How much does caster dominance affect -real- games? [Archive]

Endarire

2013-06-11, 01:22 AM

We've heard the theory before, again and again and again, that at a certain point, casters > non-casters. People postulate that it starts between level 5 due to Wild Shape, level 7 due to black tentacles/dimension door/polymorph, or level 7 again due to Divine Metamagic: Persistent divine power. Taking a good look at what characters can do, I agree. In theory.

I have a bit of anecdotal evidence. In a low-op game, the party's Wizard (a Conjurer8) used Evard's black tentacles in a dungeon with a bunch of enemies in a room about 20'x20'. The enemy force was slaughtered saved by GM Fiat. The GM was angry that we so easily diffused the situation with a core spell being used for its intended purpose when he set it up for us.

This same low-op GM once threatened to kill the party (on purpose, for whatever reason) and outnumbered us 10 to 6. We were again level 8. The party's Wizard (the same guy) went first and hampered the enemy force a little bit. Then my Psion went, used energy missile, and downright annihilated five of them became frustrated as he did about twice their HP in damage with a DC they'd need a natural 20 to save against. (Go, go Power Link Shards!) After that, my group threatened to disband my group threatened to disband and my GM ragequit. Then he returned about 2 weeks later.

Conversely, when I GMed a game from levels 1 to 21, casters were noticeably more powerful than non-casters, but we also avoided making permanent minions (so no planar binding or animate dead or simulacrum or charm/dominate). We all seemed to enjoy ourselves and never accidentally broke the game, or tried to outdo each other. It seemed to be the group, but we were more interested in interesting plot developments and challenges to conquer than having moar power! (As GM, I gave the group a chance to play with more powerful characters of a similar level for a section, and my friends preferred their own characters.)

Disclaimer: This is not a rhetorical question nor a thread intended to support boosting X or nerfing Y.

ryu

2013-06-11, 01:34 AM

Cue exactly 2345 perfectly true stories of how the druid became the most powerful person in the party by pure accident. Many of the tricks some of the best classes get aren't that complex to pull off with or without experience or any real powergaming intent. Some of them like a druid just getting a mini fighter as one of three big class features plus whatever they actually do for example.

Flickerdart

2013-06-11, 01:35 AM

I'm running a game right now with a four-man party of level 3 characters - a Knight, a Bard, a Cleric, and a Wizard. The Bard sings, rocks the social stuff, and doesn't really cast much. The Cleric has literally not cast anything except Cure so far in the campaign. The Knight actually does quite well, lots of HP, has a greatasword. The Wizard, just by spamming (Sculpted) Grease, makes these three noobs not die against scary exotic threats. If he wasn't there, they would probably have died in every encounter so far. He's literally the only reason I'm not worried about sending actually challenging encounters at them. I don't think any of them caught on yet.

ericgrau

2013-06-11, 01:40 AM

Last time I saw evard's tentacles everything broke free and at 0 or 7 damage a round it was only a short delay. But it all depends who you hit. At level 8 it's more likely the encounter will be all foes with a grapple modifier so low they're stuck for multiple rounds. Even then the next fight might have owlbears or a hill giant.

Here are the classes of the characters that dominated in games I played, 1 line per DM, no particular order:
paladin, wizard
ranger/barbarian, same wizard
sorcerer (me)
psion, warblade
fighter (me)
no one really
no one, then for a little bit the two casters thanks to quicken rods at level 7
the wizard or sorcerer (I forget which he was)

Even when outclassed only about 1/3 of the time did other players feel left out. It never got too severe, only a little annoying.

ArchangelAzrael

2013-06-11, 01:43 AM

Well from my experience the dominance of caster depends on the maturity of players. While they do have the power to outshine everyone in my group/groups they are usually played as a buffer, crowd controller, debuffer focusing more on teamplay than anything else. Hell if the caster is played by a less experienced player (who in our group usually plays the bruiser) he might end up dragging the team down instead :smallcool:. He was trying to play a nuker spell to power erudite would go nova on the first encounter of the day and asked us to sleep after that :P and he didn't do good damage because of bad spell choices/feats. (we helped him with his char when he asked us too so now at level 9 he is feeling strong and has learned to use those pp with moderation).

ArcturusV

2013-06-11, 01:43 AM

In Real Games? I've noticed it happen. It would be at 5th level, but not for reasons of Wild Shape. It's because that's when 3rd level spells kick online. And 3rd level is where a lot of "I stop things" or "I end encounters" spells start to tick up, ones that are still effective even at high levels.

But part of the "Caster Dominance" I admit to just due to coming from a different edition. When I REALLY started DnDing a lot (I had before this, but I mean when I seriously geared up, almost always had groups going, etc) was 2nd Edition of ADnD. And yeah, Mages started to kick ass eventually. There was a point where things started swinging from "The fighter (or Cleric) is always saving our asses" to "The mage is always saving our asses". Which was around 7th level or so. Not because of 4th level magic, but because they had enough 3rd level magic to go around at this point. But most games I was in ended around 10th to 12th level (Nonhuman players wanted to end it then anyway because they weren't gonna level up. That's when silliness started to creep in like Druid Highlander, etc). So it wasn't a big deal.

What does that have to do with "Caster Dominance"? In almost any 3rd edition game that I ran, I was always amazed how that change didn't really happen. Bonus spells for stats, having more than just 1 spell at first level, etc. To my eyes it completely shook things up. The guys I used to play 2nd Edition with took about 30 minutes to realize "... wait... if I play a Wizard... I no longer have to go through being carried for 6 levels and instead dominate right out of the box all day long?"

It was that difference that always lead to me thinking about Caster Dominance in 3rd, even before I really started digging into Optimization Tricks. They no longer have that swing of going from Cripple to Powerful. It's just Powerful to More Powerful.

Course, when I play with people who didn't play earlier editions, this line of thinking doesn't occur to them, so they don't see the "Caster Dominance". When I go and play with one of my friends who played older editions they almost always end up shaking their head at their all day endurance from level 1 on. Especially when a newer player complains about "running out of spells" after burning through 7 spells in 3 encounters.

Slipperychicken

2013-06-11, 03:00 AM

I find it's pretty crazy in games I play.

I recall two bossfights in the same campaign were curbstomped with this exact sequence: Beguiler's player (not dnd savvy) hems and haws about what spell to use for 10 minutes -> I advise her to use Hold Person because the boss is a tanky/quick humanoid beatstick -> her PC casts it successfully -> another character wipes the boss with a CDG.

When I play a 3.5 Wizard, things get wrecked. If there is a battlemat (or even a vague representation like a dry-erase board) and I have the classic control spells, the enemy force is severely crippled, sometimes to the point where I merely cast one spell and laugh as my minions beloved companions wipe it up. Thankfully, their monumental incompetence more than made up for my Wizard's brokenness.

Honestly, I sometimes want to play an "old-style" caster for the challenges I expected, which first got me interested in D&D. Namely, dungeon-crawling on very limited resources, where creativity, teamwork, and problem-solving skills are crucial to success, rather than knowing which type of stupidly-broken magic will instantly solve all my problems.

There's an appeal to me about this image of a dirt-stained half-sane scholar skulking through the shadows ready to blow his last spell, his condition a harsh reminder that all he has after that's gone is his wits, some survival gear, and a quarterstaff he can barely swing. Overpoweringly-strong magic tends to remove this sense of vulnerability and tension.

Eldan

2013-06-11, 03:10 AM

I actually have a Story of how the druid became the weakest Person in the Party :smalltongue:

It was my second game ever. I picked druid because changing into animals was cool. I also played a Kobold and tried two-weapon fighting with scimitars in combat (I had weapon Finesse, at least). My animal companion was an eagle who was mainly used as a scout and I heroically used wildshape twice over about five sessions, once to Change into some really small animal to inflitrate a fortress (maybe a rat) and once into a fish.
We hadn't actually read the wildshape rules. I only later realized that I couldn't actually change into tiny animals. Cue disappointment and declaring "This wildshape thing is useless!"

On the other hand, in my very first game, I was a wizard. This game ran until about level 10. Again, no one in our group got all of the rules. We had rotating DMs every second or third session or so. The Group consisted of one guy constantly changing his character from a sorcerer ("Why do you get five magic missiles spontaneously and I can only prepare one? Hax!") to a bard ("Man, so many skill points.") to a rogue ("Weapon Finesse gives you how much to hit? Where do you even find these feats!"). The other player was a monk.

Now, the division of labour was pretty clear. We all had our jobs.

The rogue/bard/sorcerer/whatever he played that day was there for weird comments, half-baked jokes, plans that never worked, annoying the DM and occasionally proving that while chaotic neutral doesn't have to mean insane, it certainly can.

The monk was there to kick ass. He was the only one to use splat-books and the most invested into the game rules. He knew how things like tripping and grappling worked, he made extensive use of Oriental adventures and Sword and Fist and somehow managed to stay in the game up to level 10 or 12 and consistently be the one killing the most enemies.

However, I was the Problem solver of the Group. As soon as the DM presented an obstacle that wasn't either clearly labeled "Punch here with fist" or "Quest-giver NPC, roll diplomacy to increase reward", everyone just got silent and looked at me. I had to provide the spells for every environmental obstacle, enemy that couldn't be beat with conventional weapons or other unusual challenge.

So, perhaps not the most powerful, but certainly the most versatile.

Flickerdart

2013-06-11, 03:13 AM

There's an appeal to me about this image of a dirt-stained half-sane scholar skulking through the shadows ready to blow his last spell, his condition a harsh reminder that all he has after that's gone is his wits, some survival gear, and a quarterstaff he can barely swing. Overpoweringly-strong magic tends to remove this sense of vulnerability and tension.
Then you should probably play a Factotum.

Ceaon

2013-06-11, 03:15 AM

Well, I think it can affect real games and the tier list helps players and DMs to NOT make it affect real games.
Of course, if a group never notices discrepancies themselves due to playstyle or somesuch, the tier list loses some of its value for them.

I've had a newbie end several encounters as a Druid, while the other, more experienced players would play melee fighters, rogues and a blackguard, who'd all mostly get in the way.
So after several encounters were cut short, I tried to turn it around and use a druid against them, using similar techniques as the newbie. Result: the newbie druid survived, the others were captured or died.

That's when I decided to search online for what I did wrong. Found the Tier list not long after, and have been able to somewhat "save" that campaign.

In all fairness, the players didn't seem to mind much that they were "less powerful" than the druid, the druid was apologetic for his "overpoweredness", and fun was had during these encounters (seeing a new player dominate by accident can really lift the spirits). I, however, was a bit shocked by the unevenness of the system and how I had to plan encounters much more intensively.

Edit: the newbie druid was indeed using spells, not wildshape. Wall of thorns, entangle, poison... He had an evil druid "I like plants but only because I can use them to kill others" theme going, so selected his spells based on that.

Krazzman

2013-06-11, 03:21 AM

I have never seen a Caster invalidate an encounter nor a teammate.

It's because of our groups.

In our Old Group we had: strong magic users but didn't care because our DM shafted us all equally.

In our current DnD Group we have one player not liking playing overly powerful characters and 2 guys having problem with vancian casting as well as a more storyfocused player that hasn't that good spell selection and 2 newbies.
We know how to make "strong" bruisers(basically high str, powerattack and a two-handed weapon). TWFer's or Skillmonkeys not that much. The only caster overshadowing the others would probably be me or the DM in most of these games. Or one of the others by pure accident.

In our Pathfinder group we run around with a "Tank" Paladin, a Barbarian, a Buff/Debuff Wizard with the occasional (I believe he is an Abjuration Specialist or the one where he get's teleport), a Merciful Healer Cleric and a Sorcerer. The 3 casters here actively ENABLE the Melees. We buff them and debuff the enemy or in my Case (Sorcerer) Buff, Debuff and throw snowballs at enemies as well as crafting Magic arms and armor (and wondrous Items).

Waker

2013-06-11, 04:00 AM

In my personal anecdotal experience, caster dominance is hit or miss. Ultimately it comes down to who is playing the character. I can think of any number of times where my Bard is outperforming the party Cleric, or my Barbarian/Fighter is contributing more than the Mystic Theurge, or my Buffer/Utility Cleric is carrying the party.

Playing a caster isn't an auto-win button. Comparing it to a cheat code for those who've read the game guide is more accurate.

Rhynn

2013-06-11, 04:08 AM

We've heard the theory before, again and again and again, that at a certain point, casters > non-casters.

My first 3E campaign, started in 2000, went from 1st level to ~23rd level. Party core was monk, fighter, paladin, druid. The druid dominated, not surprisingly. Everyone else was roughly almost as good at combat as the druid's animal companion. The druid was, obviously, a first-time 3.0 player. There wasn't really an online community for any kind of optimization advice: he just read the spell descriptions, used the spells in the obvious ways they could be used, and completely dominated the game (with a simple, unplanned druid/hierophant build). It got worse and worse as they got to higher and higher levels. Harm and heal made single-monster encounters impossible, and shapechange made things so much worse. It got to the point where I had to either find contrived ways to separate the party, or make encounters so tough they destroyed anyone/everyone but the druid. The campaign died of its own impossibility, mostly because it was impossible to design encounters or challenges that involved anyone but the druid.

So, uh, exactly what the first response said:

Cue exactly 2345 perfectly true stories of how the druid became the most powerful person in the party by pure accident.

You don't need to try to dominate a game with a druid. Wizards at least require effort and thinking.

Aotrs Commander

2013-06-11, 04:10 AM

I find it not so much a problem in my games, but it had very definately affected it. To the tune of me buffing a lot of the core noncaster classes (though the introduction of ToB had a lot to do with this as well) and in particular, playing up to bottom Epic and level 16 in my last two campaigns.

That said, casters tend not to dominate too much even though we very definitely run on the fifteen minute adventuring day. Because my combats tend to come in two flavours - incidental encounters the PCs get through without too much difficulty, and boss battles. The latter basically means "fight against enemies with class levels and full spellcaster support." The PCs almost always have to rest after such a fight.

Also, it is accepted modus operandi of all sentient creatures that you First Kill the Wizard and so the squisher casters (and the clerics to a slighter lesser extent - you don't want to knobble the PCs only way of fixing themselves) tend to attract the most fire, especially from enemy spellcasters. (Plus anything and everything that can learn Dispel packs at least one.)

(Take last night session, for example. The eight-man party was fighting eight enemies, six evil adventurers and a pair of Illithid Clerics. They won, but only really because I cast Vitriolic Sphere one round at the Paladin instead of Horrid Wilting (I cast than next round). The psion and the sorcerer spent the combat falling over and getting back up (sadly, the cleric kept healing them between their turns, so they didn't actually stay down long enough not to cast...!). The achived the novel feat, though, of being hit with damage area spells on all three saves in succession...! (Ice Flowers, Horrid Wilting and then Mass Inflict Wounds, as the chief Illithid cleric was getting a bit peeved with the cleric using his Mass Cures...!)

I use primarily classed enemies (or at the very least combined arms) as serious opposition - monsters really not so much; without spellcaster support they generally aren't really especially difficult.

So yeah, it isn't a problem as such, as everyone gets to murderise people in their various ways, but it does tend to define how the battles are fought (a bit like the introduction of tanks or aircraft defined how modern was changed.)

It also helps that some of the more abusable spells are banned (Celerity line, for one, metamagic reducers for another; DMM is allowed, but as Nightsticks aren't, the number of persistable spells - if anyone other than me even thinks about DMM that is - isn't high.)

MukkTB

2013-06-11, 04:20 AM

My experiences in combat have actually been pretty positive. A wizard buffing and doing battlefield control, maybe some debuffs, doesn't make the game unfun for the other characters. It can be satisfying to play a fighter in that situation, even if you know you're on mopup duty after the magic has been laid down. The mopup duty is the cinematic goods.

My group has never put together a competent druid. The last one that ran kept an eagle animal companion, but never sent it into combat.

The biggest problems I've run into is lacking utility magic when we don't have a spellcaster. It really sucks to get afflicted with something that requires some specific Cleric spell to cure, only to not have a cleric.

The thing is, in D&D the DM can adjust the difficulty at any time. The only balance problems that actually matter are within the party. If the Wizard has opted to melt the baddies rather than buff the fighter it can be less fun to be the fighter. And to be honest, I've had that kind of experience.

Pandiano

2013-06-11, 04:43 AM

I noticed in my games, that the main problem is less raw power, but versatility. Similar to the Druid problem I am currently playing a Factotum/Chameleon with a Winter Wolf familiar in a mid-op group. I build the character because I liked the theme of an infiltrator and a jack-of-all-trades, but accidentally happen to steal the jobs of most other characters.
Of course our swashbuckling rogueninja (whatever he may be exactly) is better in beating things up and our Bard is better in buffing, but the percieved things are like: Can replace the Bard in social encounters and knowledge, while being a better combatant than the Psywar/monk (don't laugh! :-)), can out-skill-monkeying the Rogue and heal the party easily afterwards. Oh and then cast all the fancy spells from obscure spell lists.

Not breaking the game, but the fun for some. Paired with my....extrovert personality I have to hold back in near future, I think.

Any ideas how I can make the others feel awesome as a caster?

supermonkeyjoe

2013-06-11, 04:53 AM

The party in the last game I ran was a Paladin, Wizard, Rogue and Druid, when asked, they all said they thought they were at about the same power level.

Potentially the wizard could have pulled ahead in the power curve but he didn't, using most of his spells to assist the party, the Druid took 10 levels of master of many forms and barely used any spells, the rogue took the were-rat template with LA buyoff and the paladin had a couple of ACFs to give him more versatility, overall everyone was able to contribute, covered a couple of party roles each and worked together.

The general wisdom of this board would tell you that the druid and wizard characters are going to make the others feel redundant by level 8, and are going to end up as untouchable super-gods while the mundanes die miserable lonely deaths, in TO this is probably true but I find if you have a decent group of friends to play with it rarely becomes an issue.

Rhynn

2013-06-11, 05:12 AM

The general wisdom of this board would tell you that the druid and wizard characters are going to make the others feel redundant by level 8, and are going to end up as untouchable super-gods while the mundanes die miserable lonely deaths, in TO this is probably true but I find if you have a decent group of friends to play with it rarely becomes an issue.

:smallconfused: So you're just ignoring everyone who says otherwise and pretending that you need Theoretical Optimization (i.e. "I'm not cheating, technically!") for this to be the case?

That's complete nonsense.

ArcturusV

2013-06-11, 05:23 AM

Saph

2013-06-11, 05:28 AM

I've played many, many D&D 3.0, 3.5, and PF campaigns over the years, and I've seen many, many caster and non-caster characters, played both well and badly.

The first rule of thumb that I go by is:

Skill > Build > Class

In other words, a skilled player will pretty much always outshine an inept one, regardless of their character concepts. If two players are at similar levels, then it comes down to how well-built their character is (items, spell & feat choice, etc). Only after that do you start thinking about class.

The second rule of thumb that I go by is:

Levels 1-4: Martial characters outperform casters.
Levels 5-10: Martial and caster classes are roughly balanced.
Levels 11-14: Casters outperform martials.
Levels 15-20: Casters outperform everything.
Levels 21+: If you're looking for balance, you're in the wrong game.

Note that this is subject to the first rule. I've seen games where the 1st-level spellcaster is the party MVP, but it's usually a safe bet that if the player's good enough to do that then he would have been the MVP with a martial class too. Likewise, I've seen Level 12ish games where the melee or ranged characters did most of the heavy lifting, but again it was usually because they had smart players.

So yes, caster dominance can be a thing, but it's a quadratic curve, not a straight boost, and it's secondary to player skill.

Reathin

2013-06-11, 05:31 AM

In our group, not that much. Our casters aren't hyper-optimised, often run on a theme, and don't abuse scrolls and the like. No Batman Wizards, really. That said, the usual two DMs of our group (myself being one of them) are pretty soft, more interested in story than forcing high tension.

There was one game that proved the exception, however. There was a Wizard, a Cleric varient (more about healing and buffs, less about being able to stand up directly in a fight), a Knight and a Warlock. They obliterated everything I through at them, often fast enough that whatever terrible horror I dug up couldn't even attack. Their synergy was amazing, really impressive teamwork. Regularly took down things level beyond what they should have been able to handle.

The Mormegil

2013-06-11, 05:53 AM

Campaign 1: only caster was a full-on warmge (crappy spell list), rest was fighters of various kinds. The warmage has, like, 4 spells on his list that are relevant at all, the rest is just damage. But, he has access to Black Tentacles and Cloudkill at the very least. Black Tentacles got cast SO MANY TIMES in that campaigns it became a meme for our group. Every time anything even remotely similar to a problem - be it social situations gone awry, exploring new and potentially dangerous areas or fighting - in any given adventure we did afterwards, the first thing everybody said was along the lines of "come on Simon, where's the tentacles". There was also one occasion of cloudkilling an army in the night, one occasion of stopping a fleet singlehandedly, one occasion of cutting off a dragon's wing with a well-placed triple-channeled scorching ray (that was my judgement, though: he said he aimed for the wing and dealt about 400 damage, so I decided to just allow him to cut it off). The rest of the group was capable of hitting dudes with weapons. Or disarming them.

Campaign 2: ugly story, I built a self-imposed crippled wizard with levels in spellthief of all things because I knew I would probably be OP anyways. There was also a druid girl who never played before that just wanted to be an elven druid girl with a lovely white wolf (you know the type). There was a cleric/barbarian who decided to go for cleric 5/barbarian 5. There was a warblade 10. There was a fighter 10 specialized in archery. There was also a monk 9 tiefling... and I think at least one more melee dude I can't remember. Well, of course the druid girl didn't know where to even start with her spells, so I just pointed out the obvious animal companion buffs. She was quite happy to have the wolf fight for her after all.
You probably know where this is going. First fight, I blinded everybody and the warblade + wolf went in and slaughtered them so easily the DM decided to knock it up a notch. Second fight, I cast Quickened Grease and Black Tentacles and the encounter kind of finished there. Third fight we were supposed to negotiate because the force was "overwhelming", there were like 30 NPCs or something trying to intimidate us. Well, conversation didn't go so well and they decided to show us who was in charge. After a Quickened Grease took care of their cavalry, two Solid Fogs neutralized their archers for quite some time and the warblade + wolf took care of some 10 melee dudes and I cast Fear on their rogues coming from behind, the rest of the gang decided it was time to run.
The DM was very angry with us at this point, and some tension was rising in the group itself (especially from the cleric barbarian who never managed to do anything meaningful) and the next fight he pulled out the big guns. He carefully crafted multiple-template weretigers with NPC levels abusing the CR system, then added a spellcaster for good measure. Well, the fight WAS tough, and in fact way too tough for half of our party. The barbarian / cleric outright died in the first round from all of the pouncing. They tried to focus me so I had to fall back for a while, invisible. DM expected them to use scent, but there's an 8000 gp pair of OP boots in some manual IIRC, and I bailed out. Their caster used the same spells I was using and rendered our archer useless with a solid fog - the guy couldn't do anything for like 2 turns. The warblade held its own in the melee with the wolf, while the druid kept healing them. I sneaked on the enemy caster and took him out, then ported out of harm's way. The monk tried to fight and he was cut down instantly. The warblade finally fell and it was up to the druid against some crazy melee weretigers. Well, she came out on top while not knowing what the hell she was doing, simply because she turned into a tiger herself and full-attacked a couple times.
At that point, the biggest argument ever started, with the barbarian / cleric calling out everybody for cheating, with lines such as "I'm the cleric why the hell does she heal for more than me", "I'm a barbarian I can't be going down every fight, the warblade cheats on his hp and dice rolls", "This guy invents spells and items I swear it he can't always have the right spell prepared, I have like 2 3rd level spells and he shoots multiple 4th level spells every fight" and other such pearls. The warblade was like "I can just fight, let me at least fight well", the monk kept quiet, the archer kept saying "next time I'm playing a druid" and the druid ended up crying for the wild (and completely unfair) accusations. End of campaign 2.

Campaign 3: where everybody decided to play a caster except me. I kind of enjoyed playing a swordsage, and it really is half-caster anyway, but we were level 15 and I was basically 200-damage-on-a-stick while the rest of the group went around casting Mordekainen's Magnificent Mansion to brag with a random civilian. It did not help that the campaign was particularly combat-focused with a very loose story (inexprienced DM). The best? "What the hell, dude, why didn't you save me?" "What was I supposed to do? The dragon grappled you into a volcano! I would have died to lava!" "What, you aren't even immune to fire? Swordsages suck!"

But honestly, half of this comes from the terrible balance of characters rather than caster dominance itself. I could tell quite a few anecdotes of fighters dominating other fighters too (many from the same campaigns). So let's get a different example, showcasing what I consider to be a deeper problem:

Campaign 4: a 4E campaign, with all characters playing casters or half-casters of some kind except one fighter dude. Well, with 4E's focus on balance and the options available to fighters, what problem could there be? Well, turns out, caster dominance isn't really a system issue. IME it's more like something that happens when the available actions for one guy revolve on the realm of magic, and everything that entails, while another guy's specialty is killing stuff. You are bound to find, in any given campaign, a situation where combat is not the answer, where there's something mystical and mysterious, where there's some fun to be had experimenting, trying out stuff, using your character's abilities to interface with magic. It's a fantasy RPG after all! Well, guess who can cast rituals? Guess who has Arcana trained? Guess who has a background that allows him to try new exciting stuff and who has a background that says "you dumb you hit people with sword"? Or even, in our case, the contrast a deep and complex background that revolves around honor, being a judge in a dwarf community, a conflict between paternal and judicial duties and deep experience with military and laws... and a guy who can come up and say "hey, can I roll Arcana to see if I can turn the Leylines inwards so that the magic item blows itself up?".
In the end, playing martial characters as intended by the basic D&D manual is limiting. Everybody gets to have fun with magic except you, because "you are good at hitting people!" or something. Even with balanced and restrictive magic, even without the paradoxical situations of 3.5, when all is said and done... I believe fighters need to be able to interact with magic in unique and meaningful ways in order to be played in a fantasy RPG. At least as unique and as meaningful as anyone else in the group. I don't think everyone should be a wizard, but I do think that everyone needs to interact with magic when magic is available.

Eldariel

2013-06-11, 06:02 AM

Feeling completely useless next to group casters (who I saw weren't using most of their potential and were underequipped to boot while our warriors had almost all the gold) around level 13-14 was why I started reading 339 (old WoTC Character Optimization board) in the first place and asking what I should've done differently.

Once I started reading, I found out that what was happening in Core was in line with how the system worked; Planar Binding is actually able to get you a Wish and warrior more adept than most actual warrior classes of equal level. Then they could Teleport anywhere in the world, Plane Shift and save-or-die any enemies with a weak save (I remember Ragewalker ravaging the rest of our party quite easily, having us beat up each other and stuff; Wizard & Cleric just cast Finger of Death and Destruction and it was a goner, while they were at a safe distance; also Purple Worm who fell to Hold Monster and all the normal stuff).

I still distinctly recall one argument in the party being decided by caster Forcecaging the mundane who disagreed with him and holding his release ransom for changing his point of view. You could say that's a waste of resources but mages can afford it.

So...yeah, ever since a 3.X "noob" I've played in games dominated by casters, even when they're not using most of their power. Of course, I have no problem reigning it in when I DM, but as a player...well, let me put it this way: I've had a PF Society DM complain how Wizards negate most of the modules.

He specifically thanked me for holding back and letting the rest of the party do stuff with treasure specifically found in the module for certain encounter (my only PF Society character is an Elf Conjurer, currently level 3); more specifically, the module hands out holy arrows and bolts and then you fight a DR/Good Demon or two (they fall to a single Color Spray tho). Then most module end bosses fall to Sleep. I've taken the posture of not doing anything most of the time and just letting the party do stuff while I daze/enlarge people or whatever at the start unless things look really bad so everybody gets to play.

Killer Angel

2013-06-11, 06:19 AM

The general wisdom of this board would tell you that the druid and wizard characters are going to make the others feel redundant by level 8, and are going to end up as untouchable super-gods while the mundanes die miserable lonely deaths, in TO this is probably true but I find if you have a decent group of friends to play with it rarely becomes an issue.

Avoiding such hyperboles, I can say that in real play, even low OP, the dependency of meleers from casters' help, is painfully evident.

Deathcharge01

2013-06-11, 06:28 AM

I started D&D in late 3.0, and from my experience, no matter the build, no matter the feats or race, any caster with a solid spell selection will cause havoc. You can say its a skill to be able to find the rights spells, but once you master that, your build is for the lolz unless you're going for something specific like shadowcraft mage cheese for example and feats are there just for filling prereqs, and class abilities become fluff and options just incase you happen to need them.

It also hinges more heavily on the player's maturity. Currently I'm playing in an epic campaign(lvls 20-22) with a Io7fv/abjurant champion wiz, and my party consists of a super cleric, a warlock/warmage, dwarven defender, cleric/Radiant servant of pelor, swift hunter, a rogue who throws darts for 100s of damage, and a ranger. We had an encounter where we had to face this level 37ish dread necro/druid/arcane heirophant/etc/etc enemy that the DM spent a week building and rounding out. Before the combat, most of the party was of the strong belief that he'd kill at least half of us. Combat started, I won initiative, cast Amber Sarcophagus, mass confusion as wtf just happened??!?!?!?!. Combat ended.
The party was saved, but that's not the point. After the session, the DM who is a very good friend and the one who introduced me to D&D said that we were supposed to fight the BBG, and that I kinda screwed his entire plan for the NPC. The point is this, as a wizard or caster for that matter, you can be sitting on the solution as a character, the player needs to be mature enough to know when to go all super saiyan and when to just let some things play out for the benefit and enjoyment of the group.

Aotrs Commander

2013-06-11, 07:16 AM

Combat started, I won initiative, cast Amber Sarcophagus, mass confusion as wtf just happened??!?!?!?!. Combat ended.
The party was saved, but that's not the point. After the session, the DM who is a very good friend and the one who introduced me to D&D said that we were supposed to fight the BBG, and that I kinda screwed his entire plan for the NPC. The point is this, as a wizard or caster for that matter, you can be sitting on the solution as a character, the player needs to be mature enough to know when to go all super saiyan and when to just let some things play out for the benefit and enjoyment of the group.

The other thing I have introduced is cribbed from 4E the basica idea of the solo. I created what I term the stackable "defiant" template, which basically increments a creature's hit points in blocks and gives them rerolls. The rerolls basically give them an effect negative level. The creature can also basically expend an entire block of hit points to obviate any status effect/spell/instant death what have you. It's basically big fat "no" to that sort of situation. But the thing is, it means that the SoD still contributes, even if/when it doesn't work.

It also encourages the casters to save their SoD/SoL towards the end of the fight as a finisher, as it were, and ensures that no boss battle can ever be won with one spell or attack. (I have enough of that in Rolemaster; in 3.5 the PCs can damn-well fight the BBEG properly and like it!)

That goes a very long way to ensuring the casters can't completely dominate.

(At the same time, it means the bosses last long enough to use more of their toys while not being too far above the PCs in power you have to hold back or deliberately nerf them as I had to prior. It works amazingly well, and I would highly recommend it.)

The other part of the equation is what is good for the goose is good for the gander; my players know I have absolutely no qualms about throwing whatever they use right back at them if required! (Am I'm the DM, so I could if need be just do it better, or, of necessary, just flat-0out make crap up if I ever really needed to... Not that I expect I ever will, seeing as 25% of the group I have been playing with for twenty years, 50% for ten-fifteen years and the newer blood are not heavy optimisers - like at all - so I've been guiding them in that regard!)

Bubzors

2013-06-11, 08:49 AM

I find in the games I've played over the years that it does not come up as a problem too often. We all usually play mid-op stuff, and purposely do not use things such as DMM persist. Also it might help that the highest level achieved during all of our years of play was 13. That limits it to 7th level spells, so none of the really ridiculous gate or other 9th level nonsense. In my personal group its been decided that none of us are ever interested in playing much higher than 14th level, things just start getting ridiculous.

Also, we all play for the fun of it and purposely try not to have the caster type characters step on others toes. For example in my current campaign I play a Goliath cleric of kord. I buff everyone and run around doing decent damage and tank, alongside the party crusader. The scout and rogue still do the sneaky infiltration stuff, the bard is party face/illusionist, and the wizard/runesmith is a fire happy blaster. We all do our job well and mesh together to make the whole team better. No one person really outshines the other to the extent that other players feel useless.

However, I will admit that without some of the healing spells and buffs that my character throws out, the party would have been wiped several times. But I look to that as part of the cleric's job, and not overpowered.

supermonkeyjoe

2013-06-11, 09:29 AM

It's not even Theoretical Optimization. When I teach guys in my groups how to pick spells, they realize the power of spellcasters.

1) Pick spells that completely negate an encounter/scene (Fly, Cloudkill, Knock, etc)

2) Pick spells that severely handicap an encounter/scene (Charm Person, Shivering Touch, Baleful Polymorph, Symbol of _____)

3) Pick spells that severely stack the odds of an encounter/scene in your direction (Guidance of the Avatar, Solid Fog, Wall of Force, etc)

4) Spells that put the boot in an encounter/scene that is almost over anyway.

It's not TO. But when a player has those four categories, and picks those spells in order it doesn't take much for the first level mage to go "Huh... Color Spray, instant win. Charm Person, nearly instant win. Burning Hands, useful only for clean up." and pick accordingly.

And once they start picking spells like that? Then it can become a problem.

I may have been remiss with my use of TO, High op was really what I was going for, and I suspect my definition of high-op differs from the playground.

I would also say that a lot of those spells are vastly overplayed in their usefulness.

In a perfect situation then yes, colour spray is devastating when all the enemies are bunched into a 15' triangle with the wizard on one corner, yes charm person is devastating when used on the person who will do absolutely anything for their new best friend. a lot of those spells can drastically change an encounter but it always seems they are touted as being a lot more effective than they really are. I haven't ever encountered a spell that has completely shut down or bypassed an encounter by itself, unless the encounter was specifically designed like that.

Generally in my experience the brokenness of a lot of spells are overplayed by the playground, yes some of them they do have the potential to wreck encounters, do they? not in my experience.

It's always been the case for me that the wizard drops a solid fog or a black tentacles, everyone else goes, sweet, now we can concentrate on the rest of the enemies, they don't all turn around and complain that they can't do that, or boo the wizard because the encounter is too easy now.

Rhynn

2013-06-11, 09:46 AM

It's not even Theoretical Optimization. When I teach guys in my groups how to pick spells, they realize the power of spellcasters.

Yeah, TO is crazy builds like 1000+ damage per round psychic warriors, etc. A core druid 20, cleric 20, wizard 20, or even sorcerer 20 is just insanely powerful compared to any non-high-op build that isn't a full caster. My group's druid player used even 2nd-level spells to awesome effect (heat metal and warp wood were favorites early on). It's all about actually looking at the spell descriptions and using them as intended. I think it was slightly worse in 3.0, with heal and harm having unlimited effects (his favorite tactic later on was to shapechange into a gold dragon and use a harm + claw combo to two-shot practically anything).

It's the same as playing BECM/AD&D and realizing that a 1st-level magic-user should never pick any spell but sleep. (No save, instantly disables multiple targets? Win!)

My table has also had a straight sorcerer who only used fire-based damage spells, and even he - the worst kind of spellcaster! - was able to single-handedly destroy some encounters. It didn't unbalance the game the same way a druid did - I didn't have to start building everything specifically to challenge the sorcerer - but he was still very effective at what he did.

wayfare

2013-06-11, 09:54 AM

In my experience, it is noticeable, but not overwhelming. No gm i have ever played with allows easy spell recovery on quests, so when you run dry, you are in trouble. That makes casters (at low levels, at least), much more hesitant to go nova.

That said, I once played a druid with a tiny owl as an animal companion who never used wild shape and still out preformed the mundanes in combat.

Deathcharge01

2013-06-11, 10:03 AM

The other thing I have introduced is cribbed from 4E the basica idea of the solo. I created what I term the stackable "defiant" template, which basically increments a creature's hit points in blocks and gives them rerolls. The rerolls basically give them an effect negative level. The creature can also basically expend an entire block of hit points to obviate any status effect/spell/instant death what have you. It's basically big fat "no" to that sort of situation. But the thing is, it means that the SoD still contributes, even if/when it doesn't work.

It also encourages the casters to save their SoD/SoL towards the end of the fight as a finisher, as it were, and ensures that no boss battle can ever be won with one spell or attack. (I have enough of that in Rolemaster; in 3.5 the PCs can damn-well fight the BBEG properly and like it!)

I like this idea, so much so that I'm gonna recommend it to my DM friend.

Friv

2013-06-11, 10:17 AM

The last game that I played (which was a Level 8-10 core-only game with very slow XP gain), our arcane caster was a blaster-sorcerer and our cleric used buffs and Dimension Door a lot. We also mainly fought living enemies, so the team assassin was able to contribute and my Barbarian/Fighter was able to tear through things pretty well.

However, that was in large part because I moderately optimized both magic items and build for the rogue and myself, while letting the cleric and sorcerer just take whatever seemed easiest (fireball! fireball! fireball!).

So in that game, moderately-optimized mundanes were able to just hold their own competitively with very unoptimized casters.

The game before that, our party was a Dragonlance game wiht a barbarian/monk/bard/sorcerer/paladin mix, and a fairly new player picked a sorcerer, gave him Tasha's Hideous Laughter because it seemed sort of fun, and accidentally started absolutely wrecking encounters until the DM "fixed" it by providing enemy wizards for the sorcerer to waste all of his actions casting Dispel Magic against or else they would trounce us. So caster dominance was a big deal there. Our bard was focusing on buffs and heals, essentially acting as a cleric/rogue, so didn't have quite the same effect, although those buffs were pretty key to the barbarian and paladin being useful. (The monk, incidentally, was exclusively using poisoned shurikens, and thus was either unstoppable or totally useless depending on his target's vulnerability to that tactic, and the bard's buffs didn't affect her much).

JusticeZero

2013-06-11, 10:21 AM

I would also say that a lot of those spells are vastly overplayed in their usefulness.
Generally in my experience the brokenness of a lot of spells are overplayed by the playground, yes some of them they do have the potential to wreck encounters, do they?
They have spells that can potentially wreck encounters that weren't designed with them in mind. This wouldn't be an issue if not for the fact that they have such a huge variety of such abilities after only a short time played that they have a solution for every occasion.

Rhynn

2013-06-11, 10:28 AM

Generally in my experience the brokenness of a lot of spells are overplayed by the playground, yes some of them they do have the potential to wreck encounters, do they? not in my experience.

Two words:

Slime wave.

supermonkeyjoe

2013-06-11, 10:34 AM

They have spells that can potentially wreck encounters that weren't designed with them in mind. This wouldn't be an issue if not for the fact that they have such a huge variety of such abilities after only a short time played that they have a solution for every occasion.

See this is what I was talking about, the assumption that every spellcaster is going to have exactly the right spell prepared for every situation and will have it available to cast, It works brilliantly on paper but in actual play I have never seen it happen. For ever time a spellcaster can go "I got this one guys" there are a bunch more where the response is "uh, I got nothing, magic missile?" especially when you get to the fourth or fifth encounter of the day and most of their spells have already been used up.

Rhynn

2013-06-11, 10:39 AM

Deepbluediver

2013-06-11, 10:51 AM

How much does caster dominance affect -real- games?

This is sort of an "ignorance is bliss" situation, where once some one knows about it, it will proably affect just about every game they are in from then on, depending somewhat on how you define "affect".

I've seen relatively few games where a caster dominates the battlefield to the exclusion of other characters, but there are two very distinctive reasons for that:

In some secnarios, one person will play a high-tier class at less than their full power to avoid eclipsing other players. Whether the other players knowingly chose weaker classes or are simply ignorant of optimization is largely irrelevant. The point is that one or more players are holding themselves back.

The other situation is where everyone knows about the tier list, and chooses to play all classes at the same level. They can be strong or weak, but people are basing their class selection on what other people want to play as, instead of soley on what they want to pick.

In both cases, its player choice that is preventing total caster-domination, not rules mechanics. The handful of games that I've played or been involved with where one player was significantly stronger than the others rapidly devolved into "shuttle the demi-god from place to place so he can solve the real problems", which is rarely any more fun when that individual is a player than when it's a DMPC.
It might make for a single interesting quest if done well, but when stretched out to an entire campaign most people rapidly lose interest. One friend went so far as to tell me that even being the all-powerful character in question can get boring, since it turns the game into just them versus the DM, instead of a group effort.

navar100

2013-06-11, 12:11 PM

No problems with my groups. The warrior players don't resent it when a spellcaster casts a powerful spell and are in fact happy about when a bad guy goes bye-bye or the party teleports to safety or to get where the adventure is taking place. The spellcasters don't resent buffing the warriors with various spells to facilitate their Hulk Smashing. I'm often the cleric/Pathfinder oracle, and I'm just has happy casting a healing or remove affliction spell as I am casting Divine Favor or Righteous Might and go Hulk Smashing myself. Warrior players have plenty to do in and out of combat. The warriors like the assist from a Summoned Monster or druid's wolf. Any attack against them is one less attack against the warrior.

There was one exception which happened just recently where as I played a Psion in a Pathfinder game, and the players and DM found it too powerful for their taste (3d6 damage to five creatures as a 2nd level power, Expending Psionic Focus for an auto-roll of 15 on a Concentration check to manifest defensively, 1d10 damage for a 1st level power were the major offenders). They're perfectly fine with the Druid and Summoner in the party and their pets along with the Barbarian and Rogue. I'll be switching to an Oracle. However, in my other group I will be playing a Psion with a Fighter and Rogue in the party, and they're fine with that.

ddude987

2013-06-11, 12:28 PM

While I have seen casters overshadow nom primary casters I have never found it a problem. For example in a game I am currently in I play a primary very high op cc wizard. I end enco7ntrrs with glitterdust and other spells but since I srt the rogue up and the barbaian doe alll thr dpr it seems like im not remotly better than them

Tvtyrant

2013-06-11, 01:03 PM

The first game I ever played in the DM had our party be escorted by a "cool, gruff Ranger" who was 4 levels higher than us. I was playing a healbot dwarf Cleric, we had a Barbarian who rolled 3 18s, a Druid who sat in the back and healed, and a sorcerer who used magic missile.

Eventually the Ranger decided to arrest us to save the DM's plot, and we killed it. I enlarged the Barbarian, the Druid (who had a far too high dexterity score) cast Entangle on him and the Sorcerer stunned him with Color Spray. The Barbarian and the Druid's Riding Dog (with her on its back) stood there for three rounds pounding on the Ranger until the DM finally left the room.

Basically that fight could be rewritten as "The wizard cast color spray," because nothing else we did was nearly as important.

Slipperychicken

2013-06-11, 01:48 PM

Then you should probably play a Factotum.

Already did. He just felt like if you cut a Wizard and a Rogue in half, sewed them together, and gave them a Paladin's healing hands.

The problem might have been the campaign offering no resemblance of challenge, but it just felt too... Strong? Reliable? Maybe it's a problem with the charOP minigame.

killem2

2013-06-11, 02:07 PM

In our games it doesn't. We have Psion and Wizard both are completely overshadowed by my dungeon crasher. Even when I had my conjurer, it wasn't easy to solve all problems (granted he was only level 4 at the time)

In my other game in which I DM, we have a cleric and a wizard, and nothing really crazy has happened yet.

Maybe the worst is yet to come. But I've said it many times on here, classes are n't broken players are.

Eldariel

2013-06-11, 02:13 PM

Maybe the worst is yet to come. But I've said it many times on here, classes are n't broken players are.

Rather, "classes are broken but it's up to players how much power they want to use", eh?

killem2

2013-06-11, 02:15 PM

Rather, "classes are broken but it's up to players how much power they want to use", eh?

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, did it make a sound? :smallbiggrin:....kinda think'n :smalltongue:

Thomar_of_Uointer

2013-06-11, 03:27 PM

Had a campaign with a druid in the party alongside some martial characters. Near the end of the campaign he had a Huge-sized boa constrictor and he would turn into a dire bear. You can imagine how that played out. Most encounters consisted of the druid and his animal companion going toe-to-toe with the biggest, meanest monster he could see while the rest of the party mopped up the minions. As the GM, I intentionally designed encounters to have a tough "boss" just so that the druid would have something to wrassle with.

Yes, class tiers exist. Yes, newbie players can play high-tier classes poorly, and experienced players can play high-tier classes gracefully. Yes, skilled GMs can compensate with good encounter-building. But it's a flaw in the rules that is unfair to new players, and it's very unfair to new GMs. The greatest failure of 3rd edition is using XP rewards to pretend that a level 13 fighter is on par with a level 13 druid.

RFLS

2013-06-11, 03:32 PM

See this is what I was talking about, the assumption that every spellcaster is going to have exactly the right spell prepared for every situation and will have it available to cast, It works brilliantly on paper but in actual play I have never seen it happen.

I think you missed something. The theory is that, at equal levels of effort put into optimizing a character, the full casters will thrash everyone else in terms of utility and power. Equal levels is the thing and the whole of the thing here.

soapdude

2013-06-11, 05:36 PM

Right now I'm playing a Lv16 caster (Wizard/Heir of Siberys/Rogue Mastermaker so CL 13) and am nowhere near the most powerful member of the group, all of whom are Lv16. This is probably due to the fact that I haven't played this high level of a caster before and am overwhelmed by the number of spells I have access to (nearly full Boccob's at char gen). Our party 'leader', though (some sort of Marshal or something) is played by a guy that knows the system a lot better than I, due to the fact that I haven't really been in a stable campaign in something like 8 years.

Because they were sans caster before I showed, he's maxed out on use magic device, has an item to give him a bigger boost, and has wands and scrolls and all sorts of things already. He's also a much better strategist than I, though to be fair to myself I am new to the group and have not become privy to most of the the recurring NPCs and such.

That said, I am still having fun in the game. I just have to work on my spell selection and then maybe I'll feel like I'm contributing more. Actually, I just leveled up after last session and am trying to figure out which 7th level spells to go with. Probably Greater Shadow Conjuration and something else.

danzibr

2013-06-11, 06:01 PM

WhatBigTeeth

2013-06-11, 08:23 PM

It's never been a problem. I mean, sure, there have been comparably overpowered Oracles or Archivists in the games I've played, but there have also been comparably overpowered fighters and swashbucklers. The consistent rule of which characters are above or below the power curve is who's playing them. The player whose rogue stocks up on Persuasive, Negotiator and Skill Focus (Disguise) isn't the player whose druid accidentally breaks things; that druid has only ever belonged to the guys whose fighters combo dungeoncrasher and knockback, or whose rogues have to borrow every d6 at the table.

So basically this:

But I've said it many times on here, classes are n't broken players are.

Psyren

2013-06-11, 10:46 PM

Philistine

2013-06-12, 12:56 AM

My very first 3E game - way back long time ago, pretty early in 3E's run - featured a Cleric of Kord, a Druid, a pair of Rogues... and me, playing an Elf Fighter specialized in Archery. No later than level 5, the Cleric was able to buff himself with just two low-level spells (a 1st and a 2nd, IIRC) that gave him a better attack bonus and much more damage than my (early-3E Archer) Fighter could ever hope to match. And one of those two spells was hours/level, so even at that level he could keep it up all day with just a couple of castings. The Druid OTOH had prioritized Cha over Wis, and didn't even really do anything most of the time... except Wild Empathy every Animal we encountered into joining his army of woodland creatures. The Druid didn't need to do anything most of the time, other than send in the swarm of disposable minions.

So basically, a pretty low-op Cleric and a downright anti-op Druid managed to render the other three characters in the party irrelevant. Mostly by accident. Before such a thing as an "optimization community" even existed.

Squirrel_Dude

2013-06-12, 01:09 AM

In a recent game, a DM forgot to prepare the a building for teleportation, or forgot to think about it. As a wizard I scryed the room, and it's location, and the rogue obtained a map of the building. The GM expected it to be a stealthy/sneaking mission to get to an important piece of the governments control over magic. It was some scroll printing press.

I put everyone in a portable hole, teleported into the room, and charm personed the guard. We walked about with the press and 1000 scrolls. What was supposed to take an hour or 2 took 30 minutes. It only took that long because the DM double checked the spell, and suddenly had to come up with a lit of 1000 scrolls that he didn't expect us to have so soon.

ahenobarbi

2013-06-12, 01:29 AM

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, did it make a sound? :smallbiggrin:....kinda think'n :smalltongue:

Rather "if a tree falls in a forest and a lot of people saw it but you didn't did it make a sound" :smallwink:

In a recent game, a DM forgot to prepare the a building for teleportation, or forgot to think about it. As a wizard I scryed the room, and it's location, and the rogue obtained a map of the building. The GM expected it to be a stealthy/sneaking mission to get to an important piece of the governments control over magic. It was some scroll printing press.

I put everyone in a portable hole, teleported into the room, and charm personed the guard. We walked about with the press and 1000 scrolls. What was supposed to take an hour or 2 took 30 minutes. It only took that long because the DM double checked the spell, and suddenly had to come up with a lit of 1000 scrolls that he didn't expect us to have so soon.

You clearly didn't have a jerk who blocks every idea that didn't come from him to balance casters. Once I wanted to solve a similar problem with scrying + dimension door... but a player complained so much that i just gave up because I didn't want to waste whole evening arguing.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-12, 01:36 AM

Squirrel_Dude

2013-06-12, 01:45 AM

When you say you scryed the object, you don't mean with the scrying spell, right? That spell targets creatures, not objects, and -couldn't- have given you the location of the object.I scryed the guy who we knew to be in charge of the project. For some reason he was working there late at night. We popped in and kept him company/made a friend/kidnapped him with the machine.

GoodbyeSoberDay

2013-06-12, 02:21 AM

I mostly agree with Saph, except I think casters = mundanes (not <) at the low levels all else equal. The only exception might be level 1, where the caster needs low-level-specific optimization to pull ahead.

As far as real games...

I played an evil campaign where we were all "persecuted" followers of Erythnul, targeting churches and religious figures to burn and slaughter respectively. In a climactic fight where the enemy had found and surrounded our secret church, the NPC leader told us to run, but as we were surrounded we stayed and fought. The Cleric cast Doomtide on the mob in the front, and the sorceress fireballed them to death while they were stuck in the daze (while those in the back couldn't even see through the spell). Plain ol' fireball saved the day. To be fair the melees contributed, mostly to cover the flanks and take out unoptimized NPC casters.

In a heavy dungeon crawl game the mildly optimized necromancer wizard often won encounters in round 1. Fear, Ray of Enfeeblement/Ray of Exhaustion, Black Tentacles and Solid Fog are quite devastating. Did you know that flying creatures stall in a Solid Fog?

In a game where the main characters were level 8, the level 5 Conjurer was the MVP. Abrupt Jaunt was his main and only defense, and (Sculpted) Glitterdust/Cloud of Bewilderment/Sleet Storm won fights by themselves.

In my current group we have three optimizers - J, V and myself, and everyone else doesn't really contribute as much to encounters. J prefers to play mundane killers and is very good at it, so he contributes just fine. V prefers to optimize defense, so he's often untouchable but not encounter-obviating. I prefer buffing/utility, which meshes pretty well with everyone else - usually. I did play a melee incantatrix once, and only V's psion and J's NPCs kept up.

Also, a note, playing gestalt does weird things to caster optimization. You fight higher CR/higher HD monsters and gestalt NPCs, so saving throws are much higher than normal. This makes save-or-x a situational tool, and no-save effects are required to function properly. Hence buffing/utility, which is generally friendlier. Of course, gestalt also makes skill and build much more varied and player-dependent, so you're trading one problem for another.

supermonkeyjoe

2013-06-12, 02:58 AM

That's nonsense. There are huge numbers of spells that dominate/apply in pretty much any situation (time stop, astral projection, foresight, black tentacles, solid fog, shapechange, etc.).

Nevermind the fact that spellcasters can, in fact, know exactly what to prepare (divinations) and can, in fact, control when and how they take on encounters (teleport, rope trick) unless there's some unusual circumstance going on (which is, you know, unusual).

And half of the spells you listed won't be a problem for 80% of a standard level 1-20 game, even then pretty much all of those spells can benefit the party as much as the caster, If you have your caster hoarding all the best spells for themselves and turning into a one-man party then I'd say the problem is with the player rather than the class.

There's also the fact that in the dozen or so 3.5 games I've played I've never seen anyone just cherry pick all of the 'best' spells, they usually choose what's thematically appropriate to there character, maybe I've just been lucky in the people I've played with, I just think the idea that a full caster will overshadow the other characters at later levels is overplayed a lot on this board, I'm not disputing that they can but that they will.

VariaVespasa

2013-06-12, 03:20 AM

The problem isnt casters really, its badly designed/thought-out spells and some bad basic premises.

Any spell that end the fight with no realistic opportunity to survive (amber sarc, tentacles and others) is a bad spell and needs to be adjusted. Sepia snake sigil had a save, amber sarc should too. The original tentacles both had a save and could be destoyed; there's no excuse for the ludicrous upgrade in 3.5. So the DM should tweak such spells back to a balanced form. If the players squeal, and some will, just hit the party with those particular spells using the exact rules interpretation they want when they cast it. They'll catch on soon enough.

The bad premises are three-fold.
First is the rigid structure of 4 encounters per day, which allows casters to unload in each battle. Longer adventures with a larger (and uncertain) number of encounters will keep people from unloading at maximum burn whenever they leave the house, lest they be utterly useless later on. D+D is a game of attrition. Let the party unload maximum firepower every encounter and they'll hand you your ass in your hat.

Second is that the party will be able to rest whenever they like. There are many stories of groups whacking a few rooms in a dungeon then resting up. And the other denizens of the place... do... nothing.... A sensible and good DM will not allow that kind of silliness. Its easily avoided- set a time limit on how long the players have. (The princess will be executed at dawn. If you rest now you wont be ready till 2 hours AFTER down...). Have the monsters respond to the players incursion- hunt down and harry the players resting place with noise and threat, Build extra defences, reassign troops etc whie the party is off resting. And if, despite all they can do, it looks like theyre going to lose because of repeated resting by the party- run away! Pack their bags and sneak away in the night, and let the party discover a now-empty dungeon in the morning, with nothing except discarded copper pieces and 3 scavenging kobolds. Forinstance the Giant Series from 1.0 is a classic and explicitely recommends all of this, but for far too many campaigns its a lost art. Relearn it.

And third, and interconnected with the others, is an over-reliance on single bosses. AD+D is a game of attrition, and that means quantity, not quality, lots of extra critters instead of a single boss upon which all depends. Theres a reason why the saying "Dont put all your eggs in one basket" is such a truism, so DONT DO IT...

ShneekeyTheLost

2013-06-12, 03:55 AM

Searing Spell Mailman will still rock your world. Particularly one with Darkmantle on his spell list.

Rhynn

2013-06-12, 04:08 AM

And half of the spells you listed won't be a problem for 80% of a standard level 1-20 game, even then pretty much all of those spells can benefit the party as much as the caster, If you have your caster hoarding all the best spells for themselves and turning into a one-man party then I'd say the problem is with the player rather than the class.

There are dozens and dozens of such spells, across all levels.

Please explain how playing the class and using the spells as they are intended, with no optimization (sufficient to break party balance and dominate the game with, say, a druid) is a problem with the player?

Are you saying that all players of full casters should be expert optimizers in order to counter-optimize their characters?

supermonkeyjoe

2013-06-12, 05:12 AM

There are dozens and dozens of such spells, across all levels.

Please explain how playing the class and using the spells as they are intended, with no optimization (sufficient to break party balance and dominate the game with, say, a druid) is a problem with the player?

Are you saying that all players of full casters should be expert optimizers in order to counter-optimize their characters?

No, I'm just saying that I have never seen anyone 'accidentally' pick all these amazing game-breaking spells that end encounters instantly, I'm speaking purely anecdotally here and maybe I've just been lucky in my games, I've seen casters use most of the spells you listed and plenty of other ones that people have touted as being 'encounter ending' I've just never seen them be a problem in a real game.

ArcturusV

2013-06-12, 05:34 AM

Weird. I mean some are not exactly obvious. Most people don't look at Grease when they're new and go, "OMG! LOCK DOWN!"

They do go look at Sleep, and go "Hmm... wait... I can KO an entire enemy force with just one spell."

It's not system mastery it's just obvious stuff. They're looking at spells and seeing "Hmm... I can do 1d4 damage with Magic Missile... or I can knock out a target with Color Spray", or "I can deal 1d8 with Shocking Grasp... or I can cast Magic Weapon on the Fighter's sword and he ends up doing like +8 damage over an encounter with it."

There are exceptions, like casters who just go "... I don't care. I wanna be Tim!". But even they are fairly decent at shutting down encounters pretty hard. Take a maligned, hated First Level spell like Burning Hands. 1d4 is kinda... eh. It has a 25% chance of rolling enough damage to KO even a lowly Kobold. Presuming they don't pass a save. But still, for a single action they can end up dealing quite a bit of damage in an encounter. Say, level appropriate first level encounter, 6 Kobolds in a dungeon room. Not unreasonable to say you can catch 4 of them in a Cone with the usual starting position layouts I see in adventure modules. Average 2.5 over 4 enemies, you've just relatively "massively" injured the encounter. Not in the best way, it's really the WORST option a wizard has for shutting down an encounter by example.

But it can still be effective if your DM allows Morale and Surrenders (Okay over half our force is now on death's door, I think we'll surrender to the guy who's burning us...). Or if your team has trouble landing hard hits (even shaving off two damage means your Wizard with a Club can easily put them down in one hit. Sure the Fighter always could have, but it can make a difference if your team is more weak armed). Or if you have two Tims basically clear out an entire encounter by chaining two Burning Hands.

Course, at the moderate, my player wanted to be Effective, and picked things that are obviously decent side of life... in the same Encounter he goes "Hmm... I see kobolds through the Keyhole of the door. On this side of the door I start casting Sleep, using LoS through the keyhole. I finish and... ooo... they're all KOed. CDG them all!"

And no, not theoretical on that. It's happened in so many games I've both DMed and Played in that I just accept it a fact of low level wizardry life.

Saph

2013-06-12, 06:02 AM

Course, at the moderate, my player wanted to be Effective, and picked things that are obviously decent side of life... in the same Encounter he goes "Hmm... I see kobolds through the Keyhole of the door. On this side of the door I start casting Sleep, using LoS through the keyhole. I finish and... ooo... they're all KOed. CDG them all!"

And no, not theoretical on that. It's happened in so many games I've both DMed and Played in that I just accept it a fact of low level wizardry life.

It's not hard to dominate a game when things are slanted that far in your favour.

For your "Sleep through the Keyhole, CDG them all" example to work, the following things need to happen:

Your wizard has to have prepared Sleep that morning. Likelihood: Good.
Your wizard has to not have used his castings of Sleep on previous encounters that day. Likelihood: Reasonable.
Your wizard has to be fighting enemies vulnerable to Sleep. Likelihood: Reasonable but out of your hands. If you prepare 3 castings of Sleep and the DM decides you're fighting elves or enemies immune to mind-affecting, sucks to be you.
You have to be in a position to ambush enemies in the first place. Likelihood: Unlikely (statistically, most D&D combats do not start with the party ambushing the enemy).
You have to pass your Move Silently check against the Kobold's Listen scores. Likelihood: Very iffy, depends on setup.
There have to be 2-4 Kobolds in the room (Sleep has a 4 HD limit). Likelihood: Good.
The Kobolds have to not hear your spellcasting (Listen DC 0, modified) and all be clustered within the spell's AoE, rather than moving as soon as you've used up your 1-standard-action surprise round (note: Sleep takes more than 1 standard action to cast). Likelihood: Unlikely.
The Kobolds have to all fail their saves. Likelihood: Unlikely. (If some fail and some pass, the ones that pass wake up the sleeping ones on their turn.)
Statistically, if you're regularly pulling off sequences of events like this, it usually means the DM is making things easy for you. (Forgetting to have the monsters set watch, not having them make Listen checks, forgetting that Sleep is a 1-round casting time, not having monsters wake up sleeping companions, etc.) In which case you probably could have beaten the encounter without casting spells.

And if everything goes right . . . then you've spent a 1st-level spell to kill 2-4 of the weakest monster in the game. Given that you started in an ambush position, that's what, a CR 1/2 encounter?

Psyren

2013-06-12, 06:42 AM

The kobolds also all have to be standing in a 10 ft. radius of each other, which is also out of the wizard's hands.

Color spray is even worse - a 15' cone is pretty small. Both are great once a fight has started, but before?

Rhynn

2013-06-12, 09:26 AM

No, I'm just saying that I have never seen anyone 'accidentally' pick all these amazing game-breaking spells that end encounters instantly, I'm speaking purely anecdotally here and maybe I've just been lucky in my games, I've seen casters use most of the spells you listed and plenty of other ones that people have touted as being 'encounter ending' I've just never seen them be a problem in a real game.

You've never seen someone "accidentally" pick heal, harm, and shapechange? Or sleep? I can understand grease being a bit of a "secret" good spell, but most of them are obvious immediately upon reading. (Slime wave! GAH!)

Most of the great spells are not obscure, they are obvious.

Philistine

2013-06-12, 10:31 AM

GreenETC

2013-06-12, 10:32 AM

The Kobolds have to not hear your spellcasting (Listen DC 0, modified) and all be clustered within the spell's AoE, rather than moving as soon as you've used up your 1-standard-action surprise round (note: Sleep takes more than 1 standard action to cast). Likelihood: Unlikely.

Start/Complete Full-Round Action
The "start full-round action" standard action lets you start undertaking a full-round action, which you can complete in the following round by using another standard action. You can’t use this action to start or complete a full attack, charge, run, or withdraw.
Even with your surprise round, if you have enough initiative, you can easily hit them all and even be able to open the door. Not to mention they'd have to detect you to even know combat was happening, since they're not immediately aware of you.

I think this would probably work well if you had Kobolds or Goblins playing cards or something on their off hours.

DustyBottoms

2013-06-12, 10:35 AM

The last group I played was Beguiler, Fighter/Marshal (me), Duskblade, Monk, Rogue, Shugenja. Honestly, myself and the duskblade tended to do the best - the monk, the beguiler and I split the party face time dependent upon target audience, the shugenja played healbot, and without a big caster (zard, sorc, cleric) we were fairly balanced, although the rogue felt left out at times.

Our first group was Cleric, Sorc (me), Paladin, Druid, and a wizard who got cut in half and ragequit (long story involving IRL problems). In that group, the paladin felt a little left behind but got buffed up with some magic items and it turned out ok.

Our next group is going to be Factotum, Sorc, Warlock/Hellfire lock (me), Druid, and then paladin/crusader. The factotum is the same guy as the paladin and the rogue, so I'm gonna help him be optimized for once and contribute to a fairly high-tier party.

In all, the magic users definitely have the potential to step ahead in our campaigns but don't - other than myself, its fairly low-op and the casters tend to buff or blast.

Aotrs Commander

2013-06-12, 10:39 AM

I like this idea, so much so that I'm gonna recommend it to my DM friend.

Here's the mechanics, for you and anyone else interested:

Defiant Monster Template

Defiant Monster Template

A Defiant creature is one that is extremely hard to kill. They cling to life (or unlife) with a tenacity unheard of by lesser creatures. The reasons are many. They may be chosen by destiny, favoured by some higher power, powered by some unspeakable ritual magic, driven by their sheer bloody-minded will to survive or they may simply be preternaturally fortunate.

The Defiant Template can be applied to any creature, hereafter referred to as the Base Creature. This template can be applied as many times as you think you need (and it can even be applied on the fly.)

All statistics are as the base creature except:

HD: A Defiant creature always has maximum hit points. A Defiant creature’s hit points are divided into blocks, with the base creature’s maximum hit points forming the first block. For each time this template is taken, it gains an additional block of hit points equal to it’s maximum hit points. When one block is reduced to 0, damage transfers immediately to the next one.

These are not temporary hit points and are treated as regular hit points; if the creature’s Constitution is reduced (or any other stat that applies to it’s hit points), the base and the blocks are all reduced accordingly. Effects that reduce a creature’s hit points to 0 or 1 (e.g. Harm, suffocation) instead reduce the current block’s hit points to 0 or 1. Effects which likewise function on current hit points only treat the current block’s hit points. The creature’s HD remain unaffected.

Defiant creature hit points are indicated with the format x+x, where x is the base creature’s maximum hit points, with each block being separated by the plus sign.

Temporary hit points are not counted as part of the blocks, i.e. the creatures only gets them once. They thus are not lost when a block is sacrificed, nor do they count as a block themselves (and so cannot be used with I Got Better). Temporary hits are listed last in stat blocks in the notation x+x+y.

Special Qualities: As the base creature plus the following special ability.
I Got Better (Ex): Once per encounter per template application, if the Defiant creature fails a saving throw, it can reroll it’s save as a free action. Each time it uses a reroll, it takes a cumulative -1 penalty to attack rolls, skill and ability checks, opposed checks and saves.

At the end of it’s turn, as a Free action, the Defiant creature can expend one full block of hit-points to negate any one negative condition, power, spell or other negative effect currently affecting it. This effect on the creature (only) ends immediately.

Any time the Defiant is subject to a non-hit-point-damaging effect that kills it outright or leaves it otherwise Confused, Cowering, Dazed, Helpless, Nauseated, Paralysed, Petrified (or similar), Polymorphed or Stunned (or similar effects at the DM's discretion, e.g. Maze), it may expend a full block of hit points to negate that portion of the effect.

A block of hit points expended by this power must be one that is completely undamaged.

CR +1 for each template application.

It does work, for it's designed purpose, which is letting a monster (or even a small group of monsters!) survive a round or two longer. (Certainly for dealing with parties of 6 characters of mid-high optimisation.)

GreenETC

2013-06-12, 11:07 AM

It does work, for it's designed purpose, which is letting a monster (or even a small group of monsters!) survive a round or two longer. (Certainly for dealing with parties of 6 characters of mid-high optimisation.)
I have to admit, that is pretty decent at stopping monsters from being easily shut down, though it seems to be the perfect thing for an Ubercharger to tear apart. Plus it might get a bit ridiculous at higher levels, but hey, not everything is perfect.

Icewraith

2013-06-12, 11:23 AM

I wasn't sure if the battlefield control thing would work out as advertised in a real game, so I tried out a grease/glitterdust sorcerer.

It worked. The only reason I took Scorching Ray was we leveled, and there were hints of a troll encounter coming up and we didn't have a source of reliable fire/acid damage. Lo and behold, suddenly all of the Trolls.

All of them.

Very careful conservation of scorching ray won it for us. (And the scroll of Animate Dead I found and got us a badass minion with.)

The people who say "you can't possibly have the right spell prepared all the time" - yes you can. This is because unless the DM is putting a lot of thought into encounters so you can't possibly shut them down with one spell, the right spell is usually grease, glitterdust, solid fog, etc. If the DM tries to use attrition, he usually has to throw swarms of lower CR opponents at you in order to avoid outright killing other party members - the same sort of creatures that are most vulnerable to aformeentioned grease, etc.

The encounter model in 3.5 is based around four level appropriate encounters per day. It also outright says in the DMG or SRD somewhere that multiple lower CR encounters are worth about a level appropriate encounter, and a single higher CR encounter can be worth two or more level appropriate encounters. If you load up on enough battlefield control to deal with swarms of lower-CR opponents, and use the rest of your spell slots for spells designed to ruin bosses (which can also be many of the same spells) or solve utility encounters, you're basically good for the adventuring day. If you have additional information (we're fighting ghosts, trolls, dragons etc) or make good use of a divination or two this becomes even easier.

Thus, casters really start to pick up steam around sixth or seventh level because they have enough size and diversity in their spell slots to do this. It doesn't necessarily happen in all games, but I've done it, I've been on the recieving end of it both as a Player and a DM, and I even worked against it.

The other dm in our group was extremely biased towards casters, we decided on a short-term Gestalt campaign because most of us had ridiculous ideas we wanted to try out. My Monk//Warblade drove him NUTS. It's amazing how much the higher HD, full BAB, standard action Strikes, and ability to sudden leap make the increased movement speed and flurry of a monk both effective and complimentary.

Aotrs Commander

2013-06-12, 11:48 AM

I have to admit, that is pretty decent at stopping monsters from being easily shut down, though it seems to be the perfect thing for an Ubercharger to tear apart. Plus it might get a bit ridiculous at higher levels, but hey, not everything is perfect.

Define "ridiculous" and "higher levels" as I've gone up to low Epic with this...! (I think that one Great Wyrm I used had about 3-4 applications - and she wasn't alone - giving her about 2500-3000 hit points. The PCs still won (though they did go up and down a bit.) And the Ranger/Fighter/Deepwood Sniper/Crusader (the characters started back in 3.0...) did the bulk of the damage, I think.)

I haven't had any problems with it certainly.

It's a very good general purpose solution that's easy to add in if you need it. It's not perfect, of course, but it's much better tha the alternative.

If you found uberchargers were an issue... Well, charging is relatively easy to foil by any class in the first place - terrain and position and the answer becomes "stack more defiant templates until the uber charger can't take it out in one hit and then basically mean the party HAS to get the ubercharger to charge it in order for them to beat it."

But if uberchargers are that much of a problem, they're a problem just generally, never mind to this template - because the only solution is either "negate the ubercharger somehow so they can't ubercharge" (who by that point had likely invested their entire build in it) or "don't let the players build an ubercharger that good in the first place."

(Making the point of letting it be known that "ubercharge them back and see how they like it" is an option, because either they won't or they'll come up with ways to counter it - which you just nick and use right back at them. (The DM always will win an optimisation war because you have unlimited resources - and if your real-world resources are not up to it, you can always pull the "just no" card, either IC via unique gubbins or OC directly to the player. Best not to let it get that far, though.)

ahenobarbi

2013-06-12, 11:51 AM

I'll share my story too. After some time playing with my group I decided to play a battle-field control caster (focused conjurer 3/ master specialist 4 IIRC). A party that was struggling to survive 1 encounter / day suddenly started taking a few encounters a day (and usually with little damage).

Why? Because now they could fight one enemy at time, each of them in optimal conditions (and oft the enemy was somewhat debuffed) as opposed to fighting all enemies at once, futilely trying to protect squishier members of the party.

I wouldn't say the character dominated the party (after all it didn't get a single frag :smallwink:) but everyone noticed the difference.

GreenETC

2013-06-12, 12:10 PM

Define "ridiculous" and "higher levels" as I've gone up to low Epic with this...! (I think that one Great Wyrm I used had about 3-4 applications - and she wasn't alone - giving her about 2500-3000 hit points. The PCs still won (though they did go up and down a bit.) And the Ranger/Fighter/Deepwood Sniper/Crusader (the characters started back in 3.0...) did the bulk of the damage, I think.)
This is the sort of thing I'm worried about. Obviously in Epic it won't be that big a deal, but I'd consider giving things craptons of hit points kind of unfair to anything under decently good OP.

Even with my best Rogues (TWF Shadow Blade Rogue 5/Swordsage 1) I can only manage an average of around 40 damage for both hits with +1 Short Swords when flanking for sneak attack and about to full-round. Facing a CR matched opponent, a Minotaur with 2 of those templates to make him stronger as some sort of boss type, that's 180 HP, which seems like quite a lot of HP. Or a Young Green Dragon with one use of it for 308 HP. These seem decent, but it just starts making certain monsters become ridiculously beefy, which means your party must be decently able to deal HP damage in response, either by damage OP or outnumbering, since the normal 2d6+(Str x 1.5) just isn't gonna cut it. Plus I feel having more HP just makes the fight more drawn out unless your party has good options, and in the case of that dragon, one spell to cripple it ends up counting for an entire block of HP, which turns into quite a lot as we go up.

Aotrs Commander

2013-06-12, 01:09 PM

This is the sort of thing I'm worried about. Obviously in Epic it won't be that big a deal, but I'd consider giving things craptons of hit points kind of unfair to anything under decently good OP.

Even with my best Rogues (TWF Shadow Blade Rogue 5/Swordsage 1) I can only manage an average of around 40 damage for both hits with +1 Short Swords when flanking for sneak attack and about to full-round. Facing a CR matched opponent, a Minotaur with 2 of those templates to make him stronger as some sort of boss type, that's 180 HP, which seems like quite a lot of HP. Or a Young Green Dragon with one use of it for 308 HP. These seem decent, but it just starts making certain monsters become ridiculously beefy, which means your party must be decently able to deal HP damage in response, either by damage OP or outnumbering, since the normal 2d6+(Str x 1.5) just isn't gonna cut it. Plus I feel having more HP just makes the fight more drawn out unless your party has good options, and in the case of that dragon, one spell to cripple it ends up counting for an entire block of HP, which turns into quite a lot as we go up.

The whole point IS to make it a long, drawn-out fight.

These sort of encounters are not supposed to be one of your four a day, they're supposed to be "come in fresh and then rest" sort of fights. You're supposed to have to take four or five or six rounds to take it down (rather than what I usually find is often only two to four). That's why you're scaling the defences up higher than the offense.

(Of note, any encounter that is equal to party CR I don't consider anything other than a chaff encounter. Heck, I don't even bother using CR as anything other than a measure of XP since as a balancing system it just doesn't work (I never have used EL, which is even more worthless.) When I write my own quests, I balance by eye and I don't think I ever use what 3.x considers an appropriate challenge because as soon as you step out the proscribed four-man band into something else it's useful evaporates.)

You don't use a defiant template matched against one character as a balance point, either. You HAVE to balance it against the whole party because that is the entire POINT of the exercise - to make the whole party have to work cohesively - and by work I mean really WORK, not cast one SoD and hope you get lucky.

If you typically deal with parties in the six to eight number range (which I do, I can count on the fingers of one hand we've had less than six characters in a party in my twenty years of playing), you will find that boss monsters need that kind of buffing when you hit moderate to high levels of optimisation; everything else aside, they just get out-actioned.

The thing with the defiant template is, you just add it (or remove it if needed) as required to keep the PCs on their toes. Even on the fly. It's behind the screen, so the PCs won't know how many it's got (even if they do know it's got at least one).

If the party's damage is not well-optimised and their casters not very good, you may not need it at all in the first place. If the monster will last three or four rounds as it stands, then you don't need it aside from maybe SoD protection depending on what your specific party has got (which might mean that, far from being inclinded to not use SoDs so the noncasters can have their fun, the PCs will HAVE to use some SoDs.)

You don't use it in isolation. It's a mechanism to balance out what your specific party's capabilites are so that the fight doesn't end prematurely and everyone has had a chance to get in on the fun. You have to take into account what your party composition and optimisation is like - something as a DM you will already have a good idea of over the course of an adventure anyway.

You just engineer the amount to the specific circumstances of what's fighting against who such that it requires the whole party to pull their fingers out and bring on their A game; because the casters or the noncasters can't take care of it fast enough on their own, everyone has to chip in. Which is what a boss fight should be.

Also, if your melee characters are only dealing regular weapon damage, then you might not have as much of a problem in the first place. But where I come from, even 1st-level melee characters are likely to be rolling out 2D6+6 plus maybe Power Attack.

By the by? That Dragon? Lasted about four rounds, if that, and the combat was only longer than that because she faked them out with a polymorphed lackey first.

(The eight-man defianted NPC fight only lasted about six rounds or I'd guess. That was a fully optimised team including four primary casters (okay, yeah two were illithids, so their cleric level was a bit lower (like about 11-13 instead of 16), but their CL was up to snuff and they had a crap-ton of hit points (the big cleric I think was techically just Epic). Plus a warblade, an invisible rogue, a Heedless Charge Barbarian (okay, she didn't have pounce or she really would have creamed the first target...!) and fighter, I think. Oh yeah, and they started buffed (Elation/Righteous Wrath of the Faithful party-wide, plus the holy trinity (and extend tentacles) for the clerics...)

flamewolf393

2013-06-12, 02:15 PM

I dont care how powerful your wizard is. There are plenty of times where he just cannot do without his tank healer and skillmonkey.

RFLS

2013-06-12, 02:20 PM

I dont care how powerful your wizard is. There are plenty of times where he just cannot do without his tank healer and skillmonkey.

This is patently false after about level 5. If you care to test that, we can run character sheets through a Test of Spite, and see, at equal levels of optimization, who falls first or more often.

This isn't a flippant, intended-to-shut-you-up-and-make-you-go-away response, btw. I'm completely willing to demonstrate this to you, if you wish. We can select an impartial panel of Dungeon Masters to design the challenges and ensure equal levels of optimization, if anyone would be interested.

Roll to change someone's mind....

Deepbluediver

2013-06-12, 02:29 PM

I dont care how powerful your wizard is. There are plenty of times where he just cannot do without his tank healer and skillmonkey.

/sigh

That's not really an answer to the question, but the point of the idea behind caster dominance is that the wizard can replicate the function of pretty much any other member of the party with a spell, and frequently better.

Tank?
Summon Monster, Mage Armor, Wall of Force, Levitation, Grease, Blink, 400+ft spell range, etc. All of those help protect the Wizard or just keep him out of reach of the enemy.

Skillmonkey?
What skill ISN'T a spell?
We've got Knock (open lock), Spiderclimb (climb), Charm (diplomacy), Jump (jump), Water Breathing (swim), Invisibility (hide) etc.

Healer?
The cure wounds line isn't on the wizard's spell list, true, but in many cases the wizard simply never takes damage, and there are plenty of other methods of healing besides spells (usually via magic items). And in-combat healing is usually a sub-optimal use of actions.

Now, I admit all this is theoretical, and a wizard does not necessarily always have the perfect spell prepared. But there are many methods by which a Wizard can easily escape (Teleport, Time Stop, Contingency, etc) and come back later if they haven't used Divination to scry ahead. There are also individual spells (almost all of which the wizard has access to) that are far and away more powerful and more versatile than anything a non-caster can replicate at any level (Genesis, Gate, Shapechange, etc).

As I said, the theoretical problems don't destroy games not because they aren't an issue, but because players recognize them and choose to avoid them. That's something I would term a less-than-desirable situation. It can and should be fixed.

ahenobarbi

2013-06-12, 02:30 PM

I dont care how powerful your wizard is. There are plenty of times where he just cannot do without his tank healer and skillmonkey.

Wizard can work without tank around level 1 (abrupt jaunt + animal companion), without "healer" around level 2 (arcane disciple can afford Cure Light Wounds wand), without skill monkey... certainly at level 7 (polymorph). maybe earlier (it's not like they lack skill points) at level 3 (Alter Self).

Friv

2013-06-12, 02:42 PM

I'm not sure which I find more interesting: the fact that some people consider the idea that other classes might be able to contribute occasionally to be equivalent to those classes being equal to the wizard...

...or the fact that when they do, someone is on hand to explain why even that could fall apart on you.

Bromidrosis

2013-06-12, 02:56 PM

The guys I used to play 2nd Edition with took about 30 minutes to realize "... wait... if I play a Wizard... I no longer have to go through being carried for 6 levels and instead dominate right out of the box all day long?"

It was that difference that always lead to me thinking about Caster Dominance in 3rd, even before I really started digging into Optimization Tricks. They no longer have that swing of going from Cripple to Powerful. It's just Powerful to More Powerful.

I find that interesting because my first campaign was 3.5. We started at lvl 1 and would laugh at the wizard with his few spells and ridiculously low hp making him constantly 1 round from death, only to be saved by my swordsage or our cleric. Likely we were poorly optimized but I still think there's quite a significant power swing, from the low hp character with no combat abilities a few tricks/damage abilities to the nigh-unstoppable, landscape altering arcane monsters they become once they get access to 4th lvl spells or so.

ArcturusV

2013-06-12, 03:49 PM

Well, again, it's all a matter of perspective and experience.

In 2nd edition? Wizards got d4 HP at level one. No max HP at level 1. Just D4. Also no one other than Fighters got bonus HP for Constitution. So you were going to have 1-4 HP as a wizard, no way around that (Unlike in 3rd where I've seen level 1 Wizards with 9 HP). And you'd have 1 spell of First Level. No Cantrips (Yes, Prestidigitation, Ghost Sound, etc, first level spells). No bonus spells for Int. You could specialize, yeah. But Specializations were also fixed (If you specialized in one school it automatically banned two others, no choice, so that you usually ended up banning one school you'd rather not). No crossbow proficiencies or anything, you were stuck with a Dagger or a Staff.

Compared to the 3rd edition Wizard? The 3rd edition one is insanely more powerful. Regardless of Race you can Crossbow enemies in your spare time (Handy), you have about 6 times as many spells at level one. You have around double the HP available to you. Specialization is easy peasy, not to mention variants like Domain Wizard are pretty much just Pure Benefit, no Drawbacks. Lots of ACFs that add a ton of power to a Wizard at level one like Abrupt Jaunt.

That's why it struck us as so insanely good to be a Wizard in 3rd when we first looked at it. It was exponentially more powerful right out of the box at first level than we were used to. And it still progressed in power just like the wizards we were used to.

Toliudar

2013-06-12, 05:11 PM

Another perspective:

In most of the PBP games I play on these boards, the players of non-casters run out of things to do sooner, have fewer mechanical ways to contribute to situations, and are (in my experience) much more likely to drop out. This is why I play casters 80% of the time. I hate sitting around writing commentary and cheering on the others while they do stuff. And while my martial types and skillmonkeys may not be the most optimized, they're not useless one-trick ponies, either. They just don't have as many options as your average caster.

KoboldCleric

2013-06-12, 10:32 PM

How much does caster dominance affect -real- games?

Noticeably in a mid-op group. Most of my group has at least read some of the various CharOP boards (I may be the only who has migrated over to GitP though), and a couple are actually fairly well known for builds/handbooks. Anyway, In our last campaign (undead heavy) we had 5 PCs from ECL 3 to 17

Orc Fighter/Barbarian/Werewolf Lord (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20040117a)/Warshaper/Wizard/Abjurant Champion
Halfing Fighter/Ranger/Rogue/Witch Hunter (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Witch_Hunter_(3.5e_Prestige_Class))
"Dwarf" (Gnome) Paladin/Grey Guard
Lesser Aasimar Saint Warlock/Cleric/Eldritch Disciple
Human Wizard/Mage of the Arcane Order/Archmage

Around ECL 6-8 the DM had to start seriously increasing WBL for the non-casters (e.g. Paladin got a Holy Avenger and Halfling got a Sunblade at ECL 6, Werewolf got a free LA at ECL 8). In order to save members of the party the Wizard had to Solo an encounter from time to time starting around ECL 10. By the time the party was headed to fight the BBEG at ECL 17 it was more or less the showdown of two Wizards with their respective mooks fighting in the background. It worked because we were all fine with the meta aspect of it for plot reasons and because the DM handled having two related but sorta-separate battles in the same scene quite well.

Our current campaign has gone from 1-3 to date (they just leveled to 4 at the end of the last session)
Neanderthal Cleric
Elf Sorcerer
Human Druid
Human Mystic Ranger/Swordsage (Going SotAO)
Human Swashbuckler

It's already at the point where I find myself needing to talk with the Swashbuckler about how to keep his character relevant. Each of the other four characters is capable of ending an encounter in a single round. I was able to casually toss an EL 9 encounter at them last session without really worrying about the consequences for any of the party members. The Druid and the Sorcerer have each been in a couple tight spots, so it's not all a cake walk, but we're already playing rocket tag.

All in all, we're able to handle it, but only because we're all aware of it. We'd have seen serious issues otherwise. It certainly drastically affects the way we play the game.