Some ideas about spellcasters...

[Atypical_Necro]

I was toying with idea of making some changes to spellcasters for my next campaign; mainly, taking away some of their power and versatility to give mundanes a leg up. But I can't decide if this is a good idea or not, so I thought I'd seek some insight. Here are my ideas:

1- Change the spell progression for all primary spellcasters z(ex: wizard, cleric, druid) to resemble that of the bard, lightly modified. Spell levels cap at 7th at level 18.

2- Wizards may not specialize. They may only cast spells from three different schools of magic, chosen at their first level of wizard. All other schools of magic are prohibited to them.

3a- Clerics of a deity can only prepare spells that appear on the domain spell lists of their deity (each of my deities possesses six domains which do not overlap). Their spell list also includes a bonus spell, which fits thematically with the deity and his or her portfolio. Clerics do not receive a bonus domain spell slot, instead using the same spell progression as the other primary casters.

3b- Clerics without a deity may choose six domains. They may only prepare spells that appear on those domain spell lists. Domain choices are subject to my purview as DM; they must all follow a theme and the player must be able to explain, from a roleplay and background standpoint, the character's philosophy.

3c- All clerics may choose one spell of each level from the standard cleric spell list. That spell is added to their effective spell list and can be prepared as normal. Thus, clerics of a deity have 8 spells at each level to choose from while clerics of ideals have 7.

3d- At 1st level a cleric chooses two of his available domains. He gains the domain granted power associated with that domain. At 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level he may choose another domain available to him and gain its granted power as well.

4a- All druids must choose six nature-themed cleric domains (I can provide a list if necessary). They may only prepare spells that appear on the spell lists of those domains, as well as one spell of each level that I have yet to determine.

4b- As 3c above, though the druid chooses a spell from the standard druid list instead.

I have a vague idea of how this might impact the game as a whole, but I just KNOW that there are repercussions for this large of a change that I simply don't see. In all honesty I've never attempted such a large change to the system, so I don't know if this will work. So I throw myself at the feet of those more experienced than I.

Does this accomplish what I desire, namely to give mundanes a leg up? Is it too restrictive? Will it change little? Nothing? Everything? I am open to any and all suggestions.

I apologize if this would have been more appropriate for the homebrew forum; I wasn't sure so I took a leap of faith. :smallsmile:

[ahenobarbi]

Generally bups clerics and wizards don to Tier 2. For example wizard with conjration (or cleric) still can call creatures and use them to get access to spels it/he/she wants.

[Juntao112]

Does this accomplish what I desire, namely to give mundanes a leg up?

Making the rich poorer does not make the poor richer.

My suggestion would be to ban tier 1 classes outright, and give more skill points/class features/whatever to tier 5s to make them better, because at the end of the day, the monk who can't fight when supported by a wiard will fight no better when supported by a nerfed wizard, and likely will fight quite a bit worse.

[Tvtyrant]

Dropping the spell level down to 7th already accomplishes a lot, the secondary issue of metamagic abuse doesn't seem to come up here at all. I would take out the rest of the houserules except the casting limitation and simply remove all metamagic reducers, then drop all metamagic that has more than +1 by 1 level automatically. Then kill craft: contingency.

Now we have no 8th or 9th level spells, no persistomancy or other crazy metamagic abuse.

[Ranting Fool]

One of the most common answers to "how do I make my cleric pew pew killer mcsmashy of doom" is "Get Divine meta magic and make your buff spells last all day!" :smalltongue:

[limejuicepowder]

Looks pretty solid to me, if I'm being objective. Honestly though, it would prevent me from playing a caster: the lower levels would suck that much. Bards get an extremely low amount of spells/day, which is very noticeable even with their other features. Casting anything with a saving throw really sucks when you can only do it once; if they save, you can't cast any more and you got nothing out of it. For a class that has no other features or options AT ALL, wizards and sorcs below level 5 or 6 would be unbearable (and no, the thought "well I'll be good later" is not enough). Clerics would be slightly better off because of their armor and Bab, but they'd still be a crappy fighter for most of the day for several levels.

My suggestion is to front-load the spell progression a bit so the low levels aren't so awful. Instead of changing to bard progression, leave the progression the same; just get rid of 7th-9th level spells (or more them only available through loot, like an artifact).

I've got a question though: are you planning on this game going past level 10 or so? If not.....don't bother making changes. The game doesn't really fall apart until the upper levels; as long as no one is intentionally trying to hog the spot light, (well-made) mundanes will hang with casters for quite some time.

If the game is going past level 10, then these changes are only half of what needs to be done: the other half is making mundanes strong enough so that they can actually face CR-appropriate challenges.

[LordBlades]

It also kills variety in wizards, badly. Conjuration and Transmutation are so much above all other schools in terms of sheer utility that, from a mechanical point of view, pick 3 schools practically means pick 1 school because conjuration and transmutation are a given.

[Elric VIII]

A few things:

1 - This would make Druids very similar to Clerics. I would consider creating a few Druid domains and supplementing them with nature-themed Cleric domains.

2 - Consider leaving the casters' spell slot progression the same, but limiting the level of the spells they may cast. This will lower overall power of the casters' effects and give them some leeway to fiddle with metamagic since their diversity of spells is decreased.

3 - Rather than letting the Wizard choose 3 schools, let him choose from school groups, to avoid the Conjuration + Transmutation + one other school problem. Maybe base these groups off the way bans for specialization worked in 3.0.

[bekeleven]

Wizards are still probably the most powerful class, but they're closer in power to the Sorc, which hasn't been modified outside of the spell levels dropping to 7.

Druids still pwn mundanes with wild shape and animal companion, so it probably makes sense to give them more restrictive spellcasting than the other tier 1s. Honestly you could give them ranger casting and they'd still be better than most tier 3s.

[JusticeZero]

I'll just throw out the idea of using psionics instead of magic, and giving ToB/PoW to the mundanes. Psi is generally lower tier than magic - it has a bunch of powerful things it can do, but the versatility and total resources that a character has access to, and thus, their ability to retool themselves, are seriously reduced. For instance, their blaster-sorcerer equivalent gets one power(spell) every two levels.
The only fly in the ointment there is Psychic Reformation, and you could start by making that power unavailable. Arguably, that power is probably there to give the psions a leg up to better keep up with their T1 counterparts. I doubt removing it in a full-psi world would hurt much.

[johnbragg]

I have a few homebrews I hope you'll look at.

1. Clerics: Warrior-Pseudoclerics and Pseudocleric-Adepts
(The good generic names are all taken. Give yours better names.)
You take the NPC Warrior or NPC Adept class and add the Pseudocleric features. Warrior-Clerics are the Durkon-types. Adept-Clerics are for the players who ask "wait, why is my priestess of Isis wearing plate armor and bashing ogres with a mace?" Pseudoclerics get to Turn Undead and cast domain spells, and only domain spells, from four domains.

So a 20th Level Pseudocleric gets 1 spell of each spell level, and 4 spells of each level to choose from. You may want to raid the Paladin class abilities and dump some Domain powers.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=307326

Druids are a tougher problem.
Druid-Adept
Based on Adept NPC class. ½ BAB, d6 hit dice, good Will save. Simple weapons, no armor.
(This could be tweaked to allow the traditional D&D Druid’s weapons and armor)
Spell list: As PHB Druid
Spells per day: As DMG Adept, plus Domain spells , plus bonus spells for Wisdom.
Spells known: As PHB Sorcerer, plus Summon Nature’s Ally for every spell level.
A Druid-Adept is a spontaneous caster, and may use any spell he knows for his Divine Spells.

And no wildshaping. You want to wildshape, then Wildshaping Variant Ranger.

Spell progression looks like
1 1+1
2 1+1
3 2+1 0+1
4 2+1 0+1
5 2+1 1+1 0+1
6 2+1 1+1 0+1
7 3+1 2+1 0+1 0+1
8 3+1 2+1 0+1 0+1
9 3+1 2+1 1+1 0+1 0+1
10 3+1 2+1 1+1 0+1 0+1
11 3+1 3+1 2+1 0+1 0+1 0+1
12 3+1 3+1 2+1 0+1 0+1 0+1
13 3+1 3+1 2+1 1+1 0+1 0+1 0+1
14 3+1 3+1 2+1 1+1 0+1 0+1 0+1
15 3+1 3+1 3+1 2+1 0+1 0+1 0+1 0+1
16 3+1 3+1 3+1 2+1 0+1 0+1 0+1 0+1
17 3+1 3+1 3+1 2+1 1+1 0+1 0+1 0+1 0+1
18 3+1 3+1 3+1 2+1 1+1 0+1 0+1 0+1 0+1
19 3+1 3+1 3+1 3+1 2+1 0+1 0+1 0+1 0+1
20 3+1 3+1 3+1 3+1 2+1 0+1 0+1 0+1 0+1




The best idea I've had for arcane casters is to take away high level spells and give the arcane casters low level spells in return.

1. Wizards are spontaneous casters using the Sorcerer tables, with Intelligence instead of Charisma. They still learn the spells from books, but once they learn the spell, they're set. (They can still use Spellcraft to cast from their spellbooks, if you let them carry their spellbooks with them. Try not to--consider it more of a magic library than a magic book.)
2. At level 10, things start changing.
A. Arcane casters don't get spells above 4th level. Those spells-per-day slots can be used for metamagic, or broken down and used for more lower level spells. i.e. a 6th level spell slot can get you 2 3rd level or 3 2nd level or 1 1st, 1 2nd and 1 3rd.
B. At each level starting at 10, arcane caster chooses 10 spell levels worth of spells to learn.
C. Starting at 10th level, arcane caster can make a 1st level spell an at-will ability, by spending a 2nd "spells known" level on it. At-will spells with durations over 1 minute/level can be assumed to be always on.

[Atypical_Necro]

Making the rich poorer does not make the poor richer.

My suggestion would be to ban tier 1 classes outright, and give more skill points/class features/whatever to tier 5s to make them better, because at the end of the day, the monk who can't fight when supported by a wiard will fight no better when supported by a nerfed wizard, and likely will fight quite a bit worse.

Bringing the power down for the spellcasters was only part of my plan. I was already attempting to formulate some ideas on how to enhance the lower-powered classes. For your specific reference to the monk class, I was thinking of ways to make them less MAD by perhaps allowing them to apply their Wisdom modifier to attack and damage rolls with all monk weapons and unarmed strikes in addition to their Strength or Dexterity modifiers. Also of making it more of a combat intuition kind of thing, with uncanny dodge and blindsense added on. I'm open to thoughts for improving mundanes as well.


the secondary issue of metamagic abuse doesn't seem to come up here at all. I would take out the rest of the houserules except the casting limitation and simply remove all metamagic reducers, then drop all metamagic that has more than +1 by 1 level automatically

I forgot about this issue. I like the fix idea, thanks on both counts.


My suggestion is to front-load the spell progression a bit so the low levels aren't so awful. Instead of changing to bard progression, leave the progression the same; just get rid of 7th-9th level spells (or more them only available through loot, like an artifact).

What if I used a modified Wizard spell progression, slow it down a bit? It would look like this:

SPELL LEVEL 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1st 3 1
2nd 4 2
3rd 4 2 1
4th 4 3 2
5th 4 3 3
6th 4 3 3 1
7th 4 4 3 2
8th 4 4 3 3
9th 4 4 3 3 1
10th 4 4 4 3 2
11th 4 4 4 3 3
12th 4 4 4 3 3 1
13th 4 4 4 4 3 2
14th 4 4 4 4 3 3
15th 4 4 4 4 3 3 1
16th 4 4 4 4 4 3 2
17th 4 4 4 4 4 3 3
18th 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 1
19th 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2
20th 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3


are you planning on this game going past level 10 or so?

Our campaigns typically go from level 1-3 until about level 15.


I'll just throw out the idea of using psionics instead of magic

No offense, but we're not big fans of psionics. :smallfrown:

Thanks for all of the responses, everyone!

[Andezzar]

Getting rid of level 8 and 9 spell slots means that only level 0 and 1 spells can be persisted without metamagic reducers.

Nerfs to the tier one casters mostly hurt Low OP players of such classes. Players with a higher tendency to optimization can find ways around those additional limitations, or manage to build "broken" characters with other classes.

Has the greater power level of certain classes even been a problem in your group? If not, don't worry about fixing a problem that is not there.

[JusticeZero]

No offense, but we're not big fans of psionics. :smallfrown:
Pity, it's a good and balanced magic system, and it's generally agreed as weaker than the core stuff. Any specific reason?

[Atypical_Necro]

Has the greater power level of certain classes even been a problem in your group?

It has on occasion. The player in our group who prefers to play spellcasters is also someone who is decent at optimization, willing to search for the perfect feat, spell, or item to complement his character.


Pity, it's a good and balanced magic system, and it's generally agreed as weaker than the core stuff. Any specific reason?

Mostly a fluff reason. There's nothing wrong on the mechanics front, we just prefer magic for our fantasy settings.

New opinion to solicit; what if I used my modified wizard spell progression (formatted horrifically above :smalleek:) and applied it to the generic spellcaster from Unearthed Arcana? Take class features from all of the classes that primarily rely on spells (wizard, beguiler, cleric, druid) and allow them to give up one of their bonus feats (or any of their feats?) to gain that class feature? I would have to take class features and give them prerequisites, but I wouldn't mind. Or allow them to get the class features as a...spellcaster class feature?

[Maginomicon]

To accomplish what you want to do, you need to do two things:

Enable mundanes to hit binary defenses (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1533.0) (or things similar to binary defenses) far more often.
Force non-mundanes to hit gradual defenses (or things similar to gradual defenses) far more often.


Further, it would help a lot to:

Give mundanes an actual leg-up.
Allow all mundanes access to non-mundane-like abilities.
Make extremely powerful and/or versatile non-mundane abilities take longer in practice to acquire or use.
Make casters more inherently vulnerable.


How I personally did these things was by combining the following implementations together (in order):

Called Shots (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=300755) (gives mundanes the most access to a new kind of binary defense)
"Save" Points (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=306961) (makes the most common binary defenses become gradual defenses)
...and then...
Allow all pure-mundanes to gestalt. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=282484) (gives mundanes an actual leg-up)
Use the SRD's Incantation system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm) with divine Incantations and psionic-equivalent Communals (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=299864) (gives mundanes access to non-mundane abilities)
"Charged" Incantations/Communals (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=307549) (makes powerful/versatile non-mundane effects take more time to acquire and use)
Casters become innately vulnerable to fatigue/exhaustion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=287954)