All right lets do this, balancing magic in 3.5

[Devronq]

So im the process of doing my own rewrite of 3.5, yes lots of other people already did this and we have pathfinder and legend and all that good stuff but still everyone has there own tastes so im making my own. Im trying to keep alot of it as close to 3.5 as i can.

Now the point of the thread heres what Ive done so far to balance magic.

-Metamagic costs +1 no matter what. Arcane thesis is the only thing in the game that lowers a metamagic cost and it still cant make it lower than +1. So no incantrix or any other metamagic lowering feats. Stuff like sudden maximize and similar effects are fine.

-Metamagic feats require that you be a high enough level to use them on a lv.1 spell before you can take the feat. For example you must be able to cast lv.4 spells before you can take maximize spell.

-If a spell deals elemental damage then SR applies. The orb of blah spells don't exist. Spells that deal levelDX damage with no cap don't exist.

-I lowered the duration of alot of spells. If you cast a spell and it is still active you cannot regain that spell slot back. When you rest if a spell is still active you must chose to not gain the spell slot back or end the spell and regain your slot as normal.

-Persist spell doesn't exist and permanent spells in general are a case by case situation.

-Divine metamagic can only be used once per round and you must have the feat and the divine metamagic feat. So you need twin spell and divine metamagic twin to use it.

-Teleport and scry. Ive never actually had a player or me try the whole scry and die thing but I see the power in it. So teleport only lets you return to somewhere you've been before or you need an accurate and detailed map of your teleport location. Scry works the same but you cannot gain information from a scry that would allow you to teleport there based on the scry information alone.

Everything else is just nitpicking and slightly adjusting spells and really not worth mentioning to much. So opinions comments?

And in case your curious Ive more or read all the 3.5 books (or i have them atleast) i also have the pf core book and Legend as a pdf.

[BWR]

One thing I've toyed with is fixing summoning spells.

One of the big breaks is how one simple spell can get you an insane number of different critters, some can cast many different spells, and they don't count towards CR or xp.
Rework them.
1. adopt 2e version of requiring seperate spell for each type of creature
2. increase material cost. Make them expensive enough that a caster wants to seriously consider using them, not just spamming a battlefield with celestial bison. Creatures with lots of uselful abilities, e.g. spells, should cost more than pure meat shields
3. summoned creatures count as party members. XP is divided amongst them as well (they need not necessarily gain any xp).
4. summoned creatures count as xp for opposing party. If a dude gates in a pit fiend and the party defeats it, they should get some xp for it. Conversely, if the party summons monsters and are defeated, their enemies get more xp

[SparowCrow]

Conversely, if the party summons monsters and are defeated, their enemies get more xp

you track exp for NPCs?

[NichG]

What worked for me was completely replacing all spells above 3rd level with new ones written with balance in mind. I still ended up with a handful of problems from a few silly lower level spells (Divine Insight and Circle Dance in particular ended up being ridiculous), but for the most part it worked even when going to a spell point system that allowed everyone to basically be a spontaneous caster. This is a lot of work, but I think its probably the only real way.

Magic is unbalanced in the details more than in the abstract - that is to say, each additional spell is a potential source of imbalance and comes with its own, possibly flawed mechanics. So blanket fixes tend not to work too well. Also banning specific spells and allowing 'all the rest' will tend to create a hunt for the ones you missed, and can reach to fairly obscure sources.

Basically I think your amendments target only two specific kinds of magic imbalance: the 'Mailman' style damage caster and the perma-buffer. There are lots of other problems that come from a handful of spells - Polymorph stuff, Gate and other Summons, economics-breaking instantaneous conjurations like Wall of Iron, even just esoteric stuff that wasn't well thought through like Venomfire, Streamers, Surge of Fortune, ...

In my own rewrites I actually tended to up the damage from magic by a little, but I very heavily restricted Save or Die/Lose type effects, to the tune of having their DCs halved but having a partial effect on failing the 'original' DC, or just scrapping them entirely. I made heavy use of things like 'can take a move or a standard' in places where in base D&D you'd have stunning effects or entangling effects that would completely deny actions, so in general you could still modify the enemy's options but you could never just effectively take out a swath of enemies with one spell.

[DMVerdandi]

Not very balancing honestly. I would have

1. Banned metamagic, PERIOD.
Keeps the class in the power level focused.

2. Reduced the amount of magical classes available
To be honest, Sticking with spellcaster is fairly good. You have options out the yin/yang, BUT you have to decide on those actions. If that is too restrictive, then divide the classes up again. Cleric, Mage, Spirit Shaman, and give them all casting as spirit shaman.

One might say that such a thing is actually increasing the power and potential, but, lets be real here. It decreases book keeping by a LOT, and you don't have to worry about spellbooks being stolen, and low level prepared casters having a problem with spell selection. It is the best casting mechanic. Decreasing book keeping also balances the game, not in a realist, power-sharing perspective, but in keeping the time spent researching and finding facts to a minimum. No more slowing down the campaign, wizards.

3. All spell trigger items are eternal.
Why does this balance the game? Non-magical characters. If they are using spell-trigger items, this allows them to get a lot more bang from their bucks.

4. Magic Items do not cost experience to create
This one is also pretty big. It takes off that extra book keeping needed to play with XP, makes it that much easier for non-casters to obtain and own magic items.

[MirddinEmris]

The only way to balance magic against mundane is to never allowing magic do something the mundane can't (or do it much, much better).

This is example from my favorite d20 system:

You can make hide as a full round action. There is a hidden condition. You can cast invisibility spell to gain invisible condition. The invisible condition allows you to gain hidden condition if you move more than 10ft. There are also a feat chain giving you nice perks to improve your sneaky shtick (reducing penalties for movement, light and encumbrance, ability to hide in open place, etc).

Does spell invalidate skill? No. Is it nice to have this spell regardless of your skill? Yes, it is. So, magic does not overshadow mundane, but compliments it.

Of course, it's not an absolute rule and of course caster should have their nice things, but the magic option should not make mundane pointless and weak by comparison.

P.S. Also, increasing casting time for more powerful spells would be interesting, so the caster wouldn't have better action economy compared to mundane melee, who must get their full attacks.

[jedipotter]

Your off to a good start.

What spells did to tweak? Lots of them need it. Like: "Rope Trick: duration is 10 minutes/level. You can't sleep in a Rope Trick because you have to actually keep holding onto the rope after climbing up into the extradimensional space, which doesn't offer anything you can use as ground. The rope can't be pulled up."

You will need the little adds like "A character can not believe in her own illusions, even if she wants to." and "You can only emulate spells you know or have in your spellbook with shadow evocation and shadow conjuration."

And feel free to look at my Summoning Fix:Summoning:The strain of binding and controlling a summoned creature imposes a cumulative -1 penalty to caster level for each creature currently summoned.


When casting a summoning spell, there is a 1% chance per spell level that the spell goes horribly awry and summons something else entirely. The exact nature of the mistake is left up to the DM, depending on the power of the spell and what the desired result was. Occasionally, this results in something insignificantly weak, such as a celestial chipmunk. Other times, your summon monster II delivers a hezrou. The new creature is not bound by any sort of magic, and may break the summon at any time it wishes and return to its home plane. It cannot be dismissed by dismissing the spell.

Magic that summons have as an additional material component a piece of material that was once part of a creature or object of the type to be summoned/polymorphed. Pieces of certain exotic monsters will have a high market value. (So Eschew Materials will be ineffective).

[lord_khaine]

Now the point of the thread heres what Ive done so far to balance magic.

The changes sound reasonable enough in themself.


-Metamagic costs +1 no matter what. Arcane thesis is the only thing in the game that lowers a metamagic cost and it still cant make it lower than +1. So no incantrix or any other metamagic lowering feats. Stuff like sudden maximize and similar effects are fine.

-Metamagic feats require that you be a high enough level to use them on a lv.1 spell before you can take the feat. For example you must be able to cast lv.4 spells before you can take maximize spell.

I just made the rule that you cant modify a spell with more than 1 metamagic effect, a bit simpler with more or less the same effect.


-If a spell deals elemental damage then SR applies. The orb of blah spells don't exist. Spells that deal levelDX damage with no cap don't exist.

Though maybe a bit to powerfull with metamagic support, then i still found the orb spells to occupy an important niche in them game, so i just changet them to only do ½ damage if they failed their spell penetration check.

With the metamagic nerf it seemed like enough to keep things in check.


-I lowered the duration of alot of spells. If you cast a spell and it is still active you cannot regain that spell slot back. When you rest if a spell is still active you must chose to not gain the spell slot back or end the spell and regain your slot as normal.


I have newer had this issue myself, and not found it worth spending to much time one.
Also, spells that last 24 hours is one of the few reasons for taking the extend feat, so that and the addet bookkeeping is price enough for me.


-Persist spell doesn't exist and permanent spells in general are a case by case situation.

-Divine metamagic can only be used once per round and you must have the feat and the divine metamagic feat. So you need twin spell and divine metamagic twin to use it.

The first is a reasonable change, and the second is something thats partly been errataed (the needing the feat part)


-Teleport and scry. Ive never actually had a player or me try the whole scry and die thing but I see the power in it. So teleport only lets you return to somewhere you've been before or you need an accurate and detailed map of your teleport location. Scry works the same but you cannot gain information from a scry that would allow you to teleport there based on the scry information alone.

I personaly just changet divination so it gets blocked by 3-4 meters of rock, both fixing the Scy&Die tactic as well as giving a reason for dungeons to be created everywhere :smalltongue:


Everything else is just nitpicking and slightly adjusting spells and really not worth mentioning to much. So opinions comments?


Again, as long as you are playing with "adults" this should be enough to keep things from running to much out of control.

[Cheiromancer]

-If a spell deals elemental damage then SR applies. The orb of blah spells don't exist. Spells that deal levelDX damage with no cap don't exist.


My impression is that blastomancy is not in need of balancing. When it causes trouble it is because of metamagical exploits (e.g. the mailman and the stutter caster). What I would recommend is the opposite of what you have: make elemental damage not subject to SR. Let the conjurers keep their orb spells; just improve evocation.

One other area of concern you might consider is "kiting" - when a caster spams long range offensive spells while flying. To address this you might want to lower spell ranges. E.g. make medium spells 50 ft. + 5 ft./level and long range spells 100 ft. + 10 ft./level.

[mabriss lethe]

I agree with increasing casting time on higher level spells. It would make spellcasting more of a risk/reward system. Of course, you'd have to rework the entire magic system to take that properly into account. Lower level spells would have to scale better, so that they're still useful later.

Maybe something like this: This is off the cuff btw, so I really couldn't tell how good or bad an idea it might be.

You may only cast a single spell per round regardless of the casting time.

Highest level spells take a full round action
second highest takes a standard action
Third highest and lower takes a move action.
0 level spells are all swift.

Again, this is speculation, and I'm not thrilled with it, but it's something.

[Urpriest]

-If a spell deals elemental damage then SR applies. The orb of blah spells don't exist.


This one is silly. Casting Haste on the Fighter shouldn't suddenly grant SR to enemies because he picks up a flaming weapon. Neither should summoned Fire Elementals trigger SR. In general, spells that don't grant SR and deal elemental damage do so because they do it indirectly, by creating or summoning or enhancing a mundane object that does elemental damage. That's no different from casting Haste on a Fighter with a flaming sword or summoning a Fire Elemental.

[BWR]

you track exp for NPCs?

If they happen to win against the PCs and are likely to show up again soon, sure. Not usually.

[NichG]

This one is silly. Casting Haste on the Fighter shouldn't suddenly grant SR to enemies because he picks up a flaming weapon. Neither should summoned Fire Elementals trigger SR. In general, spells that don't grant SR and deal elemental damage do so because they do it indirectly, by creating or summoning or enhancing a mundane object that does elemental damage. That's no different from casting Haste on a Fighter with a flaming sword or summoning a Fire Elemental.

Actually I don't see how your first example is implied by his rules change. Haste isn't dealing damage in this case, its changing the parameters of the Fighter's attack sequence, but the damage source is pretty clearly the flaming weapon, not the Haste spell. Since SR doesn't apply for an enemy when you use Prayer on the Fighter (which is also a SR: Yes spell though harmless), it wouldn't logically apply to Haste in this case either.

Arguably I suppose it'd apply to the flaming sword itself, but then that's independent of Haste.

For your second example, I could see a justification for summoned Fire Elementals suffering SR, but so should summoned Dire Boars or whatever in that case. Basically, if the interpretation is that the Summon Monster line of spells synthesize a creature from magical energy rather than actually bringing them physically to the location from somewhere else (which makes more sense given the other weirdness around those spells). Since it can be dispelled it could make sense that it can also be resisted by something's intrinsic resistance to magical energy. Planar Allies, Gated things, etc then would not be affected because they're physically there.

Now, I wouldn't say this is necessarily a desirable set of mechanics for gameplay reasons: for one, its a ton of rolling every time you summon something with an attack sequence against an enemy with SR. That said, I don't think casters suffering what is effectively a 50% miss chance against some enemies is fundamentally unworkable - it just means you should use SR-bearing monsters with the same frequency as you would incorporeal monsters, which are basically the same thing vs melee. The fact that spells are mostly one-shot exercises means that its a lot more swingy for the wizards though compared with the mundanes who may get 3-6 attempts to beat the miss chance each round, something to take into account.

Though it does suggest an alternate rule for SR (see spoiler).


Whatever SR a monster/creature has, subtract 10 and divide by 2, so something whose SR was 20 has an 'SR modifier' of 5. This 'SR modifier' is applied as a penalty to the effective caster level of spells cast against the creature when adjudicating their effects versus that creature in particular, and if the caster level hits zero the creature shrugs off the spell entirely. For things with dice pools, just use average results on the dice to figure out the modification rather than doing a separate reroll for each creature (so against a fireball, each point of new SR is -3.5 damage from whatever the full roll was).

For summoned creatures, this has no effect unless they completely null out the creature's CL since the duration is intrinsic to the summon and not the summon's relationship to its target.

[Urpriest]

Actually I don't see how your first example is implied by his rules change. Haste isn't dealing damage in this case, its changing the parameters of the Fighter's attack sequence, but the damage source is pretty clearly the flaming weapon, not the Haste spell. Since SR doesn't apply for an enemy when you use Prayer on the Fighter (which is also a SR: Yes spell though harmless), it wouldn't logically apply to Haste in this case either.

Arguably I suppose it'd apply to the flaming sword itself, but then that's independent of Haste.

For your second example, I could see a justification for summoned Fire Elementals suffering SR, but so should summoned Dire Boars or whatever in that case. Basically, if the interpretation is that the Summon Monster line of spells synthesize a creature from magical energy rather than actually bringing them physically to the location from somewhere else (which makes more sense given the other weirdness around those spells). Since it can be dispelled it could make sense that it can also be resisted by something's intrinsic resistance to magical energy. Planar Allies, Gated things, etc then would not be affected because they're physically there.

Now, I wouldn't say this is necessarily a desirable set of mechanics for gameplay reasons: for one, its a ton of rolling every time you summon something with an attack sequence against an enemy with SR. That said, I don't think casters suffering what is effectively a 50% miss chance against some enemies is fundamentally unworkable - it just means you should use SR-bearing monsters with the same frequency as you would incorporeal monsters, which are basically the same thing vs melee. The fact that spells are mostly one-shot exercises means that its a lot more swingy for the wizards though compared with the mundanes who may get 3-6 attempts to beat the miss chance each round, something to take into account.

Though it does suggest an alternate rule for SR (see spoiler).


Whatever SR a monster/creature has, subtract 10 and divide by 2, so something whose SR was 20 has an 'SR modifier' of 5. This 'SR modifier' is applied as a penalty to the effective caster level of spells cast against the creature when adjudicating their effects versus that creature in particular, and if the caster level hits zero the creature shrugs off the spell entirely. For things with dice pools, just use average results on the dice to figure out the modification rather than doing a separate reroll for each creature (so against a fireball, each point of new SR is -3.5 damage from whatever the full roll was).

For summoned creatures, this has no effect unless they completely null out the creature's CL since the duration is intrinsic to the summon and not the summon's relationship to its target.


The point is not that those examples are applied by his rules. They aren't. The point is that the fluff of those examples is exactly the same as the fluff of the spells he is tacking SR on to, so if he adds SR there he has to add it in those cases as well.

[Drachasor]

I've personally considered changing how spells work in the following way. Granted, part of this is just streamlining the system.

1. No Heighten Magic. Whatever slot a spell is in governs all spell level related factors.

2. Spells have a minimum spell level. Certain aspects of spells scale with Spell Level (like the damage cap).

3. Now focus on writing a smaller list of spell based on the existing spells.

I do think a ton of spells would need to be eliminated to balance magic, but that's nothing new.

Regarding summons, I'd just modify and adapt the Minion rules from 4E and have summon spells always summon more than one guy.

[Slayer Lord]

Maybe you could require a concentration check from injuries? If a caster has less than half of his hitpoint total, then he must make a concentrate check whenever he tries to cast a spell. It's always struck me as odd that injuries don't seem to impede doing anything without a specific effect being involved.

[Drachasor]

Maybe you could require a concentration check from injuries? If a caster has less than half of his hitpoint total, then he must make a concentrate check whenever he tries to cast a spell. It's always struck me as odd that injuries don't seem to impede doing anything without a specific effect being involved.

In general, random stuff like that isn't very good to ensure balance.

More significantly, "you don't do anything at all this round" effects generally are bad design, particularly if they can happen very commonly. Stuff like that cropping up is not fun.

[Tvtyrant]

Get rid of Save or Die spells, limit all Save or Lose spells to 2 turn durations or less (or have follow up saves each turn,) get rid of calling spells and the whole Wish/Miracle/open ended line of spells.

[cerin616]

Get rid of Save or Die spells, limit all Save or Lose spells to 2 turn durations or less (or have follow up saves each turn,) get rid of calling spells and the whole Wish/Miracle/open ended line of spells.

I would completely negate the wish/miracle line of things. Maybe limit their usefulness in combat. I mean even wish has a set of things it can do, and if you wish for something isnt on that list, the DM can go about it however he wants. Thats where I start to get creative.

"I wish we never went on this adventure" well, just before your adventure started, some catastrophic happened and killed your characters.

[Blas_de_Lezo]

The game is easily broken by magic itself, no matter how much limitations you put, if magic and spells exist, the game will be broken if a player wishes so. Hell, even a 1st level wizard with apropiate selection of spells and feats can break the adventure written by a DM.

If you really want to control magic, you don't have to rule against sucha a things. Just block some stuff. Allow only the spells and metamagic feats in Players Handbook, so you can predict what players can do at their max potential.

[JaronK]

Easy way to balance magic: the only casters are Beguilers, Dread Necromancers, Warmages, Healers, Bards, Rangers, Factotums, and Paladins. Shadowcraft Mages do not exist.

There, that handles like 90% of the problems. Now focus on the broken spells that are left (Gate for Healers, for example).

JaronK

[Shining Wrath]

I've got a simple suggestion:
Make news spells hard to find. Go back to the Gygax idea that wizards are very jealous of their knowledge and extremely reluctant to share their spells with other wizards.

In other words, make it cost 1000x WBL to be Schrodinger's Wizard. Bring wizards closer to sorcerers in power because they simply don't have access to all the spells, or even most of the spells.

For clerics, reduce the number of spells per day.

For druids, make the animal companion closer in power to the Paladin's mount and eliminate casting while wild shaped.

[NichG]

I've got a simple suggestion:
Make news spells hard to find. Go back to the Gygax idea that wizards are very jealous of their knowledge and extremely reluctant to share their spells with other wizards.

In other words, make it cost 1000x WBL to be Schrodinger's Wizard. Bring wizards closer to sorcerers in power because they simply don't have access to all the spells, or even most of the spells.

For clerics, reduce the number of spells per day.

For druids, make the animal companion closer in power to the Paladin's mount and eliminate casting while wild shaped.

In this scenario you just get people using Shadow Evocation/Shadow Conjuration/Anyspell/Greater Anyspell/Limited Wish/Wish/Miracle/Shades/etc multi-spells to get their versatility. You'll also find that if the party fights an enemy mage, adding an entire character's worth of extra spells to the pile by salvaging their spellbook will be a huge thing - its very different than when the Fighter finds another +1 Sword.

If you want to go this route I'd say the thing to do is make it cost Spell Level * 250xp to learn a new spell above your per-level quota. Do not adjust XP gain for character level - always use the party average level - so XP-is-a-river won't catch you up.

[Flickerdart]

I've got a simple suggestion:
Make news spells hard to find. Go back to the Gygax idea that wizards are very jealous of their knowledge and extremely reluctant to share their spells with other wizards.

In other words, make it cost 1000x WBL to be Schrodinger's Wizard. Bring wizards closer to sorcerers in power because they simply don't have access to all the spells, or even most of the spells.
a) Sorcerers can still easily break the game
b) It's very simple to make a wizard who gets 5 free spells per level. That's plenty to get all the good spells.

[lord_khaine]

I've got a simple suggestion:
Make news spells hard to find. Go back to the Gygax idea that wizards are very jealous of their knowledge and extremely reluctant to share their spells with other wizards.

In other words, make it cost 1000x WBL to be Schrodinger's Wizard. Bring wizards closer to sorcerers in power because they simply don't have access to all the spells, or even most of the spells.



This has been proven several times not to do anything at all, just out of the box a wizard knows everything he will ever need to dominate a game, and thats before he starts grabbing the feats that will double his spells by level.

[Kuulvheysoon]

The game is easily broken by magic itself, no matter how much limitations you put, if magic and spells exist, the game will be broken if a player wishes so. Hell, even a 1st level wizard with apropiate selection of spells and feats can break the adventure written by a DM.

If you really want to control magic, you don't have to rule against sucha a things. Just block some stuff. Allow only the spells and metamagic feats in Players Handbook, so you can predict what players can do at their max potential.

Are you kidding? Most of the really broken stuff is part of the PHB/SRD - Wish, Gate, Miracle and Polymorph just off the top of my head.


Easy way to balance magic: the only casters are Beguilers, Dread Necromancers, Warmages, Healers, Bards, Rangers, Factotums, and Paladins. Shadowcraft Mages do not exist.

There, that handles like 90% of the problems. Now focus on the broken spells that are left (Gate for Healers, for example).

JaronK

Win. Though you're missing Spelltheives (and maybe Divine Mind/Lurk, depending on if there's psionics or not).

[TuggyNE]

The point is not that those examples are applied by his rules. They aren't. The point is that the fluff of those examples is exactly the same as the fluff of the spells he is tacking SR on to, so if he adds SR there he has to add it in those cases as well.

To expand on this a bit, the reason acid fog does not have SR is because you're creating some acid, by means of magic, that is not itself magical — it's more or less the same as a mist made with the contents of alchemist's acid flasks. Adding SR to that is basically the same as saying that anything made with fabricate has to make SR checks, and any time a character healed from the negatives by heal attacks something, they also have to make SR checks. After all, magic was involved and responsible for their being able to attack in that way!

[NichG]

To expand on this a bit, the reason acid fog does not have SR is because you're creating some acid, by means of magic, that is not itself magical — it's more or less the same as a mist made with the contents of alchemist's acid flasks. Adding SR to that is basically the same as saying that anything made with fabricate has to make SR checks, and any time a character healed from the negatives by heal attacks something, they also have to make SR checks. After all, magic was involved and responsible for their being able to attack in that way!

See, I don't think this argument holds. One could say simply 'magic cannot create mundane matter from nothing, it can only alter' to achieve a consistent effect here. Thus, Acid Fog would still allow SR (it creates a fog of acid from nowhere), but Fabricated objects would not (because magic is altering existing material), nor would a healed character (because Heal simply rearranged their body back into working order).

Resurrection and True Resurrection would admittedly have problems in this set of physics. That said, it'd mostly be amusing and would fix itself after a few weeks as the person replaced their body mass with non-magical material. You could also have things where someone eating purely magically-created food and drinking magically-created water eventually starts running into SR issues.

However, those problems don't even occur under the OP's suggestion. Remember, they only said that 'any spell that causes elemental damage allows SR'. This is not a statement about magic, its a statement about the nature of elemental energies created by magic. Basically, under this interpretation when magic creates acidic fog it is literally creating a region of 'acid' elemental energy, something which is fundamentally magical and not equivalent at all to the acid in an Alchemist's Flask (which honestly makes sense when the one can do 20d6 damage and the other does 1d6). When such magic produces a Wall of Iron the iron that is produced is not an elemental energy, and is therefore not fundamentally magical in the same way. Basically this is a statement about the origins of effects - all elemental energies produced by magic are produced in a way that renders them innately magical and there is no way around that, whereas physical matter produced by magic is produced some other way that may be subject to different limitations.

I think this is actually more internally consistent than saying that a Fireball is somehow 'inherently magic fire' but an Orb of Fire is somehow 'summoned physical fire that holds together in the form of a ball that can be thrown'. Really I don't see the justification in the fluff for making the Orbs anything other than Evocations in the first place.

[Urpriest]

See, I don't think this argument holds. One could say simply 'magic cannot create mundane matter from nothing, it can only alter' to achieve a consistent effect here. Thus, Acid Fog would still allow SR (it creates a fog of acid from nowhere), but Fabricated objects would not (because magic is altering existing material), nor would a healed character (because Heal simply rearranged their body back into working order).

Except magic explicitly can create matter from nothing. That's the whole point of the Creation school. Under your description, Major Creation would grant SR to anyone hit by stuff from it, Genesis would grant SR to anyone hurt by anyone from that plane, etc. And healing would work differently with respect to things like bite attacks, which would also just be weird.



However, those problems don't even occur under the OP's suggestion. Remember, they only said that 'any spell that causes elemental damage allows SR'. This is not a statement about magic, its a statement about the nature of elemental energies created by magic. Basically, under this interpretation when magic creates acidic fog it is literally creating a region of 'acid' elemental energy, something which is fundamentally magical and not equivalent at all to the acid in an Alchemist's Flask (which honestly makes sense when the one can do 20d6 damage and the other does 1d6). When such magic produces a Wall of Iron the iron that is produced is not an elemental energy, and is therefore not fundamentally magical in the same way. Basically this is a statement about the origins of effects - all elemental energies produced by magic are produced in a way that renders them innately magical and there is no way around that, whereas physical matter produced by magic is produced some other way that may be subject to different limitations.


What makes elemental energy special in regards to this, though? What about something like Rock to Lava, for example? Lava can definitely deal 20d6 even when mundane.

[NichG]

Except magic explicitly can create matter from nothing. That's the whole point of the Creation school. Under your description, Major Creation would grant SR to anyone hit by stuff from it, Genesis would grant SR to anyone hurt by anyone from that plane, etc. And healing would work differently with respect to things like bite attacks, which would also just be weird.


There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the assertion that things created by magic are perforce magical. The conclusions are different than the implications of the unaltered system, but this thread is talking about making changes to systems so I don't think there's any onus to precisely preserve 'D&D physics'.

So yes, Major Creation would indeed allow SR under this interpretation. I'd still say healing wouldn't be an issue because again, it could be explained by the magic transforming what is already there rather than producing new material from scratch Perhaps the healed person loses some muscle mass or fat, or even shrinks by a millimeter when a healing spell has to replace large amounts of their body.

You could also do it by saying that healing/regeneration makes you very hungry due to the body having to replace the magical scaffolding before it vanishes, much like modern artificial bone is made by creating a porous inorganic calcium scaffolding that the body effectively turns into living bone.

The Genesis thing also need not work by raw creation. In general, demiplanes are created in the context of the Ethereal plane. It makes sense that the Genesis spell does not simply create the matter of the plane, but instead absorbs bits of trace matter from the Ethereal and places it connects to - this is also consistent with the fact that a Genesis'd plane has a certain inherent growth rate without being constantly fed more spell levels.



What makes elemental energy special in regards to this, though? What about something like Rock to Lava, for example? Lava can definitely deal 20d6 even when mundane.

Well, why shouldn't elemental energies be special? I mean, 'cold' is an energy type in D&D. You can create 'cold energy' that chills things on contact. Its not just an absence of heat combined with a material with a huge heat capacity and large thermal conductivity, its literal 'cold elemental energy'. You can have 'coldfire' and other weird stuff from Frostfell. Similarly, 'acid' is for some reason an energy - you can turn a fireball (that cannot set fires to the environment) into an acidball (that does not form pools of liquid) with Energy Substitution. So it seems reasonable to posit that 'elemental energies' in the form of fire, electricity, cold, acid, and sound are fundamental particles or flavors of particle in the D&D universe the same way that photons, gluons, etc are for ours.

On Transmute Rock to Lava one has to just make a decision and stick with it. Polymorph-style stuff is as always a bit of a mess to adjudicate. Here we get into the discussion of whether the Rock to Lava spell is filling the rock with Fire energy (thus just using a very indirect way of dealing magical fire damage, and SR should still apply) or whether one is actually altering the mundane rock into a new form (molten rock) that is then just a mundane object that behaves like hot rock.

Since the effect has a duration and can be dispelled without having to dissipate the heat via mundane means, it suggests to me that the rock is being filled with Fire energy rather than simply being heated.

[TuggyNE]

See, I don't think this argument holds. One could say simply 'magic cannot create mundane matter from nothing, it can only alter' to achieve a consistent effect here. Thus, Acid Fog would still allow SR (it creates a fog of acid from nowhere), but Fabricated objects would not (because magic is altering existing material), nor would a healed character (because Heal simply rearranged their body back into working order).

And now a wall of stone allows SR to walk through it.


However, those problems don't even occur under the OP's suggestion. Remember, they only said that 'any spell that causes elemental damage allows SR'. This is not a statement about magic, its a statement about the nature of elemental energies created by magic. Basically, under this interpretation when magic creates acidic fog it is literally creating a region of 'acid' elemental energy, something which is fundamentally magical and not equivalent at all to the acid in an Alchemist's Flask (which honestly makes sense when the one can do 20d6 damage and the other does 1d6). When such magic produces a Wall of Iron the iron that is produced is not an elemental energy, and is therefore not fundamentally magical in the same way. Basically this is a statement about the origins of effects - all elemental energies produced by magic are produced in a way that renders them innately magical and there is no way around that, whereas physical matter produced by magic is produced some other way that may be subject to different limitations.

Acid fog does 2d6 damage, flat. Why is that? Perhaps it's because it's essentially the same stuff as alchemist's acid, simply spread around? Nah, couldn't be.

I seem to recall a water to acid spell, also, although I don't remember the details, but it presumably likewise follows the usual rules for acid, despite being transmuted by magic.


I think this is actually more internally consistent than saying that a Fireball is somehow 'inherently magic fire' but an Orb of Fire is somehow 'summoned physical fire that holds together in the form of a ball that can be thrown'. Really I don't see the justification in the fluff for making the Orbs anything other than Evocations in the first place.

Orbs are the wildcard; I don't consider them a suitable example of sane Conjurations, and they already break the laws of the system.

Honestly, other than acid, most elemental damage spells should allow SR. Fortunately, they generally do; the orbs are the only ones that need to be fixed, I think. Having a general rule perform that function when you really need specific rules (with the possibility of exceptions for truly exceptional cases) is a bad idea.

[Drachasor]

Honestly, nerfing anything that does damage shouldn't be on the list of things to do to balance magic. Damaging spells are fine, as are metamagics for them. Eh, if anything the metamagics are too necessary for them.

It's the control spells that end combats in a round or two and the massive out of combat utility that's overpowered. In PF, Summon Monster spells also got buffed to the point of ridiculousness.

[NichG]

And now a wall of stone allows SR to walk through it.


Sure, why not if its magic stone? I'm not saying 'this is how you must play the game', I'm saying there really isn't anything excluding this as a consistent system of fluff underlying magic. That is to say, if you think the change to how SR works is mechanically beneficial, it won't actually break the 'sensibility' of the fluff to make the change. I find SR letting you walk through a magical barrier that happens to take the form of conjured stone to be much less of a problem than the aforementioned (and I think currently falsified) example of Haste making a Fighter's magical sword stop working because Haste is a spell and somehow brings the sword under its purview.



Acid fog does 2d6 damage, flat. Why is that? Perhaps it's because it's essentially the same stuff as alchemist's acid, simply spread around? Nah, couldn't be.


My mistake on the damage number. Still, there's nothing fundamentally stopping this from being a zone of elemental energy rather than a cloud of physical acid. Its just a different take on the what the spell is 'actually' doing.



I seem to recall a water to acid spell, also, although I don't remember the details, but it presumably likewise follows the usual rules for acid, despite being transmuted by magic.

Orbs are the wildcard; I don't consider them a suitable example of sane Conjurations, and they already break the laws of the system.

Honestly, other than acid, most elemental damage spells should allow SR. Fortunately, they generally do; the orbs are the only ones that need to be fixed, I think. Having a general rule perform that function when you really need specific rules (with the possibility of exceptions for truly exceptional cases) is a bad idea.

Well there are other, lesser-known ones. If your goal is 'spellcasters cannot do damage to an enemy via magic without beating its SR' then it makes sense to just make the rule that causes that to be the case rather than messing around with spot-alterations to just find that you missed one. If your goal is 'I don't like the orb spells making non-magical magical energies' then changing the orb spells specifically is ideal.

I mean, if the goal is the former and you fix the Orb spells, you still have to contend with Hail of Stones. And if you fix that, you have to worry about Icelance. Or Vitriolic Sphere. Or Incendiary Cloud. Or Polymorph Any Object air into fire.

[TuggyNE]

My mistake on the damage number. Still, there's nothing fundamentally stopping this from being a zone of elemental energy rather than a cloud of physical acid. Its just a different take on the what the spell is 'actually' doing.

I suppose, but you were saying that acid fog scales fundamentally differently from mundane acid, and therefore can't be mundane, which is not the case; it, and most acid spells, actually do have sane scaling that works with the fluff.


Well there are other, lesser-known ones. If your goal is 'spellcasters cannot do damage to an enemy via magic without beating its SR' then it makes sense to just make the rule that causes that to be the case rather than messing around with spot-alterations to just find that you missed one. If your goal is 'I don't like the orb spells making non-magical magical energies' then changing the orb spells specifically is ideal.

Or if your goal is "I want my magic to make sense more or less the way D&D fluff currently states with relatively minimal changes" then changing the orbs is also ideal.


I mean, if the goal is the former and you fix the Orb spells, you still have to contend with Hail of Stones. And if you fix that, you have to worry about Icelance. Or Vitriolic Sphere. Or Incendiary Cloud. Or Polymorph Any Object air into fire.

Telekinesis to throw swords at someone. Disintegrate to make a tree or boulder fall on someone, or collapse a bridge. Earthquake to collapse a cavern. Gate to bring in a Solar. Control weather to make a nasty storm. Etc etc etc. Can any of these meaningfully have target SR applied to them?

There is no logically consistent way to ensure SR extends to all spell uses without simply banning vast swathes of perfectly sensible uses. Sorry.

[Drachasor]

I don't really think we can make a list of 10 or even 20 rules whereby you can go through the spell list and know exactly how to alter everything.

Banning spells isn't practical. Allowing a list is more sensible, but still a lot of work. Probably making a new spell system would be only a bit more work if you kept to 9 spell levels and the current damage dice caps.

I mean, if we're down to going through and reviewing hundreds of spells, it does make a certain amount of sense to just toss out all the spells and make a system that from a few dozen spells you get hundreds of spells or something. Metamagic does half the work, honestly.

[NichG]

I suppose, but you were saying that acid fog scales fundamentally differently from mundane acid, and therefore can't be mundane, which is not the case; it, and most acid spells, actually do have sane scaling that works with the fluff.


I won't disagree that Acid Fog could make sense as mundane acid then. But its equally consistent to do an acid spell that is 'mystical acidic energy'.



Or if your goal is "I want my magic to make sense more or less the way D&D fluff currently states with relatively minimal changes" then changing the orbs is also ideal.


This is a thread about game re-balance though, not about attempting to impose common sense. The entire reason for this side-track is that I felt the fluff-based objection - that you can't have some sort of consistent fluff - to the SR change was nonsensical. 'The way D&D has always been' is not the only self-consistent picture, which is what I'm trying to point out.

I'm very opposed to the tendency of people to pooh-pooh attempts at altering the magic system because of things like 'oh, well this particular spell doesn't work the way it used to', because of course things will work differently when you change them. Thats kind of the point.

While I do think the only real way to 'fix' D&D magic is to throw out all the spells and rewrite them from scratch, I've also seen t a lot of promising rebalance attempts and interesting ideas get thrown out perfunctorily because they're too aggressive a change and force people to rethink aspects of the game, be it fluff or particular combos and strategies.



Telekinesis to throw swords at someone.


Possibly a problem given the particular goal of mage-damage going through SR. At the same time, one could see this as just an exploitation of the 'environmental damage potential' of there being swords present to be thrown in the same way that using Grease to make someone slip and fall into a pit isn't Grease doing damage, its Grease exploiting the presence of the bit.



Disintegrate to make a tree or boulder fall on someone, or collapse a bridge. Earthquake to collapse a cavern.


These I think are clearly reasonable uses of environmental damage potential. Its no different than the fighter smashing the pylons supporting the bridge or causing a cave-in by hitting the wall. So this isn't really apples to apples anymore.



Gate to bring in a Solar.


Gate I feel is in a class of its own, like PaO and Wish. Its just inherently difficult to balance or control in any meaningful way as written. That said, this isn't too different than teleporting a hireling along with you and the hireling later hitting someone. It just happens that Gate is a hireling buffet beyond reason.

Still, if you wanted to make this consistent with the goal of all magical damage must pass through SR, just make Gate work the same way as the Summon Monster line with a finite duration, and then everything the Solar does will have to beat SR using your caster level, not it's.



Control weather to make a nasty storm. Etc etc etc. Can any of these meaningfully have target SR applied to them?


Falls under 'altering matter' I guess? D&D Storms don't really do damage anyhow until you hit tornado.



There is no logically consistent way to ensure SR extends to all spell uses without simply banning vast swathes of perfectly sensible uses. Sorry.

Again there is this unstated and I think quite unfair requirement you have that everything should work as it has always worked after a change. Lets look at D&D's Cone of Cold. I might think that it is 'perfectly sensible' that I should be able to use this to freeze a section of water and walk across it, say. But the spell doesn't explicitly say it does that so under D&D rules-as-written I cannot use it that way. Similarly I might think that it is 'perfectly sensible' that you can't cast a fireball underwater, because it would be snuffed out, but in the rules a Spellcraft check converts it into a region of boiling steam or whatever.

So we already accept a number of apparrent violations of 'sensibility'. And we can come up for explanations of why these things are in fact sensible in the physics of the D&D universe. The fireball is energy channelled from the Plane of Fire; when you force it into water, you get some other manifestation instead, because water can snuff flame but not pure energy. Cone of Cold doesn't freeze water surfaces for long because its temporarily summoned energy, and the 'cold energy' goes away after a second, leaving only the damage done to living things in the form of burst cells/etc.

Anyhow, my point is that we can just as well make up justifications to explain whatever odd implications there are in the new system the OP comes up with. Its not impossible to do, or at least no more impossible than it is to do with D&D as-it-stands. So its not a valid reason in its own right to outright reject a proposed change.


I don't really think we can make a list of 10 or even 20 rules whereby you can go through the spell list and know exactly how to alter everything.

Banning spells isn't practical. Allowing a list is more sensible, but still a lot of work. Probably making a new spell system would be only a bit more work if you kept to 9 spell levels and the current damage dice caps.

I mean, if we're down to going through and reviewing hundreds of spells, it does make a certain amount of sense to just toss out all the spells and make a system that from a few dozen spells you get hundreds of spells or something. Metamagic does half the work, honestly.

This is basically what I did for my last campaign; at least as far as the throwing out part. I wrote about 100 spells to entirely replace spell levels 4-9 for Druid, Wizard, and Clerical casting and just got rid of all other casting systems entirely. It worked decently well, at least in the sense of preventing caster-dominance. The casters were still the most versatile characters as far as dealing with odd scenarios and situations, but they weren't as good at removing targets from a fight as melee or ranged characters.

[turkishproverb]

This is basically what I did for my last campaign; at least as far as the throwing out part. I wrote about 100 spells to entirely replace spell levels 4-9 for Druid, Wizard, and Clerical casting and just got rid of all other casting systems entirely. It worked decently well, at least in the sense of preventing caster-dominance. The casters were still the most versatile characters as far as dealing with odd scenarios and situations, but they weren't as good at removing targets from a fight as melee or ranged characters.

With all respect, that's a bit like asking someone to place a sworsage any time they want a monk. It helps a bit with the balance problem, but it may destroy what they want to play.

Honestly, I think a two pronged approach is needed. ONe needs to re-jiggle parts of the magic system, and also to elevate the mundane classes. Most of them should be where they are at level 20 by level 10 or so, and by 20 be so expert that they can deflect spells with their weapons and target the eyes on a dragon instincually.

[NichG]

With all respect, that's a bit like asking someone to place a sworsage any time they want a monk. It helps a bit with the balance problem, but it may destroy what they want to play.

At the same time, sometimes people want to play things that don't play well with others. I understand some people want to play the god wizard that can automatically solve every problem but other people don't want to play in the same game as the god wizard that can automatically solve every problem. Someone is going to be disappointed there.



Honestly, I think a two pronged approach is needed. ONe needs to re-jiggle parts of the magic system, and also to elevate the mundane classes. Most of them should be where they are at level 20 by level 10 or so, and by 20 be so expert that they can deflect spells with their weapons and target the eyes on a dragon instincually.

This can work, but only if everyone is comfortable playing a very high powered game. And honestly, this is no different than your comment about telling the Monk's player to go Swordsage, since those elevated mundanes are not going to feel the same as the current mundanes.

Essentially right now you have two games that are trying to coexist - one game which is basically Magical MacGyver, where there's a spell for every scenario and the game is about having that spell and knowing which to use, and the other which is the lower-end mundane or highly focused characters, the T3 and below stuff. If you've got a god-wizard and a fighter at the table, you basically have three options:

1. Turn the fighter into something new that isn't really a fighter anymore (thus, as you put it, 'asking someone to play a sworsage any time they want a monk'), but can keep up with the wizard.

2. Lessen the Wizard's power, which basically requires you to, as you put it, 'destroy what they want to play'.

3. Use out-of-character agreements or tactics to balance, e.g. only allowing newer players to play wizards or requiring whomever plays the wizard to hold back and not use the most potent stuff. This #3 is very powerful and can solve a lot of problems in many other places too, but when it fails it causes a lot of drama.

Basically, either you're asking some of the low-power game people to play a high-power game, or asking the high-power game people to play a low-power game. Neither is 'better' than the other, though to be fair the high-power game is much harder to GM for.

[Tyndmyr]

So im the process of doing my own rewrite of 3.5, yes lots of other people already did this and we have pathfinder and legend and all that good stuff but still everyone has there own tastes so im making my own. Im trying to keep alot of it as close to 3.5 as i can.

Now the point of the thread heres what Ive done so far to balance magic.

-Metamagic costs +1 no matter what. Arcane thesis is the only thing in the game that lowers a metamagic cost and it still cant make it lower than +1. So no incantrix or any other metamagic lowering feats. Stuff like sudden maximize and similar effects are fine.

Don't like this. The problem with metamagic is that most of the feats are overcosted to begin with. This would utterly kill pretty much all +0 metamagics, for one, and it would greatly reduce the use of many other things. Can you imagine sanctum spell ever being used with this?

And many other metamagic lowering feats are significantly weaker than arcane thesis. It's like saying we get balance by nerfing paladin, since it's so much better than monk, but leave wizard be.


-Metamagic feats require that you be a high enough level to use them on a lv.1 spell before you can take the feat. For example you must be able to cast lv.4 spells before you can take maximize spell.

This makes it much harder to do a lot of builds, and seriously, metamagics are already often not that good. Plus, level 0 spells are still a thing.

Consider, this would ban someone putting Silent Spell on Detect Magic on level 1. That's a perfectly reasonable, non-cheesy use of a level 1 slot.


-If a spell deals elemental damage then SR applies. The orb of blah spells don't exist. Spells that deal levelDX damage with no cap don't exist.

Players can get SR as well. Depending on cheese levels, lots of it. Making SR apply to basically all elemental damage makes immunities a lot less important(and immunities are at least marginally challenging to get a full spectrum of), because non-magical elemental damage is frankly not that common. Represents a large power buff to creatively cheesy players.


-I lowered the duration of alot of spells. If you cast a spell and it is still active you cannot regain that spell slot back. When you rest if a spell is still active you must chose to not gain the spell slot back or end the spell and regain your slot as normal.

Durations don't often matter all that much. This is only relevant to persist and a few spells that are meant to be long(and really aren't normally a big deal).


-Persist spell doesn't exist and permanent spells in general are a case by case situation.

Permanent spells cost xp, and the list is quite short. It is not a big deal.


-Divine metamagic can only be used once per round and you must have the feat and the divine metamagic feat. So you need twin spell and divine metamagic twin to use it.

DMM works pretty reasonably if you don't allow infinte nightsticks or the like.


-Teleport and scry. Ive never actually had a player or me try the whole scry and die thing but I see the power in it. So teleport only lets you return to somewhere you've been before or you need an accurate and detailed map of your teleport location. Scry works the same but you cannot gain information from a scry that would allow you to teleport there based on the scry information alone.

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of travel scenes. By the time they get to teleportin' level, telling them "you gotta get there the old fashioned way" isn't really gonna work.

The answer will likely be "So, I plane shift to the ethereal plane, then back to the material, using a target I know vaguely close to the area. Repeat that every two rounds until I end up where I want."

I probably play higher tier games than most people, sure, but if you're going on a presumption of the fixed system being usable as is, then this is relevant, because this is exactly what we did.

Now, if I'd actually been playing a full wizard instead of an illithid, I'd probably just chain gate the crap out of monsters until I got one capable of porting me there.


Everything else is just nitpicking and slightly adjusting spells and really not worth mentioning to much. So opinions comments?

And in case your curious Ive more or read all the 3.5 books (or i have them atleast) i also have the pf core book and Legend as a pdf.

The broken part is the spells, if magic is broken. The rest is window dressing. I can play core only, strictly by the rules, with all of these crazy restrictions, and break the hell out of the game.

So, either you go through the spells, or you agree on a rough power level that ya'll are fine with, and just play to that. The latter is a lot easier.

[aleucard]

In order to balance magic, one thing needs to be addressed before anything else.

Why in the name of Gary Gygax do all spells of the same spell level cost the exact same casting-wise? You're not telling me that Summon Monster 3 costs the same as a Fireball which also costs the same as Tongues. They, just from an objective standpoint alone (completely ignoring balance issues), do wildly different things in wildly different manners. Making them the same aside from school is one of the main roots of this problem.

My idea for dealing with this is the introduction of 2 stats for casters; [magic type] control and [magic type] reserves. Control would be the stand-in for Caster Levels, determining how much you can keep a hold of whatever it is you do and not let it go wild. Reserves would determine how much gas you have in the proverbial tank. some spells are fairly simple to control, but are massive energy hogs; this would help the most there. Some things, like Summon Monster, would have high requirements of both.

What would happen is that each spell level would have a certain base-line cost on both. Spell schools would adjust this number automatically, though certain case examples might make individual adjustments also. If someone can meet those requirements, they can add it to their spells-known list through normal channels (technically, the only requirement they need to meet to add it is control for all methods but automatic from level-up, but without the reserves it can't be cast). Metamagic would adjust the costs of a specific cast of a spell based on what it does (Maximize would be control-heavy, enlarge would be reserves-heavy, heighten would be both to lesser degrees). Spell School Specializations also adjust these costs; not enough to proscribe a given school entirely with some training, but it'll be noticeably expensive.

This is just a spit-ball idea, though; if you want to modify it, be my guest!

[Devronq]

Ok so replying to alot of comments

Metamagic costing a minimum of +1. Sorry i forgot there were +0 metamagics mostly because ive never used them. I meant you cant lower it to less than its starting point or +1 whichever is less.

The SR always applying to elemental effects. I guess its more of a case by case bases. Some one said well normal lava doesn't have SR and it deals 20d6 when the orb deals 15d6... Well ya but you don't have the option to throw someone in lava all the time and you cant push someone into metamagiced lava which would deal tonnes of damage.

Metamagic requires a level to use. Ok i somewhat see your point i suppose i could lower it to min level to use on a level 0 spell instead although it really wont be a huge difference.

In general yes it should be alot harder to make builds thats the point. Magic is the strongest thing in the game so much so that anyone who isnt magic could never possible make up for it without being magic. They need the most amount of nerfs or however youd like to put it.

But yes main goals are balancing magic at the moment.

I havnet included gate, planar binding, polymorph or shapeshift into my new game yet as im unsure what to do to balance these.

I do have wish and miracle and im satisfied but not 100% happy with my version.

I do think i have good answers for most balance issues throughout the game so if anyone has any questions il try answer them.

Im working on more than just balancing magic balancing every part of the game heck even melee i gave a whole bunch of nerfs to the games whole system needs a remake or atleast state what there intentions were when they made 3.X.