Introducing interesting limitations to primary casters (houseruling)

[King of Nowhere]

To a story, limitations are more interesting than powers. A hero is defined less by what he can do, and more but what he must struggle to do. What makes superman an interesting character are his limitations; the vulnerability to kriptonite, and his moral code keeping him from just powering his way to everything. without those, he'd be a boring invincible hero, who could be challenged only by boring invincible villlains. costs of using powers are also good ways to introduce limitations; the one ring basically works as a ring of invisibility, but wearing it brings the eye of sauron on you, and threatens your sanity; this makes it more interesting. There is a really good dissertation on the topic as Sanderson's secoond law on magic systems (http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-second-law/) for those interested; my point was to get by a basic premise: characters that can do everything without limitations are boring. Batman wizards and clerics, I'm looking at you. I am not particularly experienced, but every time I enter a discussion I discover new and crazy possibilities for abuse. Stuff that cannot be countered, things without any way to work around them.

That's not the campaign world I want to play in!

So I am trying to come up with limitations to those powers. Mind you, I am not trying to trounce caster power, or to balance things. Casters are powerful, and they are supposed to remain powerful. It makes sense that the guy who can reshape reality with a flick of fingers and the guy who is best buddy with a god are more powerful than the guy wielding a pointy stick. I merely want to introduce limitations and smart ways of counterplay, so that a fight can become an excercice in cleverness rather than a contest at who has the biggest "I win" button. My goal is for casters to keep the bulk of their power, while giving non-casters niches where they actually do things better.

Ok, enough introduction. Let's bring some actual ideas to allow counterplaying. I would like to hear the opinion of someone more experienced than myself.

casting in melee: story-wise, casters are susceptible to being disrupted in melee. Except that by casting defensively they are not.
- casting defensively is not allowed. You want to cast in melee, you take an attack of opportunity. If you make a 5-foot step before casting, your foes can make a 5-foot step to aoo you.
- the feat "casting defensively" allows you to cast spells while using the toal defence action; basically, you are good at dodging attacks while casting a spell at the same time.
- a ranged character with multiple attacks per round can skip one attack and save it towards making an aoo. He doesn't have to waste his whole round to keep a prepared action. [I am using those already, and casters stuck in melee have a hard time getting away from a powerattacking barbarian. This turned out to hamper clerics much more than wizards, since all the best mid-level clerical spells are touch. I would like some improvement so that they won't completely destroy a low level cleric offensive capability)
- Optional: if a caster moves and cast, a martial can skip his aoo on movement, and instead use it with a partial charge to run after the caster and try to disrupt the spell. I am uncertain if I should introduce this one; at the very high levels, it doesn't matter much, cause the casters have ways to stay out of range, but it is really punitive at the low levels. I don't want to be harsh on that poor level 1 wizard. Maybe introduce a feat that allows you to do that? that would also help warriors being useful over other martial classes.
Ideally, with those limitations, a caster is vulnerable to being surprised and caught in melee

scry and die: there must be some good ways to try to counter those.
- liberally interpret the concept of "connection" regarding who you can scry. You have enough connection to scry on someone if you have some idea who this guy is, some way to differentiate him from others in a crowd. If you see someone wearing a mask, you cannot scry on him, because you don't have any flippin idea how to recognize him. But then maybe you'll recognize a very peculiar scar on his hand, and so you can scry on him because you have something to identify him - though it would be a hard check, not something you can easily pass by rolling a 2. And if you fail the check, you cannot try to scry on the same person until you gather more informations on him.
- liberally interpret the concept of "connection" regarding who you can scry or where you can teleport. You can teleport to a place if you know where that place is and could reasonably find it flying. if you scry on your enemies inside a room, you can't teleport to them, because you have no flippin idea where that particular room could be. But hey, you get to see out of a window and you see the tour eiffel! Now you know they are in paris, and you have a good idea where to find them; you can attempt to teleport, but with a steep chance of failure. Even greater teleport should not be guaranteed in this circumstance, because you don't know exactly where the place is; I would ask for some kind of orienteering check to see if you can determine the position of the place accurately enough to teleport there.
- contact other planes, legend lore, and those kind of spells: they bypass any antiscry buffer, so they must be nerfed a bit. Instead of rolling probability, decide story-wise what it makes sense for the other planes to know. Do not allow vague questions like "will anyone threaten me in the next week?"; no, one using such a spell must already have a pretty good idea of what they are asking stuff about, because beings from other planes have more interesting things to do than watching you all the time. Have powerful being contacted by that spell being annoyed if someone is casting it all the time, and refusing to answer.
Ideally, with those limitations in place, there is again a point to making gather information checks. Gather information will let you discover that someone is studying a way to kill you, and only then you can use divinations to refine your knowlege and best see how to defend yourself.

mind-affecting spells: people are not easily controlled
- charme makes the target your friend. Period. You would not help your friend rob a bank (well, depending on the kind of person you are, at least). You would not help your friend beat up your other friends. You would not do suicidal missions for your friend, unless you were fooled into underestimating the risks. The brain will interpret "friendship" in its own way, so an egocentric person prone to betraying his "friends" at the first opportunity to get ahead will still betray you, and a sexual molester may try to rape you after receiving this spell if you are of the appropriate gender (because that's how he reacts to being attracted to someone). In any case, the victim realizes what happened after the spell expires, and will be pissed.
- domination will allow a second saving throw if you ask the target to do something he would object vehemently. Just take this description liberally. Making one attack his own allies definitely qualifies, while tellling them to escape won't (unless one is a crazy bloofthirsty berserker, in which case he'd be fine with attacking his allies but not with escaping :smallsmile:). asking for reserved informations, or asking for the victim's possessions, both qualify. The victim will obey commands, but will definitely try to drop hints or sabotage you in some way if he can. (I once ran a mission where the party barbarian was dominated into assassinating the guy the party was escorting, and he tried in any way to act strange to warn the rest of the party; unfortunately, they were used to the barbarian acting strangely on his own, so they didn't pay it due attention)
- people don't like the idea of someone entering their minds and forcing them to do stuff. if someone does it regularly, chances are he will attract the attention of some paladin, or a local ruler will hire someone powerful to deal with the offender.

skipping costs by loophole abuses: the price of power should not be subjected to discounts
- if a spell has an xp cost, that should not be possible to avoid. I'm thinking of that specific item that lets you store your xp, then cast a dozen wishes and then recover all your xp minus 500. Such things should not exist.
- using a spell as a spell-like ability from a polimorphed creature should still cost xp
- same goes for everything with expensive material components.
- summoned creatures should not be able to use spells or SLA with xp or high material cost; or maybe the summoner should pay the cost.

contingency abuse, or how to defeat powerful foes while sleeping without even waking up
- there once was a limitation of one contingency per wizard. there still is this limitation.
- contingency is not omniscient. It must have a way to recognize that its condition has been met, and it must be consistent with the power of a 6th level spell. So if your contingency is set to trigger if you are attacked, it does not trigger until you become actually aware of the attack; if it is set to triigger for someone who is thinking to attack you, it does not trigger if that someone is protected by mind blank. And so on

Those are the things coming to my mind so far. It needs some work, though:
- astral projection: basically, you are immortal. the only way to kill you would be to cut your silvery cord, which is basically impossible anyway. I would like some way to make the use of astral projection an actual trade of risk; cutting the cord should become reasonably possible to achieve for someone prepared, but it should not boil down to "oh, and while you were going around, suddenly you all die because someone cut the cord".
- minionmancy: I hope that if you can't skip the xp cost, and if dominated minions carry a risk factor, minionmancy should be reduced at reasonable levels.
- contingency on minions: I don't want to ban this outright (limitations are more interesting than outright banning) but i'd like to limit those contingency's capabilities to affect you.
- shapechange: it probably does not need limitations besides preventing you from skipping xp costs with SLA.
- probably there's a ton stuff i don't even know about that needs some limitation.

[Jormengand]

I feel it would be easier to create new casters with limited spell lists, or go around mass-banning spells, rather than trying to make rules which essentially mean that if you're a sorcerer trying to 1v1 a fighter, you just lose because you cannot cast any spells, except if you already polymorphed into a dragon before the fight in which case you win because you're a dragon.

[Pleh]

Similiarly, Spheres of Power looks like a great system for balancing power with limitations.

[Cosi]

scry and die: there must be some good ways to try to counter those.

The specific spells scry and teleport are only part of why Scry and Die happens. In general, Scry and Die is a result of short term buffs being very powerful, and making the attacker's advantage overwhelming. If you banned those spells, people will just figure out how to do it with dimension door or something.


- contact other planes, legend lore, and those kind of spells: they bypass any antiscry buffer, so they must be nerfed a bit. Instead of rolling probability, decide story-wise what it makes sense for the other planes to know. Do not allow vague questions like "will anyone threaten me in the next week?"; no, one using such a spell must already have a pretty good idea of what they are asking stuff about, because beings from other planes have more interesting things to do than watching you all the time. Have powerful being contacted by that spell being annoyed if someone is casting it all the time, and refusing to answer.

If the spell only tells you things the DM thinks you should know, there's very little reason to cast it.


Ideally, with those limitations in place, there is again a point to making gather information checks. Gather information will let you discover that someone is studying a way to kill you, and only then you can use divinations to refine your knowlege and best see how to defend yourself.

Why not just make Gather Information ranks give you divination SLAs? If the best information gathering comes from divination, putting a bunch of ranks into Gather Information should allow you to divine things.


- people don't like the idea of someone entering their minds and forcing them to do stuff. if someone does it regularly, chances are he will attract the attention of some paladin, or a local ruler will hire someone powerful to deal with the offender.

This is either stupid or pointless. It's stupid if the encounter just squishes the PCs, because it encourages a game of "chicken" where losing means rocks fall and everyone dies. If the encounter is a level appropriate encounter, it just means there's a different fluff text on some of your fights and you don't care. Also not clear how people will find out.


- if a spell has an xp cost, that should not be possible to avoid. I'm thinking of that specific item that lets you store your xp, then cast a dozen wishes and then recover all your xp minus 500. Such things should not exist.

I can only really thing of one spell with an XP cost that's balanced with it and broken without it (wish). Spells like simulacrum or ice assassin are broken whether you're paying the cost or not.


- using a spell as a spell-like ability from a polimorphed creature should still cost xp

What about the creatures themselves? What does an Efreet (with no XP to pay) do when trying to use its wish SLA.


- there once was a limitation of one contingency per wizard. there still is this limitation.

Just ban Craft Contingent Spell.


- contingency is not omniscient. It must have a way to recognize that its condition has been met, and it must be consistent with the power of a 6th level spell. So if your contingency is set to trigger if you are attacked, it does not trigger until you become actually aware of the attack; if it is set to triigger for someone who is thinking to attack you, it does not trigger if that someone is protected by mind blank. And so on

This is reasonable, and probably necessary. Otherwise you can use contingency as the world's weirdest divination spell.


- minionmancy: I hope that if you can't skip the xp cost, and if dominated minions carry a risk factor, minionmancy should be reduced at reasonable levels.

Neither planar binding nor animate dead cost any XP to use.


- shapechange: it probably does not need limitations besides preventing you from skipping xp costs with SLA.

Yes it does. You gain more than you lose when you change forms with shapechange, meaning you can use it to stack immunities.

[King of Nowhere]

I feel it would be easier to create new casters with limited spell lists, or go around mass-banning spells, rather than trying to make rules which essentially mean that if you're a sorcerer trying to 1v1 a fighter, you just lose because you cannot cast any spells, except if you already polymorphed into a dragon before the fight in which case you win because you're a dragon.

Is that really any worse than having rules which essentially mean that if you're a sorcerer trying to 1v1 a fighter and you're competent in optimization you win automatically?

Anyway, feel free to offer alternatives that create opportunities for counterplay. mass-banning spells is not fun

[Jormengand]

Is that really any worse than having rules which essentially mean that if you're a sorcerer trying to 1v1 a fighter and you're competent in optimization you win automatically?

Hint: that's still going to happen under this system. A sorcerer will barely ever be in an actual confrontation with a fighter; he'll send one of his summoned/called/animated/raised creatures (who is still leagues apart from the fighter in terms of power) to go and do it for him. Or if he has to get his hands dirty, he'll use fly and protection from arrows (which are also available to the truenamer, if you want to get a sense for just how screwed the fighter is) and start blasting. He doesn't need to charm anyone, mitigate any XP costs, use any of your "Your DM decides whether he feels like your spell should be effective or not" divinations, cast in melee, or even have contingency among his spells known to do that.

Either you need to ban lots of spells, or you need to nerf them into oblivion the way you have with the entire schools of divination and enchantment (the latter of which was the one which needed it least).

[ZamielVanWeber]

Do you want to nerfed all casters? Ban Wizard, Wu Jen, Sorcerer, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Warmage, Cleric, Favored Soul, Druid, Spirit Shaman, and anything on the level of these classes (I admit Warmage is a bit of a stretch at times). Everything else left should be not too bad due to have narrow list or limited castings. Much better than nerfing huge swaths of spells which will deal with problem children as well as perfectly balanced spells and also means your players cannot book dive for weird spells that no one uses because they are almost as good as a now nerfed spell.

[King of Nowhere]

I get the impression that I was misunderstood. My purpose is to make the game more interesting. I don't want to ban or nerf half the stuff regarding casters. I want to switch the game from "for every problem, I have a spell that solves it" to "I must be smart in using my spells if I want to solve problems". I want to create limitation less to nerf and more so that players have to find their way around them.

btw, fly is not a safeguard as any melee of decent level will have some means to fly, and protection from arrow only works against nonmagical arrows.

[Cosi]

If you want people to be creative using spells, you should step up your problems, not step down their solutions. Have enemy casters with their own plans, tactics, and countermeasures. Have solutions prepared for obvious tactics. Use their strategies against them. Create situations their powers can't instantly solve.

[Deadline]

btw, fly is not a safeguard as any melee of decent level will have some means to fly, and protection from arrow only works against nonmagical arrows.

At low levels, those two are sufficient to render you invulnerable, as low level melee threats generally can't afford fly items (potions and oils, maybe, but it's not a long term solution, just a one-shot and then you're poor again). At higher levels, the wizard has access to Wind Wall and Dispel Magic. The latter with hilarious results.

Best solution to flight for a melee threat is natural flight via wings. Not too many races provide that (Dragonborn of Bahamut with the wings aspect jumps to mind).

To echo Cosi on the point about creative thinking, there are certain level benchmarks for PCs where certain challenges that once require creative solutions are now minor inconveniences at best and are solved trivially by a spell. Climbing or balancing issues can be rendered irrelevant by Levitate, Fly, or even Dimension Door. Once a party has reliable access to those, you need to use different challenges.

If your challenges are being trivially solved by spells, you need to either ban those spells, or use different challenges. 20th level characters aren't going to be challenged by locked doors, pit traps, or who-dunnit style mystery plots. That kind of paradigm shift happens as early as 5th level (if not sooner for some casters), and for a DM who doesn't know it's coming, it can cause a real problem.

[King of Nowhere]

If your challenges are being trivially solved by spells, you need to either ban those spells, or use different challenges. 20th level characters aren't going to be challenged by locked doors, pit traps, or who-dunnit style mystery plots. That kind of paradigm shift happens as early as 5th level (if not sooner for some casters), and for a DM who doesn't know it's coming, it can cause a real problem.

That's a useful answer. I have no experience DMing above level 8, and anyway none of us has a skilll comparable to what you guys have here.
Still, what kind of meaningful challenge can you give to higher level adventurers? A wizard with infinity contingencies, a monster with hundreds of hp... sorry if this kind of campaign feels to me like a cheap dragonball ripoff, with the protagonists aquiring new powers and facing villains randomly more powerful who just happened to come by in order.
Some of my best villains were no match for the pcs in a direct fight, but they used cunning to compensate for that. or they were vastly more powerful than the pcs, but the pcs had options, since my bit of houseruling prevented the villains from just teleporting there and curbstomping them.
I would like to keep those options. Unless you know of ways in which a weaker character could still cause significant probllems to a stronger one without some tweaking to the rules...

[BaronDoctor]

I'm reminded of the old thread about "How do you beat a Batman Wizard? With the Joker (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=5496158&postcount=1)." Some changeling combination of bard and spymaster (from complete adventurer), or possibly master of masks (complete scoundrel).

You beat prepared casters by making them react, by misdirecting them, by never being where they expect you to be.

[Der_DWSage]

I'd say there's actually a much simpler, faster way to limit things. If you don't want to make ten new casting classes and/or put pre-requisite spells on other bits of magic, which is the long-and-hard way of doing things...

Look at how Psionics did it. The best-in-slot spells are restricted to those that specialized in it, while many others are just general spells. Haste and Shapechange is now only available to Transmuters, Create Undead is now only available to Necromancers, etc.

[Doctor Awkward]

I think you have a number of underlying flaws in your premise that share a root cause in having an unrealistic expectation of what a table-top RPG experience should be.



To a story, limitations are more interesting than powers.

The problem here is that you are conflating writing constraints with character abilities.
Poems use writing constraints. (rhyming scheme, alliteration, etc.) Fantasy authors use writing constraints.
Tabletop games use the ruleset to accomplish this, not narrative tools.


A hero is defined less by what he can do, and more but what he must struggle to do. What makes superman an interesting character are his limitations; the vulnerability to kriptonite, and his moral code keeping him from just powering his way to everything. without those, he'd be a boring invincible hero, who could be challenged only by boring invincible villlains.
In this specific example, you're right about the morality, but wrong on the kryptonite. A Krytonite Factor is one of the laziest writing tools in existence, hence the reason the trope is named after an aspect of Superman. Once it's established, it becomes a crutch for lesser writers to create artificial drama in any given situation. All of the best Superman stories, like What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, and Geoff John's Superman: Secret Origin never involve kryptonite (I overlook Metallo's involvment in Secret Origin because the rest of the story is so well done). They are always about whether or not he is doing the right thing. Because the whole point of Superman's character is that an "Eye for an eye" is wrong, and people who wield ultimate power have the ultimate duty to use it responsibly, and must always be held to a higher standard than those they go up against.


costs of using powers are also good ways to introduce limitations; the one ring basically works as a ring of invisibility, but wearing it brings the eye of sauron on you, and threatens your sanity; this makes it more interesting.

Again, table-top gaming is different from fiction in this regard. Limitations on items are gameplay balancing factors, not literary devices.


my point was to get by a basic premise: characters that can do everything without limitations are boring. Batman wizards and clerics, I'm looking at you. I am not particularly experienced, but every time I enter a discussion I discover new and crazy possibilities for abuse. Stuff that cannot be countered, things without any way to work around them.
Another flaw in your approach is the idea that an invincible hero cannot be anything but boring, and this is simply not the case. A lot of beloved heroes are so because they never lose. It's not about whether or not they will win the battle, but how cool they will look while winning the battle. For examples of this, see Cobra from Space Adventure Cobra, Saitama from One Punch Man, Alucard from Hellsing, DC Comic's Spectre, Ip Man (https://youtu.be/x9ZRjIiNzhM?t=3m27s) in the films as played by Donnie Yen, The Doctor from Doctor Who, the titular protagonist of Bayonetta, and Dante from Devil May Cry.

In table-top gaming, you have pretty much everyone in the Exalted system, where players are actually awarded bonus dice for being as showy and stylish as possible.


That's not the campaign world I want to play in!
:smalleek:
...Okay then... it's possible that 3.5 D&D might not be the system for you.

I could suggest Shadow of the Demon Lord, where martial characters have an enormous advantage over most spellcasters.



So I am trying to come up with limitations to those powers. Mind you, I am not trying to trounce caster power, or to balance things. Casters are powerful, and they are supposed to remain powerful. It makes sense that the guy who can reshape reality with a flick of fingers and the guy who is best buddy with a god are more powerful than the guy wielding a pointy stick. I merely want to introduce limitations and smart ways of counterplay, so that a fight can become an excercice in cleverness rather than a contest at who has the biggest "I win" button. My goal is for casters to keep the bulk of their power, while giving non-casters niches where they actually do things better.

I will keep your design goal in mind for below.


Ok, enough introduction. Let's bring some actual ideas to allow counterplaying. I would like to hear the opinion of someone more experienced than myself.

casting in melee: story-wise, casters are susceptible to being disrupted in melee. Except that by casting defensively they are not.
- casting defensively is not allowed. You want to cast in melee, you take an attack of opportunity. If you make a 5-foot step before casting, your foes can make a 5-foot step to aoo you.
- the feat "casting defensively" allows you to cast spells while using the toal defence action; basically, you are good at dodging attacks while casting a spell at the same time.
- a ranged character with multiple attacks per round can skip one attack and save it towards making an aoo. He doesn't have to waste his whole round to keep a prepared action. [I am using those already, and casters stuck in melee have a hard time getting away from a powerattacking barbarian. This turned out to hamper clerics much more than wizards, since all the best mid-level clerical spells are touch. I would like some improvement so that they won't completely destroy a low level cleric offensive capability)
- Optional: if a caster moves and cast, a martial can skip his aoo on movement, and instead use it with a partial charge to run after the caster and try to disrupt the spell. I am uncertain if I should introduce this one; at the very high levels, it doesn't matter much, cause the casters have ways to stay out of range, but it is really punitive at the low levels. I don't want to be harsh on that poor level 1 wizard. Maybe introduce a feat that allows you to do that? that would also help warriors being useful over other martial classes.
Ideally, with those limitations, a caster is vulnerable to being surprised and caught in melee

With all of those limitations, a spellcaster who does not have a Quickened teleport-outside-of-the-melee-attacker's-Run-range is utterly screwed if they are ever caught in melee (quickened and Swift action spells never provoke attacks of opportunity). Because all the melee character ever has to do is run up to the spellcaster and threaten him to stop him from ever casting another spell. You essentially want to give every character who wields a melee weapon the Mage Slayer feat for free. Likewise Gish characters would be non-existent under that system.

If you really want to fairly inconvenience spellcasters with melee characters, then just houserule the already existing movement restrictions on Readied actions (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialInitiativeActions.htm#ready), by adding, "You are permitted to take a 5-foot step as part of a readied action to disrupt a spellcaster even if you have already otherwise moved in your round."

That way denying the actions of a spellcaster goes from automatic to something you must actually invest your own action in doing.


scry and die: there must be some good ways to try to counter those.
Like Private Sanctum (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magesPrivateSanctum.htm), Nondetection (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/nondetection.htm), Detect Scrying and Forbiddance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/forbiddance.htm)?


- liberally interpret the concept of "connection" regarding who you can scry. You have enough connection to scry on someone if you have some idea who this guy is, some way to differentiate him from others in a crowd. If you see someone wearing a mask, you cannot scry on him, because you don't have any flippin idea how to recognize him. But then maybe you'll recognize a very peculiar scar on his hand, and so you can scry on him because you have something to identify him - though it would be a hard check, not something you can easily pass by rolling a 2. And if you fail the check, you cannot try to scry on the same person until you gather more informations on him.
- liberally interpret the concept of "connection" regarding who you can scry or where you can teleport. You can teleport to a place if you know where that place is and could reasonably find it flying. if you scry on your enemies inside a room, you can't teleport to them, because you have no flippin idea where that particular room could be. But hey, you get to see out of a window and you see the tour eiffel! Now you know they are in paris, and you have a good idea where to find them; you can attempt to teleport, but with a steep chance of failure. Even greater teleport should not be guaranteed in this circumstance, because you don't know exactly where the place is; I would ask for some kind of orienteering check to see if you can determine the position of the place accurately enough to teleport there.
- contact other planes, legend lore, and those kind of spells: they bypass any antiscry buffer, so they must be nerfed a bit. Instead of rolling probability, decide story-wise what it makes sense for the other planes to know. Do not allow vague questions like "will anyone threaten me in the next week?"; no, one using such a spell must already have a pretty good idea of what they are asking stuff about, because beings from other planes have more interesting things to do than watching you all the time. Have powerful being contacted by that spell being annoyed if someone is casting it all the time, and refusing to answer.
Ideally, with those limitations in place, there is again a point to making gather information checks. Gather information will let you discover that someone is studying a way to kill you, and only then you can use divinations to refine your knowlege and best see how to defend yourself.

Oh you mean non-magical counters of the spell nerf variety. I see.
All of this is grossly unfair to spellcasters, as there really is no point in casting any spell that simply has an arbitrary chance to fail. I mean, if your goal is to give onus to mundane methods by taking away options from magical methods then you've succeeded. But you claimed above that wasn't what you wanted to do.


mind-affecting spells: people are not easily controlled
- charme makes the target your friend. Period. You would not help your friend rob a bank (well, depending on the kind of person you are, at least). You would not help your friend beat up your other friends. You would not do suicidal missions for your friend, unless you were fooled into underestimating the risks. The brain will interpret "friendship" in its own way, so an egocentric person prone to betraying his "friends" at the first opportunity to get ahead will still betray you, and a sexual molester may try to rape you after receiving this spell if you are of the appropriate gender (because that's how he reacts to being attracted to someone). In any case, the victim realizes what happened after the spell expires, and will be pissed.
- domination will allow a second saving throw if you ask the target to do something he would object vehemently. Just take this description liberally. Making one attack his own allies definitely qualifies, while tellling them to escape won't (unless one is a crazy bloofthirsty berserker, in which case he'd be fine with attacking his allies but not with escaping :smallsmile:). asking for reserved informations, or asking for the victim's possessions, both qualify. The victim will obey commands, but will definitely try to drop hints or sabotage you in some way if he can. (I once ran a mission where the party barbarian was dominated into assassinating the guy the party was escorting, and he tried in any way to act strange to warn the rest of the party; unfortunately, they were used to the barbarian acting strangely on his own, so they didn't pay it due attention)
- people don't like the idea of someone entering their minds and forcing them to do stuff. if someone does it regularly, chances are he will attract the attention of some paladin, or a local ruler will hire someone powerful to deal with the offender.

Charm Person already functions exactly as you want it to. If a player Charms an NPC, you can determine on the spot exactly how that particular NPC would regard a friend. That spell is not mind control, and was never intended to be.
Similarly, being dominated doesn't require that liberal of an interpretation to function like that either. Any time a creature is dominated, everyone around him is entitled to a DC 15 Spot check to notice that he isn't behaving like he normally would, and that is generally enough to uncover the domination.
And again, Protection from Evil suppresses all compulsion and charm effects for the duration. And it's a first level spell on both divine and arcane lists. I really get the feeling you just don't want spellcasters to be doing things in your games.


skipping costs by loophole abuses: the price of power should not be subjected to discounts
- if a spell has an xp cost, that should not be possible to avoid. I'm thinking of that specific item that lets you store your xp, then cast a dozen wishes and then recover all your xp minus 500. Such things should not exist.
- using a spell as a spell-like ability from a polimorphed creature should still cost xp
- same goes for everything with expensive material components.
- summoned creatures should not be able to use spells or SLA with xp or high material cost; or maybe the summoner should pay the cost.

You don't need to alter the system for this. Most crafting abuses are entirely subject to the whims of the DM. If a player says "I want to craft this at a reduced cost by placing restrictions on it like in the DMG", you say "No". Thought Bottle abuse to negate XP costs for crafting and spells is expressly forbidden by a Sage ruling. If a player complains that those aren't really rules, you say, "They are if I say they are."

You don't need blanket ban rules on Summoned creature SLA's. Just specifically tell your players "No infinite wish loops."


contingency abuse, or how to defeat powerful foes while sleeping without even waking up
- there once was a limitation of one contingency per wizard. there still is this limitation.
- contingency is not omniscient. It must have a way to recognize that its condition has been met, and it must be consistent with the power of a 6th level spell. So if your contingency is set to trigger if you are attacked, it does not trigger until you become actually aware of the attack; if it is set to triigger for someone who is thinking to attack you, it does not trigger if that someone is protected by mind blank. And so on

Ban the Craft Contingent Spell feat. Done.

Those restrictions on Contingency are entirely self-defeating. Even if you specified a trigger as, "If I am ever threatened with harm in any way while I am asleep, cast an Alarm spell", the spell would fail every time because you would be asleep. You might as well just ban the spell outright.


Those are the things coming to my mind so far. It needs some work, though:
- astral projection: basically, you are immortal. the only way to kill you would be to cut your silvery cord, which is basically impossible anyway. I would like some way to make the use of astral projection an actual trade of risk; cutting the cord should become reasonably possible to achieve for someone prepared, but it should not boil down to "oh, and while you were going around, suddenly you all die because someone cut the cord".

Not true. You can also kill an astral traveler by destroying their helpless physical body. Succeeding with any of the dispel magic line of spells ends the effect as well. I really feel like your agrument here is, "Spellcasters can take steps to protect themselves while using this spell, and I don't want them too." Astral forms can be damaged by anything that works against incorporeal targets, and destroying the astral form also ends the spell.


*tons of other stuff*

To repeat, it really sounds like your biggest issue is entirely with the basic fact that 3.5 D&D exists in a state of magic > not-magic. Someone already suggested creating new caster classes with limited spell lists and selective banning of spells. If none of those options appeal to you, then I will reiterate my observation that D&D 3.5 might not be the best system for you to run.

[Darth Ultron]

I have a couple of house rules you might want to look at that I've used in my games for years. I too just go for the ''adjusting'' things and not just doing the ''ban'':



scry and die: there must be some good ways to try to counter those.


Teleportation-You can only teleport a number of miles equal to your caster level. (When teleporting through the use of a racial ability, the distance is limited to a number of miles equal to your total HD.) Teleportation spells of 4th level or lower (which includes dimension door) can’t transport you further than you can see. The range of these abilities is reduced to line of sight. You can’t use them to transport onto the other side of a closed door, or if you’re blinded, or if it’s too dark to see. You can use them to transport through a window (as you can see what’s on the other side)



Teleport Destination: The caster must have a clear mental picture of the teleport destination. For the best results the caster must physically be in the target location for a full hour and make careful notes of the sight, sound, smell and feel of the area. The caster must pick a mostly static location, one that does not change with the passage of time. A destination only remains valid if less then 50% of area remains the same to match the mental picture in the casters mind. Small changes, such as a tree blowing in the wind have no effect, however cutting down the tree makes the destination invalid for a caster that has the tree as part of their mental destination picture. If the caster does not have a full hour of study, physically at the location, the chance of the teleportation success is only 20%, plus one percent per caster level.

The teleport destionation rule above has stopped any and all teleport abuse.




- contact other planes, legend lore, and those kind of spells: they bypass any antiscry buffer, so they must be nerfed a bit.

Divination/Contact Other Plane. Contacting divine or extraplanar beings in this manner can be accomplished once every 30 days with no penalty. More often than that carries an amount of risk. Each contact thereafter carries a cumulative 5% risk of angering the being and incurring the Int/Cha decrease (or Wis decrease if the divine version is cast). [Alternates: Cumulative 5% chance of being driven insane, being given a Geas, the being sends an Aleax after you, similar effects]




mind-affecting spells: people are not easily controlled

The fix here is to simply not have a world of level one commoners.




contingency abuse,

Contingency:Never has any more information than the caster has; thus, for example, if the caster has a Contingency for "just before I walk into an Antimagic Field" the Contingency will only go off if the caster knows about the Antimagic Field.




- astral projection:

Astral Projection:spell ends if the recipient leaves the Astral Plane by any means; and doesn't make copies of worn and carried items. While your soul is projected, your equipment is not. You may chose to fashion masterwork clothes and equipment from ectoplasm, but your magic items remain with your real body. If your projection dies, you die. Your projection's equipment cannot be used by others, and vanishes 1 round after being separated from you.




- shapechange: it probably does not need limitations besides preventing you from skipping xp costs with SLA..

Polymorph magic:By default, magic that changes a creatures shape have as an additional material component a piece of material that was once part of a creature. Pieces of certain exotic monsters will have a high market value. (So Eschew Materials will be ineffective)

Changing your body and brain is an inherently risky business. Every [interval]* a character spends in a form with a type other than his own, he must make a Will save, with a DC equal to normal DC of a spell of this level, +1 for each [interval] they’ve spent in the form, +1 for each of these saves they’ve failed. As they start failing these saves, they begin forgetting their own identity. Each failed save causes the caster to lose 1d4 random spell slots or prepared spells. If the caster fails 5 saves, he becomes permanently convinced that he is a creature of the type they've shapeshifted into. They discard all memories of their past life (including feats, prepared spell slots, spells known, and more) that don't "fit" with their new form, and begin acting in a manner appropriate to the new creature, even if the spell ends. This condition can be cured by any spell capable of curing insanity. A caster who’s failed at least one of these saves must make an additional save to dismiss the spell.

It's especially difficult to maintain your mental balance in the heat of battle. Even if a spell's duration is more than one minute/level, when in combat, the subject must make a save every two rounds.

[Fizban]

I'm not up for full participation, but I did want to offer my favorite thread on the topic: The Philosopher's Stone (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?210623-3-5-Magic-Remix-The-Philosopher-s-Stone&p=11623435&posted=1) A quick and dirty set of nerfs you can throw down to take the edge off before tinkering with individual problems.

I'd also note that the scry part of scry n' die, as well as divinations in general, aren't as hard to counter as a lot of people think, just read the [scying] tag and the individual spells, then track down the various anti-divination spells to fill in the gaps.. I've never got around to writing a guide on it though.