bandits can't be tracked back to their lair, even if the druid can only do so once or twice a week. A master thief might dabble in magic so that it can fall back on Knock or Invisibility when it needs to most.

Nothing you can't have with regular rules. Only better because if the master thief relies in emergency on something that has 10% (or more) fail chance will not live to become master thief.


...if the primary result of a backlash is a major complication. This makes magic more a form of adventure-fodder. The PCs won't generally be fighting magical foes or receiving magical aid; they'll be cleaning up the mages' messes. Or maybe every so often some problem will come along that they do use magic to solve, but if they do, there's always the chance that their spell creates an even worse problem for them.

Ok. That could work. But why not use setting-wide wild magic area?


That is another flaw in the original rules, to be sure. However, note that this only matters for prepared spells. ACFs like Spontaneous Divination seriously shortcut this

Oh and you could prepare spells then divine if you did it right (the roll is made at the moment of preparation so magic god will know the answer:smallcool:).

[Quellian-dyrae]

Or you could just build the minions to do the same thing (able to destroy cities but relatively easy to take down in direct fight) with standard rules.



Nothing you can't have with regular rules. Only better because if the master thief relies in emergency on something that has 10% (or more) fail chance will not live to become master thief.

I wasn't saying you need these rules to create those characters. You had said if no one actually used magic, you don't need the rules. These are examples of characters who could use magic, potentially have some impact on the story, and would fit into a world where these rules are in play.


Ok. That could work. But why not use setting-wide wild magic area?

So...what we really need then are rules that institute a setting-wide change that gives all magic a chance of failure and/or negative side effects? :smallbiggrin:

Couldn't resist. Seriously, though, that's also a perfectly viable option. There are plenty of alternatives to these rules, which will generally be better or worse for various situations. But their existence does not mean that these rules are inherently flawed.

[Tyndmyr]

I wasn't saying you need these rules to create those characters. You had said if no one actually used magic, you don't need the rules. These are examples of characters who could use magic, potentially have some impact on the story, and would fit into a world where these rules are in play.

Seriously, if nobody is using magic much, you don't need these rules. If it's a low magic game, why do you care about how ninth level spells work?

It's the same reason why we don't have rules for nuclear detonations in D&D. Because it's not relevant to the game.

[ahenobarbi]

Couldn't resist. Seriously, though, that's also a perfectly viable option. There are plenty of alternatives to these rules, which will generally be better or worse for various situations. But their existence does not mean that these rules are inherently flawed.

Yeah. You found a tiny niche where those rules could be useful (i.e. do something regular rules can't). But as I pointed out there are already official (but optional) rules to cover that niche.

So there is no need to introduce new rules. Of course if someone fancies it they may use whatever rules they want.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Seriously, if nobody is using magic much, you don't need these rules. If it's a low magic game, why do you care about how ninth level spells work?

It's the same reason why we don't have rules for nuclear detonations in D&D. Because it's not relevant to the game.

I don't think that's a fitting analogy. Nuclear explosions don't exist in D&D. It is, functionally, a "No Nuclear Explosions" campaign. If these rules were for a "No Magic" campaign, I agree they would be useless. But for a "Low Magic" campaign, they have a place.

They may not be commonly used, but the potential for their use exists. They may not be needed often; it may wind up, over the course of a campaign, that they aren't needed ever. But does that really mean that having them is a bad thing? If we're playing a low-magic campaign, I don't see how having rules for how magic works is actually worse than nothing.

EDIT:


Yeah. You found a tiny niche where those rules could be useful (i.e. do something regular rules can't). But as I pointed out there are already official (but optional) rules to cover that niche.

So there is no need to introduce new rules.

But...the rules already do something the regular rules can't. They make magic rare, difficult, and dangerous (barring optimization to the contrary, which is a flaw that would need fixing). They also hard-remove the Christmas Tree effect and turn hit points into an encounter resource.

And sure, there are other rules that do the same thing. But really, what does that matter? How many fighter fixes do we have in the Homebrew section? Monk fixes? Does that mean no one else should post any ever again?


Of course if someone fancies it they may use whatever rules they want.

This is entirely my point. The OP saw these rules, and considered using them. JaronK created these rules for use in one of his campaigns. Presumably, there's something about these rules that those individuals, at least, felt would add to their games.

Several others don't, which is fine. I, for all my defense of them, wouldn't likely use them in an actual game for the simple fact that I like high-magic play. So they won't be of much use for us, but that doesn't mean they're of no use to anyone, nor that they are fundamentally flawed.

[demigodus]

Seriously, if nobody is using magic much, you don't need these rules. If it's a low magic game, why do you care about how ninth level spells work?

It's the same reason why we don't have rules for nuclear detonations in D&D. Because it's not relevant to the game.

Possibly because there might be a few plot important NPCs using magic. And some players like it if there is a concrete set of rules governing NPC abilities that they have access to. So they can figure out how to counter/expect NPC actions.

Honestly, the more I read this thread, the more I'm convinced that whether these rules are good, or utterly horrible depends on what the DM wants out of them, and what he claims he wants out of them. Basically comes down to needing good DM-Player communication about how he wants these rules to effect the setting, and his expectations matching how they effect the setting. If both are present, these rules can be pretty good. If the intention is presented as "These are my house rules to balance magic" and that is it, no expanding on that, these are kinda a disaster.