Exact reasons why wizards (and spellcasters in general) are OP? [Archive]

GenericMook

2013-01-18, 11:34 PM

The reason wizards, clerics, druids and even sorcerers and favored souls are way more powerful than Fighters, Warblades and Barbarians is because they can do way more.

A Fighter and a Sorcerer can do the exact same thing in combat: kill things.

But, outside of combat, the Sorcerer has a ton of spells at his disposal. He's got things like Mirror Image, Invisibility, and the like that let him do far more than be the squishy thing in the back lines. Wizards get to do that on an even larger scale, because they can prepare spells.

Wizards can fly with their own class abilities, and buff themselves to godly levels. Fighters, on the other hand, can only hit things.

As for your points:

1) A High INT is the icing on the cake. Bonus spells and additional uses out of abilities like the Incantatrix's Metamagic Effect is just adding insult to injury.
2) Again, this is a flaw of spells. If you pick your spells properly, then you can have a swiss army knife at your disposal. Doesn't matter that the wizard is squishy, he'll still do things way better than martial characters ever can.
3) That's the root of the problem.
4) AMF is effective, but WoTC didn't know what they were doing and gave spellcasters ways around their biggest weakness.

TuggyNE

2013-01-18, 11:45 PM

High INT has a big effect

More precisely, a Wizard only really needs Int to function well; Con and Dex are nice, but not critical, and Wis/Str/Cha are almost entirely superfluous.

Compared to the strong need that say Paladins have for Str, Con, Cha, usually Dex, often Wis, sometimes Int... well, it means that with most ability score arrays, rolls, or point buys the Wizard is closer to being effective than the Paladin (or the Monk, or the Fighter, etc).

Specialist wizards get too many spells per day for their cost

Not really. All Wizards get too many spells per day at higher levels to ever go through; specialists, and focused specialists, give up fairly substantial amounts of versatility in many cases for their power gains. (Even Focused Specialist Conjurer isn't quite a no-brainer, though it's close.)

They have spells to do virtually anything imaginable, so they can do just that

And, more to the point, it's fairly trivial for them to acquire more spells. A good Wizard or Archivist will have spells in their book(s) that are specialized for nearly any given situation, as well as a solid core of spells that are generally effective for nearly every situation.

AMF is not as effective as it should be

Well, at nerfing Wizards it isn't, but that's not really something AMF is at fault for. The existence of damaging instantaneous Conjurations like the Orb line is really the main problem with that. But in any case that's only a microcosm; you can't really fix T1 overpoweredness by fiating AMFs or DMZs everywhere: all you do is eliminate the low-op Wizards and leave the stubborn and skillful optimized ones, who just about always have something they can do anyway.

Incidentally, that's one of the most common problems with attempted Wizard fixes I've seen: they nerf the lower-op casters more than the higher-op ones, which is, needless to say, a really terrible idea. Spell failure rolls, reduction of spells per day, higher Concentration DCs, lots and lots of AMFs, and others all have that tendency that I've seen.

No, the root of the problem with Wizards (and Fighters) is simple to describe, but very difficult to fix; their extended class features (spells or feats respectively) are systemically and near-universally skewed. The entire culture of 3.x makes spells (individually and collectively) more powerful and flexible than feats, easier to change, easier to add, more numerous, and often harder to counter.

ArcturusV

2013-01-18, 11:47 PM

It's not even just really limited to high level Wizards (though that is often the focus). The Magic>Rest stuff really starts even at low levels.

For example, have to find a way to get past a small room guarded by 8 kobolds?

1st Level Fighter: Well crap. Try to find a choke point/terrain feature I can use. Peg one or two of them off at range during a surprise round. Then try to take them one/two at a time hoping I get them all before they get me.

1st Level Rogue: Try to use a distraction and sneak past them, hope I get lucky on my rolls, they fail on their Spots/Listens. Maybe if I got the skills try to talk my way past them.

1st Level Cleric: Basically the fighter's plan, but more effective due to having access to effects like Healing, Bless, Bane, etc, that can help even the odds even more than the Fighter can.

1st Level Wizard: Cast sleep. Coup de Grace. Move on.

Now it used to be back in the day that the balance, at low level, is that they can only do this sort of effectiveness once. Though with bonus spells from high Int scores, not so much. Not to mention all the various feats, items, etc, which can allow you to circumvent this limitation a little more often. It's rare I see the 1st level Wizard in games honestly reduced to "Hope I get lucky with a Crossbow" plinking, though sometimes you hear about that.

But right out of the gate the Wizard gets abilities which one shot encounters. Others don't. It only gets worse as they level up.

Mystra

2013-01-19, 12:00 AM

I keep seeing tons of people claiming the wizard is overpower/able to do basically anything. Would someone give me exact details as to why this is, and perhaps suggest things to reduce them

Some easy ones to do:

1.Remove or reduce Knowledge checks. A lot of a wizards power comes from the silly rule of knowing everything. I spellcaster needs to know that ''force effects do double damage'' or ''this creature is immune to acid'' before they cast a spell. Otherwise they will waste at least a couple spells per encounter.

2.Add more magic to the game world. This is simple enough, just think if magic existed for say 500 years, how would people protect against it? There are tons and tons of even just 1st/2nd level effects you can add that will greatly reduce the power of a spellcaster. For example ''a pot of dust just fills a room with floating dust...that will show any invisible creature, of course.''

3.Add more fantasy. Don't try and recreate ''just like Old Tyme Earth''. Don't have the guards be lowly human easy targets...make them half gold dragon gold elf warlocks. Don't have foes be the common orcs or trolls, but toss in a negoi, dohwar, or a mordon.

Bucky

2013-01-19, 12:18 AM

Having seen Legend, where the spellcasters have a much rougher time, the problem seems to be that non-casters' new class features as they level up tend to be either marginal improvements to existing features or new features that are only slightly more powerful than their low level abilities. If monks get the benefits of permanent Haste at level 5, fly all the time at level 10, tear holes in the fabric of space at level 15 and shapeshift into mystical beasts and kill lesser mortals by glaring at them at level 20, they're suddenly playing on the same field as the Sorcerers even without the rest of the spell library.

Or at least get to wipe the floor with the rest of the non-casters.

Urpriest

2013-01-19, 12:29 AM

Some easy ones to do:

1.Remove or reduce Knowledge checks. A lot of a wizards power comes from the silly rule of knowing everything. I spellcaster needs to know that ''force effects do double damage'' or ''this creature is immune to acid'' before they cast a spell. Otherwise they will waste at least a couple spells per encounter.

Unfortunately, that pretty much invariably leads to dead characters. There are a large number of monsters out there where if you engage them wrong at the beginning of the fight then can wipe you out or severely cripple you, with essentially no warning. D&D 3.5 is designed with the assumption that most of the time you know what you're fighting before, or at least as, you're fighting it, and knowledge checks are the way the game assigns a cost to that knowledge.

To the OP: it's the spells, and the number of spells. The spells themselves include ways to win fights with negligible risk and ways to alter the game world so those fights don't even occur. The number of spells means that even if you want to make some sort of binary "the wizard either wins with one spell or is helpless" situation (which by the way is horrible game design), the wizard has enough spells that they will have the right spell for any given situation.

Zubrowka74

2013-01-19, 12:32 AM

WhatBigTeeth

2013-01-19, 12:37 AM

The Big Evil City-Eating but oddly Level-Appropriate Dragon takes roost in the mountains overlooking Victimsville. It'll be the seventh town he's eaten this week, and only Fighter McSword, Rogue Kleptostein and Wizard O'Spellagin can save the day!

Fighter McSword tries to convince the bullheaded king of Victimsville to get his village people to book it out of town, but without social skills, he rolls his average roll of 9.5 diplomacy to bend the king's ear. Oh no! Now he has to bring the fight to the dragon before snack time or all the townspeople will be eaten alive! So Fighter McSword limbers up his climb ranks and spends the rest of his day climbing up to the dragon's den. Without in-class stealth or perception abilities, Fighter McSword is heard by the dragon long before he can find the monster on his own. The Dragon flies into the air, negating Fighter McSword's signature whacking-things combat style. Since it's still early, and the dragon is still drowsy, it decides to take a few warmup laps around the mountain before eating the Fighter (it helps with digestion). Fighter McSword fails his frightful presence save, humiliating himself. Since he can't reach the dragon, so he shoots some arrows at it with his composite longbow. Unfortunately, since Fighter McSword couldn't afford to blow more than a few dozen thousand GP on the weapon, he's shaken and heavy armor is really Fighter McSword's thing, he only hits with 1-2 arrows, dealing maybe 1d8+15+3d6 damage apiece, which annoy the dragon in about the same Fighter McSword was annoyed by his shaving nicks that morning. After his warmup lap, the dragon feels refreshed, so he flies down to the town, eats everybody, and on his way back, throws a dozen or so enervations at the fighter, and laughs as Fighter McSword comes back as a wight.

Rogue Kleptostein hears about the dragon's plans, books an audience with the king and rolls his average 50ish diplomacy check, convincing the cantankerous king to let the townspeople to take shelter in his castle's elaborate dungeons. Then Rogue Kleptostein traverses his way up to the dragon's nest, skulking along the forests and rocky outcrops. Before he gets to the dragon's roost, the dragon gets hungry and eats all the townsfolk's animals and sets their village on fire. When it comes back, Rogue Kleptostein uses his stealth abilities to sneak up on the dragon, full attack with touch attack sneak attacks, and pray that he rolls high enough damage to kill the dragon before the dragon gets a full attack of its own. If the rogue gets lucky in the fight, he might live to convince the townsfolk to build him a commemorative trophy from the ruins of their homes.

Wizard O'Spellagin hears about the dragon, spends a couple spell slots greater planar binding a half dozen pit fiends, who he nicely asks to kill the dragon for him before finishing his lunch. The townspeople all chip in and buy him a new set of dress robes out of thanks.

Garan

2013-01-19, 01:09 AM

Hmm... I'm getting the idea that it's often the higher level spells that are the issue (or at least the higher ones at any given spell level). So something I have thought about (mostly because of the way magic works in the setting I've created) is adding a mechanic that forces spellcasters to make checks for the higher of their spells.

I'd make it some form of Spellcraft/Concentration check, with the DC have something to do with the caster level they use (side note, I'm using a variation on the UA Spell point system that has preparing spellcaster still have to prepare exactly the spell and caster level they are using at the beginning of the day).

For the flavor I'm trying to create: The higher level spells have either been very recently created (and thus untested) or were designed for a time when spellcasters were more (even more) powerful. Since these spells are not really designed for mere PCs, they need to make sure they can handle the pressure. Somehow I doubt that cosmic power can flow through a mortal with no reprocussions (there has only been one, and he turned into a crazy plane destroying chaos monster that is by extension the source of everything campaign related going on in my world).

But I digress. Thoughts on making checks for high CL things?

ArcturusV

2013-01-19, 01:17 AM

crazyhedgewizrd

2013-01-19, 01:21 AM

The main reason that wizards are overpowered is because lazy DMs let them be.

Story

2013-01-19, 01:23 AM

If you think requiring a skill check is balance, go look at Incantrix.

Anyway, tons of people have attempted to balance magic in 3.5ed before. Why not look around online and pick one that you like? It saves you the work and it's probably better than what you can come up with, since it's been through feedback and revision already.

The main reason that wizards are overpowered is because lazy DMs let them be.

What do you mean? This is a commonly made (and refuted) assertion with little evidence.

Garan

2013-01-19, 01:25 AM

Cutting down on spells that do a lot of utility would probably be the way to go. This would include a lot of Polymorph spells, Enchantment Spells as mention, a lot of Summoning sort of magics.

I dunno, I really see wizards as people that can cast spells to do anything another class can do, only not nearly as well. So maybe remove buffing (I always saw that as being a Cleric's role anyway), fiddle around the Summoning lists, and make Polymorph spells easier to resist/last less time?

ArcturusV

2013-01-19, 01:31 AM

The problem with Polymorph is well known. You hit the point you can cast it and suddenly your wizard really can do everything, due to how a lot of monsters get written. Stats become irrelevant. Adventures get easily bypassed by abilities that a PC generally isn't assumed to have, etc. I would seriously consider avoiding it. If you feel you MUST have the flavor of Polymorphing effects and such limit to to spells like Baleful Polymorph and the ability to turn people into Frogs or other creatures which generally aren't going to be of any sort of advantage outside a really weird situation.

Wizard: POOF! You're a sheep now!

Summoning has a slightly easier fix I used a while ago (And the Party Summoner didn't mind it), which was requiring you to use spells like an alteration of Arcane Mark or otherwise get a pact/agreement with a creature to be able to summon it. If you kill it? You can no longer summon it. This allowed me to put a reasonable limitation on what could and could not be summoned not by Hit Dice but by what creatures wouldn't conceivably break open the game. And the summoner in question liked the idea that summons were not just disposable mooks but a resource he could collect and use (And lose).

But no promises that every wizard would like or accept that limitation.

crazyhedgewizrd

2013-01-19, 01:32 AM

Wizard O'Spellagin hears about the dragon, spends a couple spell slots greater planar binding a half dozen pit fiends, who he nicely asks to kill the dragon for him before finishing his lunch. The townspeople all chip in and buy him a new set of dress robes out of thanks.

Dragon gets rid of the planer binding, declares the treaty he has with the demons and the city is raised to the ground. Then the wizard becomes the most hated person in the country.

toapat

2013-01-19, 01:37 AM

It comes down to these:

Spells can do more, be it damage, buffs, kicking ass, being awesome.

You have more options of spells.

Weapons at best will only be dealing 2d12+5+1.5 Str Mod + 9d6 damage with an attack against a single target if not exploiting Hulking Hurler, Lord of Planetary Collision, where as spells hit 25d6 without hoops.

Spuddles

2013-01-19, 01:39 AM

It's not necessarily high level magic that is the culprit. You don't see people complaining about spells like Meteor Swarm. It's spells that get a lot of mileage for what they do.

Enchantment is often a problem. Spells like Suggestion, Mass Suggestion, Charm Person, Sleep, Hold Person, etc.

As are spells which have faaaar too many open ended, flexible uses like Grease.

Cutting down on spells that do a lot of utility would probably be the way to go. This would include a lot of Polymorph spells, Enchantment Spells as mention, a lot of Summoning sort of magics.

I'd also like to point out that grease targets balance and web forces ridiculously high strength checks. Most spells are poorly written, so a practically optimized wizard always has a weak point to exploit or defense to avoid by simply cherry picking through something like 10000 spells. A fighter has virtually no ways, outside of WBL, to deal with something that has high AC, but low touch AC, much less something that is flying or behind a prismatic ward.

Then you get to stuff like shapechange (turn into a beholder and tunnel through the earth with at will disintegrate or take the form of a creature that can manipulate the time stream) or gating a titan that gates another titan that gates another forever.

Garan

2013-01-19, 01:53 AM

I'd also like to point out that grease targets balance and web forces ridiculously high strength checks. Most spells are poorly written, so a practically optimized wizard always has a weak point to exploit or defense to avoid by simply cherry picking through something like 10000 spells. A fighter has virtually no ways, outside of WBL, to deal with something that has high AC, but low touch AC, much less something that is flying or behind a prismatic ward.

Then you get to stuff like shapechange (turn into a beholder and tunnel through the earth with at will disintegrate or take the form of a creature that can manipulate the time stream) or gating a titan that gates another titan that gates another forever.

Basically, have the DM be able to recognize when something is grossly imbalanced and be able to say "no" or "maybe changing this would be more fair"?

Exirtadorri

2013-01-19, 01:58 AM

I am an old dnd player. I have seen many things done to magic cause of god mode. I personally only allow core rule book spells, no more than one meta magic feat per spell and a dc 10 + spell level+ d4 fort save. If they fail the save they eat the spell level in con drain. They receive a number of save free spell slots equal to their level This represents the physical tax of magic and the reason a night of rest is so important.

SiuiS

2013-01-19, 01:59 AM

Full casters are over powered because a full caster can and often does fulfill the role of other classes, but other classes cannot and do not fulfill the role of the full caster.

A fighter brings a decent armor class, decent attack bonus, decent HP and decent damage to a fight at early levels.

A druid brings a decent AC/Attack bonus/Damage/HP and flanking buddy, spy, distraction and terrain effect (animal companion), and also full caster powers. A single druid class feature equals the fighter.

There are ways to mitigate this, but my favorite is to stick with the old experience dsicrepancy; A wizard needs 2.5 times the XP to level up, with fighter being the base chassis. Of course, I don't really think the difference ion capacity is a problem, so my solution may lack panache.

Story

2013-01-19, 02:13 AM

You could also have everyone play Warblades and Warmages. (Or Clerics and Wizards or Adepts and Barbarians).

Kazyan

2013-01-19, 02:24 AM

Every time WotC noticed that a Wizard couldn't do something--like, anything; come up with any wild stunt you can think of--they made a spell, ACF, or feat for that. Presumably the 'limted spells' thing justified it. The problem is that Wizards were given a series of tools that specifically overcame all of the limiters put on their power. Seriously. I can't think of a single balancing factor, besides the limits on when you get Xth level spells, for which WotC didn't make a spell for feat that makes the factor not matter ever. This means that the philosophy of making a spell to solve a specific problem--or a ridiculously open-ended spell that solves hundreds of possible problems--ends up particularly dangerous.

Wizards are Pun-Puns that need prep time and can theoretically (can't really happen, but theoretically) be inconvenienced by something. It's madness.

Crustypeanut

2013-01-19, 02:29 AM

As a semi-lazy DM, I'm almost glad that, in my group, no one really tries to OP their spellcasters. The Divine spellcaster of our group is always the healbot (Sadly), and the Arcane Caster is usually the guy who cackles, throws around buffs and the odd debuff. The cackling bit is actually a way for him to increase the duration of his debuffs and buffs. Pathfinder Witch stuff.

If, however, I had to DM against an unruly Spellcaster, I'd have to do much more work. Might actually be fun though, coming up with counters for the little bugger.. make him work for his godliness.

Zubrowka74

2013-01-19, 02:30 AM

You could also have everyone play Warblades and Warmages. (Or Clerics and Wizards or Adepts and Barbarians).

Would YOU play in games like these ?

WhatBigTeeth

2013-01-19, 03:03 AM

It's not just abilities that stand out as imbalanced that make the game wizards play fundamentally different from the game fighters play.

When a nonmagical character runs into a problem, the character can address the problem by looking at the options available on their character sheets (which usually only includes 3-4 things the character can really do well at any point in the character's career), and applying those abilities in a very rigidly-defined way. And when they do use those abilities, it often requires a few layers of failure chance and whole scenes of setup and resolution (like finding a lie to justify the bluff check to manipulate an NPC, or rolling to find or track animals to raise, then rolling to raise them, then, after years of effort, rolling to command them to do one of a limited set of trained options).

When a magical character runs into a problem, the character can address the problem with the options the character sheet lists (from 3 to around 60 at a time, after spell selection), and those abilities aren't always limited very well at all (spells like polymorph or planar binding essentially have hundreds of pages worth of options to select from). And in the case of prepared casters, if the character sheet doesn't have an automatic solution to a problem, the character can take a rest or do a quick bit of studying, and change their character sheet to include an appropriate ability. And when these abilities are used, they often resolve a problem automatically, with a rare chance of outright failure (like the single save against a suggestion, or the automatic creation and obedience of zombie or skeleton creation).

This deeper systemic problem is just as much of an issue with relatively mundane-seeming spells like water breathing, arcane eye or teleport as it is with the overt game-breakers like polymorph or simulacrum. Wizards aren't unique in having that problem, but they have the longest spell list (of a class with an explicit spell list, anyway), which really makes them the poster-child of the broken system.

If you're trying to fix 3e's magic system to make casters play the same game as noncasters, you're going to have to make those changes deep.

huttj509

2013-01-19, 03:07 AM

Basically, have the DM be able to recognize when something is grossly imbalanced and be able to say "no" or "maybe changing this would be more fair"?

The problem with that is reactionary banning spells can easily not go over well. If the wizard learned the spell, memorized the spell, then when he casts the spell the DM just says 'no,' that's a fair amount of prep nullified.

And there's too many spells with too many interactions (both legit and cheesy) to carpetban ahead of time.

And everyone's definition of where the 'cheesy' line is differs.

There are ways it can be handled if something comes up that's an issue, yes, but intending a point blank reactionary stance is a good way to ruffle feathers (stuff always comes up that wasn't anticipated, that's different, you just don't want to use the 'no' button any more than absolutely necessary).

Story

2013-01-19, 03:25 AM

Would YOU play in games like these ?

An all Tier 1 game sounds fun to me. In fact, the most recent session I was in came close with a Wizard, Druid, and Duskblade.

Spuddles

2013-01-19, 03:40 AM

The main reason that wizards are overpowered is because lazy DMs let them be.

Dragon gets rid of the planer binding, declares the treaty he has with the demons and the city is raised to the ground. Then the wizard becomes the most hated person in the country.

No one has ever said that judicious use of DM fiat, as per your example, won't stop wizardly power. But the fact that you have to go so far out of your way really emphasizes just how far out of line with other class power th wizard is, no?

Basically, have the DM be able to recognize when something is grossly imbalanced and be able to say "no" or "maybe changing this would be more fair"?

Somethings, like say, polymorph any object spam, or infinite spell loops, or unlimited spell slots, or simulacra abuse, should be blanket banned.

Web and grease won't actually kill anything. They are little more than inconvenience. If the party doesn't mind having a force multiplier like a wizard, and the dm doesn't mind using a lot of monsters, then I'm not sure I necessarily consider this sort of wizard "overpowered". But some people, many playgrounders for instance, find this sort of class difference upsetting. The people I play with expect that when I play a wizard, I can solve virtually any problem once a day, and that in combat, they won't be swarmed because I have things under control.

Would YOU play in games like these ?

I would. I like guidelines and parameters for character building. Otherwise I get too crazy.

nyjastul69

2013-01-19, 03:40 AM

There is no exact reason. The reason may vary according to the group and the DM. Casters tend to out-shine most non-casters in most games due to some of the upthread reasons. This does not mean all casters will always out-shine non-casters as a matter of fact. Check your local gaming group for details. The system is very flexible. Mileages vary for many reasons.

Spuddles

2013-01-19, 03:44 AM

nyjastul69

2013-01-19, 04:03 AM

The guy quoted above pretty muh lays out the general reasons why wizards are busted.

If you want a solid, specific set of rules, see the banlist for test of spite. Pretty comprehensive. The guy that put that together went on to be lead designer for Legend.

Where are the test of spite rules? I've heard of them, but I usually only visit this specific sub-forum. My tangental understanding of them is that it's a single PvP arena combat. If that's the case, I don't think it's a good metric of class balance. I'm not sure what your point is.

Edit: Legend, whether it is good or not, is not relevant to any discussion regarding 3.5 D&D.

Killer Angel

2013-01-19, 05:05 AM

I keep seeing tons of people claiming the wizard is overpower/able to do basically anything. Would someone give me exact details as to why this is

Ok, you already got the serious answers. Now, you need an answer that, while not serious, is still very helpful. here you are (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw). :smallwink:

crazyhedgewizrd

2013-01-19, 06:28 AM

No one has ever said that judicious use of DM fiat, as per your example, won't stop wizardly power. But the fact that you have to go so far out of your way really emphasizes just how far out of line with other class power th wizard is, no?

The main problem with the example i used with the wizard vs dragon, is that when you say a wizard has bound greater demons to take on dragon and the dragon is said to be appropriate challenge the dragon will have about equal magical power or abit more to the wizard.
Dragons are one of the most intelligent races in the world.

ArcturusV

2013-01-19, 06:43 AM

Thus the first level example. Where even at first level, with a typical first level encounter, the Wizard just decimates the encounter effortlessly, the rest struggle to do so. And without a superb level of optimization at all. This tends to get balanced by the idea that the party will run into 2-5 encounters in a day, and he can only do this once. Which isn't necessarily true due to the wide array of special powers, feats, alternatives, bonus spells, etc, that a Wizard is capable of having. Definitely not true for Random Encounters during Traveling to the adventure locale where you'll probably get 1 a day, if that. And with the experience from said random encounter can go and craft a scroll or two to extend your usefulness even more. Not to mention spells that allow a single casting to drastically alter the balance of power in more than one fight, like Charm Person.

lord_khaine

2013-01-19, 06:59 AM

The main problem with the example i used with the wizard vs dragon, is that when you say a wizard has bound greater demons to take on dragon and the dragon is said to be appropriate challenge the dragon will have about equal magical power or abit more to the wizard.

So you are saying that the only way you can counter the wizard is though a even bigger wizard, who just also happens to be a dragon :smalltongue:

Dragons are one of the most intelligent races in the world.

They are also one of the most lazy and arrogant races in all of the planes, so that kinda counters it :smallwink:

SinsI

2013-01-19, 07:10 AM

There are two main causes for overpoweredness of all the wizards(even specialists):

1) Extremely broad variety of spells in each magic school/domain/etc
2) Have easy access to all spells in many magic schools

Imho, to fix it you first need to:
1) break/rearrange all the spells in each magic group so that they are actually variations of the same kind of magic
2) Force all casters to choose one school as his Main, and all others - as Second Choice, Third Choice, etc.
The caster should only be a full caster in his Main School. In his Second, Third Choice, etc he is a caster of Lvl/2, Lvl/3, etc (with the appropriate access to that level of spells).
3. Some spells are inherently too broad - i.e. Conjuration is one of the main perpetrators. At the very least, each spell from that group should summon exactly one kind of monster; it won't hurt if you also have to make some kind of deal with that monster to actually control it...

To compensate for that nerfing, casters should be able to quickly (i.e. after 10 minutes meditation(dependent on actual spell cast time; you basically cast most of the spell, and just leave one final trigger/component use out of it)) regain spells - memorization is only a limit on how many spells you can have prepared at a time.

mcv

2013-01-19, 07:32 AM

The core reason is simply: linear fighter, quadratic wizard.

At low levels, a fighter is actually more powerful. More staying power, and can hit people all day long. The wizard might be able to nova one encounter, but then he's out for the rest of the day.

However, as they go level up, at every level, the fighter simply gets +1 BAB, some skill points, hit points and slightly better saves, and sometimes a feat. Whether he goes from level 1 to level 2, or from level 19 to level 20, matters very little for the fighter.

The wizard, on the other hand, gets lousy level 1 spells when he goes to level 2, but he gets amazing earth-shattering level 9 spells at level 20. And his level 1 spells are now also way better than they were at level 1, often doing more damage or lasting longer.

So the fighter's power curve climbs at the steady pace, while the wizard's power curve suddenly goes through the roof, as all his spells, his new ones and his old ones keep getting better. He gets more spells and better spells. That's quadratic. Meanwhile the fighter just gets another +1 to hit.

ArcturusV

2013-01-19, 07:54 AM

I really do challenge the assertion that the Wizard is somehow weaker at level 1 than the Fighter. It STARTS at bare mimimum just as powerful as a fighter is in the grand scheme of things.

Take a standard adventure. Get quest to go vanquish a ruin with some low level badguys from the local fancypants. The adventure itself is probably going to be about 4 encounters at the said location. 1 random encounter on the way there. 1 Random encounter on the way back, about 10-12 days of travel time one way to get there. This is a somewhat standard formula I've seen used for a lot of modules in my time, along with homebrewed adventures so its' not too far out of left field.

First Random Encounter on the road to the adventure local. You end up fighting a group of some low level enemies. Wild dogs, Goblins, Kobolds, whatever the flavor is for the setting. The Wizard, having been well rested, uses his 1 (likely 2) 1st level spells per day to just solo this encounter. Sleep, coup de grace. Encounter over. Wizard gets XP (key), and some loot. Fighter goes "Well that was easy" as he just stabbed sleeping kobolds in the face to kill them. Everyone is happy.

During the next 2-3 days traveling out to the Dungeon a wizard will use the XP he gained, along with materials/gold from his starting loadout or the like to go scribe 2-3 scrolls with no real problem in doing this. He'll eat 12 GP and 1 XP a piece to do this. Hardly a huge drawback for the Wizard and more than worth it to be able to double his spells per day.

You get to the dungeon. First encounter, BAM! Wizard eats up one of his daily prepped spells to decimate it. Fighter is on clean up duty just putting the finishing blow on helpless targets and the like.
Second encounter, BAM! Wizard eats up his second level 1 prepped spell for the day to clean up the encounter. Fighter again is there just for clean up duty.
Third Encounter, BAM! Use your first scroll you scribed for a whopping 1 XP. Win encounter. Fighter's going "Hmm, and the local town was having trouble with this why?"
Fourth (Boss) Encounter? Second scroll gets used to decimate the encounter. Maybe even charming the boss and turning him into a temp ally to clean it up. Rogue backstabs your charmed Boss to death while you have him distracted and unaware so you don't have to worry about what happens after the duration.
Rest up on your victory. You got spells back. YOu travel back to town. Run into the Random Encounter you one shot with your Daily Prepped Spell. Head back to town about 2 XP below the totals of your allies, but knowing that you traded those 2 XP to basically solo the entire adventure.

And without using any weird wonky 3rd party source stuff. Or combing through all the books to find an optimized build. This is just simple, core book stuff. Spells that solo encounters like Sleep and Charm Person.

Nightcanon

2013-01-19, 09:00 AM

I agree with whoever said that it's up to the DM.
In ArcturusV's example above, if the Wizard manages to wipe out whole groups of enemies at one go with sleep spells, and the DM keeps serving up groups of kobolds who conveniently bunch up to get under the spell's target area, that's down to the DM. Likewise if the DM allows wizards to scribe scrolls while travelling through rough country, that's fine, but if the wizard's player is metagaming to the extent that he may as well have access to wands of sleep and charm person, then a wise DM should be looking to fix this. Options range from undead foes to crafty bandits who take down the wizard with bowfire to simply having it rain so hard that attempting to scribe scroll outdoors leads to the parchment and the ink getting ruined.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 09:14 AM

What do you mean? This is a commonly made (and refuted) assertion with little evidence.

When my GM starts to feel we are getting a bit too powerful, he ups the ante until we start feeling challenged again.

Wizard handles anything easily? How about if he has to go 3-4 encounters without rest? Ok, how about 7-10? Rest of the party starts dying before the wizard runs out of resources? Maybe they'll pressure him to slow down, or use his resources to keep them alive longer, he moves on ahead without them? If he's no longer part of the party, he becomes an npc and the player makes a new character.

Another is that if you optimize in such a way that encounters are not a challenge for you, those encounters don't provide experience points either. A level 15 wizard who handles a horde of rampaging barbarians with a single summoning spell or something didn't really gain that much from the experience, no more than a level 5 fighter would have from defeating a level 1 commoner at any rate.

ArcturusV

2013-01-19, 09:18 AM

Yeah Nightcanon. But then you're also at the point where you have to admit that the Level 1 Wizard is stronger than the Level 1 Fighter, because as the DM you have to actually take actions against the Wizard in particular, whereas the Fighter you can just leave be without too much worry.

DEMON

2013-01-19, 09:33 AM

When my GM starts to feel we are getting a bit too powerful, he ups the ante until we start feeling challenged again.

That's perfectly fine. The problem arises, when members of the party are worlds apart in power so that in order to challenge one, you either put the other one at risk of dying right away or render him utterly useless.

Another is that if you optimize in such a way that encounters are not a challenge for you, those encounters don't provide experience points either. A level 15 wizard who handles a horde of rampaging barbarians with a single summoning spell or something didn't really gain that much from the experience, no more than a level 5 fighter would have from defeating a level 1 commoner at any rate.

That's all dependant on DM's rulings, but a 15th level Wizard normally gets the same xp for a challenge of a particular CR as a 15th level fighter would. And the fighter would probably have much tougher time overcommimg that challenge in most cases.

Story

2013-01-19, 09:39 AM

At low levels, a fighter is actually more powerful. More staying power, and can hit people all day long. The wizard might be able to nova one encounter, but then he's out for the rest of the day.

Actually, the Fighter has less staying power than the Wizard without optimization. Perhaps you meant Crusader? Anyway, the Wizard can be better than the Fighter at 1st level if optimized to do so, though people usually plan for the long haul.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 10:02 AM

That's all dependant on DM's rulings, but a 15th level Wizard normally gets the same xp for a challenge of a particular CR as a 15th level fighter would. And the fighter would probably have much tougher time overcommimg that challenge in most cases.

It does fix the problem nearly perfectly though, doesn't it?

If a level 7 wizard can deal with anything he has to, he'll just lag behind until he's traveling with level 15-16 non-casters, dealing with CR 15-20 encounters.

If he starts feeling challenged again, he'll start leveling again.

mcv

2013-01-19, 10:10 AM

Actually, the Fighter has less staying power than the Wizard without optimization. Perhaps you meant Crusader? Anyway, the Wizard can be better than the Fighter at 1st level if optimized to do so, though people usually plan for the long haul.

I meant fighter. He has higher AC (because he can wear armour), more HP, and he does more damage. Consistently, all day long, across several encounters. Well, as long as his HP last. It definitely helps to have some healing.

Sticking to standard core stuff, I don't see how a 1st level wizard can have more staying power than a fighter. He has a few good spells, but they're gone quickly. Maybe he has some additional equipment (scrolls, alchemist's fire), but that tends to be single-use only. Eventually he'll run out.

I don't doubt there's some broken abilities available for wizards in other books, but as long as you stick to core stuff, I don't see how a fighter can avoid being stronger than a wizard at level 1.

First Random Encounter on the road to the adventure local. You end up fighting a group of some low level enemies. Wild dogs, Goblins, Kobolds, whatever the flavor is for the setting. The Wizard, having been well rested, uses his 1 (likely 2) 1st level spells per day to just solo this encounter. Sleep, coup de grace. Encounter over. Wizard gets XP (key), and some loot. Fighter goes "Well that was easy" as he just stabbed sleeping kobolds in the face to kill them. Everyone is happy.

During the next 2-3 days traveling out to the Dungeon a wizard will use the XP he gained, along with materials/gold from his starting loadout or the like to go scribe 2-3 scrolls with no real problem in doing this. He'll eat 12 GP and 1 XP a piece to do this. Hardly a huge drawback for the Wizard and more than worth it to be able to double his spells per day.

You get to the dungeon. First encounter, BAM! Wizard eats up one of his daily prepped spells to decimate it. Fighter is on clean up duty just putting the finishing blow on helpless targets and the like.
Second encounter, BAM! Wizard eats up his second level 1 prepped spell for the day to clean up the encounter. Fighter again is there just for clean up duty.
Third Encounter, BAM! Use your first scroll you scribed for a whopping 1 XP. Win encounter. Fighter's going "Hmm, and the local town was having trouble with this why?"
Fourth (Boss) Encounter? Second scroll gets used to decimate the encounter.
You seem to think that a single level 1 spell never fails to win an encounter. I'd really like to know what you have in your spellbook. There are some really good, encounter-defining level 1 spells for wizards, but you still need fighters to do the actual damage. Without their help, the wizard isn't going to get very far.

Spells that solo encounters like Sleep and Charm Person.
They allow saves. I've tried using Charm Person to win a first level encounter against a group of humans, and it didn't work. Had it been skeletons, I couldn't even have tried.

It's only going to work if your DM tailors his encounters to be easily defeated by you, and even then only when he rolls badly on his saves.

Zubrowka74

2013-01-19, 10:21 AM

An all Tier 1 game sounds fun to me. In fact, the most recent session I was in came close with a Wizard, Druid, and Duskblade.

Yes, of course the game could be played with very few classes. In fact, it did start with only three classes and no feats. As an old-(mid?)-schooler I've always held that RP and fluff were more important than mechanics. You can have a full party with just 1e fighters and the player behind the character will make the difference with the help of RP. I'm all for that.

But you have to acknowledge that since 3e the mechanical options have grown way beyond the original scope and this pulled in players that enjoyed this new facet of the game. The same crowd that enjoys tinkering with a MTG deck. So going back to 3 or 4 classes might not fly with them. It's not the same game anymore.

lesser_minion

2013-01-19, 10:25 AM

It's usually suggested that magic users get to do anything because "it's magic" while non-magical characters are limited to doing mundane (i.e. routine and boring) things.

There is a double-standard, but it's mainly in how the designers didn't think of what might limit casters -- and when they did find something, they usually just handwaved it away; while at the same time, they bent over backwards and pulled stuff out of their asses to hinder non-casters.

For example, to write out a 34-page spellbook costs 3400 gp, plus the cost of gathering the spells. It has a resale value of 1700 gp. Since even a 3rd-level wizard couldn't afford this, a wizard just starts with her first spell book free of charge.

Note that the wizard can, in fact, function completely without a spellbook by taking feats. If the fighter needed a spellbook to swing a sword, do you think the game would have given one out for free?

There's also the double-standard where hitting a target 300m away is difficult even for a high-level archer, but laughably easy for a wizard, even with spells that clearly do create projectiles. Obviously, it's easier to hit a target with an explosion the size of a church than it is to hit one with an arrow, but this takes things too far.

Dusk Eclipse

2013-01-19, 10:26 AM

The main problem with the example i used with the wizard vs dragon, is that when you say a wizard has bound greater demons to take on dragon and the dragon is said to be appropriate challenge the dragon will have about equal magical power or abit more to the wizard.
Dragons are one of the most intelligent races in the world.

Actully no, at 15 th level (when GPB become available) CR appropiate dragons are mature adults at the most, and most dragons are only just getting CL 7 only up to level 3 spells (remember they cast as Sorcerers). Dragon casting is generally weak for their CR, only getting access to high level spells at near-epic/actually Epic levels.

Dragons should be played more as gishes, suplementing their natural abilities, than as full fleged spell casters.

Story

2013-01-19, 10:41 AM

I meant fighter. He has higher AC (because he can wear armour), more HP, and he does more damage. Consistently, all day long, across several encounters. Well, as long as his HP last. It definitely helps to have some healing.

Sticking to standard core stuff, I don't see how a 1st level wizard can have more staying power than a fighter. He has a few good spells, but they're gone quickly. Maybe he has some additional equipment (scrolls, alchemist's fire), but that tends to be single-use only. Eventually he'll run out.

I don't doubt there's some broken abilities available for wizards in other books, but as long as you stick to core stuff, I don't see how a fighter can avoid being stronger than a wizard at level 1.

And how are you getting this healing? Core only and the Fighter is dead after a fight or two. Outside of core, the Wizard gets stuff like the Animal Companion ACF or Fiery Burst.

But you have to acknowledge that since 3e the mechanical options have grown way beyond the original scope and this pulled in players that enjoyed this new facet of the game. The same crowd that enjoys tinkering with a MTG deck. So going back to 3 or 4 classes might not fly with them. It's not the same game anymore.

Well they're free to use the other classes, it's just unlikely to work out well for them. But something like Bard or Factorum can still be useful even with Tier 1s.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 11:18 AM

You seem to think that a single level 1 spell never fails to win an encounter. I'd really like to know what you have in your spellbook. There are some really good, encounter-defining level 1 spells for wizards, but you still need fighters to do the actual damage. Without their help, the wizard isn't going to get very far.

Sleep, coup de grace with scythe. Colour Spray, coup de grace with scythe. I'm sorry, what was that about damage?

Starbuck_II

2013-01-19, 11:19 AM

1st Level Wizard: Cast sleep. Coup de Grace. Move on.

Now it used to be back in the day that the balance, at low level, is that they can only do this sort of effectiveness once. Though with bonus spells from high Int scores, not so much. Not to mention all the various feats, items, etc, which can allow you to circumvent this limitation a little more often. It's rare I see the 1st level Wizard in games honestly reduced to "Hope I get lucky with a Crossbow" plinking, though sometimes you hear about that.

The thing is 3.5 even made this harder. Sleep used to be cast: 1 (as in -1 Initiative) in 2E like Magic missile.

3.5 made it 1 rd casting (basically casting time: 20 in 2E).
But it still rocks.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 11:26 AM

I find that people who discuss this theoretically tend to completely ignore the existence of saving throws and immunities. Even when asked about them specifically.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 11:29 AM

I find that people who discuss this theoretically tend to completely ignore the existence of saving throws and immunities. Even when asked about them specifically.
A wizard has the Knowledge skills to figure out the target's weakness ("A big fat bruiser? I should probably not use spells that it can resist with its huge bulging muscles"). People have done the numbers on this one - accounting for all rolls, a level 1 fighter specifically designed to beat a level 1 wizard loses 65% of the time or so to a wizard designed to adventure.

mcv

2013-01-19, 11:32 AM

And how are you getting this healing?
Hopefully from party members, otherwise potions, though admittedly that gets expensive. The central idea is of course to have a decent AC so you don't get hit that often. But at least a fighter can survive a hit or two, unlike the wizard.

Sleep, coup de grace with scythe. Colour Spray, coup de grace with scythe. I'm sorry, what was that about damage?
So there you are with a scythe you're not proficient in, trying to coup de grace someone who made his save. Now what?

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 11:33 AM

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 11:35 AM

a wizard 'CAN' have the knowledge skills neccessary. Even when he does, he can't possibly know contingency spells for every eventuality. He especially cannot be expected to foresee it when he's preparing spells for the day.

Say it's a group of elves, immune to sleep, suddenly you can't use your primary means to shut down a group.

What spells besides sleep do you have prepared at first level?
Colour Spray. CR1 means no more than two, so you can easily catch both of them in the cone.

Or just crossbow them. Elves have rubbish Constitution and the wizard knows it.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 11:41 AM

Yup, powerful spell, still one of them makes his save, (assuming 50% odds) he protects his friend from coup de grace until the effect wears off, or possibly attacks you instead.

ArcturusV

2013-01-19, 11:42 AM

As I said. DM screw "Ah ha, he's a primary enchanter and his first spells in his book are all enchantment spells? I'll throw him at elves/undead!". That will always neutralize a Wizard at first level (Not so much later though).

Even then, saving throws aren't a HUGE deal at first level.

Sleep? You can easily pump up the save DC 14-17 at first level, if not higher. A first level monster is likely to have no saving throw bonus if not a penalty. This again, isn't optimizing by scouring through all the books. This is having say, a Human Wizard with an average first level Intelligence for a primary wizard spellcaster (I find it tends to be around 16+), Specialist Wizard bonuses as almost every Wizard player I've seen plays as a type of specialist, there's no reason not to really, Spell Focus Feat, easy enough to tack on if not a better option from a non-core book. So you already have better than not odds of any given enemy failing a saving throw, even with a realistically weird (Statistics be damned, the rolls never do seem to average out on the table) average range of saving throws that 1st level sleep spell against 8 targets is likely to bag all but 1 or 2.

mcv

2013-01-19, 11:45 AM

Colour Spray. CR1 means no more than two, so you can easily catch both of them in the cone.
Only if they're actually close together. Blind assumptions like that will get you killed.

Or just crossbow them. Elves have rubbish Constitution and the wizard knows it.
But they have better AC than you, and might decide to longbow you back.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 11:55 AM

Only if they're actually close together. Blind assumptions like that will get you killed.
It's more likely than not, all things considered.

But they have better AC than you, and might decide to longbow you back.
Who's assuming now?

Aharon

2013-01-19, 12:01 PM

I think the problem here is the distinction between first level and later levels. A first level wizard does not win every encounter. He has a better chance than a fighter, though - 65%, according to Flickerdart. It's only at later levels that the wizard becomes totally untouchable, but even at low levels, he is very good. Colour Spray won't end all encounters, but it will end a significant number of encounters.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 12:03 PM

Why is it more likely than not?

If they're fighting you, they might have been hunting you. They might know you're a caster and stay apart.

Or even if they are completely unaware, one might be off gathering firewood while the other is setting up camp, or one might be a bow wielding scout, scouting ahead while the other a, noble swordsman, stays a bit behind..

Making the assumption of ideal circumstances for spellcasting is at least AS fallacious as making assumptions that make spellcasting fail is.

Even if they're not elves, one will probably save against sleep and spend his first round waking the one who didn't.

And there's no guarantee of 2 guys either. Sure, for the sake of argument it's only fair, but say you just see one elf, you don't know if he's alone (easy encounter), if his buddy is around the corner (normal encounter) or if he has 2-3 buddies around the corner (slightly difficult encounter)

Story

2013-01-19, 12:03 PM

Hopefully from party members

In other words, you're relying on someone more powerful than you, someone who'd be better off adventuring with another wizard. And they aren't going to be healing you all day either (Crusader and Dragonfire Adept aren't core), so you still don't have longevity.

Agincourt

2013-01-19, 12:04 PM

During the next 2-3 days traveling out to the Dungeon a wizard will use the XP he gained, along with materials/gold from his starting loadout or the like to go scribe 2-3 scrolls with no real problem in doing this. He'll eat 12 GP and 1 XP a piece to do this. Hardly a huge drawback for the Wizard and more than worth it to be able to double his spells per day.

I don't see how you can scribe a scroll while travelling. You need to spend at least a day for any magic item creation and have a quiet comfortable place to work.

Also, the 1 round casting time of Sleep significantly weakens the spell. 1 round into combat, it's rare that enemy creatures are still clumped together within a 10 foot radius burst. Allies and enemies alike are affected by the spell. In the games I play, 1 round into combat, allies and enemies are usually skirmishing by that point.

It's not a bad spell, but I don't see it as the "I win" button that higher level wizard spells are.

mcv

2013-01-19, 12:04 PM

It's more likely than not, all things considered.

Who's assuming now?
Still you. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elf.htm says AC 15, which is more than an unarmoured wizard generally has, unless you cast Mage Armor, which would significantly reduce your options in offensive spells. And at first level it lasts only an hour, so what are the odds you'll have it active when you run into some enemies? Do you want to spend your first turn of combat on this instead of an offensive spell?

Note that is also says:
Elves are cautious warriors and take time to analyze their opponents and the location of the fight if at all possible, maximizing their advantage by using ambushes, snipers, and camouflage. They prefer to fire from cover and retreat before they are found, repeating this maneuver until all of their enemies are dead.

They prefer longbows, shortbows, rapiers, and longswords. In melee, elves are graceful and deadly, using complex maneuvers that are beautiful to observe. Their wizards often use sleep spells during combat because these won’t affect other elves.
Doesn't sound like they'd be standing next to each other waiting for you to color spray them. Unless of course your wizard is sneaking up on their camp to murder them in their sleep, I mean, meditation.

mcv

2013-01-19, 12:08 PM

In other words, you're relying on someone more powerful than you, someone who'd be better off adventuring with another wizard. And they aren't going to be healing you all day either (Crusader and Dragonfire Adept aren't core), so you still don't have longevity.

Depends on the encounter. With good AC and good damage, a fighter has a good chance to survive an encounter unscathed. And his offensive capabilities don't run out. It's only when he gets unlucky that his limited resources run out. For a low level wizard, his resources run out as soon as he uses them. And then bad luck can still mean they don't do anything.

Fighter still has the edge here.

WhatBigTeeth

2013-01-19, 12:18 PM

killem2

2013-01-19, 12:21 PM

I'll show you the funny part about the online community and these classes.

My group, has a cleric and a wizard and it is still highly reliant on the fighter, barbarian, two rangers, and the rogue.

You say this, and then the reply you'll get is, well your wizard and cleric are doing it wrong.

Then I laugh to myself.

The classes are only as powerful as the knowledge they wish to look up. For someone like you, OP, who hasn't ventured outside of core, you might not see all the awesome stuff, but at the same time, people have to know what they are looking for and see the connection.

The cleric in my group is just fine with having the earth domain and picking up divine magicians and cannot wait to become a hammer of moradin.

Our wizard is just happy casting damage spells or things that look awesome in the book.

Just plain ol' d&d.

Why is it more likely than not?

If they're fighting you, they might have been hunting you. They might know you're a caster and stay apart.

Or even if they are completely unaware, one might be off gathering firewood while the other is setting up camp, or one might be a bow wielding scout, scouting ahead while the other a, noble swordsman, stays a bit behind..

Making the assumption of ideal circumstances for spellcasting is at least AS fallacious as making assumptions that make spellcasting fail is.

Even if they're not elves, one will probably save against sleep and spend his first round waking the one who didn't.

And there's no guarantee of 2 guys either. Sure, for the sake of argument it's only fair, but say you just see one elf, you don't know if he's alone (easy encounter), if his buddy is around the corner (normal encounter) or if he has 2-3 buddies around the corner (slightly difficult encounter)

You nailed it man. It is all these assumptive notions that the "tier" system is law and therefore you must respect it and realize it will always happen in your games.

Magic gets way to my verbal masturbation around here.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 12:25 PM

The readiness to ignore the 1-round casting and 15ft range limitations of sleep and color spray, as well as the ~2 uses/day at level 1 really makes me think the loudest proponents of the "Wizard >>> everybody, even at level 1" stance are talking more out of armchair theorycraft than anything they've tried in an actual game.

(And yeah, this coming from the guy who's launched into two rants already in this thread about how awesome the wizard is)
What kind of lousy wizard has two uses per day? It's the simplest of things to make a 1st level wizard with 5 1st level spells per day (1 base, 20 Int for +2 slots, focused specialist for +2 more).

Meanwhile, what "good AC" does the Fighter have, exactly? Starting wealth means that he's looking at +4 armour at best, and unless he's being built with utter disregard for later levels, he won't have all that much dexterity. Against the same two elves, he's going to have lousy damage (since he can't add STR to ranged damage yet), lousy to-hit because of his low dexterity, and lousy AC because of lack of funds. The CR 1/2 warriors are better than him in every single way, and there's two of them. He could try closing range, but with a longbow's range being what it is, he's toast long before he runs over there with his crippled move speed.

killem2

2013-01-19, 12:29 PM

What kind of lousy wizard

see what I mean OP.

If you aren't breaking the wizard, you are doing it wrong.

Self fulfilling prophecies are awesome.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 12:30 PM

see what I mean OP.

If you aren't breaking the wizard, you are doing it wrong.

Self fulfilling prophecies are awesome.
If you are not playing the class to its potential, then you cannot truly be said to be playing the class. A wizard is the sum of his spells; a blaster wizard is only the sum of the blasting spells, and thus not a whole wizard.

Likewise, if you are playing a character that casts spells, it is only natural to want to be able to cast spells. I do not understand why you find something wrong with this. Do you not like it when players play the characters they want to play?

WhatBigTeeth

2013-01-19, 12:31 PM

What kind of lousy wizard has two uses per day? It's the simplest of things to make a 1st level wizard with 5 1st level spells per day (1 base, 20 Int for +2 slots, focused specialist for +2 more).
So have we been specifically talking about grey elf focused specialist enchanters in point buy games, or are you shifting your assumptions to a very specific case (when discussing generalities) in order to defend a grossly overstated argument?

Yora

2013-01-19, 12:32 PM

Making the assumption of ideal circumstances for spellcasting is at least AS fallacious as making assumptions that make spellcasting fail is.
Pretty much all examples I've seen for spellcaster power assume perfect circumstances for the spellcasters and worst situation for their enemy.

If it ever is the other way round people say "well, yes, but that's never actually gonna happen".

What kind of lousy wizard has two uses per day? It's the simplest of things to make a 1st level wizard with 5 1st level spells per day (1 base, 20 Int for +2 slots, focused specialist for +2 more).
Show me 20 Int with Point Buy 25 and PHB races.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 12:34 PM

So have we been specifically talking about grey elf focused specialist enchanters in point buy games, or are you shifting your assumptions to a very specific case (when discussing generalities) in order to defend a grossly overstated argument?
There's more than one way to skin a cat, my insulting friend. Fire elf sub level generalist domain wizard, for instance. :smallbiggrin:

You are making a strange binary assumption (at every level, every wizard must be able to defeat every encounter with no chance of failure or else all wizards are actually crap) that is utterly meaningless.

Show me 20 Int with Point Buy 25 and PHB races.
PB25...and you want to compare this to a fighter of all things? My jowls are wobbling with mirth.

Starbuck_II

2013-01-19, 12:36 PM

So there you are with a scythe you're not proficient in, trying to coup de grace someone who made his save. Now what?

You don't need to be proficient if sleep did its job. Coup de Grace auto hits (barring miss chance).

Yora

2013-01-19, 12:38 PM

I don't want to compare anything. I just want to know how in a game with basic rules and under standard coditions this would be possible.

If arguments do not hold up under such circumstances, then it's not a discussion about the balance of wizards, but about the balance of splatbooks and high point buy campaigns.

Volthawk

2013-01-19, 12:39 PM

Yup, powerful spell, still one of them makes his save, (assuming 50% odds) he protects his friend from coup de grace until the effect wears off, or possibly attacks you instead.

When will it ever be 50% odds at first level? I mean, if we say a 16 Int Wizard with nothing further pumping the DC (note that that's 10 points in point buy, so even with this 25 point buy you have enough for 8 14 14 16 10 8 with one point to spare), that's still a DC 14 Will save for Colour Spray. In order for these elves to have a 50:50 chance, they'll need a Will save of +4 (so two of 14 Wisdom, Iron Will or being a good-Will class).

Now, since mcv has already cited the basic elven warrior in the book as his example, I'll do the same. Notice the -1 Will save (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elf.htm), which means it won't have a 50:50 chance, as it needs a 15 or higher to pass the save. Even if you swap Int and Wis, so Wis doesn't have a penalty any more, that's still a 14 or higher to pass, and still not a 50:50 chance.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 12:40 PM

I'm playing a bard in a level one core only (not even Advanced Players guide) with 10 point buy pathfinder game

This hurts MAD characters more than casters, but none of the casters has a 20 anywhere in sight. (we have a sorcerer with 18 charisma, and that's pretty much all he has)

mikethepoor

2013-01-19, 12:41 PM

What kind of lousy wizard has two uses per day? It's the simplest of things to make a 1st level wizard with 5 1st level spells per day (1 base, 20 Int for +2 slots, focused specialist for +2 more).

You actually get a total of +3/day for focused specialist, not +2; focused specialties explicitly stack with regular ones to determine bonus spell slots. Also, you're assuming you're starting at Old age to hit that 20 INT. While you can, you do have to at least think about your other stats, even if it's only to make sure your penalties aren't crippling you. Still, 6 slots a day at level 1 is a pretty sweet deal.

Volthawk

2013-01-19, 12:42 PM

You actually get a total of +3/day for focused specialist, not +2; focused specialties explicitly stack with regular ones to determine bonus spell slots. Also, you're assuming you're starting at Old age to hit that 20 INT. While you can, you do have to at least think about your other stats, even if it's only to make sure your penalties aren't crippling you. Still, 6 slots a day at level 1 is a pretty sweet deal.

What about an Int-boosting race?

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 12:42 PM

When will it ever be 50% odds at first level? I mean, if we say a 16 Int Wizard with nothing further pumping the DC, that's still a DC 14 Will save for Colour Spray. In order for these elves to have a 50:50 chance, they'll need a Will save of +4 (so two of 14 Wisdom, Iron Will or being a good-Will class).

Now, since mcv has already cited the basic elven warrior in the book as his example, I'll do the same. Notice the -1 Will save (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elf.htm), which means it won't have a 50:50 chance, as it needs a 15 or higher to pass the save. Even if you swap Int and Wis, so Wis doesn't have a penalty any more, that's still a 14 or higher to pass, and still not a 50:50 chance.

Granted, though to be fair, I said 'what if they're elves?' I didn't jump straight to the elven warriors in the book, they could be any sort of elves you might reasonably expect to encounter.

awa

2013-01-19, 12:43 PM

these level 1 god wizard argument usually assume the wizard always goes first and is never surprised.

when a goblin pops out of the bushes the wizard has an ac of 10 the fighter with his chain shirt and his shield has 16. The goblin can drop the wizard with a single blow while the fighter even if he does get hit can't be killed with out a crit.

wizard is great when everything goes right.
sleep has a one rnd casting time which means ever monster in the encounter has a chance to kill you before it goes off or to scatter and prevent you from hitting more then one target.

color spray on the other hand has a 15 foot range so catching multiple creatures is far from a a given.

at low level his defensive buffs have such a short duration that either he blows all his slots refreshing it or the first round of combat casting it. Either way having good defense is far from a given at this level.

grease is good at knocking people down but that doesn't mean they're dead they can just crawl out of the area unless you have a fighter to back you up.

worse the wizard needs to know what hes fighting ahead of time if our wizard prepares only sleep color spray finds himself fighting a zombie he is completely doomed.

Volthawk

2013-01-19, 12:47 PM

Granted, though to be fair, I said 'what if they're elves?' I didn't jump straight to the elven warriors in the book, they could be any sort of elves you might reasonably expect to encounter.

Eh, still like I said, you need two of 14 Wis (Wis 18 covers both things needed), Iron Will, a dwarf or a good Will class (so another caster) to have that 50:50 chance against a 16 Int wizard (if we go with Flickerdart's 20 Int wizard, then you need three of them, or Wis 18 and one of the others).

Nightcanon

2013-01-19, 12:47 PM

Hi Arcturus,
I don't think that planning encounters that don't play directly to the strengths of one particular character is the same as taking particular actions against that character. Kobold raiding parties shouldn't keep attacking within 10' radius circles, any more than a bunch of human bandits are should keep coming one-by-one past a hidden elven thief in a dark tunnel, or tavern bullies should keep challenging a Str 18 barbarian to arm-wrestling everywhere he goes. If wizards are dangerous, they should be targetted by opponents. If wizards are abusing Scribe Scroll to bypass the limit on spells per day, there are ways the prevent this.

mikethepoor

2013-01-19, 12:50 PM

What about an Int-boosting race?

The only one I can think of at LA +0 is the gray elf, and they're already taking a penalty to CON. I'd rather not be so unbalanced in my stats that a single lucky shot kills me, particularly if it comes from an enemy spellcaster. It's still something to think about though.

ArcturusV

2013-01-19, 12:55 PM

Fair enough Nightcanon. Though interestingly as a player? I almost never play wizards in 3rd/3.5 edition. I usually got forced into playing the cleric by teams who wanted a heal bot but no one would step up. Or a more martial character.

I've been upstaged enough by 1st level spell casters though to know the scenario I put forth isn't that unusual either. Particularly if you're dungeon or ruin/haunted manor style delving at 1st level, where the terrain naturally bunches up your enemies and forces them into neat AoE packets.

Short of playing an adventure where we face a ton of Undead or each room/encounter tends to be against a relatively hulking bruiser (again typically undead), it tends to happen to varying degrees in my experience. I just kinda accept it as my role as playing the Fighter or Cleric. If I'm throwing down a Fighter my real role isn't "Frontline Combatant" it's more like "Nighttime Bodyguard until they research spells to secure them at their most vulnerable" or possibly "Door Opener because they didn't want to burn a spell on Knock". Which typically I'm perfectly fine with. I don't mind that sort of thing myself. But the experiences have clearly told me that even at first level they have a clear edge.

WhatBigTeeth

2013-01-19, 12:58 PM

There's more than one way to skin a cat, my insulting friend. Fire elf sub level generalist domain wizard, for instance. :smallbiggrin:That general context that the discussion pertains to is still fading away into the distance. Goodbye, context.

You are making a strange binary assumption (at every level, every wizard must be able to defeat every encounter with no chance of failure or else all wizards are actually crap) that is utterly meaningless.
I have no idea where you're getting this (well, one idea, really).

Probably 7/8 of my wordcount in this thread is talking about how strong wizards are, and 1/8 is criticism for overstatements of a low-level wizard's dominance.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 01:01 PM

Eh, still like I said, you need two of 14 Wis (Wis 18 covers both things needed), Iron Will, a dwarf or a good Will class (so another caster) to have that 50:50 chance against a 16 Int wizard (if we go with Flickerdart's 20 Int wizard, then you need three of them, or Wis 18 and one of the others).

Ok, assuming we have two elven warriors, straight from the book.

Each one needs to roll a 15 to save. That's a 75% chance of failure.

The odds that both will fail are 0.75 x 0.75 = 0.5625 = 56.25%, which is only 'slightly' better than the 50% odds I grabbed out of thin air.

The odds of both saving, incidentally, are 0.25 x 0.25 = 0.0625 = 6.25%

The remaining perchantages are 2x(0.25x0.75) = 0.375 = 37.5%, which would be where one saves and the other doesn't.

And while we could argue for a higher int wizard, or elves with better than -1 to their will save, I think my point that the odds of at least one escaping the first casting are not insignificant stands.

Edit: Oops, I'm sorry, this would be for -2 to will save elves. (where 16, 17, 18, 19 or 20 (25% of the possible rolls) are needed to save)

For -1 will save. (15-20 or 30% of the rolls) the odds are:

49% that both will fail.
9% that both will succeed
42% that one will save and the other will fail.

Tar Palantir

2013-01-19, 01:22 PM

Ok, assuming we have two elven warriors, straight from the book.

Each one needs to roll a 15 to save. That's a 75% chance of failure.

The odds that both will fail are 0.75 x 0.75 = 0.5625 = 56.25%, which is only 'slightly' better than the 50% odds I grabbed out of thin air.

The odds of both saving, incidentally, are 0.25 x 0.25 = 0.0625 = 6.25%

The remaining perchantages are 2x(0.25x0.75) = 0.375 = 37.5%, which would be where one saves and the other doesn't.

And while we could argue for a higher int wizard, or elves with better than -1 to their will save, I think my point that the odds of at least one escaping the first casting are not insignificant.

Edit: Oops, I'm sorry, this would be for -2 to will save elves.

For -1 will save the odds are:

49% that both will fail.
9% that both will succeed
42% that one will save and the other will fail.

50/50 odds of ending the encounter without the enemies having a chance to take a turn is still quite significant. At any rate, first level is stupidly swingy and lethal for everyone; fight orc warriors instead of elves and everyone drops in one or two hits. 'Durability' at level 1 is a joke. Even just shift the focus from first to third level, and wizards are already starting to pull significantly ahead, with gems like Glitterdust, Web, Invisibility, Mirror Image, and Levitate, let alone Alter Self. A wizard will have at least five spells at level three, and even without a +Int race can have nine as a Focused Specialist. At level one, the situation is arguably in favor of either side (mostly because everyone dies to anything that connects), but it only gets worse with every level.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 01:25 PM

Absolutely, not arguing that. Just saying that people are overextending the truism when they speak as if Wizards are win-gods of epic win at every level of play.

Tar Palantir

2013-01-19, 01:30 PM

Absolutely, not arguing that. Just saying that people are overextending the truism when they speak as if Wizards are win-gods of epic win at every level of play.

Fair enough, but that's mostly just their win-god status hitting a divide by zero when combined with "everyone sucks at everything and dies to everything else at level 1", rather than a comparative advantage in favor of fighter.

Edenbeast

2013-01-19, 01:31 PM

Here's me posting without reading all posts in this thread. Just so you know if say something which has been said before.

I think inherently magic is very powerful. And if you check some fiction, the one wielding magic is usually more powerful than the common guy with his sword. And so should it be IMHO. In RPGs however this is normally perceived as unbalanced, or even unfair, where at the same level, a wizard can do so much more.
You can prohibit certain spells or give the fighter more magic items, etc, but I don't think that's the right solution. What could be a solution (and it just came to my mind, so excuse me if I post something completely unreasonable, but at least give it a thought), is to have different experience levels as in pre-3rd edition stuff, where a wizard progresses much slower than a fighter. Now I can already hear the wizard player cry "ooh but the fighter is already level 20 and I'm still blalala.." But that resembles the cries from people eating a meal without added salt. Alot of food contains too much salt which is unhealthy. However, many peope are used to eating salty food and think that's the normal taste of it.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 01:35 PM

I like systems where 'level' is powerlevel. In that sort of game a level 15 wizard should be about evenly matched with a level 15 fighter, but it would be incalculably more difficult to become a level 15 fighter because fighting, even very well, is so inherently weak when compared to altering the fabric of reality.

In that sort of game system, 99% of all high level characters SHOULD be casters of some sort.

It would also mean that having a very young caster type at relatively high level should be more plausible than having a very young fighter type at relatively high level.

SAGA edition took essentially this approach with Jedi and levels, I think it worked out pretty well.

Story

2013-01-19, 01:35 PM

If arguments do not hold up under such circumstances, then it's not a discussion about the balance of wizards, but about the balance of splatbooks and high point buy campaigns.

Restricted environments tend to favor the Wizard even more. Sure the Wizard no longer gets an animal companion, but the Fighter doesn't get Troll Blooded Warforged either, meaning he's dead after one unlucky hit.

The only one I can think of at LA +0 is the gray elf, and they're already taking a penalty to CON. I'd rather not be so unbalanced in my stats that a single lucky shot kills me, particularly if it comes from an enemy spellcaster. It's still something to think about though.

Sun elf, Fire elf, Lesser Asimar ...

The elves have the bonus of letting you go Domain Generalist, though the CON penalty definitely hurts.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 01:36 PM

is to have different experience levels as in pre-3rd edition stuff, where a wizard progresses much slower than a fighter
At level 9, a wizard becomes functionally immortal through planar binding nightmares and then astral projecting around. Even if wizards only got half XP, what can an 18th level fighter do that is comparable to this?

Different XP levels also don't account for classes like the Bard, or multiclass characters, or PrCs. They're just not a very good idea for 3.5, and it becomes obvious as soon as you start trying to apply it to anything.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 01:46 PM

If a character isn't challenged by the fights he wins, he should gain less xp for them...it both makes absolute sense, and solves this whole problem.

Agincourt

2013-01-19, 01:51 PM

If a character isn't challenged by the fights he wins, he should gain less xp for them...it both makes absolute sense, and solves this whole problem.

This seems to punish players for making good choices, using good tactics, or choosing the appropriate spell. It creates a perverse incentive to choose poor tactics so that the combat was "challenging." If it works for your group, fine, but I would not appreciate a DM reducing my XP because I happened to choose the right spell.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 01:52 PM

If a character isn't challenged by the fights he wins, he should gain less xp for them...it both makes absolute sense, and solves this whole problem.
Challenges are not solved by characters, but by parties. If the wizard's buffs and battlefield control made it trivial for the fighter to stab things, should he also get less XP?

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 01:54 PM

Challenges are not solved by characters, but by parties. If the wizard's buffs and battlefield control made it trivial for the fighter to stab things, should he also get less XP?

Absolutely

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 01:56 PM

Absolutely
So the entire party is lower level as a result, and there's still no balance. What did this accomplish?

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 01:59 PM

So the entire party is lower level as a result, and there's still no balance. What did this accomplish?

How much less experience depends on how much easier.

If the wizard is spending his power boosting the other guys to easily defeat encounters, all of them should proceed maybe slightly more slowly, but they shouldn't notice.

If one of them is having a very easy time, he should gain less, if one is having a very hard time, he should gain more.

as to what's been gained?

The players feel challenged instead of breezing through everything.

Encounters can be made properly challenging to the party as a whole, without the resulting xp-awards meaning that the next encounter will have to be that much harder.

It basically turns off xp inflation.

ko_sct

2013-01-19, 02:02 PM

One thing a few posters mentioned is that magic break the rules of reality and mundane are generally bound by them.

From which follow the logic of magic being always better than mundane.

Which is not true !

OK, in DnD, that's normally the case, but that's because the system is really not balanced.

There are 2 reasons for this.

1) Power of individual spells.

There is a lot of spells who will simply solve a situation in 1 or 2 casting. Combat is the most often cited example, with simply relatively low level having reasonable chance of ending an encounter.

There is also lot of spells that are good in many different situation, spells like shapeshift, alter self and summon monster X can solve a lot of different situation with a single spell.

2) Amount of resource.

It's quite simple, spell-casters have a lot of spell slots. When you have 30 spell slots, each containing a spell that can solve a situation (or many), you can do a whole lot by yourself and do it for a long time.

Now, that's the reason magic is so strong in DnD, but that doesn't mean that a system where it's not always magic>mundane is impossible to make.

Personally I like the idea of most magic taking some time to make and requiring to collect some ingredients, every mage could have a few spells that can cast with ease and quickly, like in combat, but for the more complicated effect it would require a sort ritual or something. (kind of like the idea behind 4ed ritual, but from what I heard the execution was lacking)

Other systems include drawback from casting (exhaustion, sanity lost, chance of accidentally summoning eldritch abomination). Or simply make the spell less strong and universally useful (you can see that in lower tier spellcasters, sure they can do lots of impossible things, but those are less insanely powerful.)

JKTrickster

2013-01-19, 02:08 PM

Why not just accept Sepllcasters are complete fine as is and buff the martial people? :smallconfused:

In my opinion, "mundane fighter" as a concept doesn't make much sense in a "fantasy" setting anyway. Just go all out - buff the fighters so that their skill makes them not need flight/invisibility/polymorph/etc etc

I mean it makes sense. Logically, a walking tin man isn't going to do all day much against a flying dragon. Especially not the DnD dragons.

I mean a lot of people have voiced that the Wizards of DnD....are how we have imagined wizards. From all those tales of high fantasy, the ones with the most magic have (generally) won. "Magic defeats magic" - it's literally how we think of magic. Why bother to change that?

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 02:12 PM

Why not just accept Sepllcasters are complete fine as is and buff the martial people? :smallconfused:
Because spellcasters are not fine. The T1 and T2 classes are capable of utterly annihilating many threats that are far beyond their CR range, usually in one round. Even when faced by other spellcasters, the game becomes "who can go first to activate their uber-strike and win" rather than any sort of tactical engagement. When the entire combat comes down to the initiative dice, you can't seriously claim that the game is working as intended. Even WotC realized this, which is why no more T1 casters except Archivist were added to the game after core (Artificers are not casters, and StP Erudites aren't T1 unless you take a number of particular, strained interpretations) and even T2 got very few additions (basically just Ardent, Psion, and Favored Soul) while the ranks of T3 and T4 classes were bolstered in a major way.

Aegis013

2013-01-19, 02:18 PM

Darius Kane

2013-01-19, 02:28 PM

Why not just accept Sepllcasters are complete fine as is and buff the martial people?
What Flickerdat said, and also because the game would get boring if every player could alone defeat every enemy or solve every problem. Playing as a team wouldn't really make much sense, because everyone can do everything and instead of a team effort it would turn into a competition of who is the strongest and that wouldn't be much fun for people that don't care about strength or aren't that good at optimizing.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 02:29 PM

What I hate is that 4e took every step to try to fix this.

Which wound up just making a game where everyone was a gimped spellcaster and it was no fun.

mcv

2013-01-19, 02:35 PM

You don't need to be proficient if sleep did its job. Coup de Grace auto hits (barring miss chance).

There is no guarantee that Sleep will do its job. None.

Go read the rules. Look for saving throw. Read how they work.

JKTrickster

2013-01-19, 02:38 PM

Because spellcasters are not fine. The T1 and T2 classes are capable of utterly annihilating many threats that are far beyond their CR range, usually in one round. Even when faced by other spellcasters, the game becomes "who can go first to activate their uber-strike and win" rather than any sort of tactical engagement. When the entire combat comes down to the initiative dice, you can't seriously claim that the game is working as intended. Even WotC realized this, which is why no more T1 casters except Archivist were added to the game after core (Artificers are not casters, and StP Erudites aren't T1 unless you take a number of particular, strained interpretations) and even T2 got very few additions (basically just Ardent, Psion, and Favored Soul) while the ranks of T3 and T4 classes were bolstered in a major way.

Right but haven't many of this board agreed that the most optimized T1 Caster is also the most paranoid? Often living in their own demiplane of existence, completely secluded away from life, but more than powerful enough to change the way life works if they wanted to?

Doesn't that slightly resemble how some Amazing Spellcasters are portrayed in real life? They almost become like plot tools instead of characters, to be searched out for help (if you can even manage to find them or convince them to help).

Either way, what I'm saying is that the design philosophy behind the Wizards weren't chiefly balance but a weird type of fantasy logic - literally magic has been superior to anything that wasn't magic - they designed all those spells to be like that because that's how it was like in the stories.

Well... you could claim that it is working as intended, but you'd have a hard time providing sufficient support for the claim.

I'm not saying Wizards being OP is RAI. Or even intended.

I'm simply saying that in lots of fantasy myths, wizards turn people who piss them off into frogs, so you better not piss off the almighty wizards.

In myths, there are also warriors who can kill anyone with a single strike "because fate said so" and can throw the mast of one boat at another. Then jump to another boat, and do it again.

Starbuck_II

2013-01-19, 03:39 PM

There is no guarantee that Sleep will do its job. None.

Go read the rules. Look for saving throw. Read how they work.

If it failed it didn't do its job. So my statement was still true.

Con_Brio1993

2013-01-19, 03:56 PM

One of the deeper problems I see is that magic is... well, magic. While the fighter is bound more or less tightly to the laws of physics/reality, magic in it's essence is a rule-breaking mechanic. People do not fly, it's impossible, unless it's done with magic. That sort of thing.

And you can't nerf that. Otherwise no one would play casters. Would you play a wizard that can only have small "realistic" buffs, damage spells comparable to melee output, no wish, no gate, no effective scry, no teleport ? That's the essence of the wizard. Turning people into frogs, that's why they are feared.

The best solution I can see is to try to raise mundane classes. Give them superhuman physical abilities. If they train hard enough, they can kick with enough force to dislodge skyscrapers. Or move with enough speed to mimic teleportation or invisibility. TOB did a good job with this in my opinion.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 04:20 PM

There is no guarantee that Sleep will do its job. None.

Go read the rules. Look for saving throw. Read how they work.
A 75% (with a paltry 16 INT) or better chance (with better INT and maybe even spell focus) that the target is now taken out of the fight, across multiple targets, isn't good enough for you? Compared with the fighter's maybe 50% chance of hitting a guy and then no guarantee that the shot takes 'em out, it's looking quite impressive from where I'm standing.

Aegis013

2013-01-19, 04:25 PM

I'm not saying Wizards being OP is RAI. Or even intended.

I wasn't intending to argue what you were saying, I believe I understand your point and think it's perfectly legitimate. But with a good deal of optimization experience and having DM'd for groups of T5-T4 and groups of optimized T1's, over time, it's hard to not see just how vast the divide really is, even though the books present the options as being roughly equal.

mcv

2013-01-19, 04:27 PM

If it failed it didn't do its job. So my statement was still true.

Yes. Congratulations, man. You managed to say something that's true. Well done!

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 04:28 PM

The best solution I can see is to try to raise mundane classes. Give them superhuman physical abilities. If they train hard enough, they can kick with enough force to dislodge skyscrapers. Or move with enough speed to mimic teleportation or invisibility. TOB did a good job with this in my opinion.

Some people like going in the anime direction.

I'm not one of them.

But I readily admit that it's hard to see a reasonable alternative that makes non-casters function on par with casters at very high levels. Perhaps giving them SR and/or monstrous saves, immunities and such.

If magic immunity was the fighter capstone ability (at level 19 or 20) you can bet people would rag on it much less.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 04:32 PM

Some people like going in the anime direction.
It's not anime to mimic the feats of, say, Hercules.

If magic immunity was the fighter capstone ability (at level 19 or 20) you can bet people would rag on it much less.
Getting a powerful ability at level 20 doesn't excuse 19 levels of rubbish. Just look at the Truenamer.

navar100

2013-01-19, 04:50 PM

Funny how everyone is always assuming spellscasters always have the exact spells they need at the moment they need them and the bad guys always fail their saving throws. Not even one kobold will make the save vs Sleep? Not even one wizard will not have Sleep available?

Spellcasters are powerful, but they are not overpowered.

mcv

2013-01-19, 05:06 PM

A 75% (with a paltry 16 INT) or better chance (with better INT and maybe even spell focus) that the target is now taken out of the fight, across multiple targets, isn't good enough for you? Compared with the fighter's maybe 50% chance of hitting a guy and then no guarantee that the shot takes 'em out, it's looking quite impressive from where I'm standing.
It's definitely good, but if he doesn't take everybody out, the wizard has a problem.

Let's say we've got a wizard with Int 18, Dex 12 and Con 12, and a fighter with Str 18, Dex 12 and Con 12, and they each try to take on 2 kobolds.

Let's even give the wizard an advantage and say the kobolds are close enough together to hit them both with Sleep. And he's lucky enough to win initiative. With Will -1 and DC 15, they need to roll 16 or higher, or 25% chance of success. 44% chance that at least one kobold is still standing. The kobold, with +1 to hit against AC 11, has 50% chance to hit, doing d6 -1 damage, possibly knocking the 5 HP wizard down to 0 HP in one blow. Or he could simply wake his buddy up, and then the wizard expended one spell for no gain whatsoever. (A wizard really needs some party members to take advantage of the situations he's setting up.) And there's a 12.5% chance they both make their save.

In any case, there's a fair chance that the fight isn't simply finished with that one spell. And that's assuming the kobolds are close together. If they aren't, one of them is guaranteed to be able to act.

Now consider the fighter. Like the wizard, he's lucky enough to get the first attack. Let's say he's got AC 17 (chain shirt and heavy shield) and a longsword.
His attack has only 55% chance of success, but if he hits, the kobold is guaranteed dead. His buddy won't be able to wake him up.

Whether there's one or two kobolds at that moment, they need a 16 to hit. 25% chance each. 31% one of them hits, 12.5% both hit. The chance they both miss is as good as the chance they both fail their save against the wizard. Even if both hit (assuming no crits), our 11 HP fighter is still standing, and has another chance to kill a kobold in one blow.

I'm not going to calculate all the possible ways this fight can end, but it starts pretty advantageous for the wizard (winning initiative and being able to hit them both with sleep). Without that advantage, the wizard is screwed. With that advantage (and only then), he has a decent chance of winning the encounter with one spell. But if that fails, he's in trouble. And if he lacks that advantage, he's in trouble too.

Meanwhile the fighter doesn't need that advantage. In fact, kobolds far apart is good for him, as he might be able to take them on one at a time. But with the kobolds together and winning initiative, he has a decent chance of dropping one kobold straight away, and an equally decent chance of surviving their attacks for a round. And next round, his sword still works, while the wizard expended one of his daily spells.

mcv

2013-01-19, 05:09 PM

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 05:18 PM

It's definitely good, but if he doesn't take everybody out, the wizard has a problem.

Let's say we've got a wizard with Int 18, Dex 12 and Con 12, and a fighter with Str 18, Dex 12 and Con 12, and they each try to take on 2 kobolds.

Let's even give the wizard an advantage and say the kobolds are close enough together to hit them both with Sleep. And he's lucky enough to win initiative. With Will -1 and DC 15, they need to roll 16 or higher, or 25% chance of success. 44% chance that at least one kobold is still standing. The kobold, with +1 to hit against AC 11, has 50% chance to hit, doing d6 -1 damage, possibly knocking the 5 HP wizard down to 0 HP in one blow. Or he could simply wake his buddy up, and then the wizard expended one spell for no gain whatsoever. (A wizard really needs some party members to take advantage of the situations he's setting up.) And there's a 12.5% chance they both make their save.

In any case, there's a fair chance that the fight isn't simply finished with that one spell. And that's assuming the kobolds are close together. If they aren't, one of them is guaranteed to be able to act.

Now consider the fighter. Like the wizard, he's lucky enough to get the first attack. Let's say he's got AC 17 (chain shirt and heavy shield) and a longsword.
His attack has only 55% chance of success, but if he hits, the kobold is guaranteed dead. His buddy won't be able to wake him up.

Whether there's one or two kobolds at that moment, they need a 16 to hit. 25% chance each. 31% one of them hits, 12.5% both hit. The chance they both miss is as good as the chance they both fail their save against the wizard. Even if both hit (assuming no crits), our 11 HP fighter is still standing, and has another chance to kill a kobold in one blow.

I'm not going to calculate all the possible ways this fight can end, but it starts pretty advantageous for the wizard (winning initiative and being able to hit them both with sleep). Without that advantage, the wizard is screwed. With that advantage (and only then), he has a decent chance of winning the encounter with one spell. But if that fails, he's in trouble. And if he lacks that advantage, he's in trouble too.

Meanwhile the fighter doesn't need that advantage. In fact, kobolds far apart is good for him, as he might be able to take them on one at a time. But with the kobolds together and winning initiative, he has a decent chance of dropping one kobold straight away, and an equally decent chance of surviving their attacks for a round. And next round, his sword still works, while the wizard expended one of his daily spells.
You forgot the part where the kobolds can endlessly kite the example fighter, as his move speed is so much less than theirs and he doesn't have a ranged weapon.

Con_Brio1993

2013-01-19, 05:19 PM

Some people like going in the anime direction.

I'm not one of them.

But I readily admit that it's hard to see a reasonable alternative that makes non-casters function on par with casters at very high levels. Perhaps giving them SR and/or monstrous saves, immunities and such.

If magic immunity was the fighter capstone ability (at level 19 or 20) you can bet people would rag on it much less.

I don't really consider it going the anime direction. I'm going out on a limb here and saying that the idea of supernaturally endowed humans predates anime by at least a few centuries.

Aasimar

2013-01-19, 05:34 PM

snarkiness aside, you know as well as I do the difference between being 'heroically' strong and tough, and doing stuff that would make Superman blush.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 05:36 PM

snarkiness aside, you know as well as I do the difference between being 'heroically' strong and tough, and doing stuff that would make Superman blush.
Superman punches out gods on a regular basis, and can travel through time. I'd say his blushing capacity is heavily restricted by this point.

mcv

2013-01-19, 05:51 PM

You forgot the part where the kobolds can endlessly kite the example fighter, as his move speed is so much less than theirs and he doesn't have a ranged weapon.

Kobolds have 30 ft speed, same as the fighter. And there's no reason why the fighter can't have a ranged weapon (though he's obviously better in melee).

Con_Brio1993

2013-01-19, 05:56 PM

snarkiness aside, you know as well as I do the difference between being 'heroically' strong and tough, and doing stuff that would make Superman blush.

Well being able to punt a skyscraper is probably too much. Though Superman can do much more than that. But I see no problem with altering the DND mythos so either:

1. Certain humans (read: PCs) are born blessed by some all-powerful diety. By training physically they can gain some of the power of the gods. Examples: Hercules.

2. Physics and biology are completely whack. Human biology allows them to train to the point where they can move at superspeed, hold their breath for hours, or lift small buildings just by training for years.

Yes there will be no "mundane" anymore, but whatever.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 06:00 PM

Kobolds have 30 ft speed, same as the fighter. And there's no reason why the fighter can't have a ranged weapon (though he's obviously better in melee).
Then he has AC16. I assumed you simply forgot the name of chainmail (which gives 5 AC) to arrive at 17.

Chain shirt costs quite a pretty penny. How often can he afford that when you roll for starting wealth?

mcv

2013-01-19, 06:02 PM

Well being able to punt a skyscraper is probably too much. Though Superman can do much more than that. But I see no problem with altering the DND mythos so either:

1. Certain humans (read: PCs) are born blessed by some all-powerful diety. By training physically they can gain some of the power of the gods. Examples: Hercules.

2. Physics and biology are completely whack. Human biology allows them to train to the point where they can move at superspeed, hold their breath for hours, or lift small buildings just by training for years.

Yes there will be no "mundane" anymore, but whatever.

Exactly. There is no such thing as "mundane" beyond level 10. They can already take ridiculous amounts of damage anyway, so they already left "mundane" far behind.

I'd say give them extra actions, extra attacks, better movement options (climb speed, jumping insane distances), feats of ridiculous strength, you name it.

mcv

2013-01-19, 06:07 PM

Then he has AC16. I assumed you simply forgot the name of chainmail (which gives 5 AC) to arrive at 17.
Chain shirt is +4, heavy shield is +2, Dex +1 makes for a total of 17.

Chain shirt costs quite a pretty penny. How often can he afford that when you roll for starting wealth?
I couldn't find what starting wealth for a fighter is in 3.5, but in Pathfinder it's 150 gp. I assumed that in D&D it'd be something similar. If it's less, then he certainly wouldn't have been able to afford chainmail.

toapat

2013-01-19, 06:11 PM

Chain shirt is +4, heavy shield is +2, Dex +1 makes for a total of 17.

I couldn't find what starting wealth for a fighter is in 3.5, but in Pathfinder it's 150 gp. I assumed that in D&D it'd be something similar. If it's less, then he certainly wouldn't have been able to afford chainmail.

starting fighter wealth is 150 in both. Starting wealth is given as a diceroll, but is actually a fixed number.

Flickerdart

2013-01-19, 06:21 PM

starting fighter wealth is 150 in both. Starting wealth is given as a diceroll, but is actually a fixed number.
Wrong. The fixed number is at the DM's option explicitly; the default is 6d4*10. That roll has a 43% chance of being less than that, and since the fighter's strategy depends so much on his equipment, those odds should be included in the calculations.

Darius Kane

2013-01-19, 06:32 PM

Exactly. There is no such thing as "mundane" beyond level 6.
Fixed that for ya.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-01-19, 06:34 PM

Mundanes aren't really that mundane to begin with.

A str 18 fighter can lift 300 pounds over his head. He can put that same 300 pounds on his back and march for 8 hours straight before he's even winded. Taking 10 and having the 4 ranks in jump will let him jump 18ft with a modicum of effort and even his broad-jump is 9ft. He can shove 1500 lbs of whatever out of his way his bare hands.

With con 14 he can take a longsword in the face twice before he goes down and he still won't be guaranteed dead unless you take another swing to finish him. He can run full tilt for 1 minute 42 seconds and cover 2,040, nearly a half mile, before he even has a chance at being winded.

There are humans in reality that have exceeded these feats, but always one or another, never all at once. In-fact, while this may be just inside the realm of human potential IRL, I've never heard of anyone that could accomplish all of it and that's just a first level fighter.

A 20th level fighter is sporting the same 32 in his strength that a wizard is in his int. He can now lift 2080 pounds, more than a ton, over his head and can shove aside 10400. That sounds pretty superhuman to me. Even without the magical augmentation he's at 23, lifting 600 pounds over his head and shoving aside 3000. With 23 ranks in jump and a +11 str modifier, he can leap across a 35ft chasm if he trips right before take-off and can clear 40 without even trying hard. He can also simply jump over any obstacle less than 10ft tall.

His now minimum 20 con and 20d10 HD says he can take a old red dragon's breath to the face and laugh about it. If not for the size difference he could beat that same dragon at arm-wrestling. He can run full tilt for 2 and a half minutes without getting winded and cover a little less than 2/3 the distance that he could at level one with a literal ton of gear on his shoulders. He can hold his breath for 4 and a half minutes with no effort and can even fight without breathing for over 2 minutes. If you think that doesn't sound like a long time, try just doing jumping-jacks while you hold your breath and see how long you can go.

This is all just base-line ability, no feat investment, only the standard ability boosting items, and nothing else. By level 20, the "mundanes" have left the limits of reality behind long ago.

Just sayin'.

navar100

2013-01-19, 11:15 PM

Not at level 1, no. At higher levels, it becomes a totally different matter.

At what level do opponents always fail their saving throws?

Lord_Gareth

2013-01-19, 11:18 PM

At what level do opponents always fail their saving throws?

At what level do statistics stop working?

I mean, even a first level wizard not specializing in mind-affecting magic is rocking a DC 15 (11 + 4) save vs. his Charms, Sleeps, and Color Sprays, while the average Will save of a human fighter is +0 (-1 if you dumped Wis for whatever reason), with +1 being the outlier. Yes, on the OFF CHANCE that something makes its save you have a problem, but the fact remains that spellcasters of all varieties are well-equipped to target a foe's weaknesses at all levels with INCREASING, not DECREASING, gaps between the DC and the enemy's ability to meet it.

WhatBigTeeth

2013-01-20, 01:15 AM

The mean will save of CR 1/10 to CR 2 monsters, an ECL1 party's bread and butter, is around 1.3. (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19869122/Optimization_By_The_Numbers)

A .65 probability of success is what most classes would assign a D, and that's discounting the logistic issues like expecting enemies to clump up, hold fire and maintain line of effect for the whole round your wizard spends casting sleep, or to cooperatively stand within 45 ft of the color spraying wizard without either stepping back out of range or slicing up the wizard's squishy underbelly before the spell's delivered.

Flickerdart

2013-01-20, 01:22 AM

A .65 probability of success is what most classes would assign a D, and that's discounting the logistic issues like expecting enemies to clump up, hold fire and maintain line of effect for the whole round your wizard spends casting sleep, or to cooperatively stand within 45 ft of the color spraying wizard without either stepping back out of range or slicing up the wizard's squishy underbelly before the spell's delivered.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about the way that spells are delivered. What exactly do you imagine a bunch of enemies can do on the wizard's turn as he walks up to them and casts color spray? It is infinitely more likely that they would spend their time closing in themselves, as the vast majority of low-level monsters are all about the melee attack.

Also I find it a little silly that you are citing an example that includes CR 1/10 opponents like the toad in a transparent attempt to raise the average will save, when it is obvious that the toad is something you can just step on.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-01-20, 01:40 AM

Actually flick, including a significant number of creatures with fractional HD and low will saves would -lower- the average, not raise it. Eliminating those creatures from the equation would probably make it less like that a wizard could hit on average.

Gavinfoxx

2013-01-20, 01:41 AM

There are some really good, encounter-defining level 1 spells for wizards, but you still need fighters to do the actual damage.

No, you need 8 gp mules, with perhaps a bit extra GP worth of training to get them the good combat tricks.

Flickerdart

2013-01-20, 01:42 AM

WhatBigTeeth

2013-01-20, 02:06 AM

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about the way that spells are delivered. What exactly do you imagine a bunch of enemies can do on the wizard's turn as he walks up to them and casts color spray? It is infinitely more likely that they would spend their time closing in themselves, as the vast majority of low-level monsters are all about the melee attack.{scrubbed}
At level 1, the wizard probably can't afford a horse. His movement is probably 30ft at best. Color spray is 15ft long. That means the people the wizard wants to hit with color spray have to be within 45 feet of the wizard at the beginning of the wizard's turn, if he wants to spray them.

If the wizard wants to get that close, he either spends his turn walking up to 45 feet away from the targets, and prays they don't either charge him or take a move action in the opposite direction, or he walks into melee range to ensure that he can catch them in his color spray radius in the next round.

That's why I get a strong feeling the people who keep lauding color spray as a combat end-all either haven't really looked at the tactics involved (ie. haven't ever used it) or are expecting to be softballed by their DMs.

Also I find it a little silly that you are citing an example that includes CR 1/10 opponents like the toad in a transparent attempt to raise the average will save, when it is obvious that the toad is something you can just step on.
Okay, I was going for as close to +/- 1 as possible. Would 1/3 to 2 be better? It still rounds to +1. Or would you be happier if I took the absolute most conservative parameter possible with CR 1 exactly, and we said +0 Will saves? We'd still be talking 70%, which is nowhere near reliable.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-01-20, 02:14 AM

The average save is 1.3, the toad's is 2. You were saying?

That the baboon, donkey, lizard, monkey, pony, war pony, porpoise, rat, tiny and medium vipers, and weasel are all fractional CR animals with a will save of +1. If you're going to include all of them, why not a toad or any of the other animals with fractional CR that have +2 will saves?

Flickerdart

2013-01-20, 03:03 AM

That the baboon, donkey, lizard, monkey, pony, war pony, porpoise, rat, tiny and medium vipers, and weasel are all fractional CR animals with a will save of +1. If you're going to include all of them, why not a toad or any of the other animals with fractional CR that have +2 will saves?
Because all of those animals at least have the possibility of being a threat. A toad can literally do nothing to you, as it lacks attack forms of any kind.

If the wizard wants to get that close, he either spends his turn walking up to 45 feet away from the targets, and prays they don't either charge him or take a move action in the opposite direction, or he walks into melee range to ensure that he can catch them in his color spray radius in the next round.
.
No. That's stupid. He walks up to within 15 feet (melee range? what kind of creatures have 15ft reach at this level?) and then casts the spell and then the spell takes effect. Are you confusing Color Spray with a 1 round casting time spell, perhaps?

Kasbark

2013-01-20, 03:50 AM

Here is what i did to bring casters in line in my homebrew (along with a lot of other changes, this is just the ones regarding spellcasting)

First off, spell selection needs to be limited. I started off with the spell list in the Pathfinder core rulebook (because they already fixed stuff like polymorphing, sleep, wish, planar binding and a bunch of other minor fixes)
Then i removed plot breaking spells spells (scry, teleport, overland flight, detect thoughts and such)
I then removed knock and find traps, no need to steel the rogues stuff.
Lastly i changed a whole bunch of conditions, to make them weaker. Stuff like Fear no longer takes you out of combat for an entire fight, but instead make you lousy at hitting stuff (disadvantage, stolen from Next).

This works great in our group. We are a low OP group, and this ensures that both player and enemy casters no longer break the game at level 7.

hymer

2013-01-20, 04:15 AM

@ Flickerdart: I hear toads give you warts though! :smallwink:

@ Kasbark: What's OP stand for in this context?

OracleofWuffing

2013-01-20, 04:15 AM

A .65 probability of success is what most classes would assign a D,
As long as we're taking random baselines out of context and using them to form perspective on D&D combat mechanics, a 65% batting average puts us up there with some of the best baseball players of all time.

Kasbark

2013-01-20, 04:38 AM

Aegis013

2013-01-20, 04:45 AM

That's why I get a strong feeling the people who keep lauding color spray as a combat end-all either haven't really looked at the tactics involved (ie. haven't ever used it) or are expecting to be softballed by their DMs.

I've had nothing but good experiences with colour spray. (Trivializing encounter after encounter, and laughing as my Owl familiar coup de grace'd fallen monsters) Across multiple DMs. Even if you only catch a handful of enemies in it out of a group of foes, it's much better than most classes can hope to manage at the same level.

Talionis

2013-01-20, 05:16 AM

I think it depends on the game you want to make.

E6 is a great answer if you want everyone to be weak. It is enjoying a good following and getting more and more intricate with its list of "epic feats".

If you want everyone to be more powerful, one of the best fixes I ever saw was allowing rogues to have more wealth than everyone else, so they could pay for Wizard-esc casting. The idea was rogues could just steal whatever items or money for items they need. But in that vein, I could also see giving more body slots to fighters so they can have more magical items than anyone else.

I have also suggested giving every character a bonus feat for every non-caster level. But it's hard to prop up non-casters with casters.

But I think fundamental to the idea is that in a world filled with magic, all characters will use magic to make themselves powerful and versitile enough to be on par.

Aasimar

2013-01-20, 05:18 AM

If you want everyone to be more powerful, one of the best fixes I ever saw was allowing rogues to have more wealth than everyone else, so they could pay for Wizard-esc casting. The idea was rogues could just steal whatever items or money for items they need. But in that vein, I could also see giving more body slots to fighters so they can have more magical items than anyone else.

I have also suggested giving every character a bonus feat for every non-caster level. But it's hard to prop up non-casters with casters.

But I think fundamental to the idea is that in a world filled with magic, all characters will use magic to make themselves powerful and versitile enough to be on par.

That's pretty brilliant actually.

Flickerdart

2013-01-20, 11:23 AM

@ Flickerdart: I hear toads give you warts though! :smallwink:

Everyone knows that warts just make you into an even more powerful witch.

Hiro Protagonest

2013-01-20, 03:36 PM

I used OP as in we do not optimize our characters a whole lot. Focusing more on creating a rich backstory for them, and statting them appropriately for that, rather than finding a powerful class-combo and working backwards from that.

And that's fine. But if you prefer low-power games you should really be playing a different game. Even in E6, a martial character should be able to take down large groups of bandits on their own (warblade, crusader). But in D&D, concepts tend to be larger-than-life at low-level, and superhuman at mid-high. And even then, a mid-level wizard can outdo a mid-level warblade or crusader.

MukkTB

2013-01-20, 04:19 PM

The level 1 wizard is only better than the fighter given some moderate cheese such as abjurant jaunt. Even then its still somewhat balanced. The fighter looks better by comparison than he ever will again.

Now compare a lvl 1 fighter against a lvl 1 druid. You don't need Schrodinger's Wizard to outshine a tier 4 with a tier 1 at level 1.

The problem goes away in the party if everyone tries to play the same tier. The DM takes care of difficulty although verisimilitude takes a hit if you know that a tier 1 party will face more, harder enemies. To be honest I'm beginning to get very sick of the imbalance inherent in 3.x. I play a lot of competitive pvp games where this level of imbalance would be an abomination. It might be getting time for me to look into 4e. E6 isn't a bad solution either.

Gavinfoxx

2013-01-20, 04:37 PM

It might be getting time for me to look into 4e. E6 isn't a bad solution either.

You should look into Legend, 4e, and E6...

Arbane

2013-01-20, 10:27 PM

Every time WotC noticed that a Wizard couldn't do something--like, anything; come up with any wild stunt you can think of--they made a spell, ACF, or feat for that. Presumably the 'limted spells' thing justified it. The problem is that Wizards were given a series of tools that specifically overcame all of the limiters put on their power. Seriously. I can't think of a single balancing factor, besides the limits on when you get Xth level spells, for which WotC didn't make a spell for feat that makes the factor not matter ever.

That one, too: Precocious Apprentice. (http://dndtools.eu/feats/complete-arcane--55/precocious-apprentice--2236/) :smallannoyed:

But yeah, I agree. The fact that in D&D, Magic Can Do Anything, and usually can do it vastly better than a muggle solution, is a problem.