Most Overpowered Spells

[CowardlyPaladin]

I'm trying to make my own version of D&D where I have the levels be 1-30 and in doing that I am making there be 12 spell levels opposed to 9. So i'm trying to fix all of the spells, but since I don't have a good eye for this sort of thing, what do you think are the most powerpowered spells. Or at least spells that shouldn't exist for their level. Obviously i'm mostly doing this for Cleric/Druid/Paladin If something is only overpowered in 3.5 or pathfinder, please note. The ones even I can tell are

Time Stop

Rope Trick

All Shapeshifting spells period

Planar Binding

Energy Drain

anything else

[Oko and Qailee]

The entire polymorph line and shape change.

Even spells that don't seem that good are clearly too strong for their level. Sleep for example is, at first level, 3 Auto-wins through encounters fora typical 4 man party. Grease stays good for a long time.

On the cleric side, nothing seems fair when you compare it to a mundane. Divine Power gives you full BAB, +6 Str, and temporary HP, why did you pick a fighter again?

Then there's druids, Wildshape basically means any weakness in physical stats you have vs mundanes is nearly instantly negated... you also get spells and a pet. Wildshape and an animal companion alone makes a druid better than a fighter at most D&D tables.

[Zharradan Marr]

On the cleric side, nothing seems fair when you compare it to a mundane. Divine Power gives you full BAB, +6 Str, and temporary HP, why did you pick a fighter again?To be fair, the problem here is not with the spell itself but with the ability to Persist of Quicken it via feats. Had it been cast 'fairly', as a Standard action and a duration of 1 round per level, it would be a lot less powerful.

On low levels, Rope Trick and Alter Self are game-changers. Some spells make whole skills obsolete (Knock >> Open Lock, Invisibility >> Hide, at least before every monster has Blindsense and See Invisibility, Spiderclimb or Fly >> Climb, and so on)

Polymorph, of course, and its ugly cousin, Polymorph Any Object. Planar Ally. Even Lesser Planar Ally.

Color Spray, Web, Cloud of Bewilderment, Black Tentacles, can win what seems to be a level-appropriate encounter all by themselves.

[Oko and Qailee]

To be fair, the problem here is not with the spell itself but with the ability to Persist of Quicken it via feats. Had it been cast 'fairly', as a Standard action and a duration of 1 round per level, it would be a lot less powerful.


You're right.

Haha, I'm so used to DMM: persist that I basically treat it like a standard cleric feature.

[CowardlyPaladin]

I've always felt that Knock, Zone of Truth, Disern Lies, Detect Traps, a were over powered, as they basically made the rogue useless. Not so bad I'd want to cut them, just that I would want to make them higher level.

[eggynack]

I'd ditch the energy drain, cause it's actually quite bad. Maybe replace it with enervation As for high powered druid spells, I'ma put them in by level format.

1st: Entangle, impeding stones (City, 66), snowshoes (SpC, 194), snowsight (Frost, 104, only really when combined with obscuring snow), and wall of smoke.

2nd: Blinding spittle (SpC, 32), creeping cold (SpC, 55, only with extend effect), kelpstrand (SpC, 128), luminous armor (BoED, 102), obscuring snow (Frost, 103, maybe only with snowsight), rockburst (Shining South, 48), and mass snake's swiftness (SpC, 193).

3rd: Alter fortune (PHB II, 101), friendly fire (EoE, 27), heart of water (CM, 107), primal instinct (DrM, 72), sleet storm, stone shape, and venomfire (SK, 158).

4th: Boreal wind (Frost, 89), enhance wild shape (SpC, 82), and wall of salt (Sand, 127).

5th: Animal growth, blizzard (Frost, 89), call avalanche (Frost, 90), control winds, owl's insight (SpC, 152), and wall of thorns.

6th: Mummify (Sand, 118), superior resistance (SpC, 174), sandstorm (Sand, 119, control winds is just so good that it's still borked when you raise it a level for little benefit), spellstaff, and valiant steed (BoED, 110).

7th: Cry of ysgard (BoED, 95), death by thorns (BoVD, 81), master earth (SpC, 139), and word of balance (SpC, 242).

8th: Frostfell (Frost, 95).

9th: Shapechange.

That list is a good start at least. Druid spells just don't do that well after you get to 6th's or so. I mean they're good, but it's not as good as what you get before that.

Edit: @ CowardlyPaladin: I'm not really a fan of zone of truth. You can't tell if the opponent saved or not, so you don't know that what they say is the truth with absolute surety, and they can just not say things. Inquisition (BoED, 101) is far better, even with the significantly increased spell level, just because it's so much more reliable at gaining information.

[HammeredWharf]

Balance wise, I'd ban Persistent Spell entirely. There are very few cases in which it's used in a balanced way. Usually you end up with 24h Wraithstrikes in level 2 slots.

[(Un)Inspired]

Honestly? Scry. Scrying leads to enemies dying.

[Phelix-Mu]

Gate. Needs to be rewritten to allow a save or otherwise split into two spells, one for transport, one for the calling effect. The calling effect should require a bargain or a binding.

Polymorph should be broken down into form-specific spells, as was done late in 3.5.

Polymorph any object is essentially made to be abused. It was grandfathered in from 2e and somehow turned into a real monster. Anything that arguably makes Beholder Mage into a player option is probably not appropriate for a spell.

In general, though, the OP is taking on a monumental task. If you don't "have an eye" for this kind of retooling, then it will be very difficult to not make quite a few mistakes as you work through the thousands of spells that are part of 3.5.

But you've already got a good list there.

Oh, right. Oread has to come off the druid SNA list, or at least be moved up to like VII or IIX where it belongs.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I've always felt that Knock, Zone of Truth, Disern Lies, Detect Traps, a were over powered, as they basically made the rogue useless. Not so bad I'd want to cut them, just that I would want to make them higher level.

This always irks me. I just really dislike it when people overlook the limitations of spells and declare them overpowered.

Knock can only open 2 locks at a time and is useless if the barred passage is too big or barred in any of several ways other than simple locking mechanisms.

Zone of Truth doesn't tell you if the target made his save or not and clever speech can make the truth, or better yet; only part of the truth, sound very misleading in any case. Same goes for detect lies.

Detect Traps isn't even a thing. There's find traps, which gives you trapfinding and a relatively small search bonus, and there's detect snares and pits, which can't even spot any of the traps that are actually dangerous.

None of these, nor even all of them together, is a substitute or absolute foil against a well played rogue.

[Kennisiou]

knock isn't that great as a door opener. I think it's best when prepared with silent spell alongside animate rope with silent + still spell. Basically for low level wizards/sorcerors it's a "get out of jail free" card -- pretty literally. It allows you to escape bindings of just about any sort except for things like getting stone shaped prisons all over your body. And when you don't wind up needing it, it's still valuable as a way to occasionally open doors or chests. Far from broken, but pretty good.

As for actually broken spells, though...

Silent Image. Honestly the whole "Image" line is kinda busted, it's just that silent image is the lowest level one but loses very little and thus overshadows all the others. I guess what I'm saying is, if you ban Silent Image as "too strong" suddenly Minor Image goes from "meh" to a very powerful spell.

Ice Assassin and Simulacrum of course. Genesis. Shapechange. Wish. Miracle. I'm sure I'm missing some of the other crazy eights and nines.

[(Un)Inspired]

Other than some really obviously redonkulously spells I don't think casters actual are overpowered (Controversy!). Mages should be these earth-shattering mind-bending monsters. The real problem lies in that fact that core mundanes and just really poorly constructed. As 3.5 aged the designers realized this and released the factotum and the time of battle classes.

Casters should be terrifyingly powerful. It's just that non casters should have awesome options also.

[TuggyNE]

Energy Drain

Actually, it's less potent than simply slapping Empower and Maximize on enervation without reducers, so I don't think it belongs on the list.

[The Grue]

Rockburst.

A 2nd-level Druid spell that can destroy entire planets, though to be fair this is because it's very badly written.

[eggynack]

Other than some really obviously redonkulously spells I don't think casters actual are overpowered (Controversy!). Mages should be these earth-shattering mind-bending monsters. The real problem lies in that fact that core mundanes and just really poorly constructed. As 3.5 aged the designers realized this and released the factotum and the time of battle classes.

Casters should be terrifyingly powerful. It's just that non casters should have awesome options also.
It seems like your argument is that casters aren't overpowered because they're supposed to be overpowered. Leaving aside the fact that I disagree with the central tenant of your argument, especially in a game that so often averts linear warrior quadratic caster in odd ways (casters are better at high levels, but they are also often better at low levels), that statement doesn't really make much sense. If something is supposed to be overpowered, then that doesn't make it not overpowered. Seems simple enough to me.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Other than some really obviously redonkulously spells I don't think casters actual are overpowered (Controversy!). Mages should be these earth-shattering mind-bending monsters. The real problem lies in that fact that core mundanes and just really poorly constructed. As 3.5 aged the designers realized this and released the factotum and the time of battle classes.

Casters should be terrifyingly powerful. It's just that non casters should have awesome options also.

Controversy? No. Naivety.

Even without the spells that utterly shatter the game's semblance of balance. A well played caster completely outstrips any and all non-casters. Even the vaunted martial adepts of ToB don't compare. Even if you throw out the polymorph spells, the calling spells, and the spells that tell the action economy to bugger off, they -still- have answers to virtually all problems. The non-casters only go from having virtually no chance to having a slim but credible chance of competing.

Ultimately that's the problem though. The T1 and T2 casters can do virtually anything at all. Reality is their clay to sculpt however they see fit. You simply can't bring non-casters up to that level and still credibly call them non-casters.

Do non-casters need a boost? Yes. However, the casters also need to be nerfed. There's simply no way to achieve real balance without doing both or just gutting one or the other from the game.

[(Un)Inspired]

It seems like your argument is that casters aren't overpowered because they're supposed to be overpowered. Leaving aside the fact that I disagree with the central tenant of your argument, especially in a game that so often averts linear warrior quadratic caster in odd ways (casters are better at high levels, but they are also often better at low levels), that statement doesn't really make much sense. If something is supposed to be overpowered, then that doesn't make it not overpowered. Seems simple enough to me.

My point is that (with some exceptions) they aren't overpowered. They're appropriately powered. It's just that the appropriate place for a casters power is leagues ahead of a guy with a knife.

I don't believe that ToB brought mundanes onto equal footing with casters. Not by a long shot. Not by a loooooooooooong shot. What it did so was give them fun, interesting and useful tools to play with. Something core mundanes are lacking.

EDIT: I don't think balance is necessary in a cooperative game like d&d, also as every character have cool and useful things they can do.

[eggynack]

My point is that (with some exceptions) they aren't overpowered. They're appropriately powered. It's just that the appropriate place for a casters power is leagues ahead of a guy with a knife.

I don't believe that ToB brought mundanes onto equal footing with casters. Not by a long shot. Not by a loooooooooooong shot. What it did so was give them fun, interesting and useful tools to play with. Something core mundanes are lacking.
Not overpowered compared to what? Their not-crazy spells are far more powerful than what's being tossed out by knife guy, to the extent that they're incomparable, and those same not-crazy spells still leave casters ahead of ToB by a looooooooooooong shot. The only classes that can even hope to compete is other casters, and even then it's often over a far more narrow or less powerful range if you're not in tier one or two. So, they're more powerful than everything else to a ridiculous degree, even without crazy celerity/contingency attacks or venomfire'd fleshrakers, but... these things they're doing aren't overpowered. I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.


EDIT: I don't think balance is necessary in a cooperative game like d&d, also as every character have cool and useful things they can do.
Not every character necessarily has cool and useful things they can do, especially when one of the characters is occupying a slot right next to the druid's fourth best class feature (I count summoning as its own feature). The reasons for balance's importance in a cooperative game have been dissected a number of times. Situations that challenge casters crush mundanes like tiny bugs, and situations that are normally challenging to mundanes get crushed like tiny bugs by the casters. It's very difficult to construct scenarios where someone isn't a tiny bug, and even if you can, doing so requires acknowledging the existence of imbalance and working against it.

[lsfreak]

While not necessarily overpowered, gamechangers include flight and teleportation (standard tropes as basic as castles will have to undergo revision in order to account for these) and various divinations (how long will the world stay in medieval stasis when wizard of 9th level and up can literally call up the creator and play 20 questions about the nature of the universe?).

When you include them in worldbuilding, you've got major problems with things like create food and water where a single cleric of mid-level can provide enough food for hundreds at a personal cost of a couple hours a day. And there's the issue of many of the Conjurations and some Transmutations that can create valuable material from nothing, or at least vastly less important materials. And permanent spells, walls of fire to create endless energy and so on. Objective morality and the spells that play off it, like detect evil, cause a much different sort of problem.

People have covered a lot of the combat-type broken spells. I'll add that, while not necessarily overpowered, save-or-die tend to be very poor design. Actually a good number of things; basically anything that's all-or-nothing is poor design, and in addition to save-or-dies, 3.X is filled with flat-out immunities that are ultimately more harmful to the game than not. Save-or-dies are either wasted turns or lol-I-wins, with no real active way of countering them, only passive defenses (many of which are flat-out immunities). True seeing, mind blank, and death ward simply shut down entire strategies with little if any recourse, but at the same time are necessitated by the presence of death effects, domination, perfect invisibility, and so on. I wouldn't necessarily call them overpowered, but certainly more harmful than if they weren't implemented in such a binary win/lose way.

[(Un)Inspired]

Not overpowered compared to what? Their not-crazy spells are far more powerful than what's being tossed out by knife guy, to the extent that they're incomparable, and those same not-crazy spells still leave casters ahead of ToB by a looooooooooooong shot. The only classes that can even hope to compete is other casters, and even then it's often over a far more narrow or less powerful range if you're not in tier one or two. So, they're more powerful than everything else to a ridiculous degree, even without crazy celerity/contingency attacks or venomfire'd fleshrakers, but... these things they're doing aren't overpowered. I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.


Not every character necessarily has cool and useful things they can do, especially when one of the characters is occupying a slot right next to the druid's fourth best class feature (I count summoning as its own feature). The reasons for balance's importance in a cooperative game have been dissected a number of times. Situations that challenge casters crush mundanes like tiny bugs, and situations that are normally challenging to mundanes get crushed like tiny bugs by the casters. It's very difficult to construct scenarios where someone isn't a tiny bug, and even if you can, doing so requires acknowledging the existence of imbalance and working against it.

My opinion is that caster aren't overpowered in the context of what I expect casters to be able to do based on the movies I've seen and books I read that portray them. I primarily DM and while I can point to specific spells (typically) that push even tier 3 mundanes out of use in any scenario, most games I have run the only players that haven't had means of contributing while adventuring are mundanes of the lower tiers. This experience has informed my opinion about the functionality of teamwork in a world with tier 1 and characters of lower tier.

However, i will say that while I have been playing and running tabletop RPGs for a fair amount of time, I have only played with the 3rd edition family for about a year and a half.

Kelb and eggynack, I have a great deal respect for both your opinions and I have no doubt that you have greater experience with optimal play than I do. I would like to bow out of this discussion based on trusting your greater knowledge and my displeasure that I am derailing this thread.

[SinsI]

Arguably, there are no overpowered spells, as all the encounters should already be written with them in mind.
There are poorly written spells, players that abuse them and DMs tolerating their use outside the prescribed cases.

[Raendyn]

To be fair, the problem here is not with the spell itself but with the ability to Persist of Quicken it via feats. Had it been cast 'fairly', as a Standard action and a duration of 1 round per level, it would be a lot less powerful.


Well, anyone that uses Persist as it should be used, is welcome to take it in my games. I only ban free persisting.

Anyways, someone dedicating 3-6 feats + money on a single thing just to pull off a maximum of maybe 4 persists, can have them. They usually end up less powerful than the other cleric that has 6 actual feats and they also usually tent to get dispelled sometimes, ending up with no TU attempts and with 6 wasted feats. But that's "sometimes", better players usually take exceptional care in protecting themselves...

[Kelb_Panthera]

Arguably, there are no overpowered spells, as all the encounters should already be written with them in mind.
There are poorly written spells, players that abuse them and DMs tolerating their use outside the prescribed cases.

While this probably should be true, it isn't. They're, thankfully, few in number but there are spells that, if you create an encounter with them in mind, you may as well only count on the caster taking part in the encounter; gate, polymoprh subschool, summon X, wish, limited wish, and miracle.

You see, there're flaws in the design of these spells. In all of these cases the spell can, guaranteed, produce the magic bullet for the encounter. Whatever the situation there is some creature or spell effect that is a near perfect counter to it. Any of the listed spells can get that creature or effect on the spot in something like 95% of all cases. Gate and the summons have the additional issue of dramatically increasing the effective number of actions the casters' players get on any given turn.

Then there're the action economy breakers, a wizard who knows contingency, celerity, and nerveskitter will -always- go first if that's how he chooses to use those spells, unless the enemy gets a surprise round. The celerity spells on their own give the caster a huge edge in most encounters in allowing them to act with much greater than average efficacy on at least one turn in any given encounter. Then there are the summons again, as well as any spell that gets more long-term minions such as the various undead creating spells and planar ally/binding.

No abuse or even questionable rules mongering is necessary for these spells to completely overwhelm any ability the wizard's PC allies have to contribute to the encounter. Fortunately, most of them are mid-level or higher.

Most of the rest are -mostly- okay when they can be accounted for but accounting for -all- of the things that even a bard can do is very much non-trivial, nevermind a wizard or cleric.

The game is simply slanted -too- heavily in favor of casters even if you feel that the game should be slanted toward casters.

[Gwendol]

Word of Pain is quite ridiculous.

[Solophoenix]

I hate to see Rope Trick get shovelled onto the same pile as things like Time Stop. Rope trick doesn't end encounters, it doesn't kill enemies. Rope trick provides a talented caster with a place to sleep safely. I hardly see it as a game breaker.

[ganresorc]

Rope trick provides a talented caster with a place to sleep safely. I hardly see it as a game breaker.

Or a really safe place to temporarily hide the bodies. :nale:

[Phelix-Mu]

The thing I don't like about rope trick is that it almost makes low-level adventuring safe. This is very genre-defying. Adventuring, all over the lore, is supposed to be the folly of the young, the ill-informed, the inexperienced, the generally crazy or suicidal. Common people believe it to be such. Clearly, they've never heard of rope trick.

Rope trick is safer than sleeping in your own house in many instances. It can be deployed around almost all CR-appropriate enemies and leave most of them thoroughly bamboozled and impotent. As DM, I now am faced with

a.) Accept that the wizard always has a safe place to hide long enough to rest, change up spells prepared/finish filling empty slots, and otherwise fortify the wizard's self against death or injury, no matter the situation (or practically so).

b.) Make the enemies smart enough to know the weaknesses of rope trick (they do exist). Not particularly believable in many encounters.

c.) Make the enemies smart enough to recruit bigger baddies to help them with the problem of the disappearing spell-man. This can work, but if repeated as a strategy leads to even more EL-inflation and is not particularly believable either (every baddie knows a bigger baddie willing to help).

These are all bad choices.

[Solophoenix]

The thing I don't like about rope trick is that it almost makes low-level adventuring safe. This is very genre-defying. Adventuring, all over the lore, is supposed to be the folly of the young, the ill-informed, the inexperienced, the generally crazy or suicidal. Common people believe it to be such. Clearly, they've never heard of rope trick.

Rope trick is safer than sleeping in your own house in many instances. It can be deployed around almost all CR-appropriate enemies and leave most of them thoroughly bamboozled and impotent. As DM, I now am faced with

a.) Accept that the wizard always has a safe place to hide long enough to rest, change up spells prepared/finish filling empty slots, and otherwise fortify the wizard's self against death or injury, no matter the situation (or practically so).

b.) Make the enemies smart enough to know the weaknesses of rope trick (they do exist). Not particularly believable in many encounters.

c.) Make the enemies smart enough to recruit bigger baddies to help them with the problem of the disappearing spell-man. This can work, but if repeated as a strategy leads to even more EL-inflation and is not particularly believable either (every baddie knows a bigger baddie willing to help).

These are all bad choices.

A Wizard needs 9 hours to sleep and prepare their spells, and presumably some extra time to get in and out of the Rope Trick space at either end. So not til CL 10 do you get the benefit of "low level" adventuring being safe. Yes, you could also do this at CL 5 with Extend Spell, but then you've just used one of your few precious 3rd level spell slots, a major investment that should have a major payoff.

[Zharradan Marr]

I agree with Phelix-Mu, the problem with Rope Trick is not raw power, it's genre-bending. A "major payoff" would be using, for example, an area effect spell to win an encounter in one action. Rope Trick goes beyond winning an encounter. It totally takes off the table a whole category of encounters, which are a staple of fantasy - "at night, as Frodo was sleeping, Sam heard rustling in the bushes, and ...".

Now, if the DM doesn't want to run this category of encounters to begin with, and nights are supposed to be a safe "you rest, you regain spells" affair, I guess, meh, it's fine for that DM.

[Phelix-Mu]

A Wizard needs 9 hours to sleep and prepare their spells, and presumably some extra time to get in and out of the Rope Trick space at either end. So not til CL 10 do you get the benefit of "low level" adventuring being safe. Yes, you could also do this at CL 5 with Extend Spell, but then you've just used one of your few precious 3rd level spell slots, a major investment that should have a major payoff.

Or CL booster. Or invest in scrolls with a higher CL and UMD, or higher CL wand. Or lesser metamagic rod of extend, something so useful that almost every caster should carry one. And there are probably a couple other free extends out there, knowing this game.

1 hour/level almost unbeatable safety for up to eight other creatures as a 2nd level spell? Let's find another second level spell that offers quite that degree of utility.

10min/level is plenty to time as a hiding space and avoids the RV-D&D effect that I don't much care for.

[Bronk]

That's a good point... houses are terribly unsafe. They're flammable, rickety things, especially the ones a commoner might live in. Are there any spells out there that are meant to fortify a dwelling? For example, how 'Calm Earth' would counter 'Earthquake'.

Also, I think the 'tongues' spell is overpowered... a L3 Sor/Wiz, L2 Bard spell that gives the equivalent of a 17th level Monk ability or the epic level Polyglot feat while invalidating the whole 'speak language' skill seems a bit much.

[Zharradan Marr]

A lot of spells invalidate skill use, this was already covered. Fly is better than 20 ranks in Climb, Invisibility is better than 20 ranks in Hide, some scenarios with See Invisibility notwithstanding, and Guidance of the Avatar is like having 20 ranks in everything.

[Phelix-Mu]

A lot of spells invalidate skill use, this was already covered. Fly is better than 20 ranks in Climb, Invisibility is better than 20 ranks in Hide, some scenarios with See Invisibility notwithstanding, and Guidance of the Avatar is like having 20 ranks in everything.

More like it gives you a huge bonus to one skill per casting for one roll. Isn't that how it works? Please tell me that that is how it works.

[Solophoenix]

I agree with Phelix-Mu, the problem with Rope Trick is not raw power, it's genre-bending. A "major payoff" would be using, for example, an area effect spell to win an encounter in one action. Rope Trick goes beyond winning an encounter. It totally takes off the table a whole category of encounters, which are a staple of fantasy - "at night, as Frodo was sleeping, Sam heard rustling in the bushes, and ...".

Now, if the DM doesn't want to run this category of encounters to begin with, and nights are supposed to be a safe "you rest, you regain spells" affair, I guess, meh, it's fine for that DM.

Frodo and Sam were nowhere near 10th level. The genre bending only happens at levels when spellcasters can literally teleport.



Or CL booster. Or invest in scrolls with a higher CL and UMD, or higher CL wand. Or lesser metamagic rod of extend, something so useful that almost every caster should carry one. And there are probably a couple other free extends out there, knowing this game.

1 hour/level almost unbeatable safety for up to eight other creatures as a 2nd level spell? Let's find another second level spell that offers quite that degree of utility.

10min/level is plenty to time as a hiding space and avoids the RV-D&D effect that I don't much care for.

CL Boosters and Scrolls and Wands of the appropriate CL are all far too expensive for low level adventurers. The Metamagic Rod of Extend can be used, yes, and has many other uses, but still only starts functioning for all night refreshment after level 5. And considering that a Wizard relies on a good night's sleep to be something more than a fancy commoner in the morning, I really don't see much of a problem with this.

[Phelix-Mu]

CL Boosters and Scrolls and Wands of the appropriate CL are all far too expensive for low level adventurers. The Metamagic Rod of Extend can be used, yes, and has many other uses, but still only starts functioning for all night refreshment after level 5. And considering that a Wizard relies on a good night's sleep to be something more than a fancy commoner in the morning, I really don't see much of a problem with this.

I had not really intended it to be for all night sleeping/preparing (check my original post). It is more than sufficient to rest in safety long enough for all but stationary threats to pass, to finish filling empty slots, to heal, regroup, and sleep almost all night. If there isn't a constant threat outside, a second scroll may be used (though this gets expensive in a hurry).

Many threads have tossed this about before. I am against the 15 minute adventuring day and anything leads down that rather contrived path. We can move further discussion on this point to another thread.

Again, perfect safety for hours/level for you and your friends. Sounds like at least a 3rd level spells (given sanctuary, flawed personal safety of extremely limited duration, 1st level).

[Squark]

Frodo and Sam were nowhere near 10th level. The genre bending only happens at levels when spellcasters can literally teleport.

CL Boosters and Scrolls and Wands of the appropriate CL are all far too expensive for low level adventurers. The Metamagic Rod of Extend can be used, yes, and has many other uses, but still only starts functioning for all night refreshment after level 5. And considering that a Wizard relies on a good night's sleep to be something more than a fancy commoner in the morning, I really don't see much of a problem with this.

So, perhaps the solution is to reduce rope trick's duration, but also make night attacks less debilitating to casters (Leaving aside balance arguments. I'm talking about how the mechanics play)

[Phelix-Mu]

Yes, you could well do that. But, really, a single weakness hardly will break the low-level caster. Wizards have had this Achilles' Heel for ages, and still managed to be smart enough to avoid dying to night ambushes. I'm sure some other setup exists that can protect against this particular threat.

I'm all for allowing short interruptions to the rest required, within reason.

[A Tad Insane]

Grease.
If you can't render someone completely helpless with it, you lack imagination

[Solophoenix]

I had not really intended it to be for all night sleeping/preparing (check my original post). It is more than sufficient to rest in safety long enough for all but stationary threats to pass, to finish filling empty slots, to heal, regroup, and sleep almost all night. If there isn't a constant threat outside, a second scroll may be used (though this gets expensive in a hurry).

Many threads have tossed this about before. I am against the 15 minute adventuring day and anything leads down that rather contrived path. We can move further discussion on this point to another thread.

Again, perfect safety for hours/level for you and your friends. Sounds like at least a 3rd level spells (given sanctuary, flawed personal safety of extremely limited duration, 1st level).

If adventurers are content to only spend 15 minutes per day progressing their goals, then there is something wrong with the adventure, not with their sleeping arrangement. And a 3rd level spell is exactly what an Extended Rope Trick is.


So, perhaps the solution is to reduce rope trick's duration, but also make night attacks less debilitating to casters (Leaving aside balance arguments. I'm talking about how the mechanics play)

Or the solution is for night attacks to increase in level of sophistication as the party's defenses do. Wolves snuffling around in the bushes works well at low levels, but by the time the party can spend all night in a Rope Trick, it's not unreasonable for the enemy to have spellcasters of their own. And if they're specifically looking for sleeping adventurers, it makes perfect sense for them to have See Invisibility up, and access to Dispel Magic.

[Zharradan Marr]

More like it gives you a huge bonus to one skill per casting for one roll. Isn't that how it works? Please tell me that that is how it works.Let's not get all snarky for no reason, shall we? You know how it works. It gives you a huge bonus to one skill when you need it. You're not going to discharge it to jump a 5' pit, or to swim in calm water, or to negotiate a regular purchase of a mundane item, and so on, but if you are thrown from a ship into a stormy sea wearing full plate, or if you need to negotiate with an angry barbarian tribe chieftain, or jump a 30' ravine, there you go, +20 when you need it.

Once more, in case you missed it, in caps, IT'S LIKE HAVING 20 RANKS IN EVERYTHING.

[Phelix-Mu]

Sorry if I seemed snarky. I honestly couldn't remember how it worked off the top of my head.

I still think it falls a little short of having 20 ranks in everything. 20 ranks in anything, maybe? Unless you can spam it, of course.

[Solophoenix]

Let's not get all snarky for no reason, shall we? You know how it works. It gives you a huge bonus to one skill when you need it. You're not going to discharge it to jump a 5' pit, or to swim in calm water, or to negotiate a regular purchase of a mundane item, and so on, but if you are thrown from a ship into a stormy sea wearing full plate, or if you need to negotiate with an angry barbarian tribe chieftain, or jump a 30' ravine, there you go, +20 when you need it.

Once more, in case you missed it, in caps, IT'S LIKE HAVING 20 RANKS IN EVERYTHING.

It's like having 20 ranks in one skill check, within one minute of a standard action casting. By your logic, True Strike is like having +20 to every attack.

[supervillan]

How overpowered spells and spell-casters are depends very much on the context and the campaign.

If you allow all the spells in all the books, and you allow all the metamagic shenanigans in all the books, full casters achieve godlike power dwarfing any mundane character's abilities at equal ECL.

If you actively manage players' access to spells, feats, and magic items, it's eminently possible to achieve a game in which both caster and mundane characters are viable and the players have fun.

The OP's plan to rework the spell lists over 12 spell levels and 30 character levels is one approach to this active management. Seems like a hell of a lot of work to me. My approach is that anything outside Core requires DM approval; also there is no "MagicMart". My game world is built accordingly.

To illustrate: in my current campaign, the party just hit level 8. The spell casters are still in awe of the barbarian PC's damage output. This will likely be the case until they encounter enemies that barbarian smashtime is not a successful strategy against. And they will have those encounters. To date, only a troll barbarian has got the better of the PC barbarian (although a dire lion pounce scared him plenty). The barbarian PC was not in the party before level 6, when we added an additional player. The casters will come into their own soon enough. This is not an optimised party - even moderate levels of optimisation extend the gap between mundanes and casters.

Lastly, there's the older edition thing. Casters were always more powerful than mundanes in D&D, but in earlier editions it took them longer to surpass their big dumb fighter buddies than it does in e3.5. If magic is supposed to be the dominant force in the cosmos (and it has to be, if medieval stasis applies) then magic wielders (arcane or divine) are inevitably also dominant. That dominance does not have to translate into PC irrelevance provided that DMs design games and game worlds accordingly.

/my 2cp

[Phelix-Mu]

I rather prefer divine insight, but the out-of-combat/no time pressure utility of guidance of the avatar can't be denied.

They really went overboard with the low-level "gain ability to do x really well for short period." There are a half-dozen of them in SpC that are really useful to cover up weak spots. Not optimal, but by continuing to make new ones on a similar theme, they eventually made easily abusable or exploitable ones.

[Zharradan Marr]

It's like having 20 ranks in one skill check, within one minute of a standard action casting. By your logic, True Strike is like having +20 to every attack.Sorry, I made a salad in my brain from Guidance of the Avatar (which is "1 minute or until discharged") and Divine Insight (which is "1hr/level or until discharged", but provides a bit smaller bonus, "only" +15 at CL 10).

So, let's forget about Guidance of the Avatar for a moment; I may have overvalued it. Let's look at our typical Cleric 10. He has a lot of 2nd level slots to spare. He can prepare, let's say, 3 x Divine Insight in those slots easily. With a duration measured in hours, he can easily cast one at the start of the day and go about his business. In a tight spot? Needs to negotiate a tough agreement, bluff your way past guards, or walk a tightrope? There you go, take +15. Challenge answered. Cast a second copy of Divine Insight and continue adventuring...

With just a few copies of Divine Insight prepared, a Cleric is better equipped to tackle difficult skill checks than mundane characters who are supposed to be good at those skills.

[Solophoenix]

Sorry, I made a salad in my brain from Guidance of the Avatar (which is "1 minute or until discharged") and Divine Insight (which is "1hr/level or until discharged", but provides a bit smaller bonus, "only" +15 at CL 10).

So, let's forget about Guidance of the Avatar for a moment; I may have overvalued it. Let's look at our typical Cleric 10. He has a lot of 2nd level slots to spare. He can prepare, let's say, 3 x Divine Insight in those slots easily. With a duration measured in hours, he can easily cast one at the start of the day and go about his business. In a tight spot? Needs to negotiate a tough agreement, bluff your way past guards, or walk a tightrope? There you go, take +15. Challenge answered. Cast a second copy of Divine Insight and continue adventuring...

With just a few copies of Divine Insight prepared, a Cleric is better equipped to tackle difficult skill checks than mundane characters who are supposed to be good at those skills.

On the Mundane front, look at a Rogue 10. 13 Ranks in Bluff, plus a modest CHA Bonus, say +2, and we're already at the same level as the Cleric under the spell, except on every check, with no resources expended. Throw in a Circlet of Persuasion, and for the times when you "really need it", UMD a Wand of Glibness, and you just left the Cleric in the dust.

I'm not saying that spellcasters don't outshine mundane characters at high levels, but they're not necessarily better at everything.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You've got to distinguish between "break the game" spells (Celerity, Gate, etc) and "annoy the DM" spells (Rope Trick, Teleport, etc).

It bugs the crap out of me when I hear people saying "oh man, the casters got spell X and now I can't use the same adventures anymore." No ****, Sherlock-- the entire point of a level-based game is that you're not doing same thing for 20 levels. Rope Trick comes online? Accept that you're done with "huddling in the woods with fear" adventures and start coming up with new concepts. Teleport? Great, that's the game telling you that you should be done with "long walk in the woods" quests. You can still run those kind of low-level adventures, you just have to run them at low-levels where they belong.

Not to say that there aren't problems with those kinds of spells, but they shouldn't be hit with nerf bats. Teleport doesn't need to be removed, it just needs Dimension Lock to be lower leveled. Scrying doesn't need to be 9th level, it needs to be blocked by lead.

Part and parcel of that is, of course, fixing mundane classes. If you leave Fighters and Rogues as they are, you need to nerf the entire spell list into a pile of turds. But if you replace them with Warblades and Factotums, suddenly you have room to let spells do things beyond 1d6/level damage.

[Zharradan Marr]

On the Mundane front, look at a Rogue 10. 13 Ranks in Bluff, plus a modest CHA Bonus, say +2, and we're already at the same level as the Cleric under the spell, except on every check, with no resources expended. Throw in a Circlet of Persuasion, and for the times when you "really need it", UMD a Wand of Glibness, and you just left the Cleric in the dust.
Several logical problems here:
1. The Cleric can have a modest charisma bonus too. "Having a +2 Charisma bonus" is not a rogue-exclusive class feature.
2. It's not "with no resources expended". The rogue expended 13 ranks in Bluff. Those 13 ranks are good only for bluff. They are not good for walking a tightrope. They are not good for saving him when he falls into a stormy sea. For walking a tightrope just as well, a different 13 ranks must be expended. For saving himself in a stormy sea, another 13 ranks in yet a different skill. A Divine Insight spell, on the other hand, can either Bluff, Swim, or walk a tightrope, whichever is needed right now.
3. Also, "owning a Circlet of Persuasion" is not a rogue-exclusive class feature.
4. Finally, the Cleric can UMD a Wand of Glibness too. Easily. Because he can take 1 cross-class UMD rank, and get +15 to his UMD roll with Divine Insight :smallbiggrin: while the poor rogue has to spend yet more ranks on UMD. And if you're assuming on a whim that one character owns a +30 Bluff item and the other doesn't, of course the second one is going to be disadvantaged, but it's hardly a fair comparison.

[Solophoenix]

Several logical problems here:
1. The Cleric can have a modest charisma bonus too. "Having a +2 Charisma bonus" is not a rogue-exclusive class feature.
2. It's not "with no resources expended". The rogue expended 13 ranks in Bluff. Those 13 ranks are good only for bluff. They are not good for walking a tightrope. They are not good for saving him when he falls into a stormy sea. For walking a tightrope just as well, a different 13 ranks must be expended. For saving himself in a stormy sea, another 13 ranks in yet a different skill. A Divine Insight spell, on the other hand, can either Bluff, Swim, or walk a tightrope, whichever is needed right now.
3. Also, "owning a Circlet of Persuasion" is not a rogue-exclusive class feature.
4. Finally, the Cleric can UMD a Wand of Glibness too. Easily. Because he can take 1 cross-class UMD rank, and get +15 to his UMD roll with Divine Insight :smallbiggrin: while the poor rogue has to spend yet more ranks on UMD. And if you're assuming on a whim that one character owns a +30 Bluff item and the other doesn't, of course the second one is going to be disadvantaged, but it's hardly a fair comparison.

All valid points. What I was trying to get at is that Divine Insight is unlikely to make a character better at a skill than someone who has specialised in it. The Rogue benefits from being able to repeat the skill check at a similar level to the boosted Cleric. The Cleric only gets one per spell slot/standard action. No, the Rogue's Bluff ranks can't help him in other situations, but he can keep 8+Int skills at max ranks, 9+Int if he's a Human. And if the Rogue really starts to get jealous, he can UMD a wand of Divine Insight :P.

[Rosstin]

Slightly off-topic, but is it the case that Druid Reincarnation is the lowest level resurrection spell? I guess you can cast that as a level 9 druid in both 3.5 and PF?

[Bronk]

Well, the 'last breath' spell is equally low, but I'm not aware of a lower level spell that fits the bill.

[Zharradan Marr]

All valid points. What I was trying to get at is that Divine Insight is unlikely to make a character better at a skill than someone who has specialized in it.
Fair enough. Someone who's specialized can beat Divine Insight. But, the Cleric can easily, and sometimes accidentally, upstage someone who's, how to say it, not specialized per say, but in his own element.

Example, from a true story: in the group we're playing right now, the PCs used to trek a lot through the wilderness around levels 4-8. Each day ended with a DM requesting a Survival check to see how good of a quality of shelter they managed to find. (no Rope Trick for that party) A good check meant a safe night, a poor check meant something was more likely to attack the party.

Now, one would think that the party Ranger will be in his natural element here, and he'll be the one taking point on shelter-searching. He did, after all, max out his Survival ranks, had a modicum of Wis bonus, and +2 synergy from Knowledge: Nature. But, in practice, the Cleric [a city slicker, zero Survival ranks!] often was left with a Divine Insight spell un-discharged at the end of the day, and was easily able to upstage the Ranger on this check. Even though it's nominally supposed to be the Ranger's shtick. The higher the party advanced in levels, the more likely the Cleric was to have a Divine Insight left (since he had more slots) and the more useless the Ranger became - despite of being in his natural element. "My cave is way better than your cave" became a catchphrase :smallwink:

In summary: yes, specialization is an option for the mundanes. They can get really really really good at something, if they dump enough resources into it. But in practice, the spellcaster's flexibility and ability to be good at everything he needs to be good at will win out more often than not.


And if the Rogue really starts to get jealous, he can UMD a wand of Divine Insight :P.:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

[strangebloke]

Can we try to list broken spells again? I mean obviously 3.5 has huge balance issues, but curbing the spell list somewhat makes the game a lot better.

Some ones off of the top of my head:
glitterdust: It's a Save-or-Suck spell that also reveals invisibility and has an aoe.

Magic Weapon, Greater: Who needs to spend money on magic weapons?

of course a lot of bad ones have already been listed. Any form of polymorph/shapechange/alter self is OP, as are any of the action economy breakers like time stop/celerity/nerveskitter

A lot of these, naturally, don't need to be banned so much as reworked. Greater Magic Weapon is fine if the bonuses don't keep scaling all the way to 20th level. Even the polymorph chain wouldn't be so bad if you limited the monster hit dice.

[Talderas]

Actually, it's less potent than simply slapping Empower and Maximize on enervation without reducers, so I don't think it belongs on the list.

Energy Drain is more potent than the empower and maximized. The only factor one which it is more effective is that it has a static value rather than a randomized one. However since Energy Drain can reach 8 negative levels and the Enervate can only reach 6, Energy Drain is the more potent spell hands down. Based purely on the immediate effect, Enervate is probably more effective due to having a more consistent output but it also requires an opportunity cost of two feats to acquire it while Energy Drain does not. Energy Drain also has the secondary effect of becoming a permanent effect rather than Enervate only lasting 24 hours. Without an entire build you can only compare the two spells on their direct costs and the benefits obtained.

Most Potent: Energy Drain
Most Effective: Maximized/Empowered Enervate
Cheapest: Energy Drain

[eggynack]

Energy Drain is more potent than the empower and maximized. The only factor one which it is more effective is that it has a static value rather than a randomized one. However since Energy Drain can reach 8 negative levels and the Enervate can only reach 6, Energy Drain is the more potent spell hands down. Based purely on the immediate effect, Enervate is probably more effective due to having a more consistent output but it also requires an opportunity cost of two feats to acquire it while Energy Drain does not. Energy Drain also has the secondary effect of becoming a permanent effect rather than Enervate only lasting 24 hours. Without an entire build you can only compare the two spells on their direct costs and the benefits obtained.

Most Potent: Energy Drain
Most Effective: Maximized/Empowered Enervate
Cheapest: Energy Drain
That's not how you calculate the effectiveness of a spell. You don't look at maximum value; you look at average value. energy drain deals an average of five negative levels, and maximized/empowered enervation deals an average of 5.25 negative levels. The latter is a larger number, so it's usually going to be a superior spell. Really, even were the two averages the same, I'd rather go with the spell with a high minimum and a low maximum over the spell with a low minimum and a high maximum. Variance is bad, especially on a wizard. So, no, energy drain really isn't a more potent spell. Moreover, even were it a more potent spell, it would still be really far from overpowered. These are wizard 9th's we're talking about here, and energy drain isn't even in the top ten.

[Osiris]

I have one pretty awesome spell, and one way to make sleep less OP

1 Silence. Cast this, or carry a Rod of Silence (MIC) and you have Move Silently +infinity. Nothing can hear you creep up to them.

2 If the party is fighting Undead, Sleep won't work on them. They will probably fail at Ref saves with Grease, but they won't care if they aren't touching the ground. Hurray Bird Zombies!

[TrueJordan]

I don't care what anyone says, Fly (or any varient that grants flying, including Wildshape) is extremely overpowered. Combine it with the Feather Token Tree, and you deal about 300d6 of damage in two turns (Just drop the goddamn tree on a Great Wyrm, watch him get crushed). Good luck, erryone.

[eggynack]

I don't care what anyone says, Fly (or any varient that grants flying, including Wildshape) is extremely overpowered. Combine it with the Feather Token Tree, and you deal about 300d6 of damage in two turns (Just drop the goddamn tree on a Great Wyrm, watch him get crushed). Good luck, erryone.
That seems a lot more like an issue with the spontaneous generation of trees than with flight. Flight does produce an odd tactical dichotomy though, where you need flight such that you aren't horribly disadvantaged when dealing with flying enemies, and such that your opponents are horribly disadvantaged when dealing with you. It may be an overpowered thing on that basis, though it's an easy enough to obtain ability that it's not necessarily a caster thing.

[Kennisiou]

To those saying fly basically invalidates jump and climb as skills... yeah, it does, but there's something you're forgetting: it also basically invalidates move silently, too! Magical flight produces no sound! Fly + invisibility is basically perfect stealth unless the enemy has some means of magical detection, but the fly part is still stealthy even with magical detection factored in, as there's no way to magically "hear" someone flying silently. This means that if you have some means of hiding in plain sight as well as magical flight you're going to be super stealthy even against magical detection. The only counter to fly's invalidation of three skills is a null magic zone. That's pretty freaking strong.

[eggynack]

Magical flight produces no sound!
Is this an actual thing? I've yet to find such a rule in my searching.

[Kennisiou]

Is this an actual thing? I've yet to find such a rule in my searching.

I remember the fly spell saying it didn't produce sound, but now also cannot find the ruling. I don't think it's necessarily true of all magical flight (again, lord of the skies doesn't say whether or not it makes a sound, but the fact that you're flying as a result of basically being propelled around by lightning and I think it's probably kind of noisy).

But yeah, I'm almost certain by RAW the fly spell makes no sound while moving, since you have no footfalls or anything that would be noisy.

[eggynack]

But yeah, I'm almost certain by RAW the fly spell makes no sound while moving, since you have no footfalls or anything that would be noisy.
I can't really find anything that indicates that. Move silently has no requirement aside from movement, with the only reference to footfalls being the penalties from noisy surfaces. It's a thing with logic, certainly, but as is so often the case, and it might be the case here, rules and logic don't always see eye to eye.

[Phelix-Mu]

I seem to remember something, too, but I also remember trying to look for that tidbit and only turning up that incorporeality obviates the need for Move Silently checks, which seems rather obvious.

Flying about should probably increase the DC of enemy Listen checks or grant a bonus to MS, but it would be highly dependent on the manner of flight. Owls are quiet. Condors are not. Sounds like it's either a racial bonus for natural flight or a circumstance bonus for magical flight. But I don't know where any RAW supporting that kind of ruling would be found.

I think I houseruled that anything with Perfect maneuverability doesn't need to make Tumble or Move Silently checks based on movement (but other stuff may cause them to need to make a check).

[TrueJordan]

That seems a lot more like an issue with the spontaneous generation of trees than with flight. Flight does produce an odd tactical dichotomy though, where you need flight such that you aren't horribly disadvantaged when dealing with flying enemies, and such that your opponents are horribly disadvantaged when dealing with you. It may be an overpowered thing on that basis, though it's an easy enough to obtain ability that it's not necessarily a caster thing.


That is true. Also flight plus shapeshift, flight plus Tree Shape, etc. Basically falling objects can be very OP.

[Phelix-Mu]

Flight being so dangerous only points out to me that the optimization potential of archery is too evasive/resource intensive. Flight is clearly a tactically superior position, but irl it does come with some vulnerabilities. That there are 2-3 spells that block almost all of these would-be threats just points to another problem; spells that decrease tactical options via virtual/actual immunity (wind wall, freedom of movement, etc).

Hmm. If you knock out a wizard (or anything) under the effect of fly, does the spell end? Or does the wizard fall because being unable to take move actions causes falling if you were previously flying?

[eggynack]

That there are 2-3 spells that block almost all of these would-be threats just points to another problem.
Probably more than that. Anything that produces windstorm or greater windspeed stops any ranged weaponry in its tracks, and there's a good number of spells that do that. Wind wall gets all the press cause it's low level and reads "Stop all the archery," but control winds does it too, as does sandstorm, eye of the hurricane, and even storm of vengeance. Friendly fire is also good at stopping archery, especially if you use its less crazy long term mode. It's a tragic thing (for archery).

[CombatOwl]

I'm trying to make my own version of D&D where I have the levels be 1-30 and in doing that I am making there be 12 spell levels opposed to 9. So i'm trying to fix all of the spells, but since I don't have a good eye for this sort of thing, what do you think are the most powerpowered spells. Or at least spells that shouldn't exist for their level. Obviously i'm mostly doing this for Cleric/Druid/Paladin If something is only overpowered in 3.5 or pathfinder, please note. The ones even I can tell are

Time Stop

Rope Trick

All Shapeshifting spells period

Planar Binding

Energy Drain

anything else

Prismatic Sphere never hits these sort of lists, and I have no idea why. It's so freaking overpowered. Prismatic Sphere + [Forced Movement Spell] is quite silly. Throw them into the sphere. Even if they somehow make all of the saves, they have to make them all again to get back out and do anything.

[eggynack]

Prismatic Sphere never hits these sort of lists, and I have no idea why. It's so freaking overpowered.
Probably because it's not overpowered at all. Prismatic sphere is a 9th level spell. It might be overpowered compared with the things that mundane classes are doing, but as a 9th it's barely a blip on the radar. This is the level that gives wizards disjunction, gate, astral projection, shapechange, time stop, wish, mind rape, and ice assassin. I suppose it's worth questioning why a list would have energy drain but not sphere, because drain is probably worse, but that's a reason to remove drain, rather than a reason to add sphere. The fact that your sphere related plan involves two separate spells is also a problematic thing.

[JaronK]

A few fun ones:

Ice Assassin/Simulacrum. Yay, I get a duplicate of... anything. If you're a Tainted Sorcerer or have other means of ignoring material components, you can duplicate gods for fun and profit. Or just have some pet Solars. Or pet Efreeti that follow your commands perfectly. Duplicate that great Wizard 20 that the DM told you was central to the world plot. Do whatever you like, really. Sky's the limit.

Boreal Wind. The go to "yeah, I'll just kill that army then" attack spell. Druid 4, Sor/Wiz and Clr 5, and it hits everyone in a relatively wide line out to 400'+100'/CL. While the damage per round isn't high (1d4*CL) it's the other effects that matter... it counts as a Windstorm, so enemies can't shoot at you, can't move towards you without making saves, and are generally screwed over. It even blinds people in dusty areas.

Lahm's Finger Darts. You'll need to heal the Str damage, but the ability to do 5d4 Dex damage with no save at range is pretty awesome for a level 2 spell.

Ghoul Glyph. Learn it as an Sp ability and now you can paralyze enemies with no save. Nice.

Stone Metamorphosis. Turn any stone (even stuff you made with Wall of Stone) into Sickstone, Slickstone, Elukian Clay, or a variety of other special stone types found in the rules. Quite handy.

JaronK

[LordBlades]

If you allow all the spells in all the books, and you allow all the metamagic shenanigans in all the books, full casters achieve godlike power dwarfing any mundane character's abilities at equal ECL.

If you actively manage players' access to spells, feats, and magic items, it's eminently possible to achieve a game in which both caster and mundane characters are viable and the players have fun.

95% of really strong/overpowered spells are in core and limiting access to magic items (which only casters can make/duplicate) and feats hurts mundanes a lot more than casters.





Lastly, there's the older edition thing. Casters were always more powerful than mundanes in D&D, but in earlier editions it took them longer to surpass their big dumb fighter buddies than it does in e3.5. If magic is supposed to be the dominant force in the cosmos (and it has to be, if medieval stasis applies) then magic wielders (arcane or divine) are inevitably also dominant. That dominance does not have to translate into PC irrelevance provided that DMs design games and game worlds accordingly.

/my 2cp

It's hard to not have irrelevant PCs when some characters can use part of their abilities to become a better version of others. How do you make a fighter relevant in a party with a druid that wants to do melee combat?

[Dimers]

Well, Gorfnab hasn't shown up yet to mention his signature spell, so ... regal procession, which is like one mount spell per caster level. Fill up small spaces with bodies that can take AoOs or stampede or power your necromancy spells! Drop five+ horses with accoutrements onto five+ enemies from great heights with a single action! Accuse the local duchess in the process, by putting her heraldry on the horse-bombardment!

[TrueJordan]

Well, Gorfnab hasn't shown up yet to mention his signature spell, so ... regal procession, which is like one mount spell per caster level. Fill up small spaces with bodies that can take AoOs or stampede or power your necromancy spells! Drop five+ horses with accoutrements onto five+ enemies from great heights with a single action! Accuse the local duchess in the process, by putting her heraldry on the horse-bombardment!

I dunno if this is what you were implying, but you can't summon the horses into thin air.
A creature or object brought into being or transported to your location by a conjuration spell cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#conjuration

[Dimers]

I stand corrected. Guess I should've cast summon Gorfnab instead of trying to explain the grandeur of regal procession myself. The example I recall him using involved covering the entire deck of a ship with horses ... but I shan't go into detail, lest I betray my ignorance again.

[maximus25]

My point is that (with some exceptions) they aren't overpowered. They're appropriately powered. It's just that the appropriate place for a casters power is leagues ahead of a guy with a knife.

I don't believe that ToB brought mundanes onto equal footing with casters. Not by a long shot. Not by a loooooooooooong shot. What it did so was give them fun, interesting and useful tools to play with. Something core mundanes are lacking.

EDIT: I don't think balance is necessary in a cooperative game like d&d, also as every character have cool and useful things they can do.

You realize that the point of levels is to give players a sense of scale with their powers?

A level 20 wizard and a level 20 anything SHOULD be on equal footing, power wise. Otherwise a level system is useless.

Guess what? They're not equal. A level 20 wizard blows pretty much anything else out of the water. (Except other T1's, but that's not a strong argument)

You can't have a scale and then say, "It's alright, they're not SUPPOSED to be equal!"

[supervillan]

95% of really strong/overpowered spells are in core and limiting access to magic items (which only casters can make/duplicate) and feats hurts mundanes a lot more than casters.

None of the overpowered spells listed by JaronK above are in core except simulacrum and that is only seriously abusable in conjunction with non-core material like tainted scholar . I agree there are abusable spells in core but in my view it's the proliferation of combinations arising from additional material created by designers who did not consider/foresee the consequences that gives most trouble.

I control, rather than limit, access to to non-core material. This prevents exploitative combinations. It does not prevent mundanes from having cool toys.



It's hard to not have irrelevant PCs when some characters can use part of their abilities to become a better version of others. How do you make a fighter relevant in a party with a druid that wants to do melee combat?

The wildshaped druid doesn't get to use weapons. Animals don't get ranged attacks. Yes, I know druids can cast spells with Natural Spell and they can buff themselves. It is nonetheless possible for the fighter to have more useful combat feats and weapon effects than the druid. I'm not suggesting that the fighter is as powerful, only that a skilled DM can ensure via adventure design and treasure placement that the players will feel relevant and have fun.

[(Un)Inspired]

You realize that the point of levels is to give players a sense of scale with their powers?

A level 20 wizard and a level 20 anything SHOULD be on equal footing, power wise. Otherwise a level system is useless.

Guess what? They're not equal. A level 20 wizard blows pretty much anything else out of the water. (Except other T1's, but that's not a strong argument)

You can't have a scale and then say, "It's alright, they're not SUPPOSED to be equal!"

The point of levels is give players a sense of scale with their powers... This really doesn't have anything to do with balance between classes. That sense of scale is to compare your current power with your previous power.

Think hard about what you're saying. Seriously. Think. A level 20 wizard and a level 20 ANYTHING should be on equal footing. Those are your words. So... If I were to take one level of each class in alphabetical order until I got to 20 I should be just as strong as a wizard? Because... That's what levels are for?

Let's even ignore multiclassing for a second. Your statement means that you're boldly claiming that a commoner 20 should be balanced with a wizard 20. Otherwise, you claim, a leveling system is useless.

[JaronK]

None of the overpowered spells listed by JaronK above are in core except simulacrum and that is only seriously abusable in conjunction with non-core material like tainted scholar .

That's because I wanted to pick overpowered spells people hadn't heard of (like Ice Slick, which is basically Grease but you explicitly can't avoid the balance checks).

Everyone's heard of the overpowered Core stuff, and it's worse. Planar Binding, Gate, Alter Self, Polymorph, Polymorph Any Object, Fabricate... we all know those ones. That's obvious.

And yes, a level 20 PC class (not Commoner!) should be relatively equivalent to another level 20 PC class. Not the same, just equivalent enough to be playing a similar game. But right now they're not... a Fighter is playing "let's see if we can survive fighting the next monster" and a Wizard is playing "let's rebuild the world in my image!"

JaronK

[(Un)Inspired]

And yes, a level 20 PC class (not Commoner!) should be relatively equivalent to another level 20 PC class. Not the same, just equivalent enough to be playing a similar game. But right now they're not... a Fighter is playing "let's see if we can survive fighting the next monster" and a Wizard is playing "let's rebuild the world in my image!"

JaronK

They already made that game. It's 4th edition. It's pretty fun but not quite as fun as 3rd.

[Zharradan Marr]

It's apparently very difficult to make all classes equally powerful without making them the same.

[Phelix-Mu]

It's apparently very difficult to make all classes equally powerful without making them the same.

The reason everything powerful looks like wizard is that wizard looks like everything else whenever wizard wants. There is just about zero ground for other classes to expand into that isn't somehow covered by some brand of cosmic power.

That said there is actually plenty of room for most mundanes to get tweaked upwards without impinging too much on casters (oh, so sad, casters have to share the awesome).

[Segev]

That said there is actually plenty of room for most mundanes to get tweaked upwards without impinging too much on casters.

I tend to prefer this solution, myself.

[eggynack]

Think hard about what you're saying. Seriously. Think. A level 20 wizard and a level 20 ANYTHING should be on equal footing. Those are your words. So... If I were to take one level of each class in alphabetical order until I got to 20 I should be just as strong as a wizard? Because... That's what levels are for?
Perhaps not, as that's not a core assumption of the game. However, one core assumption of D&D, at least by my understanding, is linear warriors quadratic wizards. That means that while a 20th level druid can be stronger than a 20th level fighter (Not a commoner, because another core assumption of the game is that NPC classes are designed to be weaker. Doesn't always work that way though.), but a 1st level fighter will be stronger than a 1st level druid to compensate. Only one of those two things is true, and that's a problematic thing.

Also, you seem to be implying that class balance means that optimization is impossible somehow, because you should just be able to throw whatever you want against a wall and it'll stick just fine. That is an inaccurate thing. You can start from a reasonably balanced place but still award system mastery to some extent, with things like multi-classing, feats, spells, and really any option outside of taking 20 levels in a class. Anyways, my general stance is that serious systemic imbalance, of the level present in this game, is alright as long as the game is transparent about it. It is currently not, even if you think that our cultural norms somehow make imbalance self evident.

[(Un)Inspired]

Perhaps not, as that's not a core assumption of the game. However, one core assumption of D&D, at least by my understanding, is linear warriors quadratic wizards. That means that while a 20th level druid can be stronger than a 20th level fighter (Not a commoner, because another core assumption of the game is that NPC classes are designed to be weaker. Doesn't always work that way though.), but a 1st level fighter will be stronger than a 1st level druid to compensate. Only one of those two things is true, and that's a problematic thing.

Also, you seem to be implying that class balance means that optimization is impossible somehow, because you should just be able to throw whatever you want against a wall and it'll stick just fine. That is an inaccurate thing. You can start from a reasonably balanced place but still award system mastery to some extent, with things like multi-classing, feats, spells, and really any option outside of taking 20 levels in a class. Anyways, my general stance is that serious systemic imbalance, of the level present in this game, is alright as long as the game is transparent about it. It is currently not, even if you think that our cultural norms somehow make imbalance self evident.

I don't mean to say that optimization is somehow impossible. I was just making commentary on the fact that all character at level 20 shouldn't be equal (my multiclassing statement was just a way I tried to show that).

I really like you're statement about class imbalance being ok so long as the game is upfront about it. I think one of the errors that I've been making is assuming the game was upfront about the systems imbalance. Maybe I'm just letting my internal fantasy ideas cloud what the game designers have claimed about the classes?

[Rogue Shadows]

They already made that game. It's 4th edition. It's pretty fun but not quite as fun as 3rd.

Going back a page or two, I'd like to touch on something you said...

My opinion is that caster aren't overpowered in the context of what I expect casters to be able to do based on the movies I've seen and books I read that portray them.

Here's the thing.

Legend of Zelda, Conan the Barbarian, Kull the Conqueror, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, (and many Disney movies, for that matter), Princess Mononoke, and tons of other fantasy works don't really bear this out.

In fantasy, it's far more typical for the Bad Guy to be the wizard and the Good Guy to just be some dude who picked up a sword or bow or whatever and went off and found HIGH ADVENTURE! Even in cases where magic helped out the hero - the three fairies helping Phillip defeat Maleficent; Conan receiving the magic belt that helped him defeat the Master of Yimsha; Ashi-taka* being tainted with the bile of a dying god - the warrior still got to shine on his own merits in addition to recieving magical help. Aladdin defeated his sorcerer enemy without any magic help other than a ride from Carpet to get there (granted, it was via a bunch of Bluff checks, but the point remains that it was through mundane means), and Link regularly faces down all kinds of baddies armed with just some choice magic items and a magic sword - but he's still ultimately the one saving the day, since it's not like the Master Sword can do much without a skilled swordsman to wield it.

The problem with D&D is twofold. One, wizards and sorcerers and the like are given powers and abilities that were normally reserved for the Bad Guys. It was never intended that the Good Guys would get their hands on stuff like that.

But two, wizards and sorcerers and such in D&D are far and away more powerful than their counterparts in just about any medium. Consider that in most mythologies, bringing someone back from the dead is the hardest thing to do, requiring epic quests to the netherworld, bartering with the gods of the dead, being a god yourself, or even a combination of all these things. And half the time it fails.

In D&D? 5th level spell.

-------------------
*Hyphenated to get around overzealous profanity filter

[Jormengand]

Locate City. :smalltongue:

Though, this is more a problem with Explosive Spell than Locate City itself.

Hmm... Death by Thorns is one I'd put on the list, and I'd probably put Prismatic Whatever on, too - there are more horrible spells than those, sure, but they're also problematic.

Phantasmal Killer. Ugh. The number of things you can do to make the fortitude and will DCs both impossible is heinous, and when you get Weird online you can kill everyone in a room.

If you want to have a go at psionics too, Psionic Lion's Charge is a horribly horrible damage-dealer for when it comes online (which is admittedly before you can use it unless you TWF) and the duration is out of whack in 3.5.

Tome of Battle isn't something I know well, but IHS needs a re-write.

If you want to redo ToM while you're at it, watch out for Analyse Item ("Tell me everything there is to know about this epic magic item!"), Spell rebirth (Because IHS is for losers), Rebuild Item (Sorry, this Skull Talisman of Timestop and I are going to have a nice friendly chat about the action economy), Ether reforged (You are ethereal. There is no save. There is no SR. There is an instantaneous duration. I have a wand of Magic Missile) Greater Energy Negation (You deal Vile damage? Naw, I'm imune to that), combo of Archer's Eye (You ignore total concealment) and Sensory focus (Blindsight. No, that's not blindsight 30 ft, not blindsight 60 ft, that's blindsight), combo of Transmute Weapon and Agitate Metal (Your sword is now Lithium. Excuse me while I make your sword glowing hot.), Transmute weapon in the first place (Thinaun sword of awesome, or just turn their sword into ice, which is actually on the special materials list)...

Okay, you may want to stick to spells for this one. Whatever.

[(Un)Inspired]

Going back a page or two, I'd like to touch on something you said...

My opinion is that caster aren't overpowered in the context of what I expect casters to be able to do based on the movies I've seen and books I read that portray them.

Here's the thing.

Legend of Zelda, Conan the Barbarian, Kull the Conqueror, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, (and many Disney movies, for that matter), Princess Mononoke, and tons of other fantasy works don't really bear this out.

In fantasy, it's far more typical for the Bad Guy to be the wizard and the Good Guy to just be some dude who picked up a sword or bow or whatever and went off and found HIGH ADVENTURE! Even in cases where magic helped out the hero - the three fairies helping Phillip defeat Maleficent; Conan receiving the magic belt that helped him defeat the Master of Yimsha; Ashi-taka* being tainted with the bile of a dying god - the warrior still got to shine on his own merits in addition to recieving magical help. Aladdin defeated his sorcerer enemy without any magic help other than a ride from Carpet to get there (granted, it was via a bunch of Bluff checks, but the point remains that it was through mundane means), and Link regularly faces down all kinds of baddies armed with just some choice magic items and a magic sword - but he's still ultimately the one saving the day, since it's not like the Master Sword can do much without a skilled swordsman to wield it.

The problem with D&D is twofold. One, wizards and sorcerers and the like are given powers and abilities that were normally reserved for the Bad Guys. It was never intended that the Good Guys would get their hands on stuff like that.

But two, wizards and sorcerers and such in D&D are far and away more powerful than their counterparts in just about any medium. Consider that in most mythologies, bringing someone back from the dead is the hardest thing to do, requiring epic quests to the netherworld, bartering with the gods of the dead, being a god yourself, or even a combination of all these things. And half the time it fails.

In D&D? 5th level spell.

-------------------
*Hyphenated to get around overzealous profanity filter

You even admit that basically every one of those heros gets really lucky or can only function because a spellcaster graciously grants them the ability to function. I love zelda but seriously link's greatest power is having a high UMD check.

The reason the villain is a caster and the hero is the mundane is because casters are so much stronger than dudes with swords. The hero has to overcome incredible odds to succeed against a foe that by all accounts should be trouncing him. The hero is rarely a caster because:

A. The story of a wizard versus a fighter is over in the first scene (wizard sexy and dies the fighter, roll credits)
B. none of us are spell casters in real life so we can empathize more with some powerless shmuck.
C. Writers have trouble coming up with good climaxes that arent just mundane fights (seriously, in FMA: Brotherhood a gang of wizards watches one wizard have a fistfight with another wizard for the climax...)

If wizards and fighters are balanced then you lose this trope.

You're totally right about mythology. D and D wizards blow mythological wizards pretty much out of the water. As far as other mediums go... You are sadly mistake. Look at Akira, tetsuo takes out legions of mundanes armed with lasers an tanks. He's basically only toppled my crippling psychological issues related to thinking he's inferior to Kaneda (and I guess a series of really percentile rolls for psychic enervation?) Look at lord of the rings, who cares about the mundanes? The big things to worry about are the evil wizard in the tower and the evil angel/ artificer/ Gish in his tower. The entire story is about destroying an OP item the artificer created probably by abusing the DMG rules for custom magic items. How about Jafar from Aladdin. At the end of the movie he doesn't wish to become an all powerful fighter. He wishes to become an all powerful genie (not a wizard in this case but it still shows that magic is leaps and bounds better than mundane in this world)

I totally agree with your statement about wizard power typically being the purview of villains.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Phantasmal Killer. Ugh. The number of things you can do to make the fortitude and will DCs both impossible is heinous, and when you get Weird online you can kill everyone in a room.
Are there unique things you can do for Phantasmal Killer? Because otherwise it's got the major problem of requiring two saves.

[JaronK]

They already made that game. It's 4th edition. It's pretty fun but not quite as fun as 3rd.

No, that's a different game entirely that happens to have class balance.

See, you can totally do class balance with a 3.5 style game. There are plenty of classes that are reasonably balanced to each other yet totally different. For example, Binder, Warblade, Factotum, Dread Necromancer, Beguiler, Bard, Wild Shape Ranger, and Unarmed Variant Swordsage are all dramatically different classes, yet reasonably balanced.

Or, to show a different game, in Shadowrun (a fantasy/cyberpunk hybrid), you have mundanes and magic users... but they're balanced. Totally different in play, but balanced. Sure, a mage can astrally project to scout an area, but a hacker can take over the security cameras, a rigger can send in a surveillance drone, a B&E adept can sneak in through the window, and so on. They can all achieve their goals and play the same general game, but do things very differently.

JaronK

[Rogue Shadows]

You even admit that basically every one of those heros gets really lucky or can only function because a spellcaster graciously grants them the ability to function. I love zelda but seriously link's greatest power is having a high UMD check.

But they don't shine based on their magic items, they shined based on their own abilities, supplemented by magic items, and the point remains that the gap still isn't nearly as large between warrior and wizard in any other medium.


You're totally right about mythology. D and D wizards blow mythological wizards pretty much out of the water. As far as other mediums go... You are sadly mistake. Look at Akira, tetsuo takes out legions of mundanes armed with lasers an tanks.

Apart from the speed at which he reached the orbital cannon via flying, I didn't see him to a single damned thing that couldn't be duplicated by a 10th level caster. And even then it's only the fact that he was flying to the cannon - teleport's range of 100 miles/level (so minimum 1,000 miles for a 10th-level caster) is more than enough to reach something in low Earth orbit.


Look at lord of the rings, who cares about the mundanes? The big things to worry about are the evil wizard in the tower and the evil angel/ artificer/ Gish in his tower.

Apart from control weather, I again didn't see a single thing in those movies, nor read a single thing in the books, that convinced me that any of the casters were significantly above level 10, if even that high. And even still, the casters are still defeated by noncasters: Sarumon is stabbed in the back by Grima, for example.

Sauron's more of a god than a mortal being, so I would rather not count him; even if I did, though, the entire point of why Hobbits in general were able to bear the Ring for so long was that they were so simple and normal. Frodo's certainly gained levels by the time he reaches Mt. Doom, but he's still mundane, and there is nothing innately preventing, say, Gandalf, from destroying the Ring himself via the fires of Mt. Doom other than the power of the Ring itself.

And let's not forget that Sauron was defeated in the first place anyway by someone grabbing a broken sword and cutting off his finger.


How about Jafar from Aladdin. At the end of the movie he doesn't wish to become an all powerful fighter. He wishes to become an all powerful genie (not a wizard in this case but it still shows that magic is leaps and bounds better than mundane in this world)

And yet he's totally defeated by entirely mundane means in Aladdin, as well as in Return of Jafar (his lamp is no more sturdy than an ordinary lamp; yes, it fell into magically-created lava, but we have no reason to believe that the lava itself is magical, except if we want to count a lack of appropriate convection, which would actually make it less hot than normal lava).


I totally agree with your statement about wizard power typically being the purview of villains.

The gap is also, again, not usually nearly as large.

[tyckspoon]

And yet he's totally defeated by entirely mundane means in Aladdin, as well as in Return of Jafar (his lamp is no more sturdy than an ordinary lamp; yes, it fell into magically-created lava, but we have no reason to believe that the lava itself is magical).


I'm not sure I'd list 'bluffed into voluntarily taking on the magical restrictions associated with being a Genie' as entirely mundane, seeing as how the actual restrictions that defeated him are magical limits derived from being a magical creature that required another magical creature's power to turn him into one... (Also, that was the result of a bluff of desperation, as Aladdin was getting his butt whipped by Jafar in a straight physical fight. Turns out Giant Snake beats Plucky Street Fighter.)

[Rogue Shadows]

I'm not sure I'd list 'bluffed into voluntarily taking on the magical restrictions associated with being a Genie' as entirely mundane, seeing as how the actual restrictions that defeated him are magical limits derived from being a magical creature that required another magical creature's power to turn him into one... (Also, that was the result of a bluff of desperation, as Aladdin was getting his butt whipped by Jafar in a straight physical fight. Turns out Giant Snake beats Plucky Street Fighter.)

There was still no spell nor magic item used by Aladdin himself to convince Jafar to take that action, so I'd count it, and that still leaves Return of Jafar, wherein the all-powerful genie is defeated by having his lamp kicked into a lava pit by a parrot. A sentient parrot, mind, but still just a parrot.

I could also whip out more Conan, or maybe some Xena: Warrior Princess, if you like.

[(Un)Inspired]

Dude tetsuo casts genesis and shape change. Akira has a crafted contingent spell resurrection. In the beginning of the move he casts a blast spell that destroys a huge city (it has at least the power of apocalypse from the sky if not stronger).

Even the kids who aren't as high of level as tetsuo or Akira are using telekinesis to lift more weight than that spell actually allows. They cast scry all over the place and etherealness and metaconcert.

Sauron gets wretched in the intro to lords of the rings cause he broke the caster cardinal rule (thou shall not lose caster levels) when he tried to be a Gish.

Jafar is basically a warning story for players who try to wish farm using efreet.

[Aquillion]

I've always felt that Knock, Zone of Truth, Disern Lies, Detect Traps, a were over powered, as they basically made the rogue useless. Not so bad I'd want to cut them, just that I would want to make them higher level.I think people overestimate those spells.

Two things to remember:

First, those spells cost spell slots. It's almost always a worse option to use those spells if you have a rogue around.

Second, I don't think that there's anything wrong with a wizard being able to occupy a rogue's role like that provided the rogue is still a better way to do it. Part of the idea, I think, is that it's bad for a group to feel that they "must" have each class, so some overlap between capabilities is intentional. The wizard gets knock, but the Rogue gets Use Magic Device -- in theory, the idea is that these mean that if someone doesn't want to play one class, you can occupy that role with the other in a pinch.

The problem is the underlying magic system, which means that at later levels you have so many spell slots that the lower-level ones used for that (or anything else) aren't as meaningful. Nearly any spell a wizard can cast is going to overlap with something someone else could do, after all, even if not in such an immediately obvious way -- the idea was that mundanes would be weaker but wouldn't have to worry about conserving magical resources.

In practice this didn't work, for several reasons. First, casters end up with too many spell slots at higher levels.

Second, it's too easy for casters to declare a retreat to rememorize spells. (Rope Trick was mentioned above, but it's only the most famous way. Teleport is also an issue. And even with no easy escape, the fact is that it usually isn't that tough to barricade yourself in a room or cave or whatever or to just retreat to the dungeon entrance to sleep outside.)

Third, casting was made so important that all the other people in the party often depend on it, too, so they're likely to agree to rest because (if not heavily optimized) they know they need someone to buff and heal them to operate against equal-level encounters.

Many individual spells are broken, but it's not just a matter of overpowered spells, and many spells are only problems because the underlying magical context is broken.

(However, trying to fix the entire magical context rather than individual spells hits a bigger problem -- many people play D&D only because they like that magical context. That's part of why 4e was poorly-received. If there are people in your group like that, your only real option is to buff mundanes rather than fix casting, which leads to the ToB.)

[Astral Avenger]

[snip]

Ultimately that's the problem though. The T1 and T2 casters can do virtually anything at all. Reality is their clay to sculpt however they see fit. You simply can't bring non-casters up to that level and still credibly call them non-casters.

Do non-casters need a boost? Yes. However, the casters also need to be nerfed. There's simply no way to achieve real balance without doing both or just gutting one or the other from the game.

meh, easiest way to nerf a sorcerer is to re-label warlock as "sorcerer" off the top of my head I think that would make "sorcerers" tier 3-4. Its not like you even need to change the fluff when you do it.

[Rogue Shadows]

Dude tetsuo casts genesis and shape change. Akira has a crafted contingent spell resurrection. In the beginning of the move he casts a blast spell that destroys a huge city (it has at least the power of apocalypse from the sky if not stronger).

You and I both know it has the power of the locate city bomb, which is only a 4th-level spell slot (and thereby has, at minimum, an 80-mile radius). Tetsuo morphing into that abomination, I wouldn't call shape change, since he didn't have any control over it.

Even still, Tetso (and Akira) may be able to duplicate some high-level spells, but at the same time woefully lack some other abilities one would expect from such a high-level caster. Akira wasn't made with D&D in mind.

[Kelb_Panthera]

How overpowered spells and spell-casters are depends very much on the context and the campaign.

If you allow all the spells in all the books, and you allow all the metamagic shenanigans in all the books, full casters achieve godlike power dwarfing any mundane character's abilities at equal ECL.

If you actively manage players' access to spells, feats, and magic items, it's eminently possible to achieve a game in which both caster and mundane characters are viable and the players have fun.

The OP's plan to rework the spell lists over 12 spell levels and 30 character levels is one approach to this active management. Seems like a hell of a lot of work to me. My approach is that anything outside Core requires DM approval; also there is no "MagicMart". My game world is built accordingly.

To illustrate: in my current campaign, the party just hit level 8. The spell casters are still in awe of the barbarian PC's damage output. This will likely be the case until they encounter enemies that barbarian smashtime is not a successful strategy against. And they will have those encounters. To date, only a troll barbarian has got the better of the PC barbarian (although a dire lion pounce scared him plenty). The barbarian PC was not in the party before level 6, when we added an additional player. The casters will come into their own soon enough. This is not an optimised party - even moderate levels of optimisation extend the gap between mundanes and casters.

Lastly, there's the older edition thing. Casters were always more powerful than mundanes in D&D, but in earlier editions it took them longer to surpass their big dumb fighter buddies than it does in e3.5. If magic is supposed to be the dominant force in the cosmos (and it has to be, if medieval stasis applies) then magic wielders (arcane or divine) are inevitably also dominant. That dominance does not have to translate into PC irrelevance provided that DMs design games and game worlds accordingly.

/my 2cp

Oberoni fallacy; it's not broke because you can fix it. It's a logical fallacy. The truth of the matter is that you -have- to fix it -because- it's broken.

The default rules and assumptions that are layed out in the core rulebooks make it -very- difficult to limit caster's access to spells. Impossible, in fact, for any of them except a wizard by anything but straight DM fiat, and even the wizard only needs to find a large enough community. As you extend into the various supplements this doesn't change except to add the archivist and wu jen to the same category as wizards.


Is this an actual thing? I've yet to find such a rule in my searching.

It's not. Logically, a flying caster should make -less- noise than one that's walking but not none at all. There is nothing in RAW for even that much. Fly does nothing to help with a caster's move silently checks.


Probably more than that. Anything that produces windstorm or greater windspeed stops any ranged weaponry in its tracks, and there's a good number of spells that do that. Wind wall gets all the press cause it's low level and reads "Stop all the archery," but control winds does it too, as does sandstorm, eye of the hurricane, and even storm of vengeance. Friendly fire is also good at stopping archery, especially if you use its less crazy long term mode. It's a tragic thing (for archery).

At the same time, all of those except wind wall also restrict flight. Flying in strong winds runs the risk of being blown away, taking damage from buffeting, and must make concentration checks for further casting.


meh, easiest way to nerf a sorcerer is to re-label warlock as "sorcerer" off the top of my head I think that would make "sorcerers" tier 3-4. Its not like you even need to change the fluff when you do it.

I don't see how that refutes my comment in anyway, if that was your intention. It amounts to replace a T2 with a T3-4.

[eggynack]

At the same time, all of those except wind wall also restrict flight. Flying in strong winds runs the risk of being blown away, taking damage from buffeting, and must make concentration checks for further casting.
Not in particular. Control winds, sandstorm, and eye of the hurricane all have the capacity to leave an untouched area in the center. Arrows just can't pierce those winds, so they don't have to be where you are, which is the place where you're flying unimpeded. Friendly fire only requires a target of any kind within 30 feet, which might restrict where you can be a little bit, but it certainly doesn't completely restrict flight. With storm of vengeance, and come to think of it, blizzard, you can place the huge radius right over your enemies, because the spells aren't centered on you. Thus, I don't think this is an issue for the most part.

Edit: I'm beginning to suspect that you were referring to the impact on enemies as a strength of the spell, in which case it's an accurate thing. Control winds is crazy.

[(Un)Inspired]

You and I both know it has the power of the locate city bomb, which is only a 4th-level spell slot (and thereby has, at minimum, an 80-mile radius). Tetsuo morphing into that abomination, I wouldn't call shape change, since he didn't have any control over it.

Even still, Tetso (and Akira) may be able to duplicate some high-level spells, but at the same time woefully lack some other abilities one would expect from such a high-level caster. Akira wasn't made with D&D in mind.

Hahaha ok you're probably right. Now I'm just really in the mood to desecrate movies and point out bits that fit as d&d spells.

Also, I want to run an Akira campaign sooooo badly right now. Think about it:

You tell everyone to make something mundane because your campaign is gonna be a no magic world and their all gonna be part of a thieves guild in a major city.

You have a useless DMPC that's a huge drag but they have to keep him around because he's part of their guild.

It turns out the alchemist guild (remember no actual magic) in the city were working on unlock the secrets on the human brain. They kidnap the parties useless DMPC and they have to save him.

Just as they finish breaking into the alchemist guild to save him BOOM! One of their experiments unlocks something inside of him and he takes a level in ardent.

He starts going crazy and power hungry and starts gaining ml at a horrifying rate.

The meat of the campaign is taking down this ardent. Players already hate DMPCs so finally dropping this twit will be extremely cathartic.

[LordBlades]

The wildshaped druid doesn't get to use weapons. Animals don't get ranged attacks. Yes, I know druids can cast spells with Natural Spell and they can buff themselves. It is nonetheless possible for the fighter to have more useful combat feats and weapon effects than the druid. I'm not suggesting that the fighter is as powerful, only that a skilled DM can ensure via adventure design and treasure placement that the players will feel relevant and have fun.

Most weapon enhancements simply translate into 'moar damage' (which is easily replicated by spells) or are highly situational (like Ghost Touch or Aptitude for example).

I'm genuinely curious what you'd think would be a few of the 'more useful combat feats and weapon effects' that you feel would give the fighter something useful to do alongside a druid and his animal companion.

[eggynack]

Most weapon enhancements simply translate into 'moar damage' (which is easily replicated by spells) or are highly situational (like Ghost Touch or Aptitude for example).

I'm genuinely curious what you'd think would be a few of the 'more useful combat feats and weapon effects' that you feel would give the fighter something useful to do alongside a druid and his animal companion.
Also, the wild shape'd druid could always just use weapons, if he really wanted to. Ape forms of various sizes and shapes wielding a quarterstaff is a classic maneuver, and you can replace that with a different high power monster with hands if you use fangshields druid substitution levels (CV, 40) or gloves of man (SS, 57). Toss some of the standard quarterstaff based spells onto your prepped list, like shillelagh or entangling staff, and you've got yourself a reasonable combat plan that can use whatever wacky weapon enhancements you want. People just don't tend to do that stuff cause it's not all that great, but if there's some crazy thing the fighter can do because of weapons, the druid can always yell, "Me too!" and jump right on that bandwagon.

[Gemini476]

Most weapon enhancements simply translate into 'moar damage' (which is easily replicated by spells) or are highly situational (like Ghost Touch or Aptitude for example).

I'm genuinely curious what you'd think would be a few of the 'more useful combat feats and weapon effects' that you feel would give the fighter something useful to do alongside a druid and his animal companion.

Can I give suggestions?

I've been working on converting the Rules Cyclopedia Fighter to 3.5, and wow are some of those abilities impressive. Gotta admit I wasn't really expecting some of them, despite it being Fighter Edition.

Spolered because it got long:

First of all, what a Fighter gets at first level: some things made general in 3E (lances doing double damage on charge, setting weapons vs. charge). That's pretty impressive when you're the only one who can do it, but less impressive when everyone else gets your toys (see also:PF Rogue). However, all RC classes also get access to Fighting Withdrawal, which is basically making a 5ft step instead of attacking and getting an AoO if someone follows you. I'd like to have something like that in 3.5, to be honest.
Getting into optional rules, Unarmed Strikes have a built-in Stunning Fist that at later levels (4HD+) can result in an instant KO. Two-Weapon Fighting just means that your second attack is at -4 to-hit (a big rebuff when AC only goes from 10 to 24 and 18 Strength only gives +3). Two-handing a weapon means you get +1 to damage, and shields are actually useful.

So the Fighter is simply the most masterful guy at Fight up until Name Level (level 9). (Unless you use Weapon Masteries, which I'll get to).
At level nine, you have four options for your Fighter. You can become a Landowning Fighter and get a castle with all the prestige associated with that, or you could become a Travelling Fighter and be awesome.
A Lawful Fighter can become a Paladin: they swear fealty to a Lawful clergy and are at their beck and call, get At-Will Detect Evil, spells like a cleric of a third of his level (if he has 13 Wis, note that there are 7 levels of cleric spells and he gets 6s), At-Will Turn Undead as a cleric of a third of his level, can only have a number of hirelings equal to his cleric level, and must help people who ask for it (within certain limits).
A Neutral Fighter (or one of other alignments who doesn't want to join a clergy) can become a Knight. They have a bunch of feudal restrictions, but can request three days of sanctuary at any castle (with no chance of refusal, if they follow the chivalric code.) They're still pretty awesome, though, because a turn spent casting is a turn spent not killing people with your ludicrous combat skills.
A Chaotic Fights can become an Avenger. They make an alliance with a Chaotic clergy, get At-Will Detect Evil, casts spells just like the Paladin except he needs to pay 10,000gp/clerical level, gets Turn Undead but can control them, can not have hirelings (but can charm non-hostile monsters into following him), and can demand sanctuary with sentient Chaotic monsters. He can also pretend to be a Knight and demand sanctuary from others, but who cares when you get to sleep in a Dragon's lair.

HP is also much lower, topping out at 9d8+9*CON+27*2 for a 36th level Fighter - even the biggest, baddest dragons only get to 180-ish. Saves are also much higher in general, since they scale with level properly rather than 3e's thing where it constantly waffles around 50%.
Why am I saying that? Because at level 9 Fighters get three special Fighter abilities.
Smash is Power Attack+. You losing initiative, get -5 to hit, and add your Strength score to damage.
Parry is basically Total Defence - all melee and thrown weapons get -4 to hit you, but you don't get any attacks. Given that the AC range is only 10-24, this is pretty good.
Disarm is simple. On a successful hit, you may choose to disarm rather than do damage. The victim rolls d20+your DEX; if it is higher than their dexterity stat, they drop their weapon.
Generally you only get one action each turn, be it moving, casting, or attacking, and you oinly get one attack. So you force the enemy to spend a turn being useless.

I say generally because at level 12 Fighters get multiple attacks. Or, well, one extra attack. If you can hit the target on a 2.
But you can also swap the attack for a movement action. Yes, SuperPounce is native to the RC Fighter. They get an extra attack at levels 24 and 36, and while they stack with TWF and Weapon Masteries combining them only gets you a maximum of +1 attack vs. just using Multiple Attacks.

"But wait," I hear you say, "While this is nice and all, why is this Fighter Edition?"
Weapon Mastery.
Blowguns shoot little darts of Save-or-Lose massive amounts of health, and having better Weapon Mastery in the weapon gives a penalty to the saving throws. A normal sword starts at doing 1d8 damage and little else, but a Grandmaster does 2d6+8 damage, can save vs. death ray to deflect three melee or thrown atracks/round, can throw it for 2d6+4 damage, gets -4AC to the first three attack/round with it out, gets +8 to-hit, and gets massive bonuses to disarm (+9 if a Fighter). And that's just one weapon. Daggers get critical hits on an increasingly large amount of numbers (which no one else gets), Lances presumably do quadruple damage on charges for Fighters (...maybe that class feature was better than I thought!), battleaxes make 'em lose initiative and stun them...

Basically, Fighters are good because they have options. Oh, and Casters have worse spells (although cureall-heal all HP-is pretty neat), cannot usurp the Fighter in the slightest, and are incredibly squishy. Like, really. 18 Con only gives +3HP/level, and when you roll all your d4s and only get 1hp/level after level 10, so average HP is really low.

As for magic items, they are rare and wonderful and you generally shouldn't rely on being able to get one. Most of the abilities for swords are somewhat situational, although on-command Haste and 1d3 Wishes are probably the highlights of that particular table. Level drain on hits might be cool, but it's limited to a certain amount of levels forever.

As for Wizard spells, there are some good ones at the higher levels. Level 9 has Contingency (4th level spells or lower), Shapechange (takes the form for 10 minutes/level, keeps own HP and does not gain spellcasting, gains special attack forms and weaknesses), Gate (creates a portal, you can try to call an Immortal but they may smite you), Wish (malevolent and nigh-omnipotent, but you need to be 36th level), Heal (Arcane Cureall, basically) and some other ones (Meteor Swarm for 16d6 damage (av. 56 damage) is pretty neat).

Basically, give the Fighter viable options and limit the options that the Wizard has and everyone can go home happy (the Wizard is still happy because 13 spells/level is still 117 spells). Oh, and don't allow the Wizard to get as many spells known as he gets automatically - if he only gets a few automatic spells known/level but you drop some neat-but-not-overpowered scrolls in the loot, that solves a lot of problems.

But the Fighter's options need to be viable - don't put in things that no-sell arrows and he can still deal with flying foes, for instance. And give him some abilities that cause saving throws, because those were never meant to be exclusive to magic and poison.

...This post might be a bit incoherent, in retrospect, but that's because there's so many issues with 3Es design that I can't just focus on one.

[atomicwaffle]

Evard's Black Tentacles. I call this spell the magekiller. Impervious to all forms of damage, and grapples them so no somatic components and no reflex saves. How convenient its the exact same radius as a fireball or scintillating sphere.

[Segev]

Can I give suggestions?

I've been working on converting the Rules Cyclopedia Fighter to 3.5, and wow are some of those abilities impressive. Gotta admit I wasn't really expecting some of them, despite it being Fighter Edition.

(...)

Basically, give the Fighter viable options and limit the options that the Wizard has and everyone can go home happy (the Wizard is still happy because 13 spells/level is still 117 spells). Oh, and don't allow the Wizard to get as many spells known as he gets automatically - if he only gets a few automatic spells known/level but you drop some neat-but-not-overpowered scrolls in the loot, that solves a lot of problems.

But the Fighter's options need to be viable - don't put in things that no-sell arrows and he can still deal with flying foes, for instance. And give him some abilities that cause saving throws, because those were never meant to be exclusive to magic and poison.

...This post might be a bit incoherent, in retrospect, but that's because there's so many issues with 3Es design that I can't just focus on one.
I like this post and its contents. It would seem worthwhile to identify the options fighters SHOULD have. As you note in the part I didn't quote, a lot of fighter options became general options.

And some of those are...less exciting, even so. "Set against a charge?" Wizard says "okay, so I won't charge you; not like I wanted to be in melee anyway."

But yes. Options tend to be what really make something powerful. Obviously, the options themselves must be sufficiently powerful, but the more options there are, the more likely there are to BE powerful ones...or powerful combinations.

Options are what make Sorcerers T2.

Swappable options are what make Wizards T1.