3.5: Combined H.B. Sorcerer & Wizard Equals Tier...?

[Adept_Scholar]

For my world, I am toying with the idea of combining the sorcerer and wizard classes into one (e.g. "magician"). My idea revolves around individuals who are gifted with magic being born so, or rarely, such an ability "awakens" within them later in life; however, this ability to use magic is much more limited in scope than stated in the 3.5 P.H. in that such an individual's magical affinity is solely connected to one of the 8 schools (universal spells being known and able to cast by all such individuals). Many such characters/magicians would fit into my world in much the same manner as the wizards described in the 3.5 P.H. in that they would be members of a magician's guild, but additionally would typically don a robe the same color as their school affinity (with different robe markings to be determined at a later time to determine rank/level within schools/guilds). As I do not have much experience as a D.M. or player with just how overpowered tier 1 and 2 classes are, I am on the fence as to whether or not to use the sorcerer's spell allotment per day (more flexible) or the wizard's (less flexible), but I do want to keep the familiar regardless and the wizard's ability to know all any number of spells (but in this case, only the spells of the chosen school and universal spells). As an example of what I have in mind, if I were to use the sorcerer's spell allotment per day for a 1st-level sorcerer (5 cantrips & 3 1st-level spells and outside an INT modifier as I would prefer an INT modifier to that of a CHA modifier for a class titled "magician"), a player of a level 1 magician would choose which of the 8 schools he or she would specialize in (say abjuration) and the character would only be able to cast the level-0 (1 total) and level-1 (5 total) abjuration sorcerer/wizard spells (only looking at the spells from the 3.5 P.H.) in addition to the two level-0 universal spells. This approach doesn't seem too restrictive as the character climbs in levels and certainly not nearly as flexible (which I have read can be a problem when sorcerers and wizards reach higher levels). At any rate, has anyone else encountered or toyed with a similar idea/concept? What tier would such an arcane caster be placed at? Looking at the tier descriptions (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?PHPSESSID=bc18425e5fa73d30e4a9a54889edf4 4e&topic=1002.0), it seems this constriction would lean towards a tier 4 (or even 5) placement (although I would like to aim for tier 3)...

[RFLS]

As a player? I wouldn't touch it. It seems to be hastily done, and restricts a great many character concepts. It doesn't really solve the problem at hand, as most players will pick up Conjuration, Transmutation, or Illusion, leaving them with a lot of the versatility found in standard wizards.

It also messes with entry to a large number of prestige classes. This is part and parcel with restrictiveness of character concepts. For instance, gishes would be almost non existent. You need, at a minimum, Abjuration and Transmutation for a gish, and these house rules kill that ability. Want a sneaky mage, able to mess with people's heads at will? Well, you have to pick between Illusion and Enchantment, can't do both. Want to be a summoner? Too bad, you can't use Planar Binding with any possibility of it succeeding anymore.

[ericgrau]

As I do not have much experience as a D.M. or player with just how overpowered tier 1 and 2 classes are
There's the problem right there. Usually this isn't an issue at all, especially not to people who have yet to learn a bunch of tricks.

Tossing aside 7/8th of spells OTOH will be a huge debilitating problem making the magician unplayably bad and ruin the entire campaign for them. Players will need to have extreme system understanding and 20 splatbooks to dig up spells that are actually useful for the adventure. For example the Player's Handbook limited Abjurer sees an owl bear and chooses between explosive runes (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/explosiveRunes.htm) and magic circle against evil (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magicCircleAgainstEvil.htm). But the real kicker isn't that 6d6 or a +2 AC is pitiful, it's that the owl bear doesn't read nor is he evil. Run! What else do you have? Dispel magic. Crud, run, run!

So lesson here is don't make mega changes to something you've never used just because you heard something online.

Use the classes as-is first and don't worry about it. If you're afraid some of your players know the classes much better than you do and might come out ahead, the number one thing is to tell them not to abuse the class with splatbooks and tricks. That's just about everything right there. Seriously, I could stop right here tell you don't change a thing and play nice and that would work well enough. Extreme response with the nerf hammer OTOH will ruin the entire game for them and make their game days a total waste of time.

If you think they'll do well without abusing it because they have a lot of experience with casters or any other class, then you can impose a minor penalty like a -1 or -2 as well. For example on their 6th, 12th and 18th level they skip a caster level. This nerf still does not assume that they'll abuse the system, and they shouldn't assume they can because the nerf is supposed to keep abuse in check. It isn't. It's saying don't abuse the game and on top of that since you know how to use the class so well I'm giving it a tiny penalty. If nobody has played a full arcane caster before then just leave well enough alone and let everyone learn at full power.

[FatJose]

I've been thinking of doing some thing similar with wizards. Making them have to be solely conjurers or evokers and all that. I think you should make all 0 level spells available, though. Low level wizards certainly need those. Chalk them up to being like general studies to a wizard, maybe? My own thinking is based more on the idea of wizardry being like science in that an astrologist and biologist both have studied basic physics and biology but their chosen profession means their knowledge is focused elsewhere. It helps curve huge cross-school shenanigans, or atleast lets you have a better heads up on what to expect.

No idea what to do with the sorcerer, though. It's only reason for being is to be a dumby's alternative to wizard. That is almost always the pros given over wizard. "Play this until you learn to be a decent wizard". A real shame considering I like the concept. The class has my sympathy along with the poor half-orc. "Its a great race for beginners" :smallyuk:

Its a bit more complicated, though. Its hard not to just make a page one rewrite. Currently, I'm thinking of limiting the sorcerer spell list or possibly making some thing like domains in arcane spells while also taking in elements of the red dragon disciple. I think Pathfinder did some thing similar, not sure, though.

No idea how the tiers work. Though, the fact that Wizard is tier 1 and Fighter is...tier 5? Tells me that 3.5 is just super broken.

[eggynack]

So, it's just a regular caster, except you can only cast out of one school? There were a lot of words, and I think that's what they mean. Anyways, the tier depends a lot on school choice, though I don't think it ever hits tier five, and I'm a bit doubtful of tier four too. I mean, warmages are tier four, but my understanding is that they're a bit limited in the evocations they know, and that if they just cast off of the entire evocation list, they'd be significantly better. We're talking mostly tier two and three's, ranging from transmutation and conjuration at the top, and stuff like evocation, enchantment, and abjuration hanging out on the bottom. A conjuration only wizard with full spell access would be pretty damn powerful, though I've never been entirely sure what the definition of a tier two is, so it might be tricky to categorize wizards as such, but wizards aren't going to be tier five. At least not without a whole pile of other restrictions. I mean, an adept is tier four, and they have about half casting advancement, and a pretty limited list.

[Crake]

If you consider that Beguiler (Illusion/enchantment), Warmage (Evocation and damaging Conjuration) and Dread Necromancer (Necromancy) all fit pretty well into your game, you might want to consider making a few other classes to fit into your game that are similar. Those classes all have d6 HD, 1/2 bab and poor fort and reflex with good will if I recall correctly.

They also all use sorc spells/day, and instead of mussing around with picking spells, they just give you a list, and when you're able to cast those levels of spells, you simply get access to the whole thing.

Homebrewing some similar classes for other schools shouldnt be too hard, but you might want to consider combining similar schools/subschools. For example how beguiler mixes enchantment/illusion, and warmage combines evocation and damaging conjuration, simply because a theme of spells might spill over into another school slightly.

Depending on how much time you wanna spend, you might want to develop your own set of schools, such as Energy (for warmage theme), Manipluation (for beguiler theme), Divination (for seers and whatnot), Necromancy (for necromancers), Shaping (for transmuters/creation conjurers), Summoners (for summon/calling conjurers [this would include teleporation and the appropriate abjurations for calling]), Protection (for abjurations/protective illusions) are just a few that spring to mind.

The reason for this is that by the dnd schools, some of them are just blatantly more powerful, the two big ones being conjuration and transmutation. The poor enchanters would be completely obselete vs the abjurers and their friends, with mind blank as well. So allowing some bleed-over gives room for balance.

[Spuddles]

Too restrictive, esp. with just the PHB available, at least for the purposes of having fun. It doesnt really address the core game breakers, either. Gate, simulacrum, polymorph, etc still are available. Conjuration or Transmutation would be the best to specialize in. What it really hurts is abjurations like break enchantment or resist energy- party friendly spells that wont even be considered. The loss of dispel magic is a big bummer.

In other words- dont do it. Instead use the beguiler, warmage, dread necromancer, or one of the many homebrew classes that use similar mechanics.

[Adept_Scholar]

It seems to be hastily done

Indeed, the idea is just a rough draft put up for the input of the more experienced. :smallwink:


If nobody has played a full arcane caster before then just leave well enough alone and let everyone learn at full power.

My world is still in the works and none of my players are looking at playing a caster, so I am not under pressure to resolve anything quickly.


I think you should make all 0 level spells available, though. Low level wizards certainly need those. Chalk them up to being like general studies to a wizard, maybe?

I could see this being a good idea as it would help individuals who have the "gift" better understand which school they have greater affinity through the mastery of maybe all the cantrips and 1st-level arcane spells of all schools before branching out specifically to one path.


No idea what to do with the sorcerer, though.

I never cared much for the sorcerer, so that is why I was going to just combine a couple of its features with that of the wizard to equal a "magician" class. :smalltongue:


We're talking mostly tier two and three's, ranging from transmutation and conjuration at the top, and stuff like evocation, enchantment, and abjuration hanging out on the bottom. A conjuration only wizard with full spell access would be pretty damn powerful, though I've never been entirely sure what the definition of a tier two is, so it might be tricky to categorize wizards as such, but wizards aren't going to be tier five.

Tier/power dependency upon which school is specialized in makes sense. (I would like for the majority to be within the tier 3 range).


Homebrewing some similar classes for other schools shouldnt be too hard, but you might want to consider combining similar schools/subschools. For example how beguiler mixes enchantment/illusion, and warmage combines evocation and damaging conjuration, simply because a theme of spells might spill over into another school slightly.

Depending on how much time you wanna spend, you might want to develop your own set of schools, such as Energy (for warmage theme), Manipluation (for beguiler theme), Divination (for seers and whatnot), Necromancy (for necromancers), Shaping (for transmuters/creation conjurers), Summoners (for summon/calling conjurers [this would include teleporation and the appropriate abjurations for calling]), Protection (for abjurations/protective illusions) are just a few that spring to mind.


So noted. :smallwink:


Gate, simulacrum, polymorph, etc still are available.

In conjunction with the sorcerer and wizard being more flexible in their powers/spells, what I have taken out of conversations on the tier system and game balance discussions is that the exact nature of these spells lends heavily into their status of being overpowered in comparison to other classes. This lends me to wonder if someone has gone through all of such spells and made changes deemed necessary for the sake of balance...:smallamused:


Too restrictive, esp. with just the PHB available, at least for the purposes of having fun.

I realize that limiting such a caster to one school of magic would be restrictive; yet, I am uncertain how restrictive it would actually end up being if they went on to have access to all spells of a given school. While realizing some schools are a bit better than the others, it seems like no matter how great a school is, there would come a time or scenario where players would wish they had a character of one of the "lesser" schools (in which case it may be possible for the party to hire/pay an NPC of the appropriate school for said services). This doesn't seem that much different to me than a situation of lower-tiered classes having to rely on other classes because they simply can't do everything themselves (and they are certainly not "unplayable")...:smallconfused:

[HalfQuart]

I play in a campaign with a lot of homebrew, including a very similar system that you're describing for clerics. They have very specific spells available based on their deity (all also homebrew).

The good: It creates a better feel for what a given deity's priests are like. There's some arcane spells mixed in to the lists, which makes things interesting.

The bad: It only, so far as I can tell, includes PHB spells, even though a much wider assortment of splat books are allowed. The mechanic for adding additional thematically similar spells is poorly defined. And most importantly, while the spell lists make sense for following a particular theme, they don't generally offer the kind of flexibility that an adventurer needs.

So the end result is that no one plays clerics... it's just too much of a pain. Right now we have someone playing an archivist -- a clever end-run around the hampering house rules.

To answer your specific Tier question: Conjuration, Transmutation, and maybe Necromancy could probably qualify as Tier3. Illusion probably Tier 4, until you get Shadow Conjuration and Shadow Evocation -- then it would probably bump up to Tier 2. Evocation squarely Tier 4. Abjuration, Enchantment, and Divination probably Tier 5. Divination is actually probably unplayable as a PC without multiclassing, and Enchantment pretty useless beyond low-level play... but in a purely low-level campaign or one where most stuff isn't outright immune to mind-effecting, it might make Tier 4.

[Cheiromancer]

The proportion of broken/problematic spells is higher in the PHB than in any other book. Restricting spell selection to the PHB is not a guarantee that things will turn out well.

What I would suggest is making one or more spell lists in the style of the duskblade and dread necomancer. Have 10 or 12 spells per level, most of which are related to a particular theme (e.g. most belong to a particular school). Not just PHB spells - the spell compendium and maybe the Complete series, too. Scour the web for lists of overpowered and abusive spells (and spell combos) and be careful not to include too many in your list. If you leave a few in (like alter self for a transmuter or something) that's fine, just be aware that the character will be using them a lot.

It's up to you if you want to "fix" broken spells along the way. For instance, the explosive runes/dispel magic combo might be fixed by saying that the damage from simultaneously exploding runes overlaps and does not stack. Summoned djinn might refuse to use minor creation to brew poison or create expensive spices. Wish has a gp limit for magic items. Stuff like that.

[ericgrau]

I realize that limiting such a caster to one school of magic would be restrictive; yet, I am uncertain how restrictive it would actually end up being if they went on to have access to all spells of a given school. While realizing some schools are a bit better than the others, it seems like no matter how great a school is, there would come a time or scenario where players would wish they had a character of one of the "lesser" schools (in which case it may be possible for the party to hire/pay an NPC of the appropriate school for said services). This doesn't seem that much different to me than a situation of lower-tiered classes having to rely on other classes because they simply can't do everything themselves (and they are certainly not "unplayable")...:smallconfused:
It's pretty restrictive, and truly unplayable for half of the schools. A conjurer, evoker, transmuter or maybe illusionist could be playable, though still frustrated. Others have something to do in some fights, but in other fights sit on their hands the whole time.

I like all the suggestions to get another existing class instead such as beguiler. Anything to use or slightly change something existing. Regardless of the method huge sweeping untested changes generally make a colossal mess.