Balancing Casters by Buffing Casters

[Quertus]

A little late to the party, but I realized I had a decent excuse to join the meme.

So, something that generally gets overlooked when discussing casters is their often incredibly low floor. "You can just pick all new spells tomorrow" is poor consolation to the Wizard who is dead today.

So, what would it look like to raise the floor on casters, to where new players could be expected to play them competently, straight out of the box?

And, in keeping with the meme, if the "prestige" of "good enough to play a caster" were removed, would this curb people's attempts to break the game with casters?

[Ignimortis]

A little late to the party, but I realized I had a decent excuse to join the meme.

So, something that generally gets overlooked when discussing casters is their often incredibly low floor. "You can just pick all new spells tomorrow" is poor consolation to the Wizard who is dead today.

So, what would it look like to raise the floor on casters, to where new players could be expected to play them competently, straight out of the box?

And, in keeping with the meme, if the "prestige" of "good enough to play a caster" were removed, would this curb people's attempts to break the game with casters?

All spellcasters can cast all their spells known spontaneously with their highest mental stat determining both bonus spells and DCs. Spontaneous spellcasting doesn't increase metamagic casting time. Oh hey, we're now in 5e land.

[PhantasyPen]

I'm sorry, what in tarnation is this?!

[eggynack]

I thought this would be a somewhat different thing, which, thinking on it, could actually make sense. So, a big argument in the initial thread was about whether casters should buff melee characters, with the basic assumption that them doing so would balance the game somewhat. With that in mind, maybe it'd help melee characters if casters were given really high power buff spells that cannot be self-targeted. Not sure what they'd look like offhand, but I'd prefer something that isn't polymorph. The goal is making the fighter better, not making the fighter into something else that is good.

[Bad Wolf]

Balancing Casters by Buffing Casters

Alright, that's a new one.

[Nifft]

So, what would it look like to raise the floor on casters, to where new players could be expected to play them competently, straight out of the box? - Make work as well as advertised: no better, no worse.

- Reduce the spell list; consolidate oddball effects into multi-function spells which are complex (and look complex at first glance).

- Universal Basic Competence -> every caster has a toolkit of basic spells which can't be un-learned; prepared casters can sacrifice prepared spells to cast one of these toolkit options. The Druid's summon nature's ally conversion is a good example of this.



And, in keeping with the meme, if the "prestige" of "good enough to play a caster" were removed, would this curb people's attempts to break the game with casters? No, some people just want to see if the game can be broken.

They're useful as debugging tools, so I vote we keep them.

[ryu]

I thought this would be a somewhat different thing, which, thinking on it, could actually make sense. So, a big argument in the initial thread was about whether casters should buff melee characters, with the basic assumption that them doing so would balance the game somewhat. With that in mind, maybe it'd help melee characters if casters were given really high power buff spells that cannot be self-targeted. Not sure what they'd look like offhand, but I'd prefer something that isn't polymorph. The goal is making the fighter better, not making the fighter into something else that is good.

That would just open up the humiliation of buffing the familiar. Or two casters buffing each other instead of the party fighter. What you need to make the fighter a buff target is for him to actually get more from buffs. Longer up time, stronger effects, or both. You need to make the fighter sound like an asset as opposed to the reason you can't buff yourself now.

[Troacctid]

So...is it weird then that I actually unironically buff casters to balance them?

[unseenmage]

A little late to the party, but I realized I had a decent excuse to join the meme.

...

I almost did, then I realized that pointing out how much I like Fighter optimization threads because they always give me fun ways to buff Constructs could be construed as mean-spirited.

Even if it is true.

EDIT: I'd have called it 'Balancing Casters by Buffing Constructs' and it'd have been about how buffing fighters wrong just let's me build better Construcs so please go right ahead. :smalltongue:

[Mechalich]

So, what would it look like to raise the floor on casters, to where new players could be expected to play them competently, straight out of the box?


It's called the warlock, which has existed for over a decade now. That's a caster with an exceedingly low floor - you eldritch blast every round. Even doing absolutely nothing else, such a character will contribute with a modicum of effectiveness even if played completely brain dead.

The reality is that, even played poorly, a Tier 1 caster tends to remain relevant throughout play without any trouble. Play a cleric as a healbot - that's highly inefficient, but it works, and the healbot certainly feels they're contributing (and if a GM bans Wands of Cure X Wounds, every cleric is suddenly devoting a lot more spells to healing). A blaster wizard is extremely low efficiency, but it's still a viable archetype.

The NPC/Adventure path balance point is somewhere around Tier 3. A Tier 1 class played badly still clears that bar just fine.

[Florian]

So, what would it look like to raise the floor on casters, to where new players could be expected to play them competently, straight out of the box?

Pathfinder? D6 HD, actually class features and spamable cantrips? Wizards get cast features based on school specialization, Witches have their hexes to throw around, Sorcerers come equipped with bloodline powers, so on.

[Quertus]

All spellcasters can cast all their spells known spontaneously with their highest mental stat determining both bonus spells and DCs. Spontaneous spellcasting doesn't increase metamagic casting time. Oh hey, we're now in 5e land.

So, despite Bounded Accuracy and Mother-May-I skills, the 5e development team was actually capable of doing something good? That's amazing.

Um, 5e casting is considered a good thing, right?


I'm sorry, what in tarnation is this?!

This is my only half-serious thread about the dark side of game balance: noobs. How, sure, the Playground often talks about the power ceiling of well-optimized Wizards, but rarely discusses the floor of the Int 12 Wizard with two copies of Light memorized.


I thought this would be a somewhat different thing, which, thinking on it, could actually make sense. So, a big argument in the initial thread was about whether casters should buff melee characters, with the basic assumption that them doing so would balance the game somewhat. With that in mind, maybe it'd help melee characters if casters were given really high power buff spells that cannot be self-targeted. Not sure what they'd look like offhand, but I'd prefer something that isn't polymorph. The goal is making the fighter better, not making the fighter into something else that is good.

I actually considered discussing the rule of buff spells, which probably subconsciously influenced my name choice. Problem is, some players aren't interested in playing their casters as support (as doubtless evidenced by comments in the same thread you mentioned), and forcing them into that role by making balance require it feels like hating everyone equally: the casters by forcing an unwanted role, and the muggles by reinforcing the "you're useless without casters" meme.


That would just open up the humiliation of buffing the familiar. Or two casters buffing each other instead of the party fighter. What you need to make the fighter a buff target is for him to actually get more from buffs. Longer up time, stronger effects, or both. You need to make the fighter sound like an asset as opposed to the reason you can't buff yourself now.

So, WoD d20 did something like this, in that different clans got different benefits from the same feat. Anyone got any experience how this works in actual play?

I have, in multiple threads, discussed the idea of making it a Fighter class feature to be good at being buffed, by letting them automatically Persist x buffs cast on them per day, for example.

Although, honestly, IME, in fantasy literature, it's usually the role of the cheerleader (bard) and seasoned veteran (Fighter) to "buff" the party, most of the time.


- Make work as well as advertised: no better, no worse.

- Reduce the spell list; consolidate oddball effects into multi-function spells which are complex (and look complex at first glance).

- Universal Basic Competence -> every caster has a toolkit of basic spells which can't be un-learned; prepared casters can sacrifice prepared spells to cast one of these toolkit options. The Druid's summon nature's ally conversion is a good example of this.

No, some people just want to see if the game can be broken.

They're useful as debugging tools, so I vote we keep them.

I'm all for debugging tools. :smallwink:

I'm debating whether this version of defaulting or the 5e way creates a higher floor. I'm leaning towards this being a higher floor.


So...is it weird then that I actually unironically buff casters to balance them?

I'm curious as to your buffs, and the reasons behind them.


I almost did, then I realized that pointing out how much I like Fighter optimization threads because they always give me fun ways to buff Constructs could be construed as mean-spirited.

Even if it is true.

EDIT: I'd have called it 'Balancing Casters by Buffing Constructs' and it'd have been about how buffing fighters wrong just let's me build better Construcs so please go right ahead. :smalltongue:

See my "persist spell is a fighter class feature" line of comments.


It's called the warlock, which has existed for over a decade now. That's a caster with an exceedingly low floor - you eldritch blast every round. Even doing absolutely nothing else, such a character will contribute with a modicum of effectiveness even if played completely brain dead.

The reality is that, even played poorly, a Tier 1 caster tends to remain relevant throughout play without any trouble. Play a cleric as a healbot - that's highly inefficient, but it works, and the healbot certainly feels they're contributing (and if a GM bans Wands of Cure X Wounds, every cleric is suddenly devoting a lot more spells to healing). A blaster wizard is extremely low efficiency, but it's still a viable archetype.

The NPC/Adventure path balance point is somewhere around Tier 3. A Tier 1 class played badly still clears that bar just fine.

Play that same Cleric as camping support, though, with spells like Light, Purify / Create Food/Water, etc, and their effectiveness diminishes.


Pathfinder? D6 HD, actually class features and spamable cantrips? Wizards get cast features based on school specialization, Witches have their hexes to throw around, Sorcerers come equipped with bloodline powers, so on.

Cool. Any thoughts on how the Path Finder floor compares to 5e? How hard is it to imagine a scenario where the worst possible PF caster is dead weight?

[Cosi]

So...is it weird then that I actually unironically buff casters to balance them?

You also ban all spells over 5th level. Which, sure, do that if you want, but you can't really call a system that involves doing that "buffing casters".

[Efrate]

The best pf wizard I think could be dead weight by an unskilled player.

Diviner. Scaling bonus to initiative and always acting in the surprise round is great, but going first if you prep mostly divination which often aren't great in combat, is pretty poor. The insight bonus you can grant allies on most checks could easily be wasted on your fighter trying to pick up the barmaid.

Many divinations have longer casting times and dont really help mid fight. A ten minute divination spell is useless in combat, and most noobs wont use them out of combat well. Either asking the wrong questions, or overestimating the answers they get and acting rashly on it.

Is the baron evil? Cast spell. Answer: Yes. Ok let's go storm the keep at level 2!

Bad or incomplete information is often worse than no information.

My 5e experience is super limited but scaling cantrips you can cast at will is a nice move in the right direction, similar to 3.5 warlock. You never have to resort to crossbow.

Also spellcasting rolls for a lot of your spells which use you spellcasting modifier as opposed to dex mod is also nice so you still need to roll dice (it's fun, be honest), but you have enough of a mod that you actually feel like you can hit.

[Elkad]

It's called the warlock, which has existed for over a decade now. That's a caster with an exceedingly low floor - you eldritch blast every round. Even doing absolutely nothing else, such a character will contribute with a modicum of effectiveness even if played completely brain dead.

Except Warlock is even simpler than a bog-standard fighter. It gets boring FAST, because you have so few Invocations Known.
Sure, you can build to be a scout or something, or leverage UMD, but noobs start out worrying about combat builds.

So you make a standard blasting warlock. At L7 you might have something like Eldritch Spear, See the Unseen, Entropic Warding and Fell Flight. You could pick other things, like darkness, devil sight, glaive and .. uh.. hungry darkness?

There are a bunch of ways to build, but once you build, you end up using the same 2 abilities your entire career. What can that blasting warlock do besides blast? Get things off high shelves? Maybe later he'll blast and have his skeletons attack.

DFA is even worse because it both gets invocations slower and is basically forced to use the first one on "don't accidentally incinerate the party".

They are both effective. Neither is fun for more than a couple sessions. That leads to people being dissatisfied and quitting.

[Cosi]

Warlock would be fine if it as an additional powerset on top of some level appropriate magic. Like a Sorcerer//Warlock Gestalt, with maybe one extra invocation per tier and Eldritch Blast slightly buffed (attack action, Sneak Attack progression).

[Troacctid]

I'm curious as to your buffs, and the reasons behind them.
Mostly I gave everyone with Bard- or Sorcerer-type casting a +1 effective level to bring them in line with Wizard-types, and gave half-casters full CL and access to recharge magic. I also added some bonus feats and other buffs here and there. My goal was to help casters be more balanced against each other in order to make the tradeoffs between them more meaningful and promote build diversity.


You also ban all spells over 5th level. Which, sure, do that if you want, but you can't really call a system that involves doing that "buffing casters".
Well, sure, but you could take that rule away and just use the other houserules and I think it would still be more balanced.

[Bucky]

They are both effective. Neither is fun for more than a couple sessions. That leads to people being dissatisfied and quitting.

Nothing a buff can't fix. Like a flex invocation per 4 levels.

[Ignimortis]

So, despite Bounded Accuracy and Mother-May-I skills, the 5e development team was actually capable of doing something good? That's amazing.

Um, 5e casting is considered a good thing, right?


It's not. It's simpler and many people like it, but if anything, it gives even more power to prepared casters, since they can prepare pretty much anything and still be able to cast it several times if need be. It really makes spontaneous casters with limited spells known feel worse than a prepared caster, since the prepared caster is basically "I'm you, but I choose my spell-list every day".

That's why I've posted this in a semi-sarcastic thread - because it IS a buff to casters if you implement it like they did.

[Nifft]

Warlock would be fine if it as an additional powerset on top of some level appropriate magic. Like a Sorcerer//Warlock Gestalt, with maybe one extra invocation per tier and Eldritch Blast slightly buffed (attack action, Sneak Attack progression). Hmm, so some classes would be "real" classes, and others would be "gestalt template" classes, which modified & augmented your real class.

Taking Warlock as your gestalt template would do stuff like...
- You can deliver ray & ranged touch spells with your Eldritch Blast, inflicting extra damage.

Taking Fighter as your gestalt template might do something like...
- You can deliver melee touch spells through your weapon; you can wear some armor without suffering ACF.

Taking Dragonfire Adept as your gestalt template might net you...
- You can deliver some melee touch & some area spells through your breath weapon.



It's not. It's simpler and many people like it, but if anything, it gives even more power to prepared casters, since they can prepare pretty much anything and still be able to cast it several times if need be. It really makes spontaneous casters with limited spells known feel worse than a prepared caster, since the prepared caster is basically "I'm you, but I choose my spell-list every day".

That's why I've posted this in a semi-sarcastic thread - because it IS a buff to casters if you implement it like they did. I do like the idea of 5e spellcasting on 3.5e characters, but the mechanics of casting would need to be modified a bit.

Taking the 5e casting idea in combo with my suggestion of "raised floor" spells-known baseline, you'd just say that the baseline spells were always considered known & prepared, and you prepared your daily limit on top of your baseline spell package.

[Knaight]

It's not. It's simpler and many people like it, but if anything, it gives even more power to prepared casters, since they can prepare pretty much anything and still be able to cast it several times if need be. It really makes spontaneous casters with limited spells known feel worse than a prepared caster, since the prepared caster is basically "I'm you, but I choose my spell-list every day".


On the other hand scaling off of spell level instead of caster level with upcasting is a pretty dramatic nerf.

[Ignimortis]

On the other hand scaling off of spell level instead of caster level with upcasting is a pretty dramatic nerf.

Quite so. A huge nerf in raw power (due to slots being less abundant as well), a huge boost in versatility, since in 5e everyone has Heighten Spell for free applied on the fly. But nevertheless, I think I like 5e's casting system even less than 3.5's. At least 3.5 tries making spontaneous casting its' own thing (I won't say it turned out entirely well, what with later spell access and metamagic restrictions, but at least they tried), which is something I miss dearly with 5e's casters basically being either a bad design (Warlock), properly-done (in terms of magic) half-casters, or the overall smoothed out and improved Big Three with Sorcerer as the red-headed stepbrother of Wizard (some things never change) and Bard suddenly elevated to being Sublime Chord all the time.

[Florian]

Cool. Any thoughts on how the Path Finder floor compares to 5e? How hard is it to imagine a scenario where the worst possible PF caster is dead weight?

You know, it´s still basically player > build > class, so it´s always possible to ram even the best class into the ground.

In PF, most full caster builds are more based on the class features and use spells to supplement those, which should tell you something, staple builds like the Cackling Witch/Shaman, Life Oracle or Bad Touch Cleric/Warpriest could basically function without ever resorting to spells.

To use the Witch as an example, a very basic package of slumber, evil eye, fortune, misfortune and cackle hexes will have all your team mates love you, because it´s a solid mix of spam-able buff/debuff/bfc and you can use it all day, while child sense, cauldron, cook people and blight might be thematically cool, it makes you pretty worthless as a party member.

[Quertus]

So, looking just at the floor for the worst player imaginable playing the class, a well-built Path Finder witch would not be dead weight, but a PF witch built by that same person might be. In 5e, you could get a useless caster, unless you also added in baseline competence spells. Have I summed that up correctly?

[Nifft]

In 5e, you could get a useless caster, unless you also added in baseline competence spells. Have I summed that up correctly?

Not really. 5e has very few spells, and almost none of them are as bad as the worst stinkers of 3.x were.

Someone recently tried to pick the worst possible spells, and ended up with a highly competent social character (who was not great at combat, but one Cantrip exchange would fix that).

[ryu]

So, looking just at the floor for the worst player imaginable playing the class, a well-built Path Finder witch would not be dead weight, but a PF witch built by that same person might be. In 5e, you could get a useless caster, unless you also added in baseline competence spells. Have I summed that up correctly?

I would point out that completely useless is severely unlikely. Picking and using things at total random will, on average, yield superior results. It's sorta like how it's impossible to be always wrong but on a smaller scale. To anti-correlate that well you'd need super intelligence. A being could literally judge the viability of a given hypothesis versus another by eliminating which you found more likely if you knew how to correctly communicate. Similarly absolute uselessness requires the builder know every possible useful avenue and take none of them.

[Cosi]

5e spellcasting (which works basically like the Spirit Shaman, right?) is a fine resource management mechanic. But like all other resource management mechanics it is not good enough for every class (or even every spellcasting class) to use it. Different classes having different resource management mechanics is good. Should someone have casting that works like that? Absolutely. But other people's casting should work like Beguilers, or Wizards, or whatever. And other classes should have non-spell resources which are managed in still other ways.


Hmm, so some classes would be "real" classes, and others would be "gestalt template" classes, which modified & augmented your real class.

Pretty much. Though for a quick fix/houserules I would limit the combinations and give people full class features. Let some people be Fighter//Crusaders and other people be Binder//Sorcerers, but don't let people be Binder//Wizards. Pick the right classes and you can solve balance issues with minimal effort. On the other hand, if you were doing a full system replacement, I would probably just have every class offer both a full class and a "gestalt" subclass. Also some subclasses that don't correspond to an entire class, like Vampire or Priest.

[Jack_Simth]

A little late to the party, but I realized I had a decent excuse to join the meme.

So, something that generally gets overlooked when discussing casters is their often incredibly low floor. "You can just pick all new spells tomorrow" is poor consolation to the Wizard who is dead today.

So, what would it look like to raise the floor on casters, to where new players could be expected to play them competently, straight out of the box?

There's lots of options. Basically, you just need to add something to make them "OK" even if the caster player has little-to-no idea what they're doing. Like giving them an Eidolon (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/summoner/eidolons/) with some fixed progression, or a riding dog animal companion. If the caster comes with a lesser fighter, well... that class feature's abilities become the new floor even if the rest of the class is played entirely incompetently. Granted, you can't do much for the Con-6 Elf Wizard that decides it's a good idea to wade into melee, but giving the caster a disposable mini fighter out of the box might do wonders for the noobs.


And, in keeping with the meme, if the "prestige" of "good enough to play a caster" were removed, would this curb people's attempts to break the game with casters?Nope. There will always be folks looking for MOAR POWAH!

[ryu]

There's lots of options. Basically, you just need to add something to make them "OK" even if the caster player has little-to-no idea what they're doing. Like giving them an Eidolon (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/summoner/eidolons/) with some fixed progression, or a riding dog animal companion. If the caster comes with a lesser fighter, well... that class feature's abilities become the new floor even if the rest of the class is played entirely incompetently. Granted, you can't do much for the Con-6 Elf Wizard that decides it's a good idea to wade into melee, but giving the caster a disposable mini fighter out of the box might do wonders for the noobs.
Nope. There will always be folks looking for MOAR POWAH!

Indeed. The goal of playing wizards isn't complexity. It's options and the freedom that brings. You start out able to do a lot of things and end up able to do everything.