Making casters mad

[blackwindbears]

I'm considering a houserule (for 3.5) in which primary casting stats are done away with and split up over mental stats:

Int: Determines highest level spell you can cast
Wis: Determines bonus spells
Cha: Determines save DC

What are the probable effects? Does it hurt full casters proportionally more at early levels or later levels? Will the sky fall on the ranger and paladin?

Does it create more interesting decisions regarding ability scores?

A clarification: I'd allow an int 12 wizard to cast an empowered magic missile with his 3rd level slot, just not fireball. (This might be RAW anyway)

[Goaty14]

Makes overall DCs lower, but doesn't impair most caster tricks, unless you somehow force a lower PB at early levels. Probably doesn't even hurt at later levels, due to WBL.

Also that's not RAW. You can't cast effective spell levels that you can't cast otherwise.

[Mike Miller]

If your intent is to nerf casters, this isn't really going to do it. The magic system is too involved for a minor change like this to somehow actually bring down casters. Lots of things casters do, don't need DCs for example. If you are worried about casters reigning supreme, try boosting the other classes.

[blackwindbears]

Makes overall DCs lower, but doesn't impair most caster tricks, unless you somehow force a lower PB at early levels. Probably doesn't even hurt at later levels, due to WBL.

Also that's not RAW. You can't cast effective spell levels that you can't cast otherwise.

Except for sleep, grease, color spray, Glitterdust. Basically every low level encounter ender is save DC dependent, isn't it?

[blackwindbears]

If your intent is to nerf casters, this isn't really going to do it. The magic system is too involved for a minor change like this to somehow actually bring down casters. Lots of things casters do, don't need DCs for example. If you are worried about casters reigning supreme, try boosting the other classes.

I'm not worried about casters reigning supreme, mostly because they haven't in my games.

[Mike Miller]

I'm not worried about casters reigning supreme, mostly because they haven't in my games.

What is your goal? Why make the changes?

[Boggartbae]

I think it's a fine idea. While it's true that you would need a really in-depth system change to fix the broken vancian magic system, a quick fix like this limit's caster options at least somewhat, particularly the DC lowering since no one want's to invest heavily in CHA unless they have to.

I would never do it though, since I don't care if casters are better than everyone else, and I don't mind SAD characters.

[blackwindbears]

What is your goal? Why make the changes?

That's a fair question. I apologise for the short shrift.

1) I think it's an alternative that's interesting to me.

2) I buy into the quadratic casters, linear warriors.

3) I think that it's an interesting set of choices. (Yes, I know that players prefer to never have to have any trade-offs, but i suspect it'll produce interesting results)

I was a little short because I'd just like to head off the sort of "18th level fighters can never meaningfully contribute to a combat involving an 18th level caster" stuff that has simply never shown up in my games. (And I don't know what DM is allowing chaingating of solars and the other crazed cheese I see bandied about as normal high level caster stuff.)

That being said, at non-forum optimization levels, D&D is pretty flexible. Flexible enough that being different levels usually isn't a big deal.

[SangoProduction]

Feels less **** than the Limited Magic optional rules of Pathfinder. It makes each stat at least theoretically useful, and not a dump stat unless you're a highly specialized character.
However, Intellect does overlap with Charisma here, as Spell Level also determines DC. If you wanted to enforce this better, I'd halve the DC from spell levels, and increase the bonus DC from Charisma by half.

[blackwindbears]

I think it's a fine idea. While it's true that you would need a really in-depth system change to fix the broken vancian magic system, a quick fix like this limit's caster options at least somewhat, particularly the DC lowering since no one want's to invest heavily in CHA unless they have to.

I would never do it though, since I don't care if casters are better than everyone else, and I don't mind SAD characters.

I've just never really found Vancian magic to be broken. I'm pretty sure it's not gonna break the game, I'm more curious about the side effects.

Is it obvious that one of the three stats is most important? Will every caster always max Cha?

I think you'll get a variety. Int will be aimed at current highest level, and then they'll choose between high Cha or low Cha builds. But I wouldn't want everyone to just decide to always max Wis or something.

[Zanos]

2) I buy into the quadratic casters, linear warriors.

I was a little short because I'd just like to head off the sort of "18th level fighters can never meaningfully contribute to a combat involving an 18th level caster" stuff that has simply never shown up in my games. (And I don't know what DM is allowing chaingating of solars and the other crazed cheese I see bandied about as normal high level caster stuff.)
I wouldn't touch it if you aren't having problems. That advice actually applies to a lot of things in life.

The big issue with a lot of sweeping caster nerfs is that they hit sub-optimally built characters as hard or much harder than optimal ones. An optimal wizard can actually get by with +0 to his DCs and base spell slots. He'll have to invest in spells that grant semi-permanent combat strength, like Animate Dead, and focus on spells with no save or buffing, but that's actually a pretty powerful playstyle anyway. He'll also want to be a wizard, so spells that are used in non-combat days aren't just dead spells.

Meanwhile, the sorcerer(or wizard) that likes to sling fireballs is pretty screwed because he can't comfortably get enemies to fail their saves on his damage spells while simultaneously worrying about his stat for maximum spell level and another stat for bonus spells.

The best way to nerf casters it to nerf spells, because casters are actually just delivery packets for spells. But that's a hard thing to do.

[SangoProduction]

I've just never really found Vancian magic to be broken. I'm pretty sure it's not gonna break the game, I'm more curious about the side effects.

Is it obvious that one of the three stats is most important? Will every caster always max Cha?

I think you'll get a variety. Int will be aimed at current highest level, and then they'll choose between high Cha or low Cha builds. But I wouldn't want everyone to just decide to always max Wis or something.

As is, Int is best, just in general. It's also letting you access the good spells, but is irrelevant until later game. Going to feel terrible to have high Int, unless you start high level. Probably wouldn't start with this above 14 unless you declared that Int-boosting items don't help in this regard.

Charisma give you the largest pool of possible spells per spell level, since most spells require a save, if they are offensive. It's also the worst general stat, unless you're specifically playing a face.

And Wisdom...is basically irrelevant, until mid-game, since you only get 1 bonus spell per spell level per +9 bonus, iirc. And if you also don't have high Int, then you'd already have more "bonus spell slots" for your lower level spells than Wisdom would ever grant you, simply because at minimum, your class gives you 2 spell slots of the higher level spell as soon as you access it. Unless you're playing a mid or low caster like bard or paladin.


The best way to nerf casters it to nerf spells, because casters are actually just delivery packets for spells. But that's a hard thing to do.

Nah. The best way to nerf casters is to tell them to sod off, and just use Spheres of Power.

[Jack_Simth]

I've just never really found Vancian magic to be broken. I'm pretty sure it's not gonna break the game, I'm more curious about the side effects.

Is it obvious that one of the three stats is most important? Will every caster always max Cha?

I think you'll get a variety. Int will be aimed at current highest level, and then they'll choose between high Cha or low Cha builds. But I wouldn't want everyone to just decide to always max Wis or something.

Int will be less favored: a Wizard with an Int of 13 is perfectly fine until after 6th level, and then a simple +2 headband will do until after 10th, at which point a +4 headband will do until after 14th, and a +6 headband will cover everything sub-epic.

After that, builds will either specialize for endurance on non-save effects (high wis, low cha would be fine on a Summoning build), or specialize for high DC's (low Wis, high Cha is fine for the bloke that plans on ending encounters quickly with Grease, Glitterdust, and Stinking Cloud).


And Wisdom...is basically irrelevant, until mid-game, since you only get 1 bonus spell per spell level per +9 bonus, iirc.It scales based on 4's. An 18 in a casting stat grants a bonus spell of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th; a 26 gets 2 each of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, and one each of 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th. A +9 bonus (casting stat 28 or 29) would grant three bonus 1sts, 2 each of 2nd-5th, and 1 each of 6th-9th.

[Goaty14]

3) I think that it's an interesting set of choices. (Yes, I know that players prefer to never have to have any trade-offs, but i suspect it'll produce interesting results)

Such as? The rule doesn't permit or prevent anything. At best, you're looking at theurge builds that would've been MAD anyways, but then you always have Lost Tradition for that.


I was a little short because I'd just like to head off the sort of "18th level fighters can never meaningfully contribute to a combat involving an 18th level caster" stuff that has simply never shown up in my games.

18th level fighters can never meaningfully contribute, with or without casters (read: T5).


(And I don't know what DM is allowing chaingating of solars and the other crazed cheese I see bandied about as normal high level caster stuff.)

Read: Theoretical Optimization


Is it obvious that one of the three stats is most important? Will every caster always max Cha?

INT is the most important (but not necessarily the highest), because a wider access of spells is the name of the game when it comes to building casters, and you probably can't deal with being spell levels behind short of optimized magic missile builds (and even then...). IMO, Int>Cha>Wis

[Minion #6]

2) I buy into the quadratic casters, linear warriors.



I've just never really found Vancian magic to be broken. I'm pretty sure it's not gonna break the game, I'm more curious about the side effects.


Do these statements not contradict each other? Perhaps I might be misreading what you mean by "quadratic casters, linear warriors"...

Regardless, I don't think this'd put much in the way of brakes on that issue. The issue is not just power of the options available, but the breadth of them, and the fact that some of them cannot be replicated non-magically. Even if you made every single stat figure into spellcasting, your martial characters will never replicate Tiny Hut, Rope Trick, Teleport, or any of the hundreds of other utility spells. The only effect I can definitely say it'll have is a pressure to move away from save-allowing spells to buffs, utility and no-save BFC, which were already very good areas to specialise in anyway.

And yes, it'd be a huge nerf on the spellcasting for Ranger and Paladin, but that's only relatively speaking. They'd be going from a lowcaster to essentially a noncaster at that point.

[Kayblis]

I get that your 3 reasons are "I find it interesting", but to be honest, that hurts low op and half-casters way more than full casters. Now a Paladin can't cast at all unless he compromises his physical stats, and the Ranger has to get even worse at fighting to be able to do his nature stuff. A stat of 10 is not "normal" anymore, it's "incapable". Many people like to roll for stats, and if a player gets two stats below 11 with these rules, he's not allowed to start as a half-caster and use his class abilities. Not to mention they already have to spread resources thin, and having to account for yet another stat or two is just being a Monk.

And full casters won't suffer much though. A stat of 13 supplies full casting with a +6 item, so 13 Int will be the norm and having any more is wasting stats. Almost everyone will then pump Wisdom because more spells as well as Will saves, and the few builds that focus on DCs will have to deal with having less spell slots per day. You effectively penalize simple builds from less experienced players while not solving anything for necromancers, summoners and advanced players that focus on battlefield control - and those are the ones that estabilished the "quadratic casters" mentality.

[blackwindbears]

18th level fighters can never meaningfully contribute, with or without casters (read: T5).


My apologies as the rest of your advice has been good to think about, but if I roll my eyes any harder at this it's gonna sever my optic nerve.

I assure you, I've played multiple high level modules. Fighters had no trouble contributing. I'm always kinda skeptical that people who make sweeping pronouncements like this have actually played or dmed a fighter at level 18 for say Shackled City or Age of Worms.




INT is the most important (but not necessarily the highest), because a wider access of spells is the name of the game when it comes to building casters, and you probably can't deal with being spell levels behind short of optimized magic missile builds (and even then...). IMO, Int>Cha>Wis
Sure but there's not point to having an int higher than what you need? So Cha > Wis, once Int is barely big enough to cast the necessary spells.

[Aetis]

Dang, when I saw the title, I thought you were going to remove all of the spells in 3.5 except rage (the spell).

[RoboEmperor]

This doesn't do jack. All you did is make SoDs unusuable.

You just go 100% INT, ditch Wis and Cha, and destroy the game with the mountains and mountains of spells that don't need a save. Still SAD.

The only thing your house rule does is make one playstyle unviable (one revolving around save DCs), nothing more. Spellcasters who don't give a damn about save DCs won't give a damn about what you did, and spellcasters like Blasters will throw the book at you and leave for gimping the suboptimal playstyle since any build that relies on saves, including blasting via fireball, is suboptimal.

[blackwindbears]

This doesn't do jack. All you did is make SoDs unusuable.


I'm sure anyone building a level 3 wizard with the elite array will max int so that they can cast 5th level spells rather than going with int: 14, Cha: 15. Why would they even bother memorizing Glitterdust at this point.

I swear. The willingness of certain people to declare things unviable without thinking for literally 5 minutes astounds me.




You just go 100% INT, ditch Wis and Cha, and destroy the game with the mountains and mountains of spells that don't need a save. Still SAD.


...why do you want int greater than 19?



The only thing your house rule does is make one playstyle unviable (one revolving around save DCs), nothing more. Spellcasters who don't give a damn about save DCs won't give a damn about what you did, and spellcasters like Blasters will throw the book at you and leave for gimping the suboptimal playstyle since any build that relies on saves, including blasting via fireball, is suboptimal.

I really need to figure out how to put the eyeroll emoji on this forum.

Edit: Also, I'm sorry for being an ******* about it.

[RoboEmperor]

...why do you want int greater than 19?

I don't but I'm not gonna waste resources into boosting my spell's save DCs when it is 5-6 less than what it should be when I need to use it against monsters who usually has +15-19 to their save. 30 casting stat? That's a +10, so a 9th level spell will have a save DC of 29 against agaisnt a Balor's +19 will save. Meaning 45% success chance ignoring spell resistance. If we add spell resistance to the mix the success rate plumets even further. Drop it to 19 because of your house rule? That's a +4 which makes it a 15% success chance without spell resistance. Am I gonna waste an action on a 15% success chance spell that also needs to overcome spell resistance? The answer is hell no. So I'm not gonna bother pumping my save DC. At all.

No, instead I'll get my INT to 19 and spend my wealth on other things and never anything that boosts my CHA because there is no point. There are many, many, MANY things that let me ignore save DCs so why would I choose to do a build that relies on save DCs when you gimped it so hard? The answer is I wouldn't. So you made it unviable.


I'm sure anyone building a level 3 wizard with the elite array will max int so that they can cast 5th level spells rather than going with int: 14, Cha: 15. Why would they even bother memorizing Glitterdust at this point.

I swear. The willingness of certain people to declare things unviable without thinking for literally 5 minutes astounds me.

Who uses elite array? Everyone either rolls stats or goes point buy and if you go point buy you're going 8 WIS/CHA. Even if you're using elite array CON needs to be a 14 which means CHA is 13, a measily +1. So am I going to spend a **** ton of wealth to turn that 13 into a 24? The answer is no. 18->23 via level up boosted by +11 to +34 via wish/tome and +6 enhancement is how you make SoDs usable against all of the high end monsters.

Alternatively you go 13 INT and grab a +6 Int item a.s.a.p.? Meaning you need to sink your first 32,000gp into an item and be forever unable to cast high level spells if it is stolen? What will that accomplish? Is your house rule's purpose to give spellcasters a 32,000gp tax and vulnerability to theft? Again i would rather just do a build that doesn't use save DCs than go through all of this effort to use it.

SoDs is suboptimal way to play the game and all you've done is made it even more suboptimal to the point there really is no motivation for anyone to go that route. Blasters will go scorching ray or Orb of Fire/Force and never even bother learning fireball. Battlefield Controllers got no-save spells like Solid Fog, Wall of Stone or Summon Monster x. Truly your house rule did nothing to weaken spellcasters except make the suboptimal not viable.

Also items. If the minimum required casting stat does not affect save DCs, then all wands/scrolls etc should have a save DC of -5 since you only need 0 CHA to cast them.

[blackwindbears]

I don't but I'm not gonna waste resources into boosting my spell's save DCs when it is 5-6 less than what it should be when I need to use it against monsters who usually has +15-19 to their save. 30 casting stat? That's a +10, so a 9th level spell will have a save DC of 29 against agaisnt a Balor's +19 will save. Meaning 45% success chance ignoring spell resistance. If we add spell resistance to the mix the success rate plumets even further. Drop it to 19 because of your house rule? That's a +4 which makes it a 15% success chance without spell resistance. Am I gonna waste an action on a 15% success chance spell that also needs to overcome spell resistance? The answer is hell no. So I'm not gonna bother pumping my save DC. At all.


The sheer willful ignorance here. You need a 4,000 go item by level 7, then a 16000 go item by level 11, then 36000 by level 15. This isn't remotely honerous.



No, instead I'll get my INT to 19 and spend my wealth on other things and never anything that boosts my CHA because there is no point. There are many, many, MANY things that let me ignore save DCs so why would I choose to do a build that relies on save DCs when you gimped it so hard? The answer is I wouldn't. So you made it unviable.

So you plan on your highest stat being 19 at level 20? Man, any class gets the slightest nerf and people lose their minds. If you roll, 13 isn't your highest stat, and that's all you need. So it doesn't actually lower your save DC's anyway.



Who uses elite array? Everyone either rolls stats or goes point buy and if you go point buy you're going 8 WIS/CHA.


Well, if you roll stats, what are the average results? Turns out they're exactly the elite array. Oops.



Even if you're using elite array CON needs to be a 14 which means CHA is 13, a measily +1. So am I going to spend a **** ton of wealth to turn that 13 into a 24?


Think harder. Your stats would be:

Str: 8
Dex: 10
Con: 14
Int: 13
Wis: 12
Cha: 15

Looks like you've got all the int you need and your save DC's are precisely as large as normal.



The answer is no. 18->23 via level up boosted by +11 to +34 via wish/tome and +6 enhancement is how you make SoDs usable against all of the high end monsters.

You only get 18 if you point buy and don't roll. Your criticism is against non-point buy systems, not being slightly mad.



Alternatively you go 13 INT and grab a +6 Int item a.s.a.p.? Meaning you need to sink your first 32,000gp into an item and be forever unable to cast high level spells if it is stolen? What will that accomplish? Is your house rule's purpose to give spellcasters a 32,000gp tax and vulnerability to theft? Again i would rather just do a build that doesn't use save DCs than go through all of this effort to use it.


No, don't get a +6 item right off the bat. What are you even talking about at this point? You don't need to cast 9th level spells when you're level 5.



SoDs is suboptimal way to play the game and all you've done is made it even more suboptimal to the point there really is no motivation for anyone to go that route.


Yeah, all those suboptimal spells like, sleep, and Glitterdust.




Blasters will go scorching ray or Orb of Fire/Force and never even bother learning fireball. Battlefield Controllers got no-save spells like Solid Fog, Wall of Stone or Summon Monster x. Truly your house rule did nothing to weaken spellcasters except make the suboptimal not viable.


You're making a very big deal out of losing like +1/+2 to save DC. It's almost as if you haven't actually sat down and made characters under these rules.



Also items. If the minimum required casting stat does not affect save DCs, then all wands/scrolls etc should have a save DC of -5 since you only need 0 CHA to cast them.
Well you could solve that a number of ways. What's your best suggestion?

[RoboEmperor]

The sheer willful ignorance here. You need a 4,000 go item by level 7, then a 16000 go item by level 11, then 36000 by level 15. This isn't remotely honerous.

4,000gp, sell it for 2,000gp to buy a 16,000gp to sell it at 8,000gp to buy a 36,000gp. With a loss of 2,000gp and 8,000gp a player wasted 10,000gp because of your house rule. +36,000gp on a stat item they would have never gotten if it weren't for your house rule so that's a 46,000gp wasted on wealth to combat your house rule. Is that your intent? To make spellcasters 46,000gp poorer than other players?


So you plan on your highest stat being 19 at level 20? Man, any class gets the slightest nerf and people lose their minds. If you roll, 13 isn't your highest stat, and that's all you need. So it doesn't actually lower your save DC's anyway.tially just a 46,000gp wealth tax.

I'm not losing my mind. I literally don't give a damn about save DCs when I play spellcasters as 100% of the spells I use revolve around summoning or planar binding. The latter admittedly does need save DCs but since it's an out of combat spell that ignores spell resistance I can just wait for them to roll a 1 over a week or two and then permanently enslave it.

But when I see people who don't go the optimized route and pick spells that look cool rather than function efficiently which are almost always spells that target Fortitude and does not ignore spell resistance, I smile because these people are playing for fun rather than to power game. But they struggle because save DCs don't scale well, there are very few if any method of boosting save DCs, and monsters saves and spell resistance explode to the stratosphere at higher levels.

And then someone like you comes along and says lets nerf the playstyle that people who play for fun rather than to power game because you don't have enough system mastery to know exactly why spellcasters become problematic and how to handle that. Seeing how your sole focus is 1st and 2nd level spells I am going to assumed you've rarely played beyond level 6.

No one gives a damn about 1st, 2nd, or even 3rd level spell DCs because monsters don't have spell resistance and their saves are terrible at low levels to the point that people buy wands of glitterdust rather than casting it themselves.

If I'm being brutally honest, if your encounter dies to a single glitterdust or sleep then you as a DM need to design encounters better. I mean it. Space monsters apart. Mix melee and ranged enemies. Mix monster types so there are monsters who are immune to those spells like undead. The options are limitless.


Well, if you roll stats, what are the average results? Turns out they're exactly the elite array. Oops.

With what basis do you make this claim? I actually have the mathematical evidence that shows this is wrong but I'm a hold out to see how you came to this conclusion.



If you want facts, these are the facts.
1. Only suboptimal spellcasters rely on save DCs. Optimized spellcasters use tactics that ignore save DCs and spell resistance because consistency and reliability is one of the most important things in a game where combat is over in round 1 at high optimization, rounds 1-5 in normal optimization.
2. Your house rule only hurts suboptimal spellcasters by forcing them to pay 46,000gp and does not hurt optimized spellcasters at all.
3. This in turn gives incentive to the suboptimal players to ditch their suboptimal build and play a more powerful optimized build rather than deal with your house rule on top of the horrible spell save DC scaling and explosion of monster's save and spell resistance.

If your goal was to force suboptimal players into playing more optimized builds then you've succeeded. If your goal was to weaken optimized spellcasters then you have completely failed.

Whether or not you agree with these facts does not matter. Just read other people's comments in this thread, they all agree with me and I'm not interested in debating the basics with someone who needs a little more experience with the system.

If you use these house rules because you find it interesting, go ahead, it's your game. But don't think it's a good house rule that will close the gap between spellcasters and mundanes because it's not.

[noob]

At start I think I would favor int then wisdom then constitution then dexterity then dump strength and charisma.
All it did for a normal wizard is reduce sightly its spell slots and its physical stats.
why would I favor int while there is no direct benefits from being above 19?
Simply if I start at 16 I can with stat improvements always have as much int as needed to cast top level spells even when stripped of equipment(theft, disjunction, magical npcs who capture you no matter what and so on) and it also gives me a safety buffer for stat loss at low level before I have death ward and similar stuff.

[Ignimortis]

I'm considering a houserule (for 3.5) in which primary casting stats are done away with and split up over mental stats:

Int: Determines highest level spell you can cast
Wis: Determines bonus spells
Cha: Determines save DC

What are the probable effects? Does it hurt full casters proportionally more at early levels or later levels? Will the sky fall on the ranger and paladin?

Does it create more interesting decisions regarding ability scores?

A clarification: I'd allow an int 12 wizard to cast an empowered magic missile with his 3rd level slot, just not fireball. (This might be RAW anyway)

It just makes a part of casters' arsenal less usable (namely, save-or-dies). It also just dumps on blasting again, which is not something you'd want to do if you're trying to fix 3.5 casting, as non-severely-optimized blasting is probably the worst thing to do with your magic slots.

The actual problem with Vancian casting isn't that it's highly exploitable in the form of Save-or-Dies, because they mostly fixed that for D&D 5e with lesser effects and somewhat lower save DCs, that are also harder to pump (of course, they also dropped the ball on players having adequate resistances, but what are you gonna do, it's WotC).

The problem is the presence of "I press a button that does something nobody else in the game has at the same level of power, and it happens because I say so." things. Invisibility. Teleport. Planar Binding, Fly, Time Stop, Wish/Miracle, Astral Projection...the list goes on, and I'm not even out of Core yet. The Wizard's spell list is just too large, same with Clerics and Druids.

[Mike Miller]

That's a fair question. I apologise for the short shrift.

1) I think it's an alternative that's interesting to me.

2) I buy into the quadratic casters, linear warriors.

3) I think that it's an interesting set of choices. (Yes, I know that players prefer to never have to have any trade-offs, but i suspect it'll produce interesting results)

I was a little short because I'd just like to head off the sort of "18th level fighters can never meaningfully contribute to a combat involving an 18th level caster" stuff that has simply never shown up in my games. (And I don't know what DM is allowing chaingating of solars and the other crazed cheese I see bandied about as normal high level caster stuff.)

That being said, at non-forum optimization levels, D&D is pretty flexible. Flexible enough that being different levels usually isn't a big deal.

Your three answers don't provide much information into why you are making the changes. 1 and 3 are just, it is interesting. 2 sounds like you have a problem with the power disparity of casters and martials. However, I would say boosting martials is better than trying to nerf casters.

Then you say it doesn't happen in your games. If it has never been an issue, why are you trying to fix it? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

[ericgrau]

I'm considering a houserule (for 3.5) in which primary casting stats are done away with and split up over mental stats:

Int: Determines highest level spell you can cast
Wis: Determines bonus spells
Cha: Determines save DC

What are the probable effects? Does it hurt full casters proportionally more at early levels or later levels? Will the sky fall on the ranger and paladin?

Does it create more interesting decisions regarding ability scores?

A clarification: I'd allow an int 12 wizard to cast an empowered magic missile with his 3rd level slot, just not fireball. (This might be RAW anyway)

Well caster fixes in general don't work. Because casual gaming groups don't need any fixes and optimizers will easily get around them. Especially something this simple.

So I'll explore the effect of this on a casual game; one where casters and non-casters more or less do fine alongside each other. Most players will get the int they need, which with regular rolls will be their first or 2nd highest stat to be safe. Wis will get ignored except with generous stats. Instead their attention will go to cha, which will be a trap. Rookie players will struggle with their save DCs and suffer, rather than going to no save spells. Most frustrating of all their con will suffer as their 3rd or 4th stat, making them die fast. Veterans will easily pump them in other ways. But most casual gamers will be able to handle this and it will be a minor setback in terms of casting. Their con will still be quite painful. Overall it's a convoluted way to make arcane casters and casting focused clerics (vs melee clerics) more squishy to better fit the "smart but frail" stereotypes. And slightly discourage playing a caster.

So... as skeptical as I am with most fixes this could be fine as a house rule. It won't really fix anything but it could slightly steer casual players away from casters or make them more cautious when playing casters. Which means more self protection which means less wiping the field. Good optimizers will barely be affected at all though, unless their many tricks are banned/nerfed. I also would use this as a quirky little variant for a campaign, not rule 34 out of 81 annoying little house rules.

I would still give out plenty of magic items because magic is a large part of the fun of 3.5. Gishes and melee clerics mainly just need a little of one mental stat (int). Same as before so they can manage too. The last thing you want is someone playing a non-caster because they more or less have to. So hand out lots of other toys.

[Fizban]

As an indirect effect, all casters will have more skill points, because they now require int to cast anything above 1st level. Clerics will no longer be wis powerhouses, and instead of having nigh-impregnable will saves, might be closer to your typical wizard (a non-trivial problem when will save effects tend to require at least one person to save to avoid TPK). All casters specializing in save-based spells will be bringing higher social skills even without spending skill points.

The three spellcasting functions here are not equal. Spell access caps at 19, bonus slots have a level based requirement and soft cap at 28, and whether a given spell cares about DCs is completely binary and has no cap. The system isn't made for it, and high bonus magic items make much of it pointless. The biggest effect is that high level casters are encouraged to buy more stat boosters, reducing how many other items they can buy.

Since part of the problem with caster supremacy is the abandonment of team members- rather than relying on party casters, non-casters are expected to have full suites of items to make them self-sufficient, and the same cheap items written to enable this mean casters don't need to buff their allies or themselves and have far more wealth and spell slots- the effective reduction in wealth from buying a bunch of stat boosters to get back to "normal" should result in a curbing of some power. Having four stats that can't be completely dumped should reduce inflated con/dex scores by a bit too. Note that high level characters will be quite likely to run Belts of Magnificence, because casters now want essentially every stat but strength and there's a group discount on the belt.

[blackwindbears]

4,000gp, sell it for 2,000gp to buy a 16,000gp to sell it at 8,000gp to buy a 36,000gp. With a loss of 2,000gp and 8,000gp a player wasted 10,000gp because of your house rule. +36,000gp on a stat item they would have never gotten if it weren't for your house rule so that's a 46,000gp wasted on wealth to combat your house rule. Is that your intent? To make spellcasters 46,000gp poorer than other players?


So out of the 760,000 WBL? I don't think you really ran the numbers before looking at this.




I'm not losing my mind. I literally don't give a damn about save DCs when I play spellcasters as 100% of the spells I use revolve around summoning or planar binding. The latter admittedly does need save DCs but since it's an out of combat spell that ignores spell resistance I can just wait for them to roll a 1 over a week or two and then permanently enslave it.

But when I see people who don't go the optimized route and pick spells that look cool rather than function efficiently which are almost always spells that target Fortitude and does not ignore spell resistance, I smile because these people are playing for fun rather than to power game. But they struggle because save DCs don't scale well, there are very few if any method of boosting save DCs, and monsters saves and spell resistance explode to the stratosphere at higher levels.

And then someone like you comes along and says lets nerf the playstyle that people who play for fun rather than to power game because you don't have enough system mastery to know exactly why spellcasters become problematic and how to handle that. Seeing how your sole focus is 1st and 2nd level spells I am going to assumed you've rarely played beyond level 6.

No one gives a damn about 1st, 2nd, or even 3rd level spell DCs because monsters don't have spell resistance and their saves are terrible at low levels to the point that people buy wands of glitterdust rather than casting it themselves.

If I'm being brutally honest, if your encounter dies to a single glitterdust or sleep then you as a DM need to design encounters better. I mean it. Space monsters apart. Mix melee and ranged enemies. Mix monster types so there are monsters who are immune to those spells like undead. The options are limitless.


Really spend 5 minutes thinking about this, why are you declaring SoD's impossible when you're realistically looking at somewhere between no impact on your save DC or -2 if you use point buy? (I'm not really buying into paying ~50K by level 17/18 makes the concept entirely unplayable).



With what basis do you make this claim? I actually have the mathematical evidence that shows this is wrong but I'm a hold out to see how you came to this conclusion.


I'd love to see your mathematical evidence! I don't have anything direct except half remembering it from a 3.5 sourcebook somewhere, DMG2 maybe? I've also seen a few folks on this forum claim this. Including Random832 who claims (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?116724-what-is-elite-array) 8.5, 10.4, 11.8, 13, 14.2, 15.7. My only thought is to write a python script to calculate it. I personally have no interest in calculating it analytically (as opposed to numerically) myself, but I think that it'd be an interesting proof to see!




If you want facts, these are the facts.
1. Only suboptimal spellcasters rely on save DCs. Optimized spellcasters use tactics that ignore save DCs and spell resistance because consistency and reliability is one of the most important things in a game where combat is over in round 1 at high optimization, rounds 1-5 in normal optimization.
2. Your house rule only hurts suboptimal spellcasters by forcing them to pay 46,000gp and does not hurt optimized spellcasters at all.
3. This in turn gives incentive to the suboptimal players to ditch their suboptimal build and play a more powerful optimized build rather than deal with your house rule on top of the horrible spell save DC scaling and explosion of monster's save and spell resistance.

Someone casting dominate monster at level 17 taking a -2 penalty to their save DC is not going to cause me to lose any sleep over balance. Thanks for your input.



If your goal was to force suboptimal players into playing more optimized builds then you've succeeded. If your goal was to weaken optimized spellcasters then you have completely failed.

Whether or not you agree with these facts does not matter. Just read other people's comments in this thread, they all agree with me and I'm not interested in debating the basics with someone who needs a little more experience with the system.


I won't say I'll be sorry to see the back of you.




It just makes a part of casters' arsenal less usable (namely, save-or-dies). It also just dumps on blasting again, which is not something you'd want to do if you're trying to fix 3.5 casting, as non-severely-optimized blasting is probably the worst thing to do with your magic slots.

The actual problem with Vancian casting isn't that it's highly exploitable in the form of Save-or-Dies, because they mostly fixed that for D&D 5e with lesser effects and somewhat lower save DCs, that are also harder to pump (of course, they also dropped the ball on players having adequate resistances, but what are you gonna do, it's WotC).

The problem is the presence of "I press a button that does something nobody else in the game has at the same level of power, and it happens because I say so." things. Invisibility. Teleport. Planar Binding, Fly, Time Stop, Wish/Miracle, Astral Projection...the list goes on, and I'm not even out of Core yet. The Wizard's spell list is just too large, same with Clerics and Druids.


Just as a general rule, if your input is that the problem with casters is that they cast spells, that's simply not very helpful.






So I'll explore the effect of this on a casual game; one where casters and non-casters more or less do fine alongside each other. Most players will get the int they need, which with regular rolls will be their first or 2nd highest stat to be safe. Wis will get ignored except with generous stats. Instead their attention will go to cha, which will be a trap. Rookie players will struggle with their save DCs and suffer, rather than going to no save spells. Most frustrating of all their con will suffer as their 3rd or 4th stat, making them die fast. Veterans will easily pump them in other ways. But most casual gamers will be able to handle this and it will be a minor setback in terms of casting. Their con will still be quite painful. Overall it's a convoluted way to make arcane casters and casting focused clerics (vs melee clerics) more squishy to better fit the "smart but frail" stereotypes. And slightly discourage playing a caster.

So... as skeptical as I am with most fixes this could be fine as a house rule. It won't really fix anything but it could slightly steer casual players away from casters or make them more cautious when playing casters. Which means more self protection which means less wiping the field. Good optimizers will barely be affected at all though, unless their many tricks are banned/nerfed. I also would use this as a quirky little variant for a campaign, not rule 34 out of 81 annoying little house rules.

I would still give out plenty of magic items because magic is a large part of the fun of 3.5. Gishes and melee clerics mainly just need a little of one mental stat (int). Same as before so they can manage too. The last thing you want is someone playing a non-caster because they more or less have to. So hand out lots of other toys.

So if I'm reading this correctly you're saying:

1) This won't break the game, but won't 'fix' casters.
2) Houserules require cognitive load. Avalanching your players under them won't be worth the benefit.
3) Full casters will be somewhat more squishy.
4) Melee clerics and gishes will probably be mostly uneffected.
5) Wisdom isn't worth it for most builds. It'd be better to focus on con and dex as secondary stats.

That's useful feedback, thanks.


As an indirect effect, all casters will have more skill points, because they now require int to cast anything above 1st level. Clerics will no longer be wis powerhouses, and instead of having nigh-impregnable will saves, might be closer to your typical wizard (a non-trivial problem when will save effects tend to require at least one person to save to avoid TPK). All casters specializing in save-based spells will be bringing higher social skills even without spending skill points.

The three spellcasting functions here are not equal. Spell access caps at 19, bonus slots have a level based requirement and soft cap at 28, and whether a given spell cares about DCs is completely binary and has no cap. The system isn't made for it, and high bonus magic items make much of it pointless. The biggest effect is that high level casters are encouraged to buy more stat boosters, reducing how many other items they can buy.

Since part of the problem with caster supremacy is the abandonment of team members- rather than relying on party casters, non-casters are expected to have full suites of items to make them self-sufficient, and the same cheap items written to enable this mean casters don't need to buff their allies or themselves and have far more wealth and spell slots- the effective reduction in wealth from buying a bunch of stat boosters to get back to "normal" should result in a curbing of some power. Having four stats that can't be completely dumped should reduce inflated con/dex scores by a bit too. Note that high level characters will be quite likely to run Belts of Magnificence, because casters now want essentially every stat but strength and there's a group discount on the belt.

That more or less matches my thinking. I'm a little concerned about clerics abandoning wisdom. Seems like most casters will end up with pretty similar ability scores.

[Goaty14]

I assure you, I've played multiple high level modules. Fighters had no trouble contributing. I'm always kinda skeptical that people who make sweeping pronouncements like this have actually played or dmed a fighter at level 18 for say Shackled City or Age of Worms.

Sure, but even the level 18 warrior can contribute in the same situations as the fighter. After all, they can both swing sticks around and do nothing else, right? Notice that I didn't say contribute, I said "meaningfully contribute". Compare & contrast the situations wherein the fighter contributed with where a statistically better class (that also fills the fighter's role) could've contributed, in addition to any situations where the other class could contribute where the fighter couldn't. Oh, and how well did the fighter do?


So Cha > Wis, once Int is barely big enough to cast the necessary spells.

Not necessarily. My Focused Transmuter or Focused Conjurer won't need the save DCs when they're buffing and summoning, respectively.


So out of the 760,000 WBL? I don't think you really ran the numbers before looking at this.

Touche. The wizard just drops the money that would've gone to a continuous item of flight/mindblank, picks up 3 spells known (contingency, fly, mind blank), and probably saves more dolla than the fighter.


That more or less matches my thinking. I'm a little concerned about clerics abandoning wisdom. Seems like most casters will end up with pretty similar ability scores.

This implies that clerics dropping wisdom is a bad thing?

[Deophaun]

This doesn't do jack. All you did is make SoDs unusuable.
They aren't unusuable, you just basically choose whether you want to use SoDs or if you want more bonus spells.

Int you just need to be able to hit 19 at level 17.
Wisdom could no longer be a dump stat for arcane casters.
Charisma can still be a dump stat for divines. (Persisted divine power doesn't care how ugly you are)

Of course, now you are free to maybe make a physical stat your primary. Now the Wizard can be stronger than the Fighter without polymorph.

[magicalmagicman]

You do realize every single person in this thread is repeating what RoboEmperor is saying right? That this house rule won't do anything except make a certain arsenal/playstyle of spellcasters less usable including ericgau who repeated that casual gamers will suffer while veterans will shrug them off. Your continual denial of what everyone is saying here by repeating the same incorrect assumptions or facts is frustrating but oh well. At least we tried.

You need the +6 int at level 15 not level 20. So it's not 46000gp out of 760000 but 200000. That's almost the quarter of your wealth you need to invest to combat your house rule. Since you can't cherry pick your gear and have to sell it at half price it actually ends up being 50% of your wealth by level to deal with your house rule. Why you keep claiming false facts as the basis of your argument against RoboEmperor puzzles me.

You have failed to properly describe your goals as Mike Miller pointed out and I got nothing from your argument with RoboEmperor. It seems your main goal is to nerf glitterdust and sleep? You keep claiming your house rule is a minor nerf on spellcasters which is incorrect. There is no effect on spellcasters who knows how to use their class to their fullest and 50% wealth reduction for casual players. What is the point of doing this?

You keep claiming fighters can contribute at high levels at which point i wonder, what is the point of all these house rules?

So without a goal, we just end up going in circles where you deny what everyone is saying in this thread to uphold your agenda to do... something...

So why don't you start being productive and answer Mike Miller's post by telling us what exactly is your problem with spellcasters and what you're trying to achieve with these house rules?

[blackwindbears]

Sure, but even the level 18 warrior can contribute in the same situations as the fighter. After all, they can both swing sticks around and do nothing else, right? Notice that I didn't say contribute, I said "meaningfully contribute". Compare & contrast the situations wherein the fighter contributed with where a statistically better class (that also fills the fighter's role) could've contributed, in addition to any situations where the other class could contribute where the fighter couldn't. Oh, and how well did the fighter do?


I don't know what other DM's are doing, but the high level fighters in my campaigns haven't been incapable of contributing meaningfully. They haven't contributed the most. That designation, weirdly, was at first to a high level ranger who always seemed to win initiative and had very well chosen favored enemies (belt of battle played a big role there too). Well, until it went to a rogue with staggering strike.

Naturally some combats favored the fighter for various reasons, but that's typical for just about any game.



Not necessarily. My Focused Transmuter or Focused Conjurer won't need the save DCs when they're buffing and summoning, respectively.


That's a good point. How might you have built them differently if this house rule were in place?



This implies that clerics dropping wisdom is a bad thing?

Well, I guess I don't know. How important are wise clerics in your view of generic fantasy?

[Cosi]

I certainly suspect this would succeed in making spellcasters angry. Jokes aside, there are obvious problems with this.

Most notably, nerfing casters is just going about things wrong. The overwhelming majority of abilities casters have are fair, and the largest imbalance occurs because there are parts of the game where casters have relevant abilities and martials don't. Consider the case of a mage using teleport to allow the party to rapidly travel a long distance. Sure, that's better than anything a Fighter could have done in the same situation. But that's because a Fighter couldn't do anything in that situation. He has no relevant class abilities. So the first step in any attempted balance patch or set of houserules should be dramatic and sweeping buffs to martials. They need to get better in combat, and they need to do anything at all out of it. Once that happens we can consider what nerfs casters need to catch.

But the specifics of this fix (like most quick caster nerfs actually) don't fix the problem spells. 90% or more of the balance problems are caused by a tiny subset of the spells, and this fix does nothing to help with them. In fact, in an environment where you get less spells per day at lower DCs, options like simulacrum which don't require a save and don't need to be cast on the day you use them look even better. You're basically setting up incentives that point casters directly at the most broken spells available to them.

Finally, and most specifically to this fix, you've removed a lot of the distinctiveness casters might have. Previously, Wizards, Sorcerers, and Clerics all wanted different stats and therefore would all be good at different things. Wizards were good at Knowledge, Clerics had good scouting abilities and mental defenses, Sorcerers were more proficient at social interaction. Plus all the other stuff that could key off those stats. Now everyone wants pretty much the same stats in pretty much the same amounts. That's dumb and makes the game shallower.


rather than relying on party casters, non-casters are expected to have full suites of items to make them self-sufficient, and the same cheap items written to enable this mean casters don't need to buff their allies or themselves and have far more wealth and spell slots

Yes, characters are expected to pull their own weight. The idea that it is acceptable for the Wizard and Cleric to provide the Fighter with buffs, healing, transportation, information, resurrection, and in-combat support while the Fighter provides nothing in exchange is farcical (before you respond make sure you understand what the phrases "marginal cost" and "value above replacement" mean). You're asking to be allowed to show up with a partial character and demand the rest of the group help you finish it. That's not remotely okay, and it warps the entire game around you.

[blackwindbears]

They aren't unusuable, you just basically choose whether you want to use SoDs or if you want more bonus spells.

Int you just need to be able to hit 19 at level 17.
Wisdom could no longer be a dump stat for arcane casters.
Charisma can still be a dump stat for divines. (Persisted divine power doesn't care how ugly you are)

Of course, now you are free to maybe make a physical stat your primary. Now the Wizard can be stronger than the Fighter without polymorph.

That's more or less the conclusion I came to as well.

But, if you could make a physical stat your primary with this house rule, what was keeping you from doing it before? If you don't need bonus spells or a high save DC, then you just need the minimum for getting the spell levels, correct?


You do realize every single person in this thread is repeating what RoboEmperor is saying right? That this house rule won't do anything except make a certain arsenal/playstyle of spellcasters less usable including ericgau who repeated that casual gamers will suffer while veterans will shrug them off. Your continual denial of what everyone is saying here by repeating the same incorrect assumptions or facts is frustrating but oh well. At least we tried.


Frankly I'd be more impressed if you or robo could quantify the change, looks like either no change and 46K gold, or something like -2 to save DCs. I'm not convinced it makes it completely unplayable. I'd also be somewhat more convinced if you didn't screw up the math in this next section here.



You need the +6 int at level 15 not level 20. So it's not 46000gp out of 760000 but 200000. That's almost the quarter of your wealth you need to invest to combat your house rule. Since you can't cherry pick your gear and have to sell it at half price it actually ends up being 50% of your wealth by level to deal with your house rule. Why you keep claiming false facts as the basis of your argument against RoboEmperor puzzles me.


If you buy and sell the +int items it ends up costing a total of 46K. Not at all sure how you got to 50% of wealth by level. (A +6 item costs 36K, and you've lost 10K from selling the previous items). Worst case scenario it looks to me like they might delay a spell level, and be on par with spontaneous characters. This, in my view, is not a crisis. Maybe you put your 15 in int and your 13 in cha. Then it's cost you a grand total of a -1 to your save DC.

Did you follow that? You and Robo are claiming that it makes an entire set of options for a caster completely untenable over a -1 to save DC. At least the other folks are claiming that it makes them slightly worse, rather than claiming



All you did is make SoDs unusuable.


For a -1 to save DC. Can you imagine if I suggested adding 8 to save DC's rather than 10? He'd probably claim that all of the spells allowing a save might as well be removed from the game.



You have failed to properly describe your goals as Mike Miller pointed out and I got nothing from your argument with RoboEmperor. It seems your main goal is to nerf glitterdust and sleep? You keep claiming your house rule is a minor nerf on spellcasters which is incorrect. There is no effect on spellcasters who knows how to use their class to their fullest and 50% wealth reduction for casual players. What is the point of doing this?


Glitterdust and sleep were brought up because it didn't take me going very far down the wizard spell list to find non-suboptimal options for wizards that required save DCs.



You keep claiming fighters can contribute at high levels at which point i wonder, what is the point of all these house rules?

So without a goal, we just end up going in circles where you deny what everyone is saying in this thread to uphold your agenda to do... something...

So why don't you start being productive and answer Mike Miller's post by telling us what exactly is your problem with spellcasters and what you're trying to achieve with these house rules?

If you'd like to contribute to the thread please reread OP and answer any of the questions I actually asked. If you have no interest please refrain from commenting. Thank you.

[JNAProductions]

You don't own the thread, you know. People are allowed to say what they want, even if it disagrees with what you want to hear.

[Mike Miller]

If you'd like to contribute to the thread please reread OP and answer any of the questions I actually asked. If you have no interest please refrain from commenting. Thank you.

You are making it difficult for people to contribute by not answering questions regarding the premise behind your changes. Other than it being interesting, what problems are you having and what goals did you have in mind?

[blackwindbears]

Finally, and most specifically to this fix, you've removed a lot of the distinctiveness casters might have. Previously, Wizards, Sorcerers, and Clerics all wanted different stats and therefore would all be good at different things. Wizards were good at Knowledge, Clerics had good scouting abilities and mental defenses, Sorcerers were more proficient at social interaction. Plus all the other stuff that could key off those stats. Now everyone wants pretty much the same stats in pretty much the same amounts. That's dumb and makes the game shallower.


Do you have any suggestions about how to make them more differentiated in the context of this house rule?



For future posters, I've read plenty of "the problem with spellcasters is they can cast good spells." I appreciate the input, but it's not particularly novel, nor have I found it to be true in actual games.



I suppose a question related to the OP here, is why are some classes MAD and some classes SAD? Is it better design for all of the classes to be SAD (and for the love of god, the question isn't would characters be more powerful if they were all SAD)? Equivalently why not let all characters have one ability score, called goodness (or hell, level) or something, and let all of the bonuses key off of the one ability? Why have ability scores at all? Simulationism? Die rolling minigame at the beginning of the campaign? Tradition?

[Nifft]

I'm considering a houserule (for 3.5) in which primary casting stats are done away with and split up over mental stats:

Int: Determines highest level spell you can cast
Wis: Determines bonus spells
Cha: Determines save DC


I made a class with similar mechanics, but I used Int differently: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?163829-Favored-Mystic-of-Selene

Int - prepare bonus spells
Wis - gain bonus daily slots
Cha - spell DC

In my class, you needed any one mental ability score to be (10 + level) to cast spells of that level, so I wanted to see what happened if people used the same framework for all 7 combinations of spellcasting:
- High Int, dump others
- High Wis, dump others
- High Cha, dump others
- High Int + Wis, dump Cha
- High Int + Cha, dump Wis
- High Wis + Cha, dump Int
- High All Three

This wasn't exactly like your proposal, but you may be interested in hearing the upshot from my (limited) testing. Basically, Wisdom and Charisma were less valuable than Int. Many of the best spells don't permit any saving throw, and temporary Charisma-boosting effects are useful when you do need to force a saving throw.

Charisma was viable as a mono-stat build. A solid blaster / BFC / dominator / Planar Binding build would center around Charisma, and those things include several awesome things.

Wisdom wasn't worth it.

If I were to re-do this class, I'd probably do something like...

Int - prep more spells
Wis - duration
Cha - saving throws

NOTHING would give you more slots per day except levels and items -- kinda like 5e, except different.

Anyway, that's my experience.

[blackwindbears]

But the specifics of this fix (like most quick caster nerfs actually) don't fix the problem spells. 90% or more of the balance problems are caused by a tiny subset of the spells, and this fix does nothing to help with them. In fact, in an environment where you get less spells per day at lower DCs, options like simulacrum which don't require a save and don't need to be cast on the day you use them look even better. You're basically setting up incentives that point casters directly at the most broken spells available to them.

Can you point me to a list of problem spells by the way? I know the wizard-op handbooks have a few candidates. The notorious PaO for example.

[blackwindbears]

I made a class with similar mechanics, but I used Int differently: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?163829-Favored-Mystic-of-Selene

Int - prepare bonus spells
Wis - gain bonus daily slots
Cha - spell DC

In my class, you needed any one mental ability score to be (10 + level) to cast spells of that level, so I wanted to see what happened if people used the same framework for all 7 combinations of spellcasting:
- High Int, dump others
- High Wis, dump others
- High Cha, dump others
- High Int + Wis, dump Cha
- High Int + Cha, dump Wis
- High Wis + Cha, dump Int
- High All Three

This wasn't exactly like your proposal, but you may be interested in hearing the upshot from my (limited) testing. Basically, Wisdom and Charisma were less valuable than Int. Many of the best spells don't permit any saving throw, and temporary Charisma-boosting effects are useful when you do need to force a saving throw.

Charisma was viable as a mono-stat build. A solid blaster / BFC / dominator / Planar Binding build would center around Charisma, and those things include several awesome things.

Wisdom wasn't worth it.

If I were to re-do this class, I'd probably do something like...

Int - prep more spells
Wis - duration
Cha - saving throws

NOTHING would give you more slots per day except levels and items -- kinda like 5e, except different.

Anyway, that's my experience.

Very cool, thanks for pointing me to it.

[magicalmagicman]

You are making it difficult for people to contribute by not answering questions regarding the premise behind your changes. Other than it being interesting, what problems are you having and what goals did you have in mind?

It seems you're on his ignore list. Might as well, I'm gonna take his suggestion and refrain from posting.

[Deophaun]

But, if you could make a physical stat your primary with this house rule, what was keeping you from doing it before? If you don't need bonus spells or a high save DC, then you just need the minimum for getting the spell levels, correct?
The package deal of getting all that stuff is what was "preventing" you. You've always ever only needed to max at a 19 in your primary mental stat for a caster. The bonus spells and scaling DCs is what made further investment in the stat worthwhile, plus certain spells pegged their strength to your primary casting stat (kelpstrand, for instance, likes high-Wis druids).

[EldritchWeaver]

For a -1 to save DC. Can you imagine if I suggested adding 8 to save DC's rather than 10? He'd probably claim that all of the spells allowing a save might as well be removed from the game.

Robo provided info on how the DC is going to be different by 5-6, not just 1, since you can't afford to boost all stats at once compared to a SAD caster:


I don't but I'm not gonna waste resources into boosting my spell's save DCs when it is 5-6 less than what it should be when I need to use it against monsters who usually has +15-19 to their save. 30 casting stat? That's a +10, so a 9th level spell will have a save DC of 29 against agaisnt a Balor's +19 will save. Meaning 45% success chance ignoring spell resistance. If we add spell resistance to the mix the success rate plumets even further. Drop it to 19 because of your house rule? That's a +4 which makes it a 15% success chance without spell resistance. Am I gonna waste an action on a 15% success chance spell that also needs to overcome spell resistance? The answer is hell no. So I'm not gonna bother pumping my save DC. At all.

No, instead I'll get my INT to 19 and spend my wealth on other things and never anything that boosts my CHA because there is no point. There are many, many, MANY things that let me ignore save DCs so why would I choose to do a build that relies on save DCs when you gimped it so hard? The answer is I wouldn't. So you made it unviable.

[blackwindbears]

You are making it difficult for people to contribute by not answering questions regarding the premise behind your changes. Other than it being interesting, what problems are you having and what goals did you have in mind?

I'm not having any particular problems. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to create new, unforseen, serious problems, by making this change. It's a hypothesis. What are the probable effects? So far folk have pointed out more than a few.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Specialist wizards compared



Vanilla
Houserule: max slots
Houserule: max DC


28 point-buy
10/12/14/18/8/8
8/12/14/15/16/8
8/12/14/14/14/14


Racial
8/12/14/20/8/8 (dragonborn grey elf, -2 str, +2 int)
8/12/14/15/18/10 (lesser aasimar, +2 wis/+2 cha)
8/12/14/14/16/16 (lesser aasimar, +2 wis/+2 cha)


Level 20 stats
8/12/14/36/8/8 (increases on int, +6 headband, +5 int tome, 72 000 gp)
8/12/14/19/32/8 (increases on wis, +6 periapt, +4 headband, +5 wis tome, 56 000 gp)
8/12/14/20/22/32 (increases on cha, +6 cloak, +6 periapt, +6 headband, +5 cha tome)


Spell slots
4/9/8/8/8/8/7/7/7/7
4/8/8/8/7/7/7/7/6/6
4/7/7/6/6/6/6/5/5/5


Spell slot delta (levels)
+0/+0/+0/+0/+0/+0/+0/+0/+0/+0 (0)
+0/-1/+0/+0/-1/-1/+0/+0/-1/-1 (-27)
+0/-2/-1/-2/-2/-2/-1/-2/-2/-2 (-82)


Save DC
23 + spell level
10 + spell level
21 + spell level


Focussing on spells per day: Your save DC is terrible, and you lose ~7% of your spell slots (including an 8th and a 9th) and ~2% of your WBL.
Focussing on save DC: Your save DC is slightly lower, and you lose ~22% of your spell slots (including two 8ths and two 9ths) and ~9% of your WBL.


Focussing on spells per day: You'll be nearly as effective as the vanilla wizard, but somewhat less versatile, since you can't effectively save-or-die a vulnerable target. Pick summons and buffs to avoid save DCs.
Focussing on save DC: You'll run out of spells noticably faster than the vanilla wizard, and you'll still be somewhat worse at your primary trick than a vanilla wizard doing the same thing. Pick spells that are more than single-shot effects like blackfire and avascular mass to conserve spell slots*. Ironically, some of the best ways to conserve spell slots involve no-save spells, including buffing and many forms of minionmancy.


Overall, I'd say the wizard looking for save DCs is worse off than the wizard only looking for spell slots, and the number of viable spells for each given wizard is reduced.


P.S. Wisdom is much easier to boost than Intelligence and Charisma, thanks to owl''s insight (Charisma is slightly easier to boost than Intelligence, too). All of the above wizards could easily have a +12 enhancement bonus to wisdom (replacing the periapt's +6, where applicable), if they managed to get the spell from a druid. Since that requires one to go off-list and employ some persistomancy, I haven't included it as baseline. Persistomancy typically favoures Intelligence (due to the Incantatrix' tricks being so powerful) and opens up a ton of buff spells to evaluate at each level. At very high levels of optimization (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?188138-Team-Solars-(Archiving)), this houserule would work out to be a straight buff, because you get more slots for free, and you can get enough Metamagic Effect uses with body outside body. In TO, it doesn't matter at all, as any stat can be arbitrarily high.

Of course, the same owl's insight effect works quite heavily against any wisdom-based caster, as they would lose the advantage of easily-buffed spell DCs.

*I'm not up-to-date on top spells-with-save picks, but those two are pretty cool.

[blackwindbears]

The package deal of getting all that stuff is what was "preventing" you. You've always ever only needed to max at a 19 in your primary mental stat for a caster. The bonus spells and scaling DCs is what made further investment in the stat worthwhile, plus certain spells pegged their strength to your primary casting stat (kelpstrand, for instance, likes high-Wis druids).

Good point!


Robo provided info on how the DC is going to be different by 5-6, not just 1, since you can't afford to boost all stats at once compared to a SAD caster:

He never *actually* provided the info that this was the case. He simply announces it is, then points out that having save DC's 5 or 6 worse makes it too hard to do. Well that might be the case. Here's what I see.

SAD (SoD) Wizard Level 5
str: 8
dex: 13
con: 14
int: 16
wis: 10
cha: 12
Equipment: 9000 gold
Save DC: 16

MAD (SoD) Wizard Level 5
str: 8
dex: 12
con: 14
int: 13
wis: 10
cha: 16
Equipment: 9000 gold
Save DC: 16

SAD Wizard Level 10
str: 8
dex: 13
con: 14
int: 19
wis: 10
cha: 12
Equipment: +2 int crown (4K), 45K gold
Save DC: 20

MAD Wizard level 10
str: 8
dex: 12
con: 14
int: 15
wis: 10
cha: 19
Equipment: +2 int crown (4K), +2 cha cape (4K), 41K gold
Save DC: 19

SAD Wizard level 15
str: 8
dex: 13
con: 14
int: 24
wis: 10
cha: 12
Equipment: +6 int crown (36k), 164K gold
Save DC: 25

MAD Wizard level 15
str: 8
dex: 12
con: 14
int: 19
wis: 10
cha: 20
Equipment: +6 int crown (36k), +4 cloak (16k), 148 K gold (Probably could afford the +6 cloak, but hell, I can be conservative)
Save DC: 24

(For brevities sake this continues. At level 20 the MAD wizard's save DC catches back up.)

Do you know where the heck he's getting a 10-12 ability score difference from? Hell if I know.


Edit: Ninja'd ExLibrisMortis did this more completely with far nicer formatting, and again, I don't at all see how a Save or Die wizard is rendered unplayable. Though it nicely summarizes what it will cost to go with SoD.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Edit: Ninja'd ExLibrisMortis did this more completely with far nicer formatting, and again, I don't at all see how a Save or Die wizard is rendered unplayable. Though it nicely summarizes what it will cost to go with SoD.
It's not unplayable. It's significantly worse than vanilla.

Any nerf to a wizard's spells per day or save DCs encourages the use of Persistent shapechange, planar binding, animate dead, and so on. It's not a hit to the class' power per sé, it's more of a narrowing of the focus required to acquire world-shattering power. All of the funky "I cast a spell and you will suffer!" builds are slowly weeded out with each successive sweeping nerf.

[blackwindbears]

It's not unplayable. It's significantly worse than vanilla.

Any nerf to a wizard's spells per day or save DCs encourages the use of Persistent shapechange, planar binding, animate dead, and so on. It's not a hit to the class' power per sé, it's more of a narrowing of the focus required to acquire world-shattering power. All of the funky "I cast a spell and you will suffer!" builds are slowly weeded out with each successive sweeping nerf.

I don't think that my wizards would stop memorizing disintegrate in view of this. Hell, they aren't going to stop memorizing fireball on account of this.

People are still playing fighters and rangers in my games so I don't see why, if they wanted an SoD wizard, they'd stop doing that. Unless the argument is that a SoD wizard is substantially worse than a fighter given this houserule?

If I understand correctly, before the rule change the vanilla wizard could just change his spells in the morning to play a plausible save or die wizard, now it would require a conscious build choice. Right?

[JNAProductions]

If casters aren't a problem, why nerf them in your game?

[blackwindbears]

If casters aren't a problem, why nerf them in your game?

I'm interested in the rule. Frankly the fluff of it appeals to me.

I think I must have miscommunicated in the original post. It seems to have been taken as, "should I have this houserule?"

What I meant to ask was, "if I have this houserule what are the probable effects?"

This wasn't helped when I spent two pages arguing with a hyperbolic statement about save or dies. (That the DCs would be reduced by 5 or something).

[magicalmagicman]

I'm interested in the rule. Frankly the fluff of it appeals to me.

I think I must have miscommunicated in the original post. It seems to have been taken as, "should I have this houserule?"

What I meant to ask was, "if I have this houserule what are the probable effects?"

This wasn't helped when I spent two pages arguing with a hyperbolic statement about save or dies. (That the DCs would be reduced by 5 or something).

It is not a hyperbole. It is reduced by 5-6.

You're assuming players are going to minmax and waste 46000gp and all 5 level up ability score on your stupid house rule. If they don't because they spend their money on something else like they should then their DC will in fact be reduced by 5-6. If I was in your game I would start with 15 INT and put 4 ability points from level up into INT and not waste my precious money on a stupid headband of intellect and get significantly better magic items especially since if I sell my loot my WBL is reduced. You seem to fail to understand WBL is found loot, not amount of gp after selling loot.

Seriously, who is gonna spend 82000gp to boost their save DC by 3? No one which is why it is unviable and not a hyperbole. I'm serious, who is gonna waste 46000gp combating your house rule and 36000gp for a +3 DC boost? 82000gp buys really good magic items so why would anyone spend it for +3 DC? How is it even remotely fathomable that requiring 82000gp to boost your save DC by +3 isn't completely destroying SoDs?

If your wizards don't stop preparing disintegrate then that's because they're casual gamers who don't know any better and you're hurting them for absolutely no reason.

Stop arguing basic facts. Every single person in this thread disagrees with you. It's so hard to refrain from posting when seeing such incorrect theorycrafting and then that person pointing fingers and blaming others. Your house rule is terrible and accomplishes absolutely nothing.

[AvatarVecna]

"This hasn't happened in my games" and "this doesn't happen in modules that can be designed to try and work around these problems" doesn't mean that these problems don't exist. Normally, full caster vs anything else (and when I say "vs", that could be "they're fighting" or "they're competing for the same roles at the table to see who does better") tends to be like playing a game of chess where one side is only allowed king and queen, and the other side has all the normal pieces; this change, to continue the metaphor, takes away the queen from the side that has all their pieces; if you squint at the board, and have the barest understanding of chess, you might be inclined to think that losing your queen makes this a much more even game, and in a sense you're right, but versatility and options are more important in a tactical game than pure power, and that's what we're looking at here: even if you build a caster who doesn't need save DCs at all (giving up most of their ways to deal direct damage, or impose the most awful debuffs), you haven't effected buffs or utility at all, and you've only touched on the nastier BFC spells. Blasting was already the worst way to spend your time as a caster, and debuffing tends to vary depending on the enemies you face, but buffing/BFC/utility is still enough versatility that it lets casters access the stupid broken tricks that apparently never come up in your game.

Tier 1 classes aren't T1 because they have high save DCs. In fact, most of the common T1 tactics involve things that don't allow saves at all, or try to minimize how much a good save bonus can actually matter. What makes a class Tier 1 is being able to always answer "yes" to the questions "does your class have a way to deal with {situation}?" and "could you personally be capable of that solution in a short period of time?", regardless of how circumstantial the situation in question is. A well-built fighter can solve any problem involving hitting it really hard with a stick, but when violence isn't a solution, the fighter is kinda boned. A well-built rogue can solve most any problem relating to combat or a skill check, but when something is beyond the ability of skills to contribute, they're equally boned. But magic is always relevant somehow.

The fact that you have removed a small portion of the combat-only toys out of the toybox doesn't change that the T1 casters get an extradimensional toybox instead of just a foam sword and a nerf gun.

Venerable Fire Elf/Necropolitan/Wizard 20. Elf Wizard racial ACF levels 1 and 3. Spontaneous Divination at lvl 5.

Stats (lvl 1, 32 point-buy): 14/15/8/15/16/8
Stats (lvl 1, adjusted): 8/11/1/20/19/9
Stats (lvl 11, no items, wishes via Planar Binding): 13/16/-/25/26/14
Stats (lvl 20, no items): 13/16/-/26/28/14
Stats (lvl 20, items): 13/22/-/32/34/14
Familiar: Hummingbird (+8 to Init)

(Note: originally, I was gonna roll stats and just work with whatever the dice gave me for this build, but then I rolled 18/18/16/14/11/11 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23386932&postcount=397). Since I didn't want people able to say "this build only works cuz you rolled boss stats".)

Skills:
Concentration: 23 (+33)
Knowledge (Arcana): 23 (+48)
Knowledge (A&E): 1 (+12)
Knowledge (Dungeoneering): 23 (+44)
Knowledge (Geography): 1 (+12)
Knowledge (History): 1 (+12)
Knowledge (Local): 23 (+44)
Knowledge (Nature): 23 (+44)
Knowledge (Religion): 23 (+44)
Knowledge (The Planes): 23 (+44)
Spellcraft: 23 (+46)


Feats:
HD 1: Collegiate Wizard
Flaw (Feeble): Aerenal Arcanist
Flaw (Frail): Improved Initiative
Wizard 1: Scribe Scroll
HD 3: Knowledge Devotion
HD 6: Spell Mastery
HD 9: Uncanny Forethought
Wizard 10: Miser With Magic
HD 12: Extraordinary Spell Aim
HD 15: Extend Spell
Wizard 15: Quicken Spell
HD 18: Sanctum Spell
Wizard 20: Spell Mastery


Items (44600 gp left):
Arms (2000): Bracers of the Entangling Blast
Body (5000): Ghost Shroud
Face (36000): Headband Of Intellect +6
Head (15000): Circlet of Rapid Casting
Hands (36000): Gloves of Dexterity +6
Neck (36000): Periapt Of Wisdom
Neck/Slotless (16000): Hand Of Glory
Ring (20000): Ring of Arcane Might
Ring (40000): Ring of Freedom Of Movement
Ring (80000): Ring of Skilled Casting
Concentration +10 (competence)
K (Arcana) +10 (competence)
K (Dungeoneering) +10 (competence)
K (Local) +10 (competence)
K (Nature) +10 (competence)
K (Religion) +10 (competence)
K (The Planes) +10 (competence)
Spellcraft +10 (competence)

Shoulders (16000): War Wizard Cloak
Torso (200000): Vest of the Archmagi
Waist (12000): Belt of Battle
Weapon (36600): Quarterstaff (+1 Eager Spellstrike/+1 Warning Defending)
Other (2000): Handy Haversack
Other (30000): Orange Ioun Stone
Other (1800): Efficient Quiver
Other (10000): Graft (Feathered Wings)
Other (35000): Lesser Metamagic Rod of Quicken
Other (12500): Blessed Book
Other (6000): (16) lvl 0 Wand (dealer's choice)
Other (6000): (8) lvl 1 Wand (dealer's choice)
Other (18000): (4) lvl 2 Wand (dealer's choice)
Other (22500): (2) lvl 3 Wand (dealer's choice)
Other (21000): (1) lvl 4 Wand (dealer's choice)

0th lvl Spells (all 41)
1st lvl Spells (17):
Alarm
Endure Elements
Enlarge Person
Expeditious Retreat
Feather Fall
Grease
Hail of Stone
Identify
Lesser Acid Orb
Lesser Cold Orb
Lesser Elecricity Orb
Lesser Fire Orb
Locate City
Mount
Power Word Pain
Protection From Evil
Scholar's Touch

2nd lvl Spells (12):
Detect Thoughts
Glitterdust
Gust Of Wind
Knock
Lesser Celerity
Locate Object
Protection from Arrows
Resist Energy
Rope Trick
Spider Climb
Web
Wings of Cover

3rd lvl Spells (12):
Clairaudience/Clairvoyance
Dispel Magic
Fly
Greater Magic Weapon
Haste
Heart of Water
Nondetection
Sleet Storm
Stinking Cloud
Tongues
Water Breathing
Wind Wall

4th lvl Spells (11):
Arcane Eye
Assay Spell Resistance
Celerity
Dimensional Anchor
Dimension Door
Locate Creature
Polymorph
Resilient Sphere
Scrying
Secure Shelter
Stone Shape

5th lvl Spells (11):
Cloudkill
Contact Other Plane
Lesser Planar Binding
Major Creation
Overland Flight
Permanency
Telekinesis
Telepathic Bond
Teleport
Wall Of Force
Wall Of Stone

6th lvl Spells (11):
Antimagic Field
Contingency
Greater Anticipate Teleporation
Greater Dispel Magic
Greater Heroism
Kyristan's Malevolent Tentacles
Move Earth
Planar Binding
Starmantle
Tactical Teleportation
True Seeing

7th lvl Spells (11):
Ability Rip
Avasculate
Control Weather
Energy Immunity
Forcecage
Greater Scrying
Greater Teleport
Limited Wish
Magnificent Mansion
Planar Bubble
Plane Shift

8th lvl Spells (11):
Dimensional Lock
Discern Location
Embrace The Dark Chaos
Greater Celerity
Greater Planar Binding
Greater Plane Shift
Greater Prying Eyes
Mind Blank
Polymorph Any Object
Shun The Dark Chaos
Spell Engine

9th lvl Spells (11):
Astral Projection
Disjunction
Foresight
Gate
Hindsight
Magic Miasma
Shapechange
Summon Monster IX
Towering Thunderhead
Time Stop
Wish



There's a lot going on in that build, but you can honestly ignore most of it. FMI basically takes away our need for Con (although if we're really worried about our Fort save, we can exchange the hummingbird for a rat and get +2/+4 Fort), we don't need to worry about Will at all, and if we're worried about Ref we can exchange Improved Initiative for Insightful Reflexes. The skills are mostly fluff, but are useful for Knowledge Devotion (which will boost accuracy for our ranged touch attacks while those still matter), and most of the other feats and items are useful to have, but aren't the crux of why this build is T1:

Grease, Hail of Stone, Lesser Orbs, Power Word Pain. Glitterdust, Knock, Web, Wings Of Cover. Fly, Haste, Sleet Storm, Stinking Cloud. Assay Spell Resistance, Celerity, Polymorph, Scrying. Cloudkill, Overland Flight, Teleport, Wall Of Force. Contingency, Greater Dispel Magic, Planar Binding, True Seeing. Ability Rip, Forcecage, Limited Wish, Magnificent Mansion, Plane Shift. Discern Location, Dark Chaos Shuffle, Greater Celerity, Greater Planar Binding, Mind Blank, Spell Engine. Astral Projection, Disjunction, Gate, Shapechange, Time Stop, Wish. This small sampling of the spellbook, with examples at every level, fundamentally changes how this wizard approaches combat in ways that either don't care about saving throws (for the vast majority of this sampling) or barely care about them (for a few duration'd BFCs that are really good for their level even without high Save DCs). It really comes to a head at lvl 9, when you have Polymorph/Scrying/Teleport, spells that combined give you a massive information advantage, let you choose the time and (more or less) the place where the fight will occur, and let you research spells/polymorph forms that can serve as specific counters to your enemies; I'm on record as saying that these three spells are the bare minimum for being T1 because of just how fundamentally they change your approach to combat, but the fact that you have so many more spell options every level is sweet sweet icing on top.

Countering an overpowered non-full-caster tends to involve just changing numbers in their stat block - if the ubercharger barbarian and the Swift Hunter are dealing too much damage, increase AC/HP/DR for a bunch of your monsters and suddenly things are much more even. But with a lot of caster tricks, "bigger numbers" isn't the answer, at least not on its own, because the caster isn't playing fair; tactics and strategy have to improve, and oftentimes, the only way to deal with a cheap magic trick is to counter with a cheap magic trick of your own to make the game play fair, but the fact that you have to counter cheaty magic with cheaty magic (and that you can't counter cheaty magic with skills and elbow grease alone) is just more proof of the disparity this houserule is trying to fix.

[Mike Miller]

I'm interested in the rule. Frankly the fluff of it appeals to me.

I think I must have miscommunicated in the original post. It seems to have been taken as, "should I have this houserule?"

What I meant to ask was, "if I have this houserule what are the probable effects?"

This wasn't helped when I spent two pages arguing with a hyperbolic statement about save or dies. (That the DCs would be reduced by 5 or something).

I think describing your players' characters would go a long way in describing what probable effects this would have on your campaign. Perhaps even explaining how casters have been used in the past if they aren't currently in use. Do you regularly use casters as enemy NPCs? Keep your houserules in mind when making them, too.

[Ignimortis]

I don't think that my wizards would stop memorizing disintegrate in view of this. Hell, they aren't going to stop memorizing fireball on account of this.

People are still playing fighters and rangers in my games so I don't see why, if they wanted an SoD wizard, they'd stop doing that. Unless the argument is that a SoD wizard is substantially worse than a fighter given this houserule?

If I understand correctly, before the rule change the vanilla wizard could just change his spells in the morning to play a plausible save or die wizard, now it would require a conscious build choice. Right?

If your wizards are happy to play blasters and buffers AD&D style, then you don't need to change anything. A wizard who primarily blasts stuff or casts Haste on Fighters is a perfectly balanced character at low-to-mid levels, and these kind of changes would hurt them a lot where they don't even need to be hurt.



Just as a general rule, if your input is that the problem with casters is that they cast spells, that's simply not very helpful.


The problem with casters isn't exactly that they cast spells. The problem with casters is how much access to various effects they get (and how much other characters don't get anything of the sort).

I'm perfectly fine with focused casters, especially if the martials in the same party are ToB/PoW based, because they have blind spots they can't just get rid of the next morning (disregarding Rainbow Servant-style shenanigans). This encourages teamplay and covering for each other in various situations, while preserving the general function of an arcane specialist as in "this guy has Knowledge (Arcane), Spellcraft, Identify and Detect Magic, plus a specific arsenal of useful magic that won't be useful each and every time").

The very basic point to demonstrate this is such. Two parties of 4 people are to adventure from level 1 to level 20. One party is full of 9ths casters (so a Wiizard, a Druid, a Cleric and someone else, let's say, a Beguiler for that useful low-level Trapfinding), and the other is completely martial-mundane (so a Fighter, a Barbarian, a Marshal and a Rogue). Their progress is usually this: first party struggles at levels 1-5 and then it's mostly smooth sailing unless they get really unlucky dice. Second party breezes through 1-5, and then rapidly falls off, ending up pretty useless after level 10, unless their Rogue had been investing into UMD the whole time and spent half their WBL to become a pseudo-caster.

[Fizban]

I suppose a question related to the OP here, is why are some classes MAD and some classes SAD?
I'd guess that the Favored Soul and Spirit Shaman are MAD because, like the Sorcerer, their spontaneous casting was seen as more powerful than the original prepared casting, so they needed some sort of huge nerf to compensate. They're also from one of the earlier 3.5 splatbooks- compare all the other added casters from later books, Beguiler, Dread Necro, Duskblade, Archivist, all higher powered sourcebooks (just 2 books actually, 3 if we add the Artificer), all SAD. Basically they were still in cautious 3.0 mindset when they made the MAD casters, then people didn't like those so they stopped.

The Shadowcaster is from a whole book of lower power magickyness, so naturally it has the MAD in spite of being later on.

[VladtheLad]

You could try splitting the difference in two attributes and then see how it goes.
Umm maybe int wis for wizards, cha int for sorcerers, wis cha for clerics and druids.
Then you could also try making all spell dc's equal to 1/2 caster levels+casting modifier. That way maybe the your highest spells will have lower dc's but your lower won't have totally inconsequential dc's? Plus its faster for all your spells to have one dc.

I don't know really just a thought.

[gogogome]

Seriously, who is gonna spend 82000gp to boost their save DC by 3? No one which is why it is unviable and not a hyperbole. I'm serious, who is gonna waste 46000gp combating your house rule and 36000gp for a +3 DC boost? 82000gp buys really good magic items so why would anyone spend it for +3 DC? How is it even remotely fathomable that requiring 82000gp to boost your save DC by +3 isn't completely destroying SoDs?

I think this is worth repeating.

It costs 36,000gp to boost a spellcaster's spell DC by +3. With the house rule it now takes 82,000gp for a minmaxer and it might not even be possible for a casual gamer. The OP seems to be using 20th level WBL exclusively but wealth does not matter at 20th level. Your wealth increases exponentially in the last few levels. If we use 15th level WBL since that is when the +6 headband of intellect is mandatory, 82,000gp investment out of 200,000gp just to get a boost to your save DC.

If the intention of the OP was to nerf spells that require saves to the point you need to dedicate your entire character for it then this house rule will work. But it seems really silly to nerf save or die spells since any opponent worth their salt will have immunities to most of them, and as others have mentioned, higher level monsters have high spell resistance and high saves.

[Cosi]

Do you have any suggestions about how to make them more differentiated in the context of this house rule?

You could have the attribute associations not be fixed for all casters. Use whatever the caster's default stat is for DCs, then have them pick the stats they want for the other two things. Actually, I'd probably drop it to two stats, because that's closer to what martials do and you can do one stat for DCs and the other one for Spell Slots and Max Spell Level. That alleviates some of imbalances in terms of how much people want different stats.


Can you point me to a list of problem spells by the way? I know the wizard-op handbooks have a few candidates. The notorious PaO for example.

I think it's less about a list of individual spells and more about attributes. Some things to consider (roughly in order of importance):

1. Does the spell allow you to open the MM to a random page and say "I want that"? If it does, it's likely to be a problem.
2. Does casting the spell yesterday provide a combat advantage today? If it does, it's likely to be a problem.
3. Does the spell allow you to act multiple times in a single initiative pass? If it does, it's likely to be a problem.

If you consider the most broken spells in the game -- planar binding, simulacrum, and the like -- they hit not just one, but all three of these issues. Of course, these aren't a perfect guideline. Some things that meet one of the criteria in question aren't problematic (e.g. summon monster giving you action advantage) and some things that don't meet any of the criteria are problematic (e.g. shivering touch is stupidly deadly). Even the spells that are problematic have uses that don't cause issues (using planar binding for utility, non-stacked extra action spells). But that's a good set of guidelines for identifying spells that cause issues.

[Deophaun]

What I meant to ask was, "if I have this houserule what are the probable effects?"
The problem with this rule is that it hits the floor hard, while doing precious little about the ceiling. High-op T1 casters are still going to break the game. Low-op T1s are going to have a tough time as their spells stop working. Mid-op T1s are going to be sorely tempted to go to high-op to maintain their baseline performance level. T3 casters are going to stay T3, but they will still suffer.

This is the problem with using general mechanics changes to nerf casters rather than dealing with individual classes and spells: by the time you have pounded the high-op T1s into line, you've done terrible, terrible damage to the surrounding, innocent playstyles.

[blackwindbears]

The problem with this rule is that it hits the floor hard, while doing precious little about the ceiling. High-op T1 casters are still going to break the game. Low-op T1s are going to have a tough time as their spells stop working. Mid-op T1s are going to be sorely tempted to go to high-op to maintain their baseline performance level. T3 casters are going to stay T3, but they will still suffer.

This is the problem with using general mechanics changes to nerf casters rather than dealing with individual classes and spells: by the time you have pounded the high-op T1s into line, you've done terrible, terrible damage to the surrounding, innocent playstyles.

I guess I should define what I would consider to be terrible, terrible damage: A 5-6 difference in DC's (a couple builds on here have shown 0 to 1), a 50% loss of spell slots, or being behind a full spell level. (Apparently spontaneous casters do just fine being behind half a spell level). T1s playing like they're T2's and "getting punished" just isn't at all going to be relevant at my table.


I think this is worth repeating.

It costs 36,000gp to boost a spellcaster's spell DC by +3. With the house rule it now takes 82,000gp for a minmaxer and it might not even be possible for a casual gamer. The OP seems to be using 20th level WBL exclusively but wealth does not matter at 20th level. Your wealth increases exponentially in the last few levels. If we use 15th level WBL since that is when the +6 headband of intellect is mandatory, 82,000gp investment out of 200,000gp just to get a boost to your save DC.

If the intention of the OP was to nerf spells that require saves to the point you need to dedicate your entire character for it then this house rule will work. But it seems really silly to nerf save or die spells since any opponent worth their salt will have immunities to most of them, and as others have mentioned, higher level monsters have high spell resistance and high saves.

Whether they go DC's or not they're getting the headband. It doesn't make any sense to invest in a 19 int straight rather than another attribute. I computed this as several levels earlier in the thread. None of the numbers looked scary to me. And it doesn't make sense to call the headband 36,000 without the house rule and 46,000 with the house rule. It's either 46 in both cases or 36 in both cases.



You could have the attribute associations not be fixed for all casters. Use whatever the caster's default stat is for DCs, then have them pick the stats they want for the other two things. Actually, I'd probably drop it to two stats, because that's closer to what martials do and you can do one stat for DCs and the other one for Spell Slots and Max Spell Level. That alleviates some of imbalances in terms of how much people want different stats.


A couple people have suggested that, I'll think about that too. I like fixed attribute associations because it suggests that there is some sort of underlying (simulationist) rule to how magic works, rather than a grab bag dictated by (gamist) class design.



I think it's less about a list of individual spells and more about attributes. Some things to consider (roughly in order of importance):

1. Does the spell allow you to open the MM to a random page and say "I want that"? If it does, it's likely to be a problem.
2. Does casting the spell yesterday provide a combat advantage today? If it does, it's likely to be a problem.
3. Does the spell allow you to act multiple times in a single initiative pass? If it does, it's likely to be a problem.

If you consider the most broken spells in the game -- planar binding, simulacrum, and the like -- they hit not just one, but all three of these issues. Of course, these aren't a perfect guideline. Some things that meet one of the criteria in question aren't problematic (e.g. summon monster giving you action advantage) and some things that don't meet any of the criteria are problematic (e.g. shivering touch is stupidly deadly). Even the spells that are problematic have uses that don't cause issues (using planar binding for utility, non-stacked extra action spells). But that's a good set of guidelines for identifying spells that cause issues.

Generally the spells that require some sort of DM interaction haven't historically caused me a lot of trouble. Ones that simply aren't thought out well (ray of stupidity, shivering touch, that weird XPH's Energy Stun) have been a lot more troublesome. Are there uses of Planar Binding that are broken that aren't just TO to begin with? (A link is fine)


You could try splitting the difference in two attributes and then see how it goes.
Umm maybe int wis for wizards, cha int for sorcerers, wis cha for clerics and druids.
Then you could also try making all spell dc's equal to 1/2 caster levels+casting modifier. That way maybe the your highest spells will have lower dc's but your lower won't have totally inconsequential dc's? Plus its faster for all your spells to have one dc.

I don't know really just a thought.

Thanks for the input!


If your wizards are happy to play blasters and buffers AD&D style, then you don't need to change anything. A wizard who primarily blasts stuff or casts Haste on Fighters is a perfectly balanced character at low-to-mid levels, and these kind of changes would hurt them a lot where they don't even need to be hurt.


It looks to me like they lose something like 20% of spell slots.



The problem with casters isn't exactly that they cast spells. The problem with casters is how much access to various effects they get (and how much other characters don't get anything of the sort).

I'm perfectly fine with focused casters, especially if the martials in the same party are ToB/PoW based, because they have blind spots they can't just get rid of the next morning (disregarding Rainbow Servant-style shenanigans). This encourages teamplay and covering for each other in various situations, while preserving the general function of an arcane specialist as in "this guy has Knowledge (Arcane), Spellcraft, Identify and Detect Magic, plus a specific arsenal of useful magic that won't be useful each and every time").

The very basic point to demonstrate this is such. Two parties of 4 people are to adventure from level 1 to level 20. One party is full of 9ths casters (so a Wiizard, a Druid, a Cleric and someone else, let's say, a Beguiler for that useful low-level Trapfinding), and the other is completely martial-mundane (so a Fighter, a Barbarian, a Marshal and a Rogue). Their progress is usually this: first party struggles at levels 1-5 and then it's mostly smooth sailing unless they get really unlucky dice. Second party breezes through 1-5, and then rapidly falls off, ending up pretty useless after level 10, unless their Rogue had been investing into UMD the whole time and spent half their WBL to become a pseudo-caster.

So it seems to me then, that the first party getting taxed 20% of their wealth by level and 20% of their spell slots wouldn't break my game in half.


I think describing your players' characters would go a long way in describing what probable effects this would have on your campaign. Perhaps even explaining how casters have been used in the past if they aren't currently in use. Do you regularly use casters as enemy NPCs? Keep your houserules in mind when making them, too.

Casters get used as NPC's pretty frequently, but I'm generally running some sort of adventure path. Hell, that alone is a good point. This houserule would require recomputing every caster stat block.

Our most recent campaign ended two weeks ago, so I don't know what the characters are yet. I prefer to sort out house rules before a campaign gets started. It's generally pretty annoying to get one dropped on you 5 levels in.

[AvatarVecna]

I guess I should define what I would consider to be terrible, terrible damage: A 5-6 difference in DC's (a couple builds on here have shown 0 to 1), a 50% loss of spell slots, or being behind a full spell level. (Apparently spontaneous casters do just fine being behind half a spell level). T1s playing like they're T2's and "getting punished" just isn't at all going to be relevant at my table.

I feel a need to address this, particularly since my build was designed more or less to highlight why a wizard can be problematic even without caring about save DCs:

Under normal rules, a caster has to maintain one stat; under these rules, they have to maintain 3. You make a weak argument that they only really need to maintain 2, because Int "only" needs to reach 19, and that's easy if items count, but it still runs into problems: maintaining three stats, or even just two stats, the same way a caster would maintain their one is functionally impossible under the normal rules, meaning that even if you care about maintaining save DCs, you couldn't keep them within 1 point of "normal save DCs" if you tried your heart out. Combine this with the fact that a significant percentage of spells are both 1) problematic for game balance and 2) don't require saves, and it becomes a simple conclusion that playing a caster under this houserule means not caring about save DCs and using the gigantic pool of powerful, borderline broken spells that don't care about them.

Now, you might say "that's only if maintaining them that way is impossible", and indeed you're right about that. But how difficult is it to maintain multiple stats in a way that stays competitive with a SAD caster? Well here's the thing: there's four primary ways to increase your stats, which I'll list here in difficulty to arbitrarily increase:
WBL
Point-Buy
Race/Age benefits
HD bumps

Now, there's enough WBL that - if you wanted - you could buy +5 tomes and +6 gear for all three stats. Sure, that's most of your money, and still a solid chunk even if you just do it for two stats, but it's doable. Point-buy is the kind of thing that tends to not increase all that much from game to game; most games play with 32, some with 28, some with 36 or even 40, but rarely higher or lower. And that's not all that much difference to afford extra max-stats, which is what you need to keep those save DCs competitive. Sure, you could just get three 16s and use age bonuses to get the rest of the way, but that leaves you with precious few points for your physical attributes on top of large penalties to them, where if you were playing a SAD caster you'd have another 20 to play with over there to be less of a sad sack (and possibly fewer penalties, since you don't need to dump age as hard to get those mental bonuses). But then we start getting into tricky stuff with race, because the fact of that matter is that most races don't even give one mental attribute bonus, let alone two or three - at least not without getting into more powerful races which come with RHD and LA. But then we get into the big problem: HD bumps. You cannot get more of those to assign, you just can't, not without gaining a lot more levels.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, I figure most casters that go from SAD to MAD are going to have one of four results (and in all three cases, they get Int to 19 and forget about it in short order). I've listed them here, and some problems you might see arise as they try to deal with the change.

1) They dump Wisdom to focus on Charisma

In this case, the player wants access to a larger percentage of their spell list than they'd otherwise have under your rules, and they're willing to sacrifice some spell slots each day to accomplish it; these guys will see their save DCs remain within 0-2 points of normal Save DC values across all levels, and will lose significant per-day spell power. Essentially, these guys have chosen few slots in exchange for a wider variety of things to do with those slots; they will likely try to offset this loss by resting more often to offset the lost slots (the classic "15 minute adventuring day" approach. And thus, the rules change will have had little to no effect on them overall, unless this option is dealt with...just like a normal game.

2) They dump Charisma to focus on Wisdom

This is what my build did, and it's the opposite of the previous possibility. Essentially, these guys are fine losing access to a small subset of their spell list in exchange for more per-day spell slots; their save DCs are going to start off anywhere from 3 to 7 points lower than normal (depending on just how hard they're dumping and how hard your standard casters normally pump their casting stat), and that comparative disadvantage is only going to get worse as the SAD caster's stat rises and the MAD caster's Cha stays the same. Expect these guys to snipe weird spells from obscure sources in their quest to find a way to participate in combat without requiring save DCs, although you should also expect them to bust out a lot of char-op classic spells that don't require save DCs, such as a lot of the spells I listed in my previous post. Limiting book access, or limiting access to more broken spells, or both, will keep these guys from running amok...just like a normal game.

3) They keep Wisdom and Charisma more or less balanced

This player will end up being like a normal caster more or less, with slightly fewer spell slots (enough to be noticeably less able to contribute on some longer adventuring days), and with slightly lower save DCs (this will start out maybe 0-2 points lower than normal, and that gap will slowly grow over time as the burden of keeping multiple stats relevant weighs them down). These guys may employ either of the problem-responses listed above, but will largely be about as problematic as they normally are when playing casters, just slightly less so...meaning that the fix isn't really affecting much here beyond the mid-levels anyway.

4) They keep Wisdom and Charisma maxed, and the rest of their build suffers

This option is basically "I'm going to throw lots of money at my stats to keep even with SAD casters, in exchange for not getting to spend that money on more interesting items". These guys are unlikely to be very happy about the extra expenditure, and will likely be looking for ways to offset these costs; expect them to invest more heavily in item creation, that they can make their own items cheaply. The easiest way to deal with this is stricter enforcement of time tables; they can't spend months crafting the perfect gear to defeat Satan if the world is ending next week...which was a potential problem and potential fix before the rules-change too.

A running theme in these options is "here is a problem that could crop up from these people, because it can crop up from normal casters, and you'll still have to deal with it". When you make life more difficult for classes/builds that tend to have recurring problems in a way that doesn't impact those problems, you're forcing the players that are trying to play fairly to use cheap tricks to keep up. Part of the problem with the massive power imbalance in 3.5 is ceilings and floors; the worst monk can wipe the floor with the worst wizard, but that's far from indicative of how monks and wizards compare in general. Generic changes like this tend to punish the lower-op players far more than the higher-op ones, and the ceiling is so high that bringing it down a ways still doesn't leave any non-casters in spitting distance of it. If you're fine dealing with the problems I've listed here, then this change might work for your game - or maybe you don't expect them to come up at all. But if you're asking "what can I expect to happen if I use this houserule", those are the problems I expect to come up, just as I expect them to come up in regular games, because the rule you've made doesn't really change the problems inherent to the casting system all that much.

[Minion #6]

The problem with this rule is that it hits the floor hard, while doing precious little about the ceiling. High-op T1 casters are still going to break the game. Low-op T1s are going to have a tough time as their spells stop working. Mid-op T1s are going to be sorely tempted to go to high-op to maintain their baseline performance level. T3 casters are going to stay T3, but they will still suffer.

This is the problem with using general mechanics changes to nerf casters rather than dealing with individual classes and spells: by the time you have pounded the high-op T1s into line, you've done terrible, terrible damage to the surrounding, innocent playstyles.

Quoted for truth. It's like floodwater - those already on the lower ground will get inundated, those on the high ground will be inconvenienced, and those inbetween will move to the high ground. If you're actually worried about high-op spellcasters (which from what I can tell you don't seem to be?) then just ban T2 and up. Problem solved. And if you're not worried about high-op spellcasters, then there's no actual reason to institute this rule anyway beyond "it interests me". Which is a valid reason, I suppose, but I'd sure as hell avoid your game with a houserule like that, as I would guess that most people with an inkling of system knowledge would do too.

[Fizban]

It looks to me like they lose something like 20% of spell slots.
Speaking of spell slots- that's another thing that most of the time is an accepted truth, that spellcasters already have too many spell slots. So why would there be a problem cutting them? The alternative approach would be to increase the expected number of daily encounters for a given table until spell slots are stretched to the appropriate point. 5e actually reduces spell slots while at the same time increasing expected encounters to 6 in a day (while giving everyone daily healing and spellcasters unlimited "cantrips")

[gogogome]

Whether they go DC's or not they're getting the headband. It doesn't make any sense to invest in a 19 int straight rather than another attribute. I computed this as several levels earlier in the thread. None of the numbers looked scary to me. And it doesn't make sense to call the headband 36,000 without the house rule and 46,000 with the house rule. It's either 46 in both cases or 36 in both cases.

The 36,000 is the cloak of charisma. The 46,000 is the minmaxer buying and selling headbands of intellect to keep his int at 13.

If you think people who go save or die spells deserve to spend 82,000gp for +3 save DC then I guess that's what you think...

Since you don't seem to have any reason for this house rule other than making casters MAD just because you want them to be MAD, and since you seem dead set on claiming your house rule to be a good one that doesn't affect casters at all, I guess... ok? It's your game. As long as you find players who are willing to play your game I guess it all doesn't matter.

[Cosi]

A couple people have suggested that, I'll think about that too. I like fixed attribute associations because it suggests that there is some sort of underlying (simulationist) rule to how magic works, rather than a grab bag dictated by (gamist) class design.

Does Weapon Finesse indicate that there's not an underlying physics to how hitting people with swords works? It's magic, it can work however you want because it isn't real and there's no baseline reality to check it against. You could imagine a model where using magic is like having an argument with the universe, and the different stat associations represent something like Logos (INT), Pathos (CHA), and Ethos (WIS). Or honestly whatever.


Generally the spells that require some sort of DM interaction haven't historically caused me a lot of trouble. Ones that simply aren't thought out well (ray of stupidity, shivering touch, that weird XPH's Energy Stun) have been a lot more troublesome. Are there uses of Planar Binding that are broken that aren't just TO to begin with? (A link is fine)

The problem with planar binding is that the line between "broken" and "not broken" isn't super well defined. There are endpoints that are obvious. Casting it four times a day for a week then walking around with an army of Glabzerus the size of your party is obviously broken. Binding a CR 18 demon at 11th level is obviously broken. Binding an Efreet and then having it use iwish to bind another Efreet and so on forever is obviously broken. But binding a pack of elementals to build some fortifications for you is a balanced and desirable use of the spell. Even multiple castings working in parallel for some logistical purpose is fine. As is having one casting that you use for a minion that's below party CR. Or summoning an Efreet and using wish to pop out true creation during downtime. And you could probably scale those up some amount without breaking the game. You could have two minions, or a minion slightly above the lowest acceptable CR, or any number of things that are modestly better than obviously-balanced effects. And clearly that eventually becomes TO. But it's not at all clear when eventually is, and it probably even varies between games.

[CharonsHelper]

I'm considering a houserule (for 3.5) in which primary casting stats are done away with and split up over mental stats:

Int: Determines highest level spell you can cast
Wis: Determines bonus spells
Cha: Determines save DC

What are the probable effects? Does it hurt full casters proportionally more at early levels or later levels? Will the sky fall on the ranger and paladin?


I think that it'd be very awkward to slap this onto 3.5 with no other changes. It'd sort of work, but it'd be awkward.

It'd be a LOT more work - but I've thought before that it'd be cool if different spells used different caster stats for DCs. And it wouldn't be TOO hard to split it by school.

For example, enchantment DCs would be based upon CHA, evocation would be INT, and necromancy be WIS.

But again - still not great slapped onto the system. It'd have to be incorporated into the system from the ground up - and potentially covering things other than DCs.

[Nifft]

And it wouldn't be TOO hard to split it by school.

For example, enchantment DCs would be based upon CHA, evocation would be INT, and necromancy be WIS.

3.0e Psionics was somewhat like this.

[Deophaun]

I guess I should define what I would consider to be terrible, terrible damage: A 5-6 difference in DC's (a couple builds on here have shown 0 to 1)
You're judging this based on your nerf, which as I explained, doesn't touch High-op T1s. Since your proposed rules have failed to "pound T1s down," it makes sense that they haven't managed to do "terrible, terrible damage" to everyone else. Just some damage to those that don't warrant it.

[death390]

still reading through this, but as other have said this won't do anything to the casters much. the preffered stats will be Int (19 cap), Con/Dex, Wis with Str and Cha dumped.
because Str isn't usefull beyond that first bag of holding even with encumberance unless is a gish, and Cha is always a dump stat so even tacking on DC modifier to it won't get them to focus on it.
16 int + the first 3 attribute bonuses means that characters need LESS casting class stat than normal, and it is arguably the best mental stat in the game.
Con gives more hitpoints and fort saves while Dex gives AC and Reflex saves. shore it up with an ok Will save and the natural good will save most casters have and they are fine.

heck bonus slots are crap in the first place +1 bonus slot for the first 4 levels, +2 slots (1 starting from 1 the other continuing progression and resetting to 1 after 9th level slot) every +1 after. this means that the first 18 wis attribute points are next to crap in general AND they can't even use the slots until they reach the class level that gets them (if ever see half-casters for only getting 2 bonus slots every 5th +1). the MAD of it means that getting to the decent set of bonus slots (wis 20+) is a chore since you won't put your good stats into it anyway.

heck personally i favor the evasive spells like invisibility and blur so i don't mind a lower Con score, i would dump 16 into Int, Highest after that (or before that if 16/17/18) into Dex, then go CON WIS in that order. oh i need some kind of offence? unlimited charge eternal wand of magic missile or orb of X, 1800g for CL 1.

even with normal casting DC's it was always either an arms race to use your favorite SoD and get DC's high enough or target a weak save in the first place. hell sometimes you don't even need a direcly affecting spell. put a "Wall" in front of those creatures and unless they DM fiat into it they will go around, Silent spell CL 1 eternal wand unlimited charges CL 1 1800g. Create Traps spell level 1, make 1 of 4 traps that last 12 HOURS, yeah attack rolls suck, but set enough of them (or have them set to "aid another trap") and you fear jack **** especially when wielding the silent image wand to funnel them into the trap spots.


in addition to that martials (non ToB) CAN be OK in higher level OPTIMIZED play, are decent in high level casual play, but as many others/ guides/ common sense say: why would i want a fighter or barbarian when i can have a duskblade, why a rouge when i could get a beguiler, why a ranger when there is the druid, why a paladin when there is the cleric?

EDIT: also saw your statement that its a -1 to save DC, ITS NOT!!!! it is anywhere from 3-4 loss of DC AT 1ST LEVEL and gets WORSE as you arn't pumping your DC stat since it is crap already.
EDIT2: also i would stop memorizing fireball on this, no point doing 1/2 damage every time since DC's are crap anyway with homebrew format.
EDIT3: you stated in the first post of this page that some builds show only a 0-1 DC drop. NOT EVERYONE PLAYS LIKE YOU DO, OR ME, OR OTHERS IN THIS POSTING. people play how they want to and the dice sometimes set them in odd directions. your builds are only 0-2 DC difference, mine listed above is ~8-9 from vanilla, and as others have stated EVEN IN VANILLA IT IS HARD TO WIN THE DC RACE! in addition i would NOT get the mental stat boosting items since the only ok one is WIS for my chars due to the fact that it gives 3 bonus spells (at best already have 18 and gives 6 slots instead, not likely), why would i do that when CON/DEX item would be better for more survivability or just a better general magic item? heck for just 50k i could get some damn nice other items.

[blackwindbears]

You're judging this based on your nerf, which as I explained, doesn't touch High-op T1s. Since your proposed rules have failed to "pound T1s down," it makes sense that they haven't managed to do "terrible, terrible damage" to everyone else. Just some damage to those that don't warrant it.

It seems like we keep talking past each other, and I think I've figured out why, I'll expand more on it below.


3.0e Psionics was somewhat like this.

Hrm, it might not be a coincidence that I'm the only person that liked 3.0 psionics.


I think that it'd be very awkward to slap this onto 3.5 with no other changes. It'd sort of work, but it'd be awkward.

It'd be a LOT more work - but I've thought before that it'd be cool if different spells used different caster stats for DCs. And it wouldn't be TOO hard to split it by school.

For example, enchantment DCs would be based upon CHA, evocation would be INT, and necromancy be WIS.

But again - still not great slapped onto the system. It'd have to be incorporated into the system from the ground up - and potentially covering things other than DCs.

You could do that, but I'm not sure how you'd assign bonus spells. Maybe they're based on the primary casting stat. I'll look into it as an alternative.


Does Weapon Finesse indicate that there's not an underlying physics to how hitting people with swords works? It's magic, it can work however you want because it isn't real and there's no baseline reality to check it against. You could imagine a model where using magic is like having an argument with the universe, and the different stat associations represent something like Logos (INT), Pathos (CHA), and Ethos (WIS). Or honestly whatever.


Alright, if it can work however I want, this is how I want it to work.



The problem with planar binding is that the line between "broken" and "not broken" isn't super well defined. There are endpoints that are obvious. Casting it four times a day for a week then walking around with an army of Glabzerus the size of your party is obviously broken. Binding a CR 18 demon at 11th level is obviously broken. Binding an Efreet and then having it use iwish to bind another Efreet and so on forever is obviously broken. But binding a pack of elementals to build some fortifications for you is a balanced and desirable use of the spell. Even multiple castings working in parallel for some logistical purpose is fine. As is having one casting that you use for a minion that's below party CR. Or summoning an Efreet and using wish to pop out true creation during downtime. And you could probably scale those up some amount without breaking the game. You could have two minions, or a minion slightly above the lowest acceptable CR, or any number of things that are modestly better than obviously-balanced effects. And clearly that eventually becomes TO. But it's not at all clear when eventually is, and it probably even varies between games.

See below for some discussion on this.


The 36,000 is the cloak of charisma. The 46,000 is the minmaxer buying and selling headbands of intellect to keep his int at 13.

If you think people who go save or die spells deserve to spend 82,000gp for +3 save DC then I guess that's what you think...

Since you don't seem to have any reason for this house rule other than making casters MAD just because you want them to be MAD, and since you seem dead set on claiming your house rule to be a good one that doesn't affect casters at all, I guess... ok? It's your game. As long as you find players who are willing to play your game I guess it all doesn't matter.

I think you'll find that that I never claimed that this was a good or bad houserule. I'm just trying to quantify the actual impact. Some people are having fun wildly exaggerating the impact. Good for them I guess?

I'm not quite sure why you assume that people won't upgrade their plus DC item as they go, but would upgrade their +spell item. Part of the reason might be that the treasure your receive per encounter is more than your WBL. It's almost as if the system already accounts for the buying and selling. Also, you should be looking at the marginal cost.



Speaking of spell slots- that's another thing that most of the time is an accepted truth, that spellcasters already have too many spell slots. So why would there be a problem cutting them? The alternative approach would be to increase the expected number of daily encounters for a given table until spell slots are stretched to the appropriate point. 5e actually reduces spell slots while at the same time increasing expected encounters to 6 in a day (while giving everyone daily healing and spellcasters unlimited "cantrips")

5e reduces spell slots by what, more than 80% at high levels? I'm apparently doing terrible, terrible damage to save or die casters by reducing their spell slots by 20%.

I have no answer for why cutting them would be a disaster. If you're letting your players have 15 minute adventuring days you've got much greater balance issues.


Quoted for truth. It's like floodwater - those already on the lower ground will get inundated, those on the high ground will be inconvenienced, and those inbetween will move to the high ground. If you're actually worried about high-op spellcasters (which from what I can tell you don't seem to be?) then just ban T2 and up. Problem solved. And if you're not worried about high-op spellcasters, then there's no actual reason to institute this rule anyway beyond "it interests me". Which is a valid reason, I suppose, but I'd sure as hell avoid your game with a houserule like that, as I would guess that most people with an inkling of system knowledge would do too.

I'm not going to ban wizards and sorcerers because people on a forum are panicking that this houserule will make them broken full stop.


I feel a need to address this, particularly since my build was designed more or less to highlight why a wizard can be problematic even without caring about save DCs:

Under normal rules, a caster has to maintain one stat; under these rules, they have to maintain 3. You make a weak argument that they only really need to maintain 2, because Int "only" needs to reach 19, and that's easy if items count, but it still runs into problems: maintaining three stats, or even just two stats, the same way a caster would maintain their one is functionally impossible under the normal rules, meaning that even if you care about maintaining save DCs, you couldn't keep them within 1 point of "normal save DCs" if you tried your heart out. Combine this with the fact that a significant percentage of spells are both 1) problematic for game balance and 2) don't require saves, and it becomes a simple conclusion that playing a caster under this houserule means not caring about save DCs and using the gigantic pool of powerful, borderline broken spells that don't care about them.

Now, you might say "that's only if maintaining them that way is impossible", and indeed you're right about that. But how difficult is it to maintain multiple stats in a way that stays competitive with a SAD caster? Well here's the thing: there's four primary ways to increase your stats, which I'll list here in difficulty to arbitrarily increase:
WBL
Point-Buy
Race/Age benefits
HD bumps

Now, there's enough WBL that - if you wanted - you could buy +5 tomes and +6 gear for all three stats. Sure, that's most of your money, and still a solid chunk even if you just do it for two stats, but it's doable. Point-buy is the kind of thing that tends to not increase all that much from game to game; most games play with 32, some with 28, some with 36 or even 40, but rarely higher or lower. And that's not all that much difference to afford extra max-stats, which is what you need to keep those save DCs competitive. Sure, you could just get three 16s and use age bonuses to get the rest of the way, but that leaves you with precious few points for your physical attributes on top of large penalties to them, where if you were playing a SAD caster you'd have another 20 to play with over there to be less of a sad sack (and possibly fewer penalties, since you don't need to dump age as hard to get those mental bonuses). But then we start getting into tricky stuff with race, because the fact of that matter is that most races don't even give one mental attribute bonus, let alone two or three - at least not without getting into more powerful races which come with RHD and LA. But then we get into the big problem: HD bumps. You cannot get more of those to assign, you just can't, not without gaining a lot more levels.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, I figure most casters that go from SAD to MAD are going to have one of four results (and in all three cases, they get Int to 19 and forget about it in short order). I've listed them here, and some problems you might see arise as they try to deal with the change.

1) They dump Wisdom to focus on Charisma

In this case, the player wants access to a larger percentage of their spell list than they'd otherwise have under your rules, and they're willing to sacrifice some spell slots each day to accomplish it; these guys will see their save DCs remain within 0-2 points of normal Save DC values across all levels, and will lose significant per-day spell power. Essentially, these guys have chosen few slots in exchange for a wider variety of things to do with those slots; they will likely try to offset this loss by resting more often to offset the lost slots (the classic "15 minute adventuring day" approach. And thus, the rules change will have had little to no effect on them overall, unless this option is dealt with...just like a normal game.

2) They dump Charisma to focus on Wisdom

This is what my build did, and it's the opposite of the previous possibility. Essentially, these guys are fine losing access to a small subset of their spell list in exchange for more per-day spell slots; their save DCs are going to start off anywhere from 3 to 7 points lower than normal (depending on just how hard they're dumping and how hard your standard casters normally pump their casting stat), and that comparative disadvantage is only going to get worse as the SAD caster's stat rises and the MAD caster's Cha stays the same. Expect these guys to snipe weird spells from obscure sources in their quest to find a way to participate in combat without requiring save DCs, although you should also expect them to bust out a lot of char-op classic spells that don't require save DCs, such as a lot of the spells I listed in my previous post. Limiting book access, or limiting access to more broken spells, or both, will keep these guys from running amok...just like a normal game.

3) They keep Wisdom and Charisma more or less balanced

This player will end up being like a normal caster more or less, with slightly fewer spell slots (enough to be noticeably less able to contribute on some longer adventuring days), and with slightly lower save DCs (this will start out maybe 0-2 points lower than normal, and that gap will slowly grow over time as the burden of keeping multiple stats relevant weighs them down). These guys may employ either of the problem-responses listed above, but will largely be about as problematic as they normally are when playing casters, just slightly less so...meaning that the fix isn't really affecting much here beyond the mid-levels anyway.

4) They keep Wisdom and Charisma maxed, and the rest of their build suffers

This option is basically "I'm going to throw lots of money at my stats to keep even with SAD casters, in exchange for not getting to spend that money on more interesting items". These guys are unlikely to be very happy about the extra expenditure, and will likely be looking for ways to offset these costs; expect them to invest more heavily in item creation, that they can make their own items cheaply. The easiest way to deal with this is stricter enforcement of time tables; they can't spend months crafting the perfect gear to defeat Satan if the world is ending next week...which was a potential problem and potential fix before the rules-change too.

A running theme in these options is "here is a problem that could crop up from these people, because it can crop up from normal casters, and you'll still have to deal with it". When you make life more difficult for classes/builds that tend to have recurring problems in a way that doesn't impact those problems, you're forcing the players that are trying to play fairly to use cheap tricks to keep up. Part of the problem with the massive power imbalance in 3.5 is ceilings and floors; the worst monk can wipe the floor with the worst wizard, but that's far from indicative of how monks and wizards compare in general. Generic changes like this tend to punish the lower-op players far more than the higher-op ones, and the ceiling is so high that bringing it down a ways still doesn't leave any non-casters in spitting distance of it. If you're fine dealing with the problems I've listed here, then this change might work for your game - or maybe you don't expect them to come up at all. But if you're asking "what can I expect to happen if I use this houserule", those are the problems I expect to come up, just as I expect them to come up in regular games, because the rule you've made doesn't really change the problems inherent to the casting system all that much.

The money quote here is: cheap tricks to "keep up". My natural question is of course, to "keep up with what?" A bunch of T4 and T5 martials?

Thanks for the detailed response. I agree broadly with your categories and find them helpful, but not very much with your conclusions. Mostly because they have the same problems that a whole host of similar posts have, so see below.



Information for everyone I told to "see below"

There's been a lot of rancor insisting that I should believe some terrible event is going to occur in my games when I use this house rule. Let me expand a bit on why I asked the forums what the plausible effects were, and why it seems like I'm ignoring you when you state what you think the plausible effects are.

The responses I was expecting to get were:


Using this house-rule such and such base-class loses any access to their spells.


or



If you use this house-rule this obscure prestige class becomes inaccessible with current RAW.


Like, hell, can a hexblade still cast spells with this change? I have no idea. I don't know much about hexblades.

What's been great is that I've gotten a some useful responses along those lines.


I've also gotten responses that boiled down to basically this:


You're disproportionately impacting TX uses of T1 fullcasters rather than T1 uses of fullcasters. Your players will respond by becoming T1 rather than T(X+1).


This isn't very useful to me, because while it might be a very important consideration if this house-rule were going to be stuck into D&D 3.6, it isn't relevant to my table because my players respect the metagame.

Metagame, what metagame?
The metagame, in this context, is the stuff surrounding the game we've agreed to play. It's the reason that while there are rules that allow my player's to turn right and start killing each other this doesn't generally happen. You can think of it like a deal.



I agree to run an adventure path, let's say shackled city.

You agree to build a character that wants to: 1. explore dungeons, 2. hang out around Cauldron, 3. try to save it and later the world when they are threatened.

I agree to be as permissive as possible. You agree not to break the game (do something that puts you wildly out of the level of effectiveness expected for characters of your level), or if you attempt to break the universe the universe will push back. There aren't any secret infinite wish loopholes, for example. Attempts to execute on a 'loophole' will result in your character discovering precisely why no one else does it.


Generally this works just fine, because after 13 years of running 3.5 my system mastery is sufficient to handle problems as they crop up. My players don't look for broken builds online. This also works because I ask who wants to play whatever it is I'm planning on running in advance.

But for fun allow me to explain how I would/have handled game breaking issues. Let me also note, these are in game actions. I'd rather not repeat that, all of these are proceeded with a conversation explaining that I think the action they are taking is game breaking, why I think it's game breaking, and ask if they're quite sure that's what they want to do.



D&D is fundamentally an attrition game. The underlying system assumes roughly 4 encounters per day. Having a one encounter day when they need it isn't a serious issue. Regularly it could be, if you look at D&D like some kind of video-game with one-way interaction.

If the players are actually attempting to take a dungeon apart at a rate of one room per rest, bad things will start to happen. For one, if the dungeon is controlled by inhabitants they figure out that someone is laying siege to the dungeon. They fortify, move in reinforcements, and generally do what they can to ensure that the party is making negative progress from day to day. (Imagine attacking a military base, killing one opponent and then retreating to rest. What the hell do you expect to happen?)

I suppose this might be a problem for other tables because they assume that encounters must be run precisely as written? Or they're worried about accidentally TPK'ing their players with a couple overwhelming encounters resulting from the sensible response of the inhabitants. Access to rope trick doesn't mean that you can do an adventure at 1/4 speed and expect nothing bad to happen.





If a player tried to bind an efreeti to begin with they'd probably get an "are you sure you want to do that"? Trying to get access to a much higher level spell with an XP cost in exchange for a 5th level spell slot isn't going to fly. If this was a one-off attempt where they desperately needed to get 3 wishes, came up with an appropriate payment for them, it's probably not a problem.

If they began doing something like this regularly I'd be forced to note that the binding doesn't require them to fulfill their wishes the way the wish spell itself would. Just to use wish to grant their requests as the efreeti interpreted them. Misinterpretations of what they wanted would get more dangerous until they got the idea that they had no business doing this, or died.

If they simply led with chain binding Efreeti they'd discover very quickly a couple things.

1) If they worded it very poorly they'd find themselves watching Efreeti bind Efreeti then rushing off to inform the previous Efreeti that they'd finished so they could go home. The first Efreeti would only stick around long enough to finish the binding, inform the caster and leave.

2) If they were more careful and made sure that they didn't all leave, but presumably stuck around to grant infinite wishes to the initial caster. They'd have repeated hints that maybe this isn't a great idea as more and more efreeti's appeared. If they insisted on continuing they'd likely learn, in order, 1) That agreeing to perform a service doesn't necessarily mean that the service will be performed precisely correctly, 2) They don't have circle of protection from evil or dimensional anchor by default, 3) They can fail that DC 20 spellcraft check, 4) 10? 100? 1000? Efreet is a lot for an 11th level character to fight, 5) Binding the entire court of a Noble from the City of Brass is likely to result in retribution faster than you can say inappropriate encounter level.

Naturally in a video game (or forum optimization), none of these things are a problem, because the Efreet in a video game don't actually come from anywhere, they're created by the program when they are bound. If the program creates 10,000 Efreet it has no effect on the wider world. They don't telepathically communicate with each other to determine how best to escape, they have no allies.

A DM has no such constraints.





This is something that probably isn't an issue if a player is going in one direction or the other.* Maybe after a significant amount of role-playing and sessions they could complete the shuffle, once, safely.**


I should note however that casting an [evil] spell is an evil act. I don't say this to indicate that neutral and good creatures are never allowed to cast [evil] spells in my games, but rather that whenever a character commits an evil act the player should notice. It should therefore, through the description, not be like casting other spells. The players should feel as though their characters have done something really wrong and immoral.



If they actually tried to use it to simply have whatever feats they wanted whenever they woke up in the morning, they'd get a number of NPC's warning them that they're meddling with dark powers, that the human mind wasn't meant to deal with such radical changes, blah, blah, blah. If it continued I'd probably bust out some insanity rules. Maybe certain feats would suddenly stop working. I'm not quite sure. Ultimately over the course of 3 or 4 sessions it'll* result in the PC's death or permanent insanity.



Yeah, I just had to edit these to provide penalties. They are too direct in their method to actually warn players off abusing them.



If a player decides that they are going to effectively raise their ECL by 5-6 by repeatedly casting Planar Binding on Glabrezu they'd run into a number of issues.

First, evil spell policy:

I should note however that casting an [evil] spell is an evil act. I don't say this to indicate that neutral and good creatures are never allowed to cast [evil] spells in my games, but rather that whenever a character commits an evil act the player should notice. It should therefore, through the description, not be like casting other spells. The players should feel as though their characters have done something really wrong and immoral.


There are a couple ways to go with this. I should also note that I use Dicefreaks rules on fiends called to the prime. (The short version is that it creates a desecrate spell centered on where they're called along with a number of other thematic effects). This is the sort of nonsense that good organizations will notice. Just as if the party were wantonly murdering in the street.

The Glabrezu themselves might agree to whatever you suggest whether you succeed in the charisma check or not and simply not follow through. Which is to say, they might wait until you are most vulnerable and turn on you, en masse. If you smack the Glabrezu with debuffs first you may have promoted yourself from inconvenience to torturer that needs to be murdered slowly. Unless you construct some way to get the Glabrezu either to permanently serve you or ensure that it dies truly, it may contrive to get called by you again and in any case will definitely work towards your demise. If you’ve done this to multiple Glabrezu, you’ve made several dangerous enemies.

When doing char-op, or playing a video game this never seems to be considered. If you can stand in front of a steam roller picking up pennies, and RAW doesn’t directly mention the steam roller, and the steam roller has to be piloted by a DM, you might as well pick up all the pennies you like.

Like I said previously, in a video game called creatures are created when you call them. In D&D they came from somewhere.


There are plenty of spells left in the wizards repertoire that do effective things. Hopefully this explains why I’m ignoring everything that follows after a phrase “therefore players will”.

I find example builds highly valuable.

I find theory crafting about possible options somewhat valuable.

Speculation about what my players will do? I’m basically ignoring it.

[blackwindbears]

NOT EVERYONE PLAYS LIKE YOU DO, OR ME, OR OTHERS IN THIS POSTING.

What I can't figure out is why in the world that is at all relevant to me implementing a houserule in this game. It's in all caps, so I'm sure it must be important, but it seems so deeply divorced from anything I would consider useful information.

Edit: Apologies for the snark, but I don't find these "it's really -5 or 6 to DC" arguments convincing. Repetition has nothing to do with it. Provide an example build that attempts to max DC using the elite array in both cases at a few levels.

Edit 2: The relevant question is not "faced with this nerf, what would you do?" (Unless you're one of my players?) But rather, if you were maxing DC's how much would your DC's decrease (and what would that cost). If you were maxing spell slots, how would your slots decrease (and what would that cost). Presenting a loss of 5 or 6 to the DC as somehow the default, because its what you would do is irrelevant. You're no longer comparing apples to apples, and your advice becomes useless.

[death390]

What I can't figure out is why in the world that is at all relevant to me implementing a houserule in this game. It's in all caps, so I'm sure it must be important, but it seems so deeply divorced from anything I would consider useful information.

Edit: Apologies for the snark, but I don't find these "it's really -5 or 6 to DC" arguments convincing. Repetition has nothing to do with it. Provide an example build that attempts to max DC using the elite array in both cases at a few levels.

Edit 2: The relevant question is not "faced with this nerf, what would you do?" (Unless you're one of my players?) But rather, if you were maxing DC's how much would your DC's decrease (and what would that cost). If you were maxing spell slots, how would your slots decrease (and what would that cost). Presenting a loss of 5 or 6 to the DC as somehow the default, because its what you would do is irrelevant. You're no longer comparing apples to apples, and your advice becomes useless.

the more important statements have * for tl:dr

*ah this might be part of the disconnect. the reason for all caps was thus; i have a preference for optimizing even my casual characters, by doing so i optimize what I see as important. when you optimize what YOU see as important we don't optimize the same things. for me i would never touch Charisma and thus it would either be my lowest or 2nd lowest stat for the entirty of my statblock. when you are making your arguments that [you only lose 0-1 DC] you are taking into account optimization of CHA. in any case where CHA is not optimized (casual play, decide against it for fluff/ preference/ect, ect) the overall loss of DC is closer to the 5-8 some people are saying.

the difference with MAD characters vs SAD characters is that there is always a sacrifice somewhere, the rouge who maxed DEX/INT and dumped str relies upon SA to deal damage, the martial often loses out on mental stats due to being at most a half caster (ranger/paladin) and thus needs no more than a 15 but needs focuses on thier physical aspects since 13 is high enough Int even with skill points being based off of it and Will saves needing will.

you will note that in most of your builds, you seem to sacrifice Wisdom: look at avatar Venca's post (2nd from the top), it clearly states these things. your response to this was: "The money quote here is: cheap tricks to "keep up". My natural question is of course, to "keep up with what?" A bunch of T4 and T5 martials?"


there is 1 mandatory attribute that stops increasing in usefulness after 19: 1 attribute that loses a large quantity of slots which determine how long a caster can last because after they are out of spells they are basically a commoner who can UMD: and the last attribute determines if you can even keep up with the DC arms race.

the 19 pt requirement isnt so bad 15 +1 every 4th level and your good. but the trick comes with the other 2, and if you focus on one or both your 3 physical stats suffer, or you lose out on a large portion of your WBL as you progress.

*with the DC arms race it is DIFFICULT to win against a good save when you are keeping pace in vanilla losing out on so much as 2-3 DC means that you basically shouldn't even try to target that save anymore, because that is 10-15% more chance of failure that you might have been around 50/50 in the first place. you could still win against weak saves but it also got harder. the best bet at that point is to find some way to contribute without worrying about DC if you arn't going to go all in on boosting your CHA. this in turn limits the spells you have the capacity to use well.

*with every creature it is different due to the changing numbers but generality exist for this reason. the following are statistically valid results to a loss of 2 DC.
80% chance of monster NOT saving down to 70%, total loss of 12.5% effectiveness
65% to 55% loss of 15%
50% to 40% loss of 20%
35% to 25% loss of 28%
105% to 95% loss of 5%

*this doesn't cover good save or bad save simply your normal odds changing with the loss of 2 DC, based on the difference of your DC value vs their save against it. a 50/50 shot is where both numbers are equal, for every point more or less the odds change by 5% (from their expected place from the DMS die roll). for example the monster has 3 more save than your DC your chances to beat the opponent are only 35% because of his advantage, but if you had 2 less DC your chances go down to only 25%. on the flip side when you have the advantage by 3 points your 65% chance to beat the save is worse when the same version of you with a lower DC only gets 55%. EDIT: then imagine the difference for those of us who don't max out CHA the loss is staggering even 6 pts of DC loss is -30% chance and AT BEST going from can't lose (+20 above monster) to they have a decent chance (+14). that gives them a flat 30% boost to their chances which could be everything from you cant win at the low end to a 600% increase (from 5% chance [1/20 roll] to 35% [7/20])

*then when we look at the +6 item [+3DC] worth 36000g (assuming you buy it straight rather than trade up) the gains for such an item are entirely dependent on HOW MUCH DC you have in the first place. on the weak side the off chance that you can land a save spell go up 15% so from 10-25% and on the high end you can make it so you nearly always win going from 65 to 80%. however what is the point of getting such an item if you couldn't USE the spells that needed saves so you didn't get them? why prepare fireball when you only can win 10-20% of the time and when you lose they take 1/2 damage? especially when no save/ conditional save spells work without the chance of failure? why not buff the party fighter do deal an extra 2d6+15 damage with the extra attack from haste, summon a monster, make a tricky illusion to control the battlefield, or even use a reserve spell feat that does fairly equal damage (Fiery burst 1d6 damage/ spell level in 5ft radius out to 30ft at will). according to the arms and equipment guide a WONDROUS ITEM OF Fiery burst would cost 15k (10k+5k per prerequisite) could even make it a held item like a wand/weapon, make it 30k and it doesn't even take up a item slot (double cost for slot less items).

[AvatarVecna]

OP, we don't know your players, so we don't know what they're going to do, or what they normally do. The best advice we can give you is based on what could be done with this, which by necessity for this situation has to be phrased along the lines of "your players might do this or that". I don't know your players, so I don't necessarily think they are or aren't going to implement a 15-minute adventuring day, or dig up tons of obscure broken spells, or whatever, because I don't know them, but because you're asking how this rules change is going to affect your game, it's useful on our side to state the potential consequences in terms of what your players could/would do, even if it comes with the caveat that we don't know your players. Dismissing general advice and observations because you feel like we're making statements and assertions about people we don't know does nothing but make everybody involved in the discussion frustrated.


The money quote here is: cheap tricks to "keep up". My natural question is of course, to "keep up with what?" A bunch of T4 and T5 martials?

In a word, yes. As I've mentioned, and has apparently gone ignored, part of the balance problem in 3.5 is just how difference there is between the floor and ceiling of a class, as well as the floors of various classes and the ceilings of various classes. At its worst, a wizard is a commoner with an overly high opinion of itself, and the base game is "balanced" under the assumption that you play an inefficient blaster wizard who doesn't abuse the utility. If your players "respect the meta" as you claim they do, they're probably already fairly balanced.

That's my, and I imagine a few other people's, problem with this thread: the "solution" put forth in the OP (based on the way you talk about your group) seems like it's solving a problem that doesn't exist in your home game by punishing people for playing theoretically-broken classes in a balanced way; and if you're seeking advice on how this houserule affects the balance of the game in a more general not-just-about-my-home-game kinda sense, then the answer is "it doesn't, because the game is really complex and broken in lots of subtle complex ways and this generic change to how casting is handled doesn't address 99% of those ways". And that's not even getting into how you're ignoring the data provided by builds like mine which have significant Save DC loss (getting to that at a later paragraph).

Thanks for the detailed response. I agree broadly with your categories and find them helpful, but not very much with your conclusions. Mostly because they have the same problems that a whole host of similar posts have, so see below.


The dark chaos shuffle

This is something that probably isn't an issue if a player is going in one direction or the other.* Maybe after a significant amount of role-playing and sessions they could complete the shuffle, once, safely.**

Evil Spells

I should note however that casting an [evil] spell is an evil act. I don't say this to indicate that neutral and good creatures are never allowed to cast [evil] spells in my games, but rather that whenever a character commits an evil act the player should notice. It should therefore, through the description, not be like casting other spells. The players should feel as though their characters have done something really wrong and immoral.


If they actually tried to use it to simply have whatever feats they wanted whenever they woke up in the morning, they'd get a number of NPC's warning them that they're meddling with dark powers, that the human mind wasn't meant to deal with such radical changes, blah, blah, blah. If it continued I'd probably bust out some insanity rules. Maybe certain feats would suddenly stop working. I'm not quite sure. Ultimately over the course of 3 or 4 sessions it'll* result in the PC's death or permanent insanity.

It's rookie mistakes like this that make people question the "13 years of running my system mastery" you brag about in this post. The process referred to as the Dark Chaos Shuffle is not a single spell, but rather a pair of spells. These two spells, respectively, let you embrace and shun the power of the Abyss. Even if one of them was [Evi], the other would probably be [Good] and the relative damage of the former on one's mind/soul would be undone by the healing nature of the other. But that's not even the main reason why you're wrong here, because neither of these spells is [Evil]. Embrace The Dark Chaos is a [Chaotic] spell, casting it isn't and shouldn't be considered an Evil act unless you're deciding to houserule that as well.[/quote]


What I can't figure out is why in the world that is at all relevant to me implementing a houserule in this game. It's in all caps, so I'm sure it must be important, but it seems so deeply divorced from anything I would consider useful information.

Edit: Apologies for the snark, but I don't find these "it's really -5 or 6 to DC" arguments convincing. Repetition has nothing to do with it. Provide an example build that attempts to max DC using the elite array in both cases at a few levels.

Edit 2: The relevant question is not "faced with this nerf, what would you do?" (Unless you're one of my players?) But rather, if you were maxing DC's how much would your DC's decrease (and what would that cost). If you were maxing spell slots, how would your slots decrease (and what would that cost). Presenting a loss of 5 or 6 to the DC as somehow the default, because its what you would do is irrelevant. You're no longer comparing apples to apples, and your advice becomes useless.

The reason that nobody took the question that way is because that's a stupid way to take the question. You're essentially asking "if I change the apple basket to an apple/oranges basket, how many fewer apples can it hold if you only fill the basket with apples?", because it's ignoring the loss that comes with deciding not to have oranges. The impact of this houserule affects two areas primarily (bonus spells, and save DCs), and if you're only looking at the difference between a SAD caster's Save DC and a MAD caster's Save DC when they focus on keeping Save DC, you're looking at how the category you optimized for is barely affected and applauding yourself for not impacting too much, when there's a giant impact in the other category that you're ignoring. That's why people are stating the losses of both sides, because both sides are relevant to a player who is focusing one at the expense of the other. The build I provided (which has gone uncommented on by you) suffered no losses on the Bonus Spells front, but was a full 11 points (at 20th lvl) behind on where their Save DC would've been as a SAD caster, and that's even with them cheating to boost their Cha 5 points; if I'd been more hesitant about abusing free wishes, that Save DC would be 14 points behind. The fact that I suffered significant losses to save DC is important context when considering that I didn't lose any bonus spells - and the fact that, if my build had hardfocused Cha the way it hardfocused Wis, and had dumped Wis the way it dumped Cha, then the situation would be reversed, with basically no lost Save DC but also losing the vast majority of my bonus spell slots.

Ignoring that loss because you feel it's like comparing apples and oranges just has the result of you being able to look at your houserule and say (from a certain point of view) that it didn't cause Save DCs to fall at all, when that's only (at best) 1/3 of the full story.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Three stats might be excessive, but yeah I've had the idea for a long time, too.

I just had two stats, "Spell Power" and "Spell Knowledge"

Spell Knowledge would be for the whole needing a score of 10 + spell level or higher to cast spells at all, and bonus spell slots.
Spell Power was for save DCs and caster power checks, which would generally replace opposed CL checks and dispel checks/DCs (from Arcana Evolved....basically you and the opponent just add the relevant ability mod on top of CL to the d20 roll). It would also apply for other spell parameters that use a casting stat (like combat maneuvers for Telekinesis, or the attack and damage modifier for Whirling Blade)

Which stat was each depended on class. Generally Cha was for spell power, Wis for spell knowledge, and Int could be either (depending on which of the other two it got paired with).

Clerics were Wis/Cha, Druids were Int/Wis, Wizards were Int/Wis, Sorc I think was Wis/Cha, Bard was Int/Cha, etc...
Some classes could reverse the general rule for Cha = power, Wis = knowledge to give more variety (or if their spells lean more/less towards save DCs / offense, making the spell knowledge stat the less/more prominent one classically associated with the class)

Never implemented the idea. I kinda just moved onto giving high point buys, and just resigned myself to casters having high casting stats. It was easier to just make sure the MAD classes could have the stats they needed, too.

[Minion #6]

I'm not going to ban wizards and sorcerers because people on a forum are panicking that this houserule will make them broken full stop.

They already can be broken. Your houserule just punishes the less broken casters without affecting the broken ones. The house rule of "No =>T2 casters" forbids the broken casters without punishing the less broken ones. It's that simple.

Splitting DCs, spell access, and spells per day over three stats creates a situation where priorities must be set. The number of sets of prioritisation where INT !=19 on a 9th level caster by the time they get 9th level spells is negligible under these circumstances, as there is a large disincentive for it to be lower and no incentive for it to be higher. That then leaves only three possible sets of prioritisation. Either WIS > CHA, WIS < CHA or WIS = CHA. That is objectively the entire set of possibilities.

It's a matter of which strategies you are encouraging and which you are discouraging with this houserule. Any rule, be it official or unofficial, encourages and discourages different strategies. In the case of this, as there are only three possibilities (WIS > CHA, WIS < CHA or WIS = CHA, henceforth X1, X2 and X3 respectively), all that needs to be examined is what these character builds encourage or discourage.

X1
This possibility leaves you with a higher level of spells per day, but low save DCs. In combat, this discourages spells that rely on saving throws and encourages spells that do not allow or rely on saving throws in order to be effective. This makes debuffing, save-or-lose, and save-based blasting unattractive propositions, as your effectiveness will be much lower. Out of combat, saves are less relevant, and there are more than enough powerful utility spells that don't interact with saving throws. There is no tradeoff between combat and out of combat casting due to your higher number of spell slots.

Note that under this particular case, the encouraged spells themselves do not have a failure chance.

X2
This possibility leaves you with higher save DCs but a lower number of spells per day. In combat, this discourages spells that do not immediately remove an enemy from the combat and encourages spells that do immediately remove an enemy from the combat. Debuffing and save-based blasting are still not terribly attractive, as they will not use your more limited number of spells as effectively as save-or-lose spells will. Out of combat, the enchantment school and certain spells from the illusion school are the most useful ones that allow a saving throw, so they are prioritised. However, a lower number of spells means there's a tradeoff between in combat and out of combat casting.

Note that under this particular case, the encouraged spells themselves do have a failure chance.

X3
This leaves you with lower saves than X2 and less spells than X1. In combat, you're still worse off using spells that allow saves than spells that do not as your DCs won't be high enough to introduce any reliability. You have more out of combat utility than X2 as saves are not as relevant but less than X1. Mechanically, there's no advantage to make your character like this over the other two, but it's included for completeness.

Which is best?
Assuming all three possibilities make equally good spell selections according to their strengths and weaknesses, it's simple. That X1 > X2 is obvious, due to the existence of save-agnostic - i.e. no failure chance - spells that still contribute combined with the higher number of spell slots. X3, when spells are selected like X1, will likely be better than X2 for the same reason, but worse than X1.

X1 > X3 > X2

Therefore, your houserule encourages having a higher or medium number of no-save spells over a lower number of spells with higher save DCs.

[RoboEmperor]

They already can be broken. Your houserule just punishes the less broken casters without affecting the broken ones.

This is literally what every single person in this thread has been saying for three pages and his response every time was
"No it doesn't. Less broken casters can trivially get past this by spending an additional 46,000gp which is nothing for a 20th level character." and
"No-save spellcasters will also pay 46,000gp because it's stupid to pump level up ability score gains into INT past 13."

[Minion #6]

This is literally what every single person in this thread has been saying for three pages and his response every time was
"No it doesn't. Less broken casters can trivially get past this by spending an additional 46,000gp which is nothing for a 20th level character." and
"No-save spellcasters will also pay 46,000gp because it's stupid to pump level up ability score gains into INT past 13."

1) "Less broken casters need to spend extra resources in order to function as intended while broken casters can ignore that" is hardly an argument in favour of the houserule.
2) No? Just take INT 15, pop your ASIs in it, and never think about it again. All of your other stuff - +stat items, Tome of X, etc. - you just pile onto WIS.

[Lans]

Considering spell casters don't need to spend money on magic armor or weapons, I don't think them having to buy another ability booster is a big deal.

As for save DCs, in a normal point buy the caster is going to get 6 points available by dropping its casting score from 18 to 16, so I can easily see a starting intelligence of 15.

[RoboEmperor]

Considering spell casters don't need to spend money on magic armor or weapons, I don't think them having to buy another ability booster is a big deal.

Suboptimal Spellcasters need to spend money on magic items. Save or Die spells that are affected by spell resistance are exponentially affected by their save DC while optimal spellcasters can fully function without wealth.

[blackwindbears]

the more important statements have * for tl:dr

*ah this might be part of the disconnect. the reason for all caps was thus; i have a preference for optimizing even my casual characters, by doing so i optimize what I see as important. when you optimize what YOU see as important we don't optimize the same things. for me i would never touch Charisma and thus it would either be my lowest or 2nd lowest stat for the entirty of my statblock. when you are making your arguments that [you only lose 0-1 DC] you are taking into account optimization of CHA. in any case where CHA is not optimized (casual play, decide against it for fluff/ preference/ect, ect) the overall loss of DC is closer to the 5-8 some people are saying.


Precisely. It's not even that this is my build preference. I assumed incorrectly that the point being made was that the best you could do was DC -5 or -6. If you dump CHA, then CHA gets dumped. I should have more clearly communicated earlier that I understand that dumping CHA results in substantially lower DCs. The first five or six posts point out that you're going to either build to max Wis for spell slots, or Cha for DCs. If you dump Cha you're dumping DCs and if you dump Wis you're not getting bonus spells.

Of course reviewing his first post RoboEmperor declared he'd max int, but I'm not certain he was reading very carefully anyway.



the difference with MAD characters vs SAD characters is that there is always a sacrifice somewhere, the rouge who maxed DEX/INT and dumped str relies upon SA to deal damage, the martial often loses out on mental stats due to being at most a half caster (ranger/paladin) and thus needs no more than a 15 but needs focuses on thier physical aspects since 13 is high enough Int even with skill points being based off of it and Will saves needing will.

you will note that in most of your builds, you seem to sacrifice Wisdom: look at avatar Venca's post (2nd from the top), it clearly states these things. your response to this was: "The money quote here is: cheap tricks to "keep up". My natural question is of course, to "keep up with what?" A bunch of T4 and T5 martials?"


Yes, my point is my players simply aren't going to resort to cheap tricks. But I've gone around in circles on that for 3 pages now.



there is 1 mandatory attribute that stops increasing in usefulness after 19: 1 attribute that loses a large quantity of slots which determine how long a caster can last because after they are out of spells they are basically a commoner who can UMD: and the last attribute determines if you can even keep up with the DC arms race.

the 19 pt requirement isnt so bad 15 +1 every 4th level and your good. but the trick comes with the other 2, and if you focus on one or both your 3 physical stats suffer, or you lose out on a large portion of your WBL as you progress.


It's not a very large portion of WBL, so I don't think it's a good idea to use finite attribute points that might be better spent making a score higher after its been stacked with an item. Even if you don't want bonus spell slots or +DC having much higher dex or much higher con is probably superior. Depends on how much you value ~10% of your WBL. (The marginal choice between attribute points and gear on int.)



*with the DC arms race it is DIFFICULT to win against a good save when you are keeping pace in vanilla losing out on so much as 2-3 DC means that you basically shouldn't even try to target that save anymore, because that is 10-15% more chance of failure that you might have been around 50/50 in the first place. you could still win against weak saves but it also got harder. the best bet at that point is to find some way to contribute without worrying about DC if you arn't going to go all in on boosting your CHA. this in turn limits the spells you have the capacity to use well.


Indeed it reduces them by ~20% at the top end, and somewhere between 0% and 50% depending on how hard you dump wis, and whether or not you specialize, and whether you're a wizard, cleric, or sorcerer.



*with every creature it is different due to the changing numbers but generality exist for this reason. the following are statistically valid results to a loss of 2 DC.
80% chance of monster NOT saving down to 70%, total loss of 12.5% effectiveness
65% to 55% loss of 15%
50% to 40% loss of 20%
35% to 25% loss of 28%
105% to 95% loss of 5%


This is always important to keep in mind.



*this doesn't cover good save or bad save simply your normal odds changing with the loss of 2 DC, based on the difference of your DC value vs their save against it. a 50/50 shot is where both numbers are equal, for every point more or less the odds change by 5% (from their expected place from the DMS die roll). for example the monster has 3 more save than your DC your chances to beat the opponent are only 35% because of his advantage, but if you had 2 less DC your chances go down to only 25%. on the flip side when you have the advantage by 3 points your 65% chance to beat the save is worse when the same version of you with a lower DC only gets 55%. EDIT: then imagine the difference for those of us who don't max out CHA the loss is staggering even 6 pts of DC loss is -30% chance and AT BEST going from can't lose (+20 above monster) to they have a decent chance (+14). that gives them a flat 30% boost to their chances which could be everything from you cant win at the low end to a 600% increase (from 5% chance [1/20 roll] to 35% [7/20])


If you're dumping CHA you won't find save negates spells to be very useful at all.




*then when we look at the +6 item [+3DC] worth 36000g (assuming you buy it straight rather than trade up) the gains for such an item are entirely dependent on HOW MUCH DC you have in the first place. on the weak side the off chance that you can land a save spell go up 15% so from 10-25% and on the high end you can make it so you nearly always win going from 65 to 80%. however what is the point of getting such an item if you couldn't USE the spells that needed saves so you didn't get them? why prepare fireball when you only can win 10-20% of the time and when you lose they take 1/2 damage? especially when no save/ conditional save spells work without the chance of failure? why not buff the party fighter do deal an extra 2d6+15 damage with the extra attack from haste, summon a monster, make a tricky illusion to control the battlefield, or even use a reserve spell feat that does fairly equal damage (Fiery burst 1d6 damage/ spell level in 5ft radius out to 30ft at will). according to the arms and equipment guide a WONDROUS ITEM OF Fiery burst would cost 15k (10k+5k per prerequisite) could even make it a held item like a wand/weapon, make it 30k and it doesn't even take up a item slot (double cost for slot less items).
[/QUOTE]

I don't expect folks who dump CHA to use any save negates spells. I certainly don't expect anyone who dumped cha to buy cloak's of charisma.



OP, we don't know your players, so we don't know what they're going to do, or what they normally do. The best advice we can give you is based on what could be done with this, which by necessity for this situation has to be phrased along the lines of "your players might do this or that". I don't know your players, so I don't necessarily think they are or aren't going to implement a 15-minute adventuring day, or dig up tons of obscure broken spells, or whatever, because I don't know them, but because you're asking how this rules change is going to affect your game, it's useful on our side to state the potential consequences in terms of what your players could/would do, even if it comes with the caveat that we don't know your players. Dismissing general advice and observations because you feel like we're making statements and assertions about people we don't know does nothing but make everybody involved in the discussion frustrated.


This has been a frustrating discussion, and I appreciate the time your taking to carefully explain the problems you see.

We do have a fundamental communication problem. I'm not asking for advice. I'm asking if it's still possible for rangers to cast spells. I'm asking whether the house rule would have a larger impact on casters at low levels or at high levels.

The real issue is that I worded my initial post so vaguely because I was hoping to get for some really non-obvious results, that I ended up getting a lot of well-meaning but not terribly useful advice. We've spent pages arguing about how my players will respond when what I'd really like to know is whether someone can still build a sublime chord.



if you're seeking advice on how this houserule affects the balance of the game in a more general not-just-about-my-home-game kinda sense

This is the point I'm having a lot of trouble getting across. That is exactly what I'm not looking for.

I just want to know if it'll prevent people from building hexblades.



It's rookie mistakes like this that make people question the "13 years of running my system mastery" you brag about in this post. The process referred to as the Dark Chaos Shuffle is not a single spell, but rather a pair of spells.

I'm sorry that I wasn't clearer, but yes, that much is obvious. Who would name a spell Dark Chaos Shuffle?



These two spells, respectively, let you embrace and shun the power of the Abyss. Even if one of them was [Evi], the other would probably be [Good] and the relative damage of the former on one's mind/soul would be undone by the healing nature of the other. But that's not even the main reason why you're wrong here, because neither of these spells is [Evil]. Embrace The Dark Chaos is a [Chaotic] spell, casting it isn't and shouldn't be considered an Evil act unless you're deciding to houserule that as well.

You're correct, I missed that. Nevertheless the remedy works just fine. Embracing a bunch of [chaos] on a regular basis and fundamentally changing your physiology to do so is going to have deleterious effects. I don't know if it'd be the insanity rules or something else.



The reason that nobody took the question that way is because that's a stupid way to take the question. You're essentially asking "if I change the apple basket to an apple/oranges basket, how many fewer apples can it hold if you only fill the basket with apples?",


Many people did take it the way I intended, and at least one managed to provide builds that quantified the number of missing oranges, which I found very helpful. They also quantified the number of missing apples when optimizing for oranges.




because it's ignoring the loss that comes with deciding not to have oranges. The impact of this houserule affects two areas primarily (bonus spells, and save DCs), and if you're only looking at the difference between a SAD caster's Save DC and a MAD caster's Save DC when they focus on keeping Save DC, you're looking at how the category you optimized for is barely affected and applauding yourself for not impacting too much, when there's a giant impact in the other category that you're ignoring. That's why people are stating the losses of both sides, because both sides are relevant to a player who is focusing one at the expense of the other. The build I provided (which has gone uncommented on by you) suffered no losses on the Bonus Spells front, but was a full 11 points (at 20th lvl) behind on where their Save DC would've been as a SAD caster, and that's even with them cheating to boost their Cha 5 points; if I'd been more hesitant about abusing free wishes, that Save DC would be 14 points behind. The fact that I suffered significant losses to save DC is important context when considering that I didn't lose any bonus spells - and the fact that, if my build had hardfocused Cha the way it hardfocused Wis, and had dumped Wis the way it dumped Cha, then the situation would be reversed, with basically no lost Save DC but also losing the vast majority of my bonus spell slots.


I'm sorry I misunderstood, I ignored the build because I incorrectly thought that you were quoting from another source to providing a list of good spells that required no save DCs.

The build itself isn't terribly relevant to my game because the vast majority of it either wouldn't be practical, wouldn't be allowed, or would've gotten you killed. I do appreciate the effort it took to make it.



Ignoring that loss because you feel it's like comparing apples and oranges just has the result of you being able to look at your houserule and say (from a certain point of view) that it didn't cause Save DCs to fall at all, when that's only (at best) 1/3 of the full story.

Right, I know the other parts of the story just as well. I just don't agree with the conclusion that, "clearly, this third is the best third, so you've now forced all players to be broken in order to be relevant". The other thirds still exist, and can still be relevant. Maybe that isn't what you've been arguing but some of these posts are starting to run together.


Three stats might be excessive, but yeah I've had the idea for a long time, too.

I just had two stats, "Spell Power" and "Spell Knowledge"

Spell Knowledge would be for the whole needing a score of 10 + spell level or higher to cast spells at all, and bonus spell slots.
Spell Power was for save DCs and caster power checks, which would generally replace opposed CL checks and dispel checks/DCs (from Arcana Evolved....basically you and the opponent just add the relevant ability mod on top of CL to the d20 roll). It would also apply for other spell parameters that use a casting stat (like combat maneuvers for Telekinesis, or the attack and damage modifier for Whirling Blade)

Which stat was each depended on class. Generally Cha was for spell power, Wis for spell knowledge, and Int could be either (depending on which of the other two it got paired with).

Clerics were Wis/Cha, Druids were Int/Wis, Wizards were Int/Wis, Sorc I think was Wis/Cha, Bard was Int/Cha, etc...
Some classes could reverse the general rule for Cha = power, Wis = knowledge to give more variety (or if their spells lean more/less towards save DCs / offense, making the spell knowledge stat the less/more prominent one classically associated with the class)

Never implemented the idea. I kinda just moved onto giving high point buys, and just resigned myself to casters having high casting stats. It was easier to just make sure the MAD classes could have the stats they needed, too.

Did you end up building any characters using your rules? Would you mind sharing them?

Did you consider just raising the floor on the stats? The problem I've got with point buy is that the builds become fairly predictable.


They already can be broken. Your houserule just punishes the less broken casters without affecting the broken ones. The house rule of "No =>T2 casters" forbids the broken casters without punishing the less broken ones. It's that simple.


I understand the argument, it's not something that concerns me. You might as well assume that this house rule is in addition to a no T1 or T2 implementation of classes, because that is how the game is played at my table.



1) "Less broken casters need to spend extra resources in order to function as intended while broken casters can ignore that" is hardly an argument in favour of the houserule.
2) No? Just take INT 15, pop your ASIs in it, and never think about it again. All of your other stuff - +stat items, Tome of X, etc. - you just pile onto WIS.

We're not having an argument about whether or not to have the houserule. I'm trying to dig up unforseen effects. 3.5 has a ton of base classes and prestige classes. I don't know the details on most of them. I'm quite aware of how my players would build a full caster under these rules.



Considering spell casters don't need to spend money on magic armor or weapons, I don't think them having to buy another ability booster is a big deal.

As for save DCs, in a normal point buy the caster is going to get 6 points available by dropping its casting score from 18 to 16, so I can easily see a starting intelligence of 15.

Do you think a Bard would still be playable?

[weckar]

Clerics take the shortest end of this stick. They still need Charisma for turning. Theyneed wisdomfor some domain abilities. Of the three,bonus spells are easiest to do without while spell level is near impossible.

[blackwindbears]

Clerics take the shortest end of this stick. They still need Charisma for turning. Theyneed wisdomfor some domain abilities. Of the three,bonus spells are easiest to do without while spell level is near impossible.

I hadn't even thought of domain abilities, thanks for pointing that out.

[Nifft]

This has been a frustrating discussion, (...)

The thread title could have been "Making posters mad".

Anyway, regarding Bards -- a 16 Int is not that big a deal under most point-buy systems. The need for Wisdom to get bonus slots at key levels (since they get only bonus spells initially) is more of a burden. Ironically, you'd make Bard builds more focused on Wisdom and able to largely ignore Charisma -- they'd just pick buff / BFC spells which don't require a saving throw, like glibness or mirror image instead of suggestion or color spray.

Wisdom has good Bard synergy with Sense Motive and Listen checks... but one who Listens more than she Bluffs is not the typical Bard cliche. Playable, and effective even, but not the usual.

[blackwindbears]

The thread title could have been "Making posters mad".

Anyway, regarding Bards -- a 16 Int is not that big a deal under most point-buy systems. The need for Wisdom to get bonus slots at key levels (since they get only bonus spells initially) is more of a burden. Ironically, you'd make Bard builds more focused on Wisdom and able to largely ignore Charisma -- they'd just pick buff / BFC spells which don't require a saving throw, like glibness or mirror image instead of suggestion or color spray.

Wisdom has good Bard synergy with Sense Motive and Listen checks... but one who Listens more than she Bluffs is not the typical Bard cliche. Playable, and effective even, but not the usual.

So it puts you behind a level to get your spells at higher levels. Do bards usually have save DC's on their spells that matter if they aren't maxing it? Is Cha important to their perform stuff?

Edit: I'm thinking my next thread will be an optimization guide for granting innocent posters Barbarian class features.

[noob]

Your change would make bards a lot better at being skillmonkeys but they would become less good at diplomancing.

[Nifft]

So it puts you behind a level to get your spells at higher levels. Do bards usually have save DC's on their spells that matter if they aren't maxing it? Is Cha important to their perform stuff?

Cha isn't necessary for the combat aspects of Bardic Music -- the important ones run off skill ranks and Bard level, and since Inspire Courage is the biggest combat benefit, you don't even need many ranks to get most of the good stuff.

Non-combat mundane Perform does use Charisma (obviously), and effects like Fascinate + Suggestion do use Charisma.

[Deophaun]

This isn't very useful to me, because while it might be a very important consideration if this house-rule were going to be stuck into D&D 3.6, it isn't relevant to my table because my players respect the metagame.

Metagame, what metagame?
The metagame, in this context, is the stuff surrounding the game we've agreed to play. It's the reason that while there are rules that allow my player's to turn right and start killing each other this doesn't generally happen. You can think of it like a deal.
Because absolutely no one here has ever played a game where the PCs didn't all just start stabbing each other at session 1.


Generally this works just fine, because after 13 years of running 3.5 my system mastery is sufficient to handle problems as they crop up. My players don't look for broken builds online.
And what we're saying is that your change encourages them to do just that.

Here's a surprising fact: people don't simply look up broken builds just to follow a broken build. Many people look them up to see what options are available that they can apply to achieving their own preferred character, to hit the level they are comfortable with, to make an otherwise unplayable concept playable.

You've stated that your group doesn't have any balance problems between casters and mundanes. You're telling us how calm the surface of your lake is, how nice and peaceful it is to take your little boat out on it. And you're wondering what would happen if you threw a big rock into it. Well, we're telling you: it won't help your boat keep from rocking.

Let's take a look at Charisma. A point or two drop in DCs is tough at any level. Coupled with the loss of bonus spell slots, your spells are landing less often and you have fewer of them to cast. Charisma-based casters are going to be very disappointed in their choice. Charisma-based casters go out of style. Which means Charisma-based skills also fall behind. If you want to be a silver-tongued rogue (generally speaking, not the class), your path is not found in Charisma, but in finding those spells that give you a bonus to those checks. Otherwise, you're going to fail at either being a silver-tongued rogue or at being whatever casting class you've chosen.

And those spells are the ones that break the game balance and let you pull off crazy Diplo and Bluff DCs.

But that's the choice you're telling your players who were happily balanced beforehand to make. Either cast glibness all the time or get used to never being believed. Hyperbolic? Maybe a little, but definitely not entirely.

[blackwindbears]

You've stated that your group doesn't have any balance problems between casters and mundanes. You're telling us how calm the surface of your lake is, how nice and peaceful it is to take your little boat out on it. And you're wondering what would happen if you threw a big rock into it. Well, we're telling you: it won't help your boat keep from rocking.


The problem I'm having is that the question I'm asking is whether or not the rock is likely to hit anything beneath the surface, but some people can't get past the waves.

I'll running out of ways to say this, but maybe this phrasing will work: I'm quite comfortable with the obvious effects of this change. I'm trying to ask about some of the less obvious ones at this point. There are north of 50 base classes in 3.5, and who knows how many prestige classes. Perhaps this rule change makes it literally impossible to qualify for one RAW, I don't know.

[SLOTHRPG95]

We do have a fundamental communication problem. I'm not asking for advice. I'm asking if it's still possible for rangers to cast spells. I'm asking whether the house rule would have a larger impact on casters at low levels or at high levels.

The real issue is that I worded my initial post so vaguely because I was hoping to get for some really non-obvious results, that I ended up getting a lot of well-meaning but not terribly useful advice. We've spent pages arguing about how my players will respond when what I'd really like to know is whether someone can still build a sublime chord.

This is the point I'm having a lot of trouble getting across. That is exactly what I'm not looking for.

I just want to know if it'll prevent people from building hexblades.

I'm sorry that I wasn't clearer, but yes, that much is obvious. Who would name a spell Dark Chaos Shuffle?

Do you think a Bard would still be playable?

First off I'd just like to say that I've had some characters who'd totally make a spell called Dark Chaos Shuffle. Perhaps some enhanced mashup of Confusion and Irresistible Dance....

As for what I think are your actual concerns, I can speak to a few classes/PrCs. Sublime Chords are basically going to be unaffected, or rather are going to act pretty much in the same way other full-casters will act. I know this has been hashed over and it's not what you're interested in, so I'll leave that at that. Bards, as noted by someone else, can still function very well as skill monkeys. Honestly, I usually prioritize Int on my Bards for those sweet, sweet skill points. I only want/need Cha 16+ for high-end utility spells when a skill roll just won't do the trick, or if I decide to go diplomancer instead of Bard-Sage. I know you're not as interested about what individual posters would do, but I offer this all the same as potential insight on how the class might be impacted.

I think the real problem here is the impact on Rangers, Paladins, Hexblades, etc., and similarly on the wide variety of PrCs that offer half-casting. This is a pity, as these are some of my favorite classes, and I think many players will simply decide it's not worth it to keep them as casters.

With that said, Paladins might actually benefit from this change. Already, a typical Paladin wants high STR, CON, and CHA, and that's not going to change. Before, a WIS of 14 was needed to get full spell access, now instead you're looking at an INT of 14 and also WIS of 14 if they wanted to keep the two bonus spells. On the upside, their spell DCs would go up, but on the downside that's not really something most Paladins use anyway. Probably as a Human Paladin using the Elite array I'd start with 15 Str, 10 Dex, 14 Con, 12 Int, 8 Wis, 13 Cha. I'd just buy a Headband +2 when I needed it (at which point the cost is nothing), put stat bumps in Str and Cha like normal, and otherwise operate just fine (albeit with no bonus spells/day).

Hexblades, not so much. The typical Hexblade already wants everything except INT and WIS to be high, and now you've basically just told the half-caster that flavor-wise is supposed to be even more magic-centric than the Paladin or Ranger that if they want to keep that, they have to care about keeping all six of their stats high. Oh, or they could neglect their physical stats, but that doesn't sound like a great idea for a class designed to be a front-line fighter in light armor. I honestly don't know how I'd build a Hexblade in this sort of system.

Ranger is similar to Hexblade, but less extreme. If you're already the sort who plays a Ranger as a skill monkey first and foremost, I'd say you're not really impacted. If you were planning on dumping INT normally, but wanted to have lots of magical tricks, then I have bad news for you. The good news is that even in this case, Ranger spells don't tend to focus on saves so they can still probably dump CHA. As a Dwarf Ranger using the Elite array (and going for a magical melee ranger feel), I'd start with 15 Str, 13 Dex, 14 Con, 10 Int, 14 Wis, 6 Cha. I'd stat bump Int at 4th and 8th and just get a Headband past that, put my other stat bumps in Str, and make sure to have some level of not-too-expensive Wis boost for a few extra spells per day.

I think most PrCs follow the same pattern as one of the three above example, with one obvious caveat: you get into PrCs at higher levels, and as such it makes not bumping Int with your ASIs that much easier of a choice. After all, at higher levels, a +2 or +4 Headband isn't gonna break your bank account.

[blackwindbears]

First off I'd just like to say that I've had some characters who'd totally make a spell called Dark Chaos Shuffle. Perhaps some enhanced mashup of Confusion and Irresistible Dance....


Well hell, there's a spell called Irresistible Dance to begin with, so I suppose it was more plausible than I gave it credit for.



Ranger is similar to Hexblade, but less extreme. If you're already the sort who plays a Ranger as a skill monkey first and foremost, I'd say you're not really impacted. If you were planning on dumping INT normally, but wanted to have lots of magical tricks, then I have bad news for you. The good news is that even in this case, Ranger spells don't tend to focus on saves so they can still probably dump CHA. As a Dwarf Ranger using the Elite array (and going for a magical melee ranger feel), I'd start with 15 Str, 13 Dex, 14 Con, 10 Int, 14 Wis, 6 Cha. I'd stat bump Int at 4th and 8th and just get a Headband past that, put my other stat bumps in Str, and make sure to have some level of not-too-expensive Wis boost for a few extra spells per day.


Thanks for your detailed rundown! Dumb question, what does the ranger need Wis for?

[Goaty14]

Thanks for your detailed rundown! Dumb question, what does the ranger need Wis for?

Spells. :confused:

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'm trying to ask about some of the less obvious ones at this point. There are north of 50 base classes in 3.5, and who knows how many prestige classes. Perhaps this rule change makes it literally impossible to qualify for one RAW, I don't know.
There aren't any classes that completely stop working when you change a +11 ability modifier for a +2.

Your questions were answered on page one. Probably effects: lower save DCs, same broken tricks, no falling skies. Ability score optimization is between optimized no-save (Wisdom) and less-optimized save (Charisma). There is a 95%-of-normal-strength path, and an 80%-of-normal-strength path. The choice is obvious, hence optimization is no more interesting.

[AvatarVecna]

The problem I'm having is that the question I'm asking is whether or not the rock is likely to hit anything beneath the surface, but some people can't get past the waves.

I'll running out of ways to say this, but maybe this phrasing will work: I'm quite comfortable with the obvious effects of this change. I'm trying to ask about some of the less obvious ones at this point. There are north of 50 base classes in 3.5, and who knows how many prestige classes. Perhaps this rule change makes it literally impossible to qualify for one RAW, I don't know.

Here are some less obvious changes, then.

1) Split casters are more viable than they used to be.

Classes that already use two stats to cast spells are more viable not because the rule makes them better than they were, but rather because the rule is less of a drastic change. In the base game, classes such as these were (mostly) considered unviable compared to their obvious alternatives because of the split-stat casting they suffered from; once everybody becomes a split-stat caster, this relative disadvantage is gone. Archivists, Bards with the Bardic Sage ACF, Favored Souls, and Warmages. Of these four, the most problematic will probably be Archivist, which is considered on par with the Big Core Three in the base game despite its partial-split-stat casting, leaving it arguably the best caster in the game.

2) Gish populations will change drastically.

There's generally two kinds of gishes: the first is a class with less-than-full casting that also has some significant martial prowess and maybe some class features, and the second is a full caster who uses a pile of buffs to turn themselves into a combat god while still having enough spells to deal with utility stuff through the day. The latter (CoDzillas, Muscle Wizards, Artificers, etc) will be the least affected by this rules change, since they going from needing one stat to two (Int/Wis) and don't really need save DCs to self-buff to victory. If they aren't already common in your games, it's probably because there's other factors in your game making that style less ideal. The former group, however, is basically ****ed: at absolute best, the likes of Hexblades, Duskblaes, Battle Sorcerers, and Paladins needed three stats (Str or Dex for offense, Con, and casting stat), and have much lower maximum spell level, so they were already fairly terrible. This adds one or maybe even two additional stats to what they need, putting them in a similar position to monks (needing 4/5 decent stats to be playable, let alone good). Paladins should probably be encouraged to take a Spell-less variant, and the other gishy martials should be avoided. The exception here is probably Ranger, who in a lot of ways is more like a half-caster version of the latter gish group. Rangers have non-spellcasting reasons to invest in Int/Wis, and limited reason to invest in Cha for spellcasting and non-spellcasting purposes, since their spells are generally buffing/utility, and save DCs were never particularly high to begin with.

3) Non-Vancian casters are largely unaffected.

I'm not referring to psionics or truenaming here, those are largely Vancian with a twist. There are four main classes on this point in my mind: Crusader, Factotum, Swordsage, and Warblade. The ToB classes don't really "cast" the way "other" casters do, maneuvers (in preparation, execution, resistance, frequency, and recovery) operate very differently from the Vancian model. If this rule is intended to affect these classes, you'll probably want to take a closer look at them to figure out how you want to word it so that it affects them. Factotum is unaffected for a different reason, because while the Factotum is semi-Vancian, it also breaks some of the rules most Vancian casters have to follow: Factotum's maximum castable spell level is untied to any attribute, and they don't gain bonus spells from a high attribute (rather, their slots are based purely on class level). The only normal thing is Save DCs, which are set by Int normally. And because a Factotum is probably best off spending their prepared spell slots on utility and buffing, rather than debuffing/blasting/BFC, they're rarely if ever going to be casting a spell that requires a save to resist (save perhaps Scrying and the like?), so at least in regards to their casting, a Factotum could very much get away with Int 10/Wis 10/Cha 10. That being said, they are likely to invest in two or even all three of these stats for non-spellcasting related reasons, so even if you adjusted the factotum so that it was affected by this rule-change, it would still be among the least-affected "caster" in the game.

4) PrCs that grant personal spellcasting are largely unchanged.

I don't mean that they don't suffer from the change, but rather that this change is too small to affect their existing viability. PrCs like Assassin, Blackguard, Trapsmith, and Vigilante (which all grant PrC-specific casting progression) were fairly terrible/niche to begin with, so this change makes these fairly bad classes worse. On the other end of the spectrum, classes that grant in-house casting going up to 9th at a useful rate (Apostle Of Peace, Sublime Chord, Ur-Priest, Beholder Mage, etc) were absolutely ridiculous to varying degrees in the base game, and this change isn't enough of a blow to make them unviable, or even less problematic than they already were.

5) Caster theurges become more viable.

There's a lot of reasons why the Mystic Theurge is generally considered unoptimal, but this rule change takes away one of them: it's often difficult to get the class combo you want without having multiple casting stats in the base game, but now all casters (and thus all theurges) use the same stats for the same things, meaning Theurges are slightly less punished and thus slightly more comparatively valuable after the change. I could see an argument for both an Int/Cha Theurge and an Int/Wis Theurge, but I feel like the latter will be more common because theurges already have a spells-per-day advantage and a spell-DC disadvantage, and focusing Cha won't undo the disadvantage their PrC is giving them, so they'll focus Wis and just have tons and tons of spells. Plus, even compared to normal single casters, theurges get twice the benefits from investing in Wis, so even if you're of the opinion that Wis and Cha are equally viable to invest in under this rule for a wizard or cleric, a theurge has far more reason to invest in Wis than other casters.

There's probably other relatively simple things that change as part of this rule-change, but these are the off-the-top-of-my-head things.

[AvatarVecna]

Thanks for your detailed rundown! Dumb question, what does the ranger need Wis for?

A spell-less ranger, one with absolutely no spellcasting, still has significant reasons to invest in Wisdom: the classes only bad save is Will, and the three skills you could arguably say are the core skills of the ranger are Listen, Spot, and Survival - all of which are Wis-based. A spell-less ranger with a bad wisdom score is called a "why didn't you just play Fighter?" As mentioned in my previous post, most rangers that are played like skillmonkeys with a side of utility/buff casting were going to focus Int/Wis anyway, so this rule change doesn't affect them as much as it does others.

[Bohandas]

Also that's not RAW. You can't cast effective spell levels that you can't cast otherwise.

I got the impression that you could. I thought that was part of the point of metamagic.

The SRD always talks about maximum spell level, not maximum level of spell slot. And the description of metamagic specifically states that metamagic doesn't change the spell's level. (With the exception of Heighten Spell, whose description required the note "This does not change the level of the spell, so the DC for saving throws against it does not go up.", implying that this is not the default for metamagic)

cf.

"Metamagic Feats

As a spellcaster’s knowledge of magic grows, she can learn to cast spells in ways slightly different from the ways in which the spells were originally designed or learned. Preparing and casting a spell in such a way is harder than normal but, thanks to metamagic feats, at least it is possible. Spells modified by a metamagic feat use a spell slot higher than normal. This does not change the level of the spell, so the DC for saving throws against it does not go up"

"To learn, prepare, or cast a spell, the wizard must have an Intelligence score equal to at least 10 + the spell level."

"To learn, prepare, or cast a spell, the wizard must have an Intelligence score equal to at least 10 + the spell level."

"To prepare or cast a spell, a cleric must have a Wisdom score equal to at least 10 + the spell level."

"Extend Spell [Metamagic]
Benefit

An extended spell lasts twice as long as normal. A spell with a duration of concentration, instantaneous, or permanent is not affected by this feat. An extended spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell’s actual level"

"Heighten Spell [Metamagic]
Benefit

A heightened spell has a higher spell level than normal (up to a maximum of 9th level). Unlike other metamagic feats, Heighten Spell actually increases the effective level of the spell that it modifies. All effects dependent on spell level (such as saving throw DCs and ability to penetrate a lesser globe of invulnerability) are calculated according to the heightened level. The heightened spell is as difficult to prepare and cast as a spell of its effective level."

"The minimum Charisma score needed to cast a sorcerer or bard spell is 10 + the spell’s level."

"The minimum Wisdom score needed to cast a cleric, druid, paladin, or ranger spell is 10 + the spell’s level."

"The minimum Intelligence score needed to cast a wizard spell is 10 + the spell’s level."

[Nifft]

Thanks for your detailed rundown! Dumb question, what does the ranger need Wis for?

Scouting skills.

Spot, Listen, Survival (for Track): all Wisdom-based.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Did you end up building any characters using your rules? Would you mind sharing them?

Did you consider just raising the floor on the stats? The problem I've got with point buy is that the builds become fairly predictable.

No, I never implemented it. I don't DM much, and when I do, usually I feel like i need to keep the houserule changes down / not extreme so as to not scare off prospective players.

Like I said, I just grew to accept that casters will have massive casting stats and moved on to at least make sure the monks and such could afford a bunch of 14's.

Are the stat arrays that result predictable? Perhaps. But to me, the stats aren't really an identifying part of the character the way race, class / build, feats, skill ranks, magic items, etc... are. So it never bothered me. If it did...I'd just increase the point buy even more, to the point where players are raising dump stats above 8 just b/c they have more points than they know what to do with.

My last game, I did implement one houserule regarding stats, though. Not for character creation, but growth.
At level 4, 8, etc.... instead of adding +1 to one stat, you can add +1 to two different stats. If you do so, then 4 levels later on, you can't opt to increase either stat. Afterwards, you can select either or both again.

So you could do...
Level 4: Str +1, Con +1
Level 8: Dex +1, Wis +1
Level 12: Str +1, Con +1
Level 16: Dex +1, Wis +1
Level 20: Str +1, Con +1

Or...
Level 4: Str +1, Con +1
Level 8: Dex +1
Level 12: Str +1, Dex +1
Level 16: Con +1
Level 20: Str +1, Con +1

For some examples. or you know... just do Int +1 five times in a row, like the current system ensures players will do.
Doing the dual stats means they won't be able to raise quite as fast, but you can end up w/ as much as +3 to two stats and +2 to two others, significantly more total points, but not getting as high as a single stat advanced each time. I think it worked really well, only "issue" was having to track your choices for each such level up. Though b/c it was point buy for creation, I could figure it out in reverse if necessary to see how a player chose level up points.

[Goaty14]

(snip)

If your reading is supposedly correct, then why can't a 1st level wizard with a 16 INT and heighten spell count as casting 3rd level spells for PrCs? Why can't a beguiler with a 16 INT qualify likewise? I mean, if a beguiler has a slot, then he has all of the spells of that level known, and thus a 16 INT beguiler could cast 3rd level spells, no?

The paladin/ranger text where it says that you can only cast spells of that level if you have bonus slots effectively says that you can't cast spells of a spell level that you don't have access to via the table. And then (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#metamagicFeats):


In all ways, a metamagic spell operates at its original spell level, even though it is prepared and cast as a higher-level spell.

And then metamagic makes you cast it as a higher level spell, which you don't have access to.

[SLOTHRPG95]

2) Gish populations will change drastically.

There's generally two kinds of gishes: the first is a class with less-than-full casting that also has some significant martial prowess and maybe some class features, and the second is a full caster who uses a pile of buffs to turn themselves into a combat god while still having enough spells to deal with utility stuff through the day. The latter (CoDzillas, Muscle Wizards, Artificers, etc) will be the least affected by this rules change, since they going from needing one stat to two (Int/Wis) and don't really need save DCs to self-buff to victory. If they aren't already common in your games, it's probably because there's other factors in your game making that style less ideal. The former group, however, is basically ****ed: at absolute best, the likes of Hexblades, Duskblaes, Battle Sorcerers, and Paladins needed three stats (Str or Dex for offense, Con, and casting stat), and have much lower maximum spell level, so they were already fairly terrible. This adds one or maybe even two additional stats to what they need, putting them in a similar position to monks (needing 4/5 decent stats to be playable, let alone good). Paladins should probably be encouraged to take a Spell-less variant, and the other gishy martials should be avoided. The exception here is probably Ranger, who in a lot of ways is more like a half-caster version of the latter gish group. Rangers have non-spellcasting reasons to invest in Int/Wis, and limited reason to invest in Cha for spellcasting and non-spellcasting purposes, since their spells are generally buffing/utility, and save DCs were never particularly high to begin with.



I largely agree with the points you're making here, but I don't really see how this impacts the MAD-ness of Paladins. Slap on a Headband, and then Int isn't a problem since you only need a 14 at most anyways. In fact, since Paladins under normal conditions have reason to care about Wis and Cha, doesn't this make dumping Wis more viable? Sure, you wouldn't get any bonus spells. But that's compared to not getting any spells at all as a 10 Wisdom Paladin in core.

[AvatarVecna]

I largely agree with the points you're making here, but I don't really see how this impacts the MAD-ness of Paladins. Slap on a Headband, and then Int isn't a problem since you only need a 14 at most anyways. In fact, since Paladins under normal conditions have reason to care about Wis and Cha, doesn't this make dumping Wis more viable? Sure, you wouldn't get any bonus spells. But that's compared to not getting any spells at all as a 10 Wisdom Paladin in core.

I am voting down the paladin as part of a comparison with the ranger. Normally, both the Paladin and the Ranger run their casting entirely off Wisdom; for the Ranger, this isn't a problem because Wis plays well with their other features, but for a Paladin, it really doesn't - most of their stuff ties more into Str and Cha. In Pathfinder, one of the paladin changes was changing all the spell stuff to Cha...and if you check charop guides for PF Paladin, sure enough they recommend dumping Int and Wis. While it's less important for full casters (a cleric with triple-casting-stat rules, Wis for domains, and Cha for turning, is still a ****ing cleric), it's important for half-casters and especially half-caster gishes to have some stat synergy between their casting and their class abilities. When a cleric invests points in Int 19, they can take solace in the fact that they can pick up lots of useful skills; when a Ranger picks up Int 14, he gets a couple more good skills and has enough to potentially play with Knowledge Devotion regularly; when a Paladin picks up Int 14, he is basically wasting any resources he spent on it purely on the ability to be permitted to use his class features and basically nothing else (not enough interesting skills that a few extra are nice, not enough skill points for KD synergy, no Int-based class features). Similarly, the only mental stat a Paladin really has synergy with (Cha) is also the aspect of his casting that he least cares about.

When it comes down to it, both of these classes have to invest a bit in Int and a bit in either Wis or Cha; Paladin additionally has to invest in Cha for other class abilities, while Ranger has to invest in Wis for other things, but both classes (for spellcasting benefits) gain more from investing in Wis than Cha. Even if you look at it from the point of view of "the paladin started with all three aspects tied to Wis, and now has one aspect tied to Cha", and ignore that the one aspect is the one the paladin cared the least about, it must be acknowledged that one of the benefits (and crucially, the only one that's an actual requirement) moved to Int, while the most desirable one for significant investment is still in Wisdom. Cha/Cha/Cha is better than Wis/Wis/Wis by a longshot, but that doesn't mean Int/Wis/Cha is better than Wis/Wis/Wis; the minor benefits of switching the save DCs to Cha are offset by making Int now a requirement. Well, that, or the paladin dumps Wis the way they used to dump Int and accepts not having as many spell slots, but I think it's hard to argue that's a better place for the paladin to be.

That being said, I will attach a giant caveat to my opinion on the paladin under this ruling: if the Paladin takes the DrM feat "Serenity", they are now gaining even better Wis synergy than the Ranger, and is much more viable (although because the spellcasting is still split across three stats, it's still not on-par with a regular Serenity Paladin who doesn't also need Int for casting and a bit of Cha for saves if they want that). Serenity Paladin is worse under Triple-Stat-Rule than otherwise, but it's worsened less than Core Paladin.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If your reading is supposedly correct, then why can't a 1st level wizard with a 16 INT and heighten spell count as casting 3rd level spells for PrCs? Why can't a beguiler with a 16 INT qualify likewise? I mean, if a beguiler has a slot, then he has all of the spells of that level known, and thus a 16 INT beguiler could cast 3rd level spells, no?

You realize you answer your own question here;


The paladin/ranger text where it says that you can only cast spells of that level if you have bonus slots effectively says that you can't cast spells of a spell level that you don't have access to via the table. And then (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#metamagicFeats):

None of the full casters get slots on the levels where the table is marked with ( - ) either. Heighten spell is part of several early entry tricks once you have a way to pay for it other than normal preparation.

Look at the first part of this that you quoted.


In all ways, a metamagic spell operates at its original spell level, even though it is prepared and cast as a higher-level spell.

A maximized fireball operates "in all ways" as a third level spell. It's just prepared and cast from a sixth level slot.

And, for what it's worth, this reading appears to follow designer intent http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20050503a

[Lans]

Suboptimal Spellcasters need to spend money on magic items. Save or Die spells that are affected by spell resistance are exponentially affected by their save DC while optimal spellcasters can fully function without wealth.

Right, but the items they need to spend money on are chump change compared to a magic weapons and armor

[RoboEmperor]

Right, but the items they need to spend money on are chump change compared to a magic weapons and armor

+6 item is 36000
+5 inherent bonus is 137,500gp
That's actually all the items I know that boost save DC. The rest is feats like spell focus, snowcasting and cold focus.

and then there's a bunch of +caster level item you need to overcome spell resistance like metamagic rod of quicken for a quickened true casting or assay resistance.

It's not chump change.

[Bohandas]

If your reading is supposedly correct, then why can't a 1st level wizard with a 16 INT and heighten spell count as casting 3rd level spells for PrCs? Why can't a beguiler with a 16 INT qualify likewise? I mean, if a beguiler has a slot, then he has all of the spells of that level known, and thus a 16 INT beguiler could cast 3rd level spells, no?

For one thing because of the disclaimer at the end of the desc4ription for Heighten Spell ("The heightened spell is as difficult to prepare and cast as a spell of its effective level.") the one that doesn't appear in any other metamagic feat

[AnimeTheCat]

A maximized fireball operates "in all ways" as a third level spell. It's just prepared and cast from a sixth level slot.

And, for what it's worth, this reading appears to follow designer intent http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20050503a

Based on that line of thinking, would a 2nd level spell heightened to a 4th level overcome effects such as the one produced by a lesser globe of invulnerability? (I think they protect against levels 0-3 right?). I just kind of thought about this before even looking, so the rules text may specifically cover this, but it was just a thought.

[noob]

Based on that line of thinking, would a 2nd level spell heightened to a 4th level overcome effects such as the one produced by a lesser globe of invulnerability? (I think they protect against levels 0-3 right?). I just kind of thought about this before even looking, so the rules text may specifically cover this, but it was just a thought.
heighten is specified as an exception to this rule and make the spell count as a higher level spell for most purposes and not just for casting.
you can read the rules of heighten spell.

[SLOTHRPG95]

I am voting down the paladin as part of a comparison with the ranger. Normally, both the Paladin and the Ranger run their casting entirely off Wisdom; for the Ranger, this isn't a problem because Wis plays well with their other features, but for a Paladin, it really doesn't - most of their stuff ties more into Str and Cha. In Pathfinder, one of the paladin changes was changing all the spell stuff to Cha...and if you check charop guides for PF Paladin, sure enough they recommend dumping Int and Wis. While it's less important for full casters (a cleric with triple-casting-stat rules, Wis for domains, and Cha for turning, is still a ****ing cleric), it's important for half-casters and especially half-caster gishes to have some stat synergy between their casting and their class abilities. When a cleric invests points in Int 19, they can take solace in the fact that they can pick up lots of useful skills; when a Ranger picks up Int 14, he gets a couple more good skills and has enough to potentially play with Knowledge Devotion regularly; when a Paladin picks up Int 14, he is basically wasting any resources he spent on it purely on the ability to be permitted to use his class features and basically nothing else (not enough interesting skills that a few extra are nice, not enough skill points for KD synergy, no Int-based class features). Similarly, the only mental stat a Paladin really has synergy with (Cha) is also the aspect of his casting that he least cares about.

When it comes down to it, both of these classes have to invest a bit in Int and a bit in either Wis or Cha; Paladin additionally has to invest in Cha for other class abilities, while Ranger has to invest in Wis for other things, but both classes (for spellcasting benefits) gain more from investing in Wis than Cha. Even if you look at it from the point of view of "the paladin started with all three aspects tied to Wis, and now has one aspect tied to Cha", and ignore that the one aspect is the one the paladin cared the least about, it must be acknowledged that one of the benefits (and crucially, the only one that's an actual requirement) moved to Int, while the most desirable one for significant investment is still in Wisdom. Cha/Cha/Cha is better than Wis/Wis/Wis by a longshot, but that doesn't mean Int/Wis/Cha is better than Wis/Wis/Wis; the minor benefits of switching the save DCs to Cha are offset by making Int now a requirement. Well, that, or the paladin dumps Wis the way they used to dump Int and accepts not having as many spell slots, but I think it's hard to argue that's a better place for the paladin to be.

That being said, I will attach a giant caveat to my opinion on the paladin under this ruling: if the Paladin takes the DrM feat "Serenity", they are now gaining even better Wis synergy than the Ranger, and is much more viable (although because the spellcasting is still split across three stats, it's still not on-par with a regular Serenity Paladin who doesn't also need Int for casting and a bit of Cha for saves if they want that). Serenity Paladin is worse under Triple-Stat-Rule than otherwise, but it's worsened less than Core Paladin.

These are all very valid points. I was mostly looking at the extent of MAD-ness of the two classes (should they care about their casting) in core vs. by these alternate rules. Under that analysis, Paladins aren't hurt too much, whereas Rangers have to care about everything that they did before, plut Int. Of course, as it's well-known the Ranger is a skill monkey who just happens to have full BAB, and no skill monkey I've ever met has ever dumped Int. Furthermore, I don't want to oversell the idea that "hey Paladins are already bumping Cha and now it impacts their save DCs," since as you and I have both mentioned, most half-casters don't really rely on spells with saves. Those that do? They suffer from not only MAD-ness, but also low spell levels keeping their DCs abysmal.

The only exception in core/core-adjacent that I can think of (and I can't believe that I'm saying this) is the Hexblade. I'm not arguing that they're optimal, or even good, at affecting people with their spells. They're just slightly better than the likes of Rangers or Paladins, since (a) unlike core Paladins, they have other reasons to care about their casting stat, (b) boosting save DCs is one of the few things their weak bonus feat selection can do, and (c) they come equipped with a built-in debuff that impacts saves, and is tied to class (not spell) level. Is this enough for them to win the DC arms race? Nope. Are they left slightly less in the dust than, say, core Paladins or Rangers? Yes, for whatever small consolation that might provide.

[death390]

You realize you answer your own question here;



None of the full casters get slots on the levels where the table is marked with ( - ) either. Heighten spell is part of several early entry tricks once you have a way to pay for it other than normal preparation.

Look at the first part of this that you quoted.



A maximized fireball operates "in all ways" as a third level spell. It's just prepared and cast from a sixth level slot.

And, for what it's worth, this reading appears to follow designer intent http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20050503a

Heighten spell is different than other metamagic "Unlike other metamagic feats, Heighten Spell actually increases the effective level of the spell that it modifies." specific trumps general. even more so the use of metemagic reducers makes heighten extra weird that it doesn't state that is uses the slot to determine the effective level so applying reducers can get you a equivilent 9th level spell in a 1st level slot (cantrip with 8 reducers: due to min. +1 most reducers have stipulated)

[AnimeTheCat]

heighten is specified as an exception to this rule and make the spell count as a higher level spell for most purposes and not just for casting.
you can read the rules of heighten spell.

As I said, I just had that thought based on a response, didn't have the time or chance to read the feat and/or spell.

[lbuttitta]

As a minor consequence, theurge-type casters are "buffed" in comparison to full casters; you're going to be ability-dependent anyways, so you might as well take two caster classes.

[blackwindbears]

As a minor consequence, theurge-type casters are "buffed" in comparison to full casters; you're going to be ability-dependent anyways, so you might as well take two caster classes.

Seems to me that it still sucks to be behind so many levels (as a note, I don't allow early entry cheese for any of the theurge classes).

[noob]

Seems to me that it still sucks to be behind so many levels (as a note, I don't allow early entry cheese for any of the theurge classes).
An ur priest sublime chord theurge does not needs early entry and now gets to have quite a lot of medium level spell slots and is not that much lacking in high level spell slots especially if you could get enough levels in ur priest for the really cool tricks.

[Jack_Simth]

An ur priest sublime chord theurge does not needs early entry and now gets to have quite a lot of medium level spell slots and is not that much lacking in high level spell slots especially if you could get enough levels in ur priest for the really cool tricks.

If you have enough levels in Ur-Priest to use the actual class features, you aren't theurging much.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If you have enough levels in Ur-Priest to use the actual class features, you aren't theurging much.

Class features? You mean the half-ass rebuke, the pitiful spell resistance, the one less relevant spell slot, or the too little too late half-decent one you could out perform with a spell several levels before you got it? You go to ur-priest for the same reason you go to cleric; the spells.

[RoboEmperor]

Class features? You mean the half-ass rebuke, the pitiful spell resistance, the one less relevant spell slot, or the too little too late half-decent one you could out perform with a spell several levels before you got it? You go to ur-priest for the same reason you go to cleric; the spells.

I thought you go Ur-Priest for free wishes.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I thought you go Ur-Priest for free wishes.

You want free wishes, buy a candle. You want to use ur-priest without attracting flying DMGs, steal spell-like is just not that impressive.

[RoboEmperor]

You want free wishes, buy a candle. You want to use ur-priest without attracting flying DMGs, steal spell-like is just not that impressive.

It's still an SLA meaning you can ignore costs. Animate Dead in particular is very useful since you control it and not the called creature.

[Goaty14]

You want free wishes, buy a candle.

Somebody should sig this, no context needed :smallbiggrin:

[Jack_Simth]

Class features? You mean the half-ass rebuke, the pitiful spell resistance, the one less relevant spell slot, or the too little too late half-decent one you could out perform with a spell several levels before you got it? You go to ur-priest for the same reason you go to cleric; the spells.
I'm unsure which, specifically, noob was referencing - but that's largely irrelevant, as a proper theurge with Ur-Priest is going to stop after just one or two Ur-Priest levels (depending on how many you need to get the theurge class you're after). Your "basic" sublime Chord ur-Theurge is Savage Bard-8/Ur-Priest-2/Sublime Chord-1/Mystic Theurge-X. You can trade out a bard level for another Ur-Priest level, a lot go two levels in Sublime Chord, and there's some mixes with more multiclassing that use a different Arcane base class, but that's the "basic" Sublime Ur-Theurge. So unless noob was referencing the Rebuke, my statement still stands just fine.

Also: Note that the extremely limited rebuking still grants access to some divine feats.

[noob]

you can have 4 levels in ur priest with the following.
Savage bard 1/Wizard 5/ ur priest 4/sublime chord 1/mystic theurge 9
The arcane casting do not need to come from bard levels and it is not early entry since you did not enter sublime chord earlier.
If we could cram 2 more levels in Ur priest then we would be able to get Siphon spell power which possibly allow to stockpile ninth level spells indefinitely as long as you skip spell preparations.

[Deophaun]

The problem I'm having is that the question I'm asking is whether or not the rock is likely to hit anything beneath the surface, but some people can't get past the waves.

I'll running out of ways to say this, but maybe this phrasing will work: I'm quite comfortable with the obvious effects of this change. I'm trying to ask about some of the less obvious ones at this point. There are north of 50 base classes in 3.5, and who knows how many prestige classes. Perhaps this rule change makes it literally impossible to qualify for one RAW, I don't know.
Asks about non-obvious effects of spellcasting changes on Bards.
Gets frustrated over a post that talks about the effect on Charisma-based casters' (e.g. Bards) skills.

There's a reason no one knows how to respond to whatever question you (haven't) posed.

[magicalmagicman]

Asks about non-obvious effects of spellcasting changes on Bards.
Gets frustrated over a post that talks about the effect on Charisma-based casters' (e.g. Bards) skills.

There's a reason no one knows how to respond to whatever question you (haven't) posed.

OP: I am gonna make casters MAD because I am obsessed with making casters MAD. Nothing will stop me from making casters MAD.
OP: You're not allowed to talk about anything about my house rule because I'm not listening to a word you say. But please, please, discuss this with me.
OP: I am not gonna listen to what anything anyone says. No matter how many people endlessly repeat the samething over and over with varying amounts of proof that my house rule will make the game worse I will not change my mind that making casters MAD is an excellent idea and nothing will stop me or make me modify my house rule to change this. But please, please, discuss this with me.

[Kelb_Panthera]

you can have 4 levels in ur priest with the following.
Savage bard 1/Wizard 5/ ur priest 4/sublime chord 1/mystic theurge 9
The arcane casting do not need to come from bard levels and it is not early entry since you did not enter sublime chord earlier.
If we could cram 2 more levels in Ur priest then we would be able to get Siphon spell power which possibly allow to stockpile ninth level spells indefinitely as long as you skip spell preparations.

Why would you take more than 6 levels of MT on that build?

[Jack_Simth]

Why would you take more than 6 levels of MT on that build?

CL advancement, I would imagine.

[noob]

Why would you take more than 6 levels of MT on that build?

For getting the maximum amount of spell slots from sublime chord?

[Nifft]

For getting the maximum amount of spell slots from sublime chord?

For that, I'd suggest almost any other caster-advancing PrC (including Sublime Chord itself).

[Kelb_Panthera]

For getting the maximum amount of spell slots from sublime chord?

The last 4 levels of MT get you that but the +1 to existing divine class for those 4 levels is wasted. Literally any other arcane advancing class will do the same thing plus its own features.

[Jack_Simth]

The last 4 levels of MT get you that but the +1 to existing divine class for those 4 levels is wasted. Literally amy other arcane advancing class will do the same thing plus its own features.

It still boosts caster level for Ur-Priest:
To determine the caster level of an ur-priest, add the character’s ur-priest levels to one-half of his levels in other spellcasting classes
So while you don't get more spells per day nor more spell access for casting as an Ur-Priest 13, you do get more caster levels for things like SR penetration, spell durations, and the bonus from Magic Vestments.

Other arcane advancement PrC's (like Incantatrix, Loremaster, or Archmage) would not do so (well, they'll do half caster level advancement... probably).

[noob]

It still boosts caster level for Ur-Priest:
So while you don't get more spells per day nor more spell access for casting as an Ur-Priest 13, you do get more caster levels for things like SR penetration, spell durations, and the bonus from Magic Vestments.

Other arcane advancement PrC's (like Incantatrix, Loremaster, or Archmage) would not do so (well, they'll do half caster level advancement... probably).

by the way with my build we basically have level appropriate cl in ur priest.
sublime chord cl is the level in sublime chord + the level in one of the previous arcane classes(we pick wizard) so we basically have an ur priest cl of 3(wizard and savage bard) +4(levels in ur priest) + 9(advancement of mystic theurge) +7.5(sublime chord cl being 5+10) which does a total of 23.5 caster level.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Small hiccup; +1 to spellcasting PrCs aren't spellcasting classes. That's why you can't theurge, say, cerebremancer and arcane hierophant with mystic theurge. Ur-priest caster level is ur-priest + 1/2 of his levels in other spellcasting classes.

[noob]

Small hiccup; +1 to spellcasting PrCs aren't spellcasting classes. That's why you can't theurge, say, cerebremancer and arcane hierophant with mystic theurge. Ur-priest caster level is ur-priest + 1/2 of his levels in other spellcasting classes.

what I said is that mystic theurge can progress ur priest and sublime chord at once.
thanks to progressing ur priest it progress ur priest and progressing sublime chord increase the caster level in sublime chord and so increase the caster level in ur priest.

[MrSandman]

you can have 4 levels in ur priest with the following.
Savage bard 1/Wizard 5/ ur priest 4/sublime chord 1/mystic theurge 9
The arcane casting do not need to come from bard levels and it is not early entry since you did not enter sublime chord earlier.
If we could cram 2 more levels in Ur priest then we would be able to get Siphon spell power which possibly allow to stockpile ninth level spells indefinitely as long as you skip spell preparations.

Didn't sublime cord have that bardic lock thing that forces you to keep taking levels on it until you reach sublime cord 10? Or are there more than one published versions?

[RedWarlock]

Rather than functioning as hard limiters, if you really want to diversify stat investment for casters, while retaining stat associations for types of casting, you could make the general applications into scaling benefits, much like HP and skill points.

Though it works better if everyone is a spontaneous caster, maybe adopting spirit shaman-style daily-known for all divine casters if you want to keep that feature. Bonus spells known from int (or bonus spells per level up in their book for wizards), bonus spells per day based on wis, and spell DC based on charisma. Each would have a healthy baseline, but more is better in all things.

Then use the score-as-limiter (score of 13 to cast 3rd level spells) based on source. Intelligence for Arcane (or just wizards, cha for sorcs if you prefer), Wisdom for nature, and Charisma for Divine, would be my preference, but do as you like.

[noob]

Didn't sublime cord have that bardic lock thing that forces you to keep taking levels on it until you reach sublime cord 10? Or are there more than one published versions?

It is a houserule made in one of the web sites that talks about sublime chord but in dnd 3.5 without house rules there is no such lock.
Still with the change to make casters mad my build have more slots than without the change since now all spell slots are keyed off the same stat for all the different classes.

[MrSandman]

It is a houserule made in one of the web sites that talks about sublime chord but in dnd 3.5 without house rules there is no such lock.

Oh I see. Cheers.

[Kelb_Panthera]

what I said is that mystic theurge can progress ur priest and sublime chord at once.
thanks to progressing ur priest it progress ur priest and progressing sublime chord increase the caster level in sublime chord and so increase the caster level in ur priest.

I'm not arguing that MT doesn't increase the CL directly, it pretty unambiguously does. I'm saying it doesn't increase it indirectly. You only have 7 levels in classes that are spellcasting classes other than ur-priest in that build. Your ur-priest CL should be 16 not 23. Incantatrix would leave you at UP CL 13 but you'd get an extra metamagic, cooperative metamagic, and metamagic effect.

3 to divine CL just seems -really- weak for class features beyond advancing arcane progression.

[Lans]

+6 item is 36000
+5 inherent bonus is 137,500gp
That's actually all the items I know that boost save DC. The rest is feats like spell focus, snowcasting and cold focus.

and then there's a bunch of +caster level item you need to overcome spell resistance like metamagic rod of quicken for a quickened true casting or assay resistance.

It's not chump change.

Okay, not chump change but still like a quarter of what a fighter needs to function.

I've rarely see some one taking items for getting by spell resistance. Assay resistence is a swift action in complete arcane

[Minion #6]

OP: I am gonna make casters MAD because I am obsessed with making casters MAD. Nothing will stop me from making casters MAD.
OP: You're not allowed to talk about anything about my house rule because I'm not listening to a word you say. But please, please, discuss this with me.
OP: I am not gonna listen to what anything anyone says. No matter how many people endlessly repeat the samething over and over with varying amounts of proof that my house rule will make the game worse I will not change my mind that making casters MAD is an excellent idea and nothing will stop me or make me modify my house rule to change this. But please, please, discuss this with me.

That's very much the impression I got too. Why ask for feedback if you don't want feedback? Especially given that it was framed as "what effects would it have on my game?", what answer would there be other than "entirely negative"?

[Jack_Simth]

I'm not arguing that MT doesn't increase the CL directly, it pretty unambiguously does. I'm saying it doesn't increase it indirectly. You only have 7 levels in classes that are spellcasting classes other than ur-priest in that build. Your ur-priest CL should be 16 not 23. Incantatrix would leave you at UP CL 13 but you'd get an extra metamagic, cooperative metamagic, and metamagic effect.
It's debatable; not everyone will see it the same way (which is why I didn't say "for the 1.5 advancement CL Progression"). Basically, the (opposite your position) logic goes:
His caster level goes up "...as if he had also gained a level in any one..." class of the relevant type. Well, with Ur-Priest, your caster level would go up if you took more levels in Wizard (or Bard, or whatever base you're using). It's caster level, as if you'd gained a level in the arcane class...

Not everyone buys that, of course, but that's the basic logic of it.

[death390]

Small hiccup; +1 to spellcasting PrCs aren't spellcasting classes. That's why you can't theurge, say, cerebremancer and arcane hierophant with mystic theurge. Ur-priest caster level is ur-priest + 1/2 of his levels in other spellcasting classes.

this is actually a large point of contention in general. the only statement about this in the books is on p313 of the players handbook "spellcaster: A character capable of casting spells." this does NOT limit it to non theurge classes in the opinion of many, meaning for several tables you CAN theurge a prestige class or even another theurge class, that has one of the following entries: spells, spells per day, spellcasting, ect.

yes theurging a theurge spellcasting class could lead to a mess, but there is no RAW definition to be used and the idea that a spellcasting class is one that has an entry for spells/ spellcasting only technically limits those that have spells per day section instead since multiple prestige classes have the other two. all boils down to DM adjudication at the end though.

EDIT: this is a snipped from another post i made a long time ago

from the DMG thaumaturge prestige class. My emphasis.

Spells per Day: When a new thaumaturgist level is gained, the character gains new spells per day as if he had also gained a level in whatever spellcasting class he belonged to before he added the prestige class. He does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained (bonus metamagic or item creation feats, bard or assassin abilities, and so on). This essentially means that he adds the level of thaumaturgist to the level of whatever other spellcasting class the character has, then determines spells per day and caster level accordingly. If a character had more than one spellcasting class before he became a thaumaturgist, he must decide to which class he adds each level of thaumaturgist for the purpose of determining spells per day.

other classes with similar wording (and the same emphasized point) include dweomerkeeper contemplative divine oracle tainted sorcerer seeker of the misty isle sacred fist and nightcloak.

logically the bold text means at the very least these classes are spellcasting classes, at best that means all prestige classes that progress spellcasting are spellcasting classes. this also means they are a valid target for other prestige class spellcasting progression.

the books that these classes are from include the Dungeon masters guide, unearthed arcana, and complete divine (most in CD)