CowardlyPaladin
2013-05-30, 03:23 PM
Now like everybody and there dog knows, casters in 3E are freakishly over powered, and the trick to balancing them is tricky because it requires revamping the entire system. It is also bad for the realism of the world if a powerful wizard can so easily dominate global politics. One of the major problems being that high level wizard spells are just absurdly powerful and can easily destory any non magically protected threat in a single failed save. On the other hand, extremely powerful spells are fun and it would be a shame to get ride of them entirely. An idea i have been toying with is maybe splitting up various spells to make them more situational and make the point where Wizards become god like farther away. My solution is twofold
1) Increase the level that it takes before becoming epic, maybe level 30. Redesign the spell lists by adding more spell levels or changing spells per level ect so that the Wizard/Druid/Cleric combo takes longer before they start to dominate entirely. Most of the added levels will be in the 9-15 area, padding that out so as to extend the period where people are on a relative equal playing field.
2) With 10 (maybe more) extra levels to play with, split the spells so that they aren't as freakishly powerful. For example, a problem alot of people have is that death is a slap on the wrist, so maybe instead of having 3-5 raise dead spells, make there be about 10 with varying levels of quality. An earlier version can only work if cast within an hour, or within 3 days. one can work normally but has a chance of the body being possessed by something else. One works normally without level loss but the character's class might change, or there gender ect. One might work only if you sacrifice somebody of equal HD, or if you first track down the ghost and kill it. Thus the truly revolving door raise dead spells like Resurrection and true Resurrection can only be used by the most powerful of all casters. Same with the charm spells, stack them so that a single suggestion spell doesn't take out the party fighter. ONe might only work for 5 rounds, one might only make them do actions that they felt like doing anyways, one might make them obey a single worded command, one might make them act like they have fallen in love with you, one might make them act like you are there best friend ect. Pad them out, and make it so that each individual spell has more variety, room to roll play ect. Honestly, being having a charm spell cast on you isn't bad if the person still has room to be clever and role play, and trying to work around the spells limitations can be fun and intuitive if enough lee way is allowed.
Another version for this is shapeshifting, which currently means that a Druid can use up all of her spells and still out fight the fighter, so maybe stack them so that one's limitations are more spread out and less obvious.
Obviously neither of these solutions can solve the problems entirely, and many of other problems still exist, but I was wondering if this might be a way of minimizing the domination of spell casters.
1) Increase the level that it takes before becoming epic, maybe level 30. Redesign the spell lists by adding more spell levels or changing spells per level ect so that the Wizard/Druid/Cleric combo takes longer before they start to dominate entirely. Most of the added levels will be in the 9-15 area, padding that out so as to extend the period where people are on a relative equal playing field.
2) With 10 (maybe more) extra levels to play with, split the spells so that they aren't as freakishly powerful. For example, a problem alot of people have is that death is a slap on the wrist, so maybe instead of having 3-5 raise dead spells, make there be about 10 with varying levels of quality. An earlier version can only work if cast within an hour, or within 3 days. one can work normally but has a chance of the body being possessed by something else. One works normally without level loss but the character's class might change, or there gender ect. One might work only if you sacrifice somebody of equal HD, or if you first track down the ghost and kill it. Thus the truly revolving door raise dead spells like Resurrection and true Resurrection can only be used by the most powerful of all casters. Same with the charm spells, stack them so that a single suggestion spell doesn't take out the party fighter. ONe might only work for 5 rounds, one might only make them do actions that they felt like doing anyways, one might make them obey a single worded command, one might make them act like they have fallen in love with you, one might make them act like you are there best friend ect. Pad them out, and make it so that each individual spell has more variety, room to roll play ect. Honestly, being having a charm spell cast on you isn't bad if the person still has room to be clever and role play, and trying to work around the spells limitations can be fun and intuitive if enough lee way is allowed.
Another version for this is shapeshifting, which currently means that a Druid can use up all of her spells and still out fight the fighter, so maybe stack them so that one's limitations are more spread out and less obvious.
Obviously neither of these solutions can solve the problems entirely, and many of other problems still exist, but I was wondering if this might be a way of minimizing the domination of spell casters.