Warning, unpopular opinion ahead: Wizards arent overpowered.

[StevenC21]

Edit: I am not the OP. His post was deleted in some fashion. I am not sure how.

(1) Yes, divine casters have a number of advantages over arcane casters, though the price is a generally weaker spell list.

(2) "Secoundly, since they only have access to so many spells per day( And, for wizards, need to prepare then in advance )".

This is flat wrong at high op levels.

(3) "Wizard" often refers to Wizard + PrC, through which you can trivially unlock literally infinite spells per day, at will, of any level, on any class list.

Wizards are overpowered. And you don't even need to think all that hard. Regardless of how much extra thinking they need, there is no excuse for a team based game to be trivially curbstomped by a single character, especially one who isn't focused on minionmancy (because in that case you have a "party" of sorts).

It's a team game. I can win it with 15 levels and kill anything you through at me. Anything. And you can't even hurt me.

You have some good points, but I suggest refining your argument a bit. Good job exercising your critical thinking, though!

[NigelWalmsley]

The bigger issue is that when people say "Wizards are overpowered" what they actually mean is "Wizards are better than Fighters". Which is true, but a completely different point from the claim nominally being made. If you look at the caliber of opposition people are expected to be fighting, it's a little weird to claim that the casting classes are "overpowered". The Planetar casts as a 17th level Cleric, has a pile of SLAs, and a bunch of resistances. And it's CR 16. But it's a problem to have 16th level Cleric casting and basically no class features as a 16th level character. Sure.

[StevenC21]

Yes, but the issue arises when it becomes evident that a single full caster can, with a little effort and ingenuity, kill things that are far "stronger" than they are, at least according to CR and the typical numbers: HP, BAB, Ability scores, etc.

[Blackhawk748]

Fell Drain Sonic Snap. I can do that at Level 1. Yes, so much strategic thinking there.

Sarcasm aside, yes it takes work to get Super OP, but not an insurmountable amount and you can certainly snap the difficulty curve over your knee. What's the Barbarian gonna do? Charge Pounce again? Meanwhile, the Wizard has created Teleport Circles and is popping around wherever they want doing prety much whatever they want.

[NigelWalmsley]

Yes, but the issue arises when it becomes evident that a single full caster can, with a little effort and ingenuity, kill things that are far "stronger" than they are, at least according to CR and the typical numbers: HP, BAB, Ability scores, etc.

Yes, if you optimize aggressively enough, the CR system no longer accurately reflects your abilities. But that's also true of non-casters. You can build an Ubercharger that does more damage than any printed monster has HP. That doesn't mean Fighters or Barbarians or Frenzied Berserkers are overpowered, it means the system is breakable. It doesn't even really mean that, because "heavily optimized character versus RAW monster" is not a particularly useful comparison.

[StevenC21]

Yes, at least, until that monster uses Hold/Dominate Person... Or Wall of Force... or Forcecage, etc.

The problem is, you can build a martial to be REALLY GOOD at one thing, like an ubercharger.

But your wizard can be REALLY GOOD at almost everything.

[StevenC21]

Be a tenth level Elder Druid, who happens to be undead.

[NigelWalmsley]

Yes, at least, until that monster uses Hold/Dominate Person... Or Wall of Force... or Forcecage, etc.

So to be clear, Wizards are overpowered because they aren't trivially shut down by a wide variety of spells? In that case I'll gladly accept that Wizards are overpowered, because the properties we're ascribing to "being overpowered" are properties it is good for characters to have.

And before you talk about level gaps, let me remind you that I reject "optimized Wizard versus stock opposition" as indicative of anything meaningful. Your cheesed-out 3rd level Wizard is facing cheesed-out CR 3 enemies.


But your wizard can be REALLY GOOD at almost everything.

Sure? But that's because you're talking about a very high level of optimization, where people are very good at things. The relative effectiveness isn't any different than it is at mid optimization. It sounds scary to point out that the Wizard can do game-warping things out of combat and the Fighter can't. But the Wizard can do things out of combat and the Fighter can't. The fact that when you move the level of optimization up to "game-warping" that remains true isn't actually a novel datapoint.


Be a tenth level Elder Druid, who happens to be undead.

I would not describe "be a 17th level character who has ten levels in an obscure PrC from Dragon Magazine that has a specific type" as "trivial". The fact that you apparently would makes me somewhat skeptical that you are approaching this discussion from a position of good faith.

[Droid Tony]

I share the opinion that wizards are not overpowered.

It's all in how the game is played, how the rules are used, and the massive amounts of houserules.

Just take any ''overpowered" wizard and put them in a game with the right play style, used rules, and house rules, and amazingly, they are no longer over powered.

You can see this very clearly by just asking any player if they would want to play a wizard character in a game that is NOT played in their characters favor, does NOT interpret rules in their character's favor and maybe most of all does not have a ton of house rules in their character's favor. Suddenly, they won't want to play a wizard.

If you just take away all the game modifications, protections and changes that make wizards too powerful.....then, suddenly, they are not over powered.

[AvatarVecna]

Making one of these threads in 3.5 too, huh? :smallamused:

At most levels of optimization, a sorcerer is gonna generally be worse than a wizard. That's not to say that sorcerers are bad by any objective measure - they still get 9th lvl spells. But wizards get spell access a class level early, can access a much wider pool of spells even without spending a single copper (and can access a ludicrously wider variety with a bit of effort, which is hard to match with similar sorcerer resources), and gets free item creation/metamagic feats. Throwing in PrCs elevates both about the same. Throwing in any particular spell or metamagic abuse will end up with both about the same. I think wizard generally has more abusable ACFs than sorcerer, but it doesn't make that huge a difference outside a very particularly absurd readings. At higher ops, the difference between them starts mattering less and less because they both get enough resources to get all the caster tricks necessary to basically be locked away unfindable/untouchable/unkillable while spamming clones or whatever at people. At the highest levels of optimization, they can both have infinite everything of whatever the want in such a way that class doesn't matter (in the same sense that commoner of their level could accomplish the exact same thing).

Wizards aren't overpowered because they're better than sorcerers, that wizards are (slightly) better than sorcerers is just different degrees of overpoweredness. Wizards and sorcerers are overpowered because they're capable of casting 9th lvl spells, which requires significantly less abuse of the system for them to consistently contribute across a variety of level-appropriate encounters.

(Also maybe it's more nuanced than you're making it sound, but "cheesed-out wizards aren't overpowered because the DM can cheese out the monsters too" just sounds like Oberoni Fallacy with extra steps?)

EDIT: And now I get to look forward to a discussion about the above post regarding exactly how wizards are only viable because of (apparently) a giant pile of houserules never spoken about that the entire community has embraced as facts of how the game works?

[Gnaeus]

Sigh.

Ok. The real reason that wizard list>clerics is a handful of really powerful spells that are not obscure, and are almost universally powerful. The poster children are Polymorph and Planar Binding. But also shapechange, limited wish, PAO and a number of others.

Polymorph is available by 7. It is the most powerful buff for your muggle at that level BY FAR. There will be virtually no fights where turning your fighter into a flying, fire resistant, huge weapon wielder with 4 arms isn’t amazing. It also lets you turn yourself into a form with amazing armor, energy immunity, and whatever movement form you like. It can be used to hide. Or as a disguise. No cleric spell short of miracle has that flexibility. And it’s core. There are other polymorph tricks for the advanced user that are even more broken.

Planar Binding is even worse. It duplicates dozens if not hundreds of spells, some higher level. The simplest, lowest op tricks let you summon a dozen fighter types which are individually competitive with low op fighter type PCs. The Sorcerer or Wizard can actually summon an arbitrary number of flying, melee competent angels with their own spell casting. And can fairly easily do it for free. Planar ally, the cleric version, has actual costs, and doesn’t let you pick your pets, which makes it way less a abusable. Again, core. Again, there are very few situations that can’t be solved with an arbitrarily high number of fighter/casters.

Just those core 2 spells, used RAW and liberally by a canny player, completely outclass anyone without similar tricks. That’s not high op, that’s core. The only way to stop wizards from being op is to nerf those spells (and half a dozen similar ones) into the ground. At which point, it is no longer a 3.5 wizard, and bears little resemblance to the power of a 3.5 wizard.

The real advantages of cleric/druids come from duplicating wizards with a better chassis. Like taking Polymorph via a domain (slightly weaker at low op due to uses per day). Or using Gate or Shapechange to duplicate wizard spells. It’s usually agreed that once 9th level spells are in play all tier 1 casters can replicate any tricks of the others.

[Gnaeus]

You dont even have to make too many houserules. Wizards can find theirselves struggling quite heavily when they simply get their info wrong and prepare the wrong spells( For a example, when you prepare several of the famous "Save or Death" spells like Death Finger, Hold Monster, Flesh to Stone... And then you suddenly find yourself up against a Golem or another construct that is immune to then. )

No construct is immune to a Polymorphed minion or a dozen bound devils. None of us are pointing to save or lose spells as overpowered.

More, wizards have a LOT of spells. You don’t take several death spells. You take some, and some spells that bypass spell immunity, of which there are many.

[AvatarVecna]

You dont even have to make too many houserules. Wizards can find theirselves struggling quite heavily when they simply get their info wrong and prepare the wrong spells( For a example, when you prepare several of the famous "Save or Death" spells like Death Finger, Hold Monster, Flesh to Stone... And then you suddenly find yourself up against a Golem or another construct that is immune to then. )

Whiel I disagree with the example, the sentiment rings true, and is a problem prepared casters generally have to deal with. Spontaneous classes have to deal with the same problem, mind; if they choose the wrong spells at chargen, they don't exactly have a lot of options later if they run into something their spells can't deal with.

Generally speaking, you know/select general spells if you have reason to believe you don't have complete information (which basically has to be the strategy in the lower levels). Once you get to the level where divinations are easier to get frequently, and particularly when you're not under time constraints, information-gathering divinations can be useful for refining your strategy. At higher levels (and higher op levels), having the time to use lots of divinations without having to worry about the doomsday whatever exploding the whatever (time manipulation or action economy shenanigans, generally), it gets a lot easier to endlessly refine your strategy.

(SoDs are generally not a great choice though - unless you're already planning on significantly rigging the associated die rolls in your favor, it's a not-insignificant chance of wasting a high-level spell slot. And divinations aren't perfect, of course. There's ways around them...but this is bad news for Wizards and Sorcerers, and any other caster employing them for that matter. Magic Immunity protects from some divination effects, as does being mindless, which helps golems double.)

[NigelWalmsley]

Wizards and sorcerers are overpowered because they're capable of casting 9th lvl spells, which requires significantly less abuse of the system for them to consistently contribute across a variety of level-appropriate encounters.

I feel like I'm missing something you're saying here. Because I'm having trouble parsing this in a way that seems reasonable. I don't think you can point at "getting 9th level spells" as the reason something is broken, because at that point the Truenamer and the Healer both get Gate as an endgame ability and are therefore broken. And I'm again having difficulty reading "requires significantly less abuse of the system for them to consistently contribute across a variety of level-appropriate encounters." as anything other than a good thing. Aren't "not abusing the system" and "contributing to a variety of level-appropriate encounters" both things we want people to do?


(Also maybe it's more nuanced than you're making it sound, but "cheesed-out wizards aren't overpowered because the DM can cheese out the monsters too" just sounds like Oberoni Fallacy with extra steps?)

The nuance of the position is that cheesed-out Wizards don't make Wizards overpowered, they make cheese overpowered. Take, for example, Planar Binding. You can use Planar Binding to get infinite money, and then use that infinite money to buy items that are infinitely good, and then the game is broken. But none of that really has much of anything to do with Wizards in any meaningful sense. You can buy castings of Planar Binding for money, and step one of that plan is to get infinite money. So why does it matter that you are personally a Wizard? If we're postulating a game where "cast every spell at will" is a thing you are going to be allowed to do, why not just play The Wish (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Wish_and_the_Word_(3.5e_Optimized_Character_Bu ild))? That guy could be a Commoner and have just as much casting at his disposal.


And now I get to look forward to a discussion about the above post regarding exactly how wizards are only viable because of (apparently) a giant pile of houserules never spoken about that the entire community has embraced as facts of how the game works?

Having read a number of threads about this sort of thing on various forums, my expectation is that that poster is assuming a style of DMing that would give the word "Gygaxian" a real workout.

[Droid Tony]

EDIT: And now I get to look forward to a discussion about the above post regarding exactly how wizards are only viable because of (apparently) a giant pile of houserules never spoken about that the entire community has embraced as facts of how the game works?

Well, not the entire community: just the ones that say Wizards Are Overpowered. Though, sure, it's still a large group of people who all think the same way.

And it's easy enough to get them spoken about.


You dont even have to make too many houserules. Wizards can find theirselves struggling quite heavily when they simply get their info wrong and prepare the wrong spells( For a example, when you prepare several of the famous "Save or Death" spells like Death Finger, Hold Monster, Flesh to Stone... And then you suddenly find yourself up against a Golem or another construct that is immune to then. )

This is an example of game play in favor of spellcasters:

The DM announces that the next Adventure will officially be an undead adventure. And the player is allowed to alter their spellcaster to be the perfect anti-undead character. Result: ''over powered wizard".

Or the other way: As PART of a huge adventure the party, unexpectedly, finds themselves in a crypt full of undead. And the players must use whatever character they are using with no modifications.

An illusionist, enchanter or clod based spellcaster would sure have a hard time in an undead filled crypt, but so would almost all spellcasters made in a general way.

And this is an example of one of the ''unspoken things'' : The DM does promise and swear to never, ever do anything in the game that a player of a spellcasting wizard might not like; or will effect the power level of their character.

Note the above includes any use of dispel/anti magic, intelligent foes that use tactics, use of foes the spellcasting characters are not prepared for, and the famous lost and targeting of equipment and magic items.

[NigelWalmsley]

Honestly, Planar Binding and Polymorph are overpowered. There's not really any getting around it with DMing style or whatever. But they're also two spells (maybe like a dozen if you count all the variants). The fact that two out of several thousand spells are broken hardly makes Wizards broken. Especially when those spells are available to a variety of classes that aren't Wizards.

[Gnaeus]

The nuance of the position is that cheesed-out Wizards don't make Wizards overpowered, they make cheese overpowered. Take, for example, Planar Binding. You can use Planar Binding to get infinite money, and then use that infinite money to buy items that are infinitely good, and then the game is broken. But none of that really has much of anything to do with Wizards in any meaningful sense. You can buy castings of Planar Binding for money, and step one of that plan is to get infinite money. So why does it matter that you are personally a Wizard? If we're postulating a game where "cast every spell at will" is a thing you are going to be allowed to do, why not just play The Wish (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Wish_and_the_Word_(3.5e_Optimized_Character_Bu ild))? That guy could be a Commoner and have just as much casting at his disposal.
.

Ok. True. But you are assuming both an incredible lactose tolerance and system mastery.

I don’t have to imagine a game in which planar binding is allowed but infinite loops aren’t. That’s almost every game I’ve ever played. A newb core wizard can literally stumble through a game for 8 levels and then wake up one morning with a spell he picked out of the PHB and realize that he can curb stomp any dungeon not specifically designed to nerf that one spell.

[NigelWalmsley]

Ok. True. But you are assuming both an incredible lactose tolerance and system mastery.

Well, the guy I was originally talking to was postulating that "cast every spell at will" was a level of optimization we were going to be seriously considering.


I don’t have to imagine a game in which planar binding is allowed but infinite loops aren’t. That’s almost every game I’ve ever played. A newb core wizard can literally stumble through a game for 8 levels and then wake up one morning with a spell he picked out of the PHB and realize that he can curb stomp any dungeon not specifically designed to nerf that one spell.

And so can a Sorcerer. So can a Dread Necromancer. In fact, the Dread Necromancer literally is not allowed to pass on having the ability to summon up an army of outsiders who are individually harder core than the party Fighter. I agree that the character you are describing is overpowered. I just don't see how the overpowered part of the equation is "Wizard" rather than "Planar Binding".

[Blackhawk748]

Well, not the entire community: just the ones that say Wizards Are Overpowered. Though, sure, it's still a large group of people who all think the same way.

And it's easy enough to get them spoken about.



This is an example of game play in favor of spellcasters:

The DM announces that the next Adventure will officially be an undead adventure. And the player is allowed to alter their spellcaster to be the perfect anti-undead character. Result: ''over powered wizard".

Or the other way: As PART of a huge adventure the party, unexpectedly, finds themselves in a crypt full of undead. And the players must use whatever character they are using with no modifications.

An illusionist, enchanter or clod based spellcaster would sure have a hard time in an undead filled crypt, but so would almost all spellcasters made in a general way.

And this is an example of one of the ''unspoken things'' : The DM does promise and swear to never, ever do anything in the game that a player of a spellcasting wizard might not like; or will effect the power level of their character.

Note the above includes any use of dispel/anti magic, intelligent foes that use tactics, use of foes the spellcasting characters are not prepared for, and the famous lost and targeting of equipment and magic items.

Illusionists have no issue with Mindless undead. Just make a wall and call it a day and hte Enchanter has a mind controlled minion to deal with them Also even the specialists can use things outside their specialty and right there is why the Wizard is OP. Because if they have a wide variety of spells in their book (and they should, its like the entire reason to play a Wizard) you can just swap them out on the fly.

The Figher or Barb? Nope. They hit things with a stick. They may do it well, but they hit things with a stick.



And so can a Sorcerer. So can a Dread Necromancer. In fact, the Dread Necromancer literally is not allowed to pass on having the ability to summon up an army of outsiders who are individually harder core than the party Fighter. I agree that the character you are describing is overpowered. I just don't see how the overpowered part of the equation is "Wizard" rather than "Planar Binding".

Because the Wizard is using a few pages in his book to do that while the Dred Necro has to go get Magic Circle Against X somehow (probably an Item, lets be real). Yes they can both do it, and Sorcs and Dred Necros technically have an advantage in being Charisma based, but honestly the Dred Necro probably has a massive undead army instead cuz thats their thing.

Really, most Casters (that aren't heavily themed and Fixed List) are OP in 3.5. It's just that Wizard is the one on top.

[Droid Tony]

Honestly, Planar Binding and Polymorph are overpowered. There's not really any getting around it with DMing style or whatever. But they're also two spells (maybe like a dozen if you count all the variants). The fact that two out of several thousand spells are broken hardly makes Wizards broken. Especially when those spells are available to a variety of classes that aren't Wizards.

Well, there IS a way or three around this: It's just ways never even considered.

Take an easy example: So what can a wizard summon with Planar Binding or turn into with Polymorph? You will note there is no rules for either. So....

The ''Overpowered Wizard Way"- A wizard can summon or ploymorh in to ANYTHING that is in any official rule book. The wizard character automatically knows EVERYTHING(including game mechanics) about EVERY monster and creature in the whole game.

So...that is one way to do it. Or....

The Other Game: The DM puts some sort of reasonable limit on what a wizard character knows, and puts a stop to any player trickery where they make a backstory that they read a 'special book' with the creatures the player likes in it so the wizard character can use them.

See, simple enough.

For more complex.....well, DON"T ignore that line in Planar Binding about the creature coming back to get revenge on the wizard: USE IT and have it happen often.



Illusionists have no issue with Mindless undead. Just make a wall and call it a day and hte Enchanter has a mind controlled minion to deal with them Also even the specialists can use things outside their specialty and right there is why the Wizard is OP. Because if they have a wide variety of spells in their book (and they should, its like the entire reason to play a Wizard) you can just swap them out on the fly.

Well, then the specialists are right back to being a general wizard and are still not pure anti undead obliteraters.

And if in your game wizard can just ''swap" out memorized spells at will, that is an example of a very pro wizard house rule.

[Gnaeus]

I think your DM has been way too generous with usages of Planar Binding. Remember always that Planar Binding gives you-No-Particular control over the creatures you summon: You have to give then a offer that will be worth whatever services you are asking of then, and precisely how good of a offer is good enough of a offer, is, for all relevant effects, up to the DM( Yes, the spell does mentions resisted Charisma checks, but personally, I would rule it as "The offer needs to be at least something the creature could conceivably accept out of its own free will in order to making these rolls be necessary." ). If the DM is feeling mean today, it is entirely possible that the summoned creatures will flat-out pretend to cooperate only to betray you at the first chance they get.

As for Polymorph, yes, that one really is quite powerfull. Its only real downside that I can think of is that it will usually lock the polymorphed ally out of whatever magical itens they had on their person for the duration, but how much of a disadvantage that is depends a lot on the game...

1. Your houserule isn’t a rule. You can do it without payment. It’s in the spell description. Your offer can be as simple as stopping your torture of them (there are other spells for that).
2. You forget that there are hundreds of outsiders. And it’s easy to find ones that have aligned goals. I’m going to give you this pile of meat. I’m going to give you the chance to torture this villager. I’m going to give you the opportunity to save the people being menaced by the Necromancer in this dungeon.
3. That’s not how Polymorph works. Items only meld if the new form is incapable of using the item. And magic gear resizes by default. It is trivial to Polymorph things into forms that can use their gear. Your fighter will ONLY EVER be transformed into armor/weapon using forms. For yourself you really only want forms with hands and speech.

[NigelWalmsley]

you can just swap them out on the fly.

Except you can't. You can swap them out tomorrow. And you can't swap to anything you want, because getting "all the spells" is actually pretty expensive if your game is following WBL. The Wizard can come back tomorrow with better spells, but the notion that they can come back with the best spells is largely a fantasy.


Because the Wizard is using a few pages in his book to do that while the Dred Necro has to go get Magic Circle Against X somehow (probably an Item, lets be real).

An Eternal Wand of Magic Circle Against Evil is about 10k GP. Is the difference between "absurdly OP" and "totally fine" really just 10k GP? And that's the most expensive way to go about things.


Really, most Casters (that aren't heavily themed and Fixed List) are OP in 3.5. It's just that Wizard is the one on top.

Again, look at the monsters. High level monsters often have full casting and also other stuff. "Better than Fighters" doesn't mean "OP", just like "costs more than $4" doesn't mean "expensive". Broken tricks aren't exclusive to the Wizard, and without broken tricks the Wizard is not at an unreasonable power level. It's true that it's way the hell better than a lot of classes, but that's because there are a lot of classes that are very, very bad. The Truenamer is a cruel joke, but that's not because the Wizard exists, it's because it has to optimize extensively to get limited uses of abilities that range from "pretty bad" to "kind of okay".


For more complex.....well, DON"T ignore that line in Planar Binding about the creature coming back to get revenge on the wizard: USE IT and have it happen often.

So I'm going to ignore the rest of this post, because it's exactly what I expected, but this is something that otherwise reasonable people seem to think is a good way of dealing with Planar Binding. It is not.

The problem with Planar Binding, fundamentally, is that it allows the Wizard to hog the spotlight. Instead of the fight being "the party versus monsters" it's "the Wizard and his pets versus monsters". Having encounters where antagonists whose story is entirely about a confrontation with the Wizard show up later doesn't fix that, it makes it worse. Every encounter that is a "consequence" of Planar Binding is another encounter that is about the Wizard.

[Gnaeus]

Well, there IS a way or three around this: It's just ways never even considered.

Take an easy example: So what can a wizard summon with Planar Binding or turn into with Polymorph? You will note there is no rules for either. So....

The ''Overpowered Wizard Way"- A wizard can summon or ploymorh in to ANYTHING that is in any official rule book. The wizard character automatically knows EVERYTHING(including game mechanics) about EVERY monster and creature in the whole game.

So...that is one way to do it. Or....

The Other Game: The DM puts some sort of reasonable limit on what a wizard character knows, and puts a stop to any player trickery where they make a backstory that they read a 'special book' with the creatures the player likes in it so the wizard character can use them.

See, simple enough.

For more complex.....well, DON"T ignore that line in Planar Binding about the creature coming back to get revenge on the wizard: USE IT and have it happen often.

Yeah, no.

To meaningfully nerf these spells that way, you really have to be redesigning the universe to do it. For one thing, the wizard, unlike the sorcerer, is a fantastic knowledge monkey. He will have max ranks in knowledge arcana and planes and local and everything else. You don’t have to do deep book diving for these spells to be amazing, and you can’t reasonably tell the knowledge monkey that he has never heard of common monsters. And if you did, he already has trivial ways to expand his knowledge. From teleporting to the local wizard college during downtime to plane shifting to sigil to asking his imp familiar about devils. Or things he can summon with summon monster. Heck, Polymorph would be one of the most flexible spells in the game even if you limited it to only monsters your party has encountered in most campaigns.

As for the revenge clause, frankly, it’s just dumb. As mentioned before, you will commonly be calling things that are cool with your flavor of destruction anyway. And are weaker than you. And most of them can’t plane shift on their own. And many of them are really dumb. Unless your reading of “the creature might later seek revenge” is actually “the creature will certainly call in creatures vastly more powerful than itself to seek revenge” the possibility that those barbed devils with their int 6 could even find you let alone hurt you seems remote. Assuming that creatures that live their entire eternities as soldiers would even care. Or that you couldn’t make an agreement that includes not murdering you later, which they as lawful outsiders would likely obey.

The tortured logic you have to reach to not make those spells amazing is basically just a harder, more passive aggressive way of just banning or rewriting them.

[AvatarVecna]

I feel like I'm missing something you're saying here. Because I'm having trouble parsing this in a way that seems reasonable. I don't think you can point at "getting 9th level spells" as the reason something is broken, because at that point the Truenamer and the Healer both get Gate as an endgame ability and are therefore broken.

Up until the point they get Gate, it could certainly be argued whether they are barely worth taking or not. At the point where they have Gate available, though, they can (at least theoretically) have access to whatever they want, and they get to play with the big boys. But pretending my general note about 9th lvl spells being inherently overpowered is applicable to 100% of 9th lvl casters across all builds and op levels would be disingenuous, because I'm sure you're fully aware what I'm actually talking about - what's generally referred to as T1/T2 classes, classes that have access to a wide variety of problem-solving tools for the majority of their career, and which are (almost exclusively) classes capable of casting 9th lvl spells or equivalents in other subsystems. That there are 9th lvl "whatever" capable classes outside of those tiers isn't a comment on 9th lvl "whatever" in general, but on them in particular - Healer hyper-focuses healing, and suffers for it; Warmage hyper-focuses blasting, and suffers for it; ToB classes hyper-focuses melee combat, and suffers for it. Truenamers...well, they're trying. :smalltongue:


And I'm again having difficulty reading "requires significantly less abuse of the system for them to consistently contribute across a variety of level-appropriate encounters." as anything other than a good thing. Aren't "not abusing the system" and "contributing to a variety of level-appropriate encounters" both things we want people to do?

You're missing that it's part of a larger argument that wizards aren't necessarily OP compared to sorcerers, but are when compared to fighters (and the like). Getting a wizard or a sorcerer or whatever caster to consistently contribute his share of effort to accomplishing level-appropriate encounters isn't difficult and doesn't require you to torture the RAW or get infinite bull**** or shenanigans of any sort - just using spells with their intended use straight out of the book is sufficient to do your part (maybe even more than your part, who knows). Getting somebody who isn't a T1/T2 golden boy to do the same though can be tricky, depending on the circumstances. And I don't necessarily mean "well if the DM is shutting down your PC thats on the DM", I more mean that adventuring is generally more than just endless combat, there's other stuff that happens in there, and there are just some classes that aren't going to be capable.

This can be a problem even if you're playing at WotC-levels of charop. The default game kinda assumes clerics heal, wizards blast+a bit of utility, fighters melee, and rogues deal with melee+traps. When traps come up, the cleric and fighter (and maybe wizard, depending on utility access/spell slots remaining) sit and twiddle their thumbs while the rogue does their thing. And that kind of situation, where one class or another is able to minimally contribute if at all? That continues happening at "higher than WotC" levels of charop, but more so for some classes than others. A lot more. Almost universally happens for some of them, in fact. As if they're nigh-incapable of contributing to any encounter that doesn't involve immediate combat in a small cramped space. And at those same levels of charop, it can happen significantly less for some classes. That, apparently, if you're willing to look, some classes have some kind of answer for just about any situation that could possibly come up at their level (or even situations at levels higher than they are). And those classes have certain...mechanics in common with each other.

For classes that have problems contributing to a wide variety of circumstances, some won't mind, because they're fantastic at their thing and they're fine not hogging the spotlight. For some, they will feel like they're letting the team down by being useless frequently, and will strive to improve their variety of options. On the flip side, the classes that are capable of constantly contributing have to choose between contributing (possibly in a way that succeeds so well, the person specializing in that field barely has to do anything, and thus feels useless), or not contributing (and thus holding back from helping the group to their best result in an attempt to spare the feelings of the specialist they would overshadow).

And that doesn't happen all the time - I'd wager in most games, it only happens occasionally. But finding out spells are broken by accident is kinda the worst way because then the caster didn't realize they were making the choice to overshadow their friends and now they have to deal with that whole thing. It's a little bit more difficult to play Sherlock Holmes rogue if there's a cleric in the party who can cast Speak With Dead, for example - not impossible, but at least a little bit more difficult than it was if the cleric wasn't there.

So to circle back around, when I say "requires significantly less abuse of the system for them to consistently contribute across a variety of level-appropriate encounters", the "they", I'm talking is sorcerers and wizards (and also about clerics and druids and favored souls and psions and beguilers and...). And "significantly less abuse of the system" isn't in general, but rather...in comparison.

They don't necessarily need to be carried through 100% of noncombat encounters.

They don't need to sit and twiddle their thumbs when a problem that can't be solved with expert stick-swinging shows up.

They can just use their mechanics sufficiently to significantly contribute to a wide variety of problems, and even to just do their part to help when a problem they're not 'specialized' for rears its head.

They don't need another party member's help to do their one job a significant percent of the time.

They can contribute to equal-level encounters of many kinds (including lots of kinds of combat) without significantly abusing the system of rules that govern their universe.

...but there's others who can't. Others who have to work harder to accomplish less, or even to accomplish anything at all. Others who have to abuse the system to get it to work with them, rather than having cooperation with the rules effortlessly woven into their mechanics. Others who frequently have to sit on the sidelines, or frequently get outclassed at their own specialty by some schmuck in a bathrobe.

Wizards and sorcerers don't need abuse to contribute...but others do. And that's what I was getting at with that line. I hope this has helped you parse my meaning. It doesn't mean that wizards are overpowered compared to caster-monsters of similar capabilities, or that it's overpowered compared to other caster classes...but there's dozens of classes and hundreds of monsters that are going to be more than a little challenged trying to fight alongside/against wizards (or sorcerers/clerics/druids/etc) of their level, while there's dozens/hundreds more that will be completely out of their league.


The nuance of the position is that cheesed-out Wizards don't make Wizards overpowered, they make cheese overpowered. Take, for example, Planar Binding. You can use Planar Binding to get infinite money, and then use that infinite money to buy items that are infinitely good, and then the game is broken. But none of that really has much of anything to do with Wizards in any meaningful sense. You can buy castings of Planar Binding for money, and step one of that plan is to get infinite money. So why does it matter that you are personally a Wizard? If we're postulating a game where "cast every spell at will" is a thing you are going to be allowed to do, why not just play The Wish (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Wish_and_the_Word_(3.5e_Optimized_Character_Bu ild))? That guy could be a Commoner and have just as much casting at his disposal.

I guess my issue with the position is that it seems to be built on the assumption that any build or spell use capable of surpassing designer expectations is something No True Roleplayer would do, something that is "overpowered cheese, and therefore disqualified as an argument in favor of wizards". The problem is that when some mechanics have just fairly basic uses that are, on their face, kinda more than you should maybe have available at that level, and are certainly more significant than a number of other classes have at the same level...well, I feel like there's a word for describing the class with those "significantly more powerful" mechanics, as compared to the class that doesn't have them. The word is slipping my mind, though.


Having read a number of threads about this sort of thing on various forums, my expectation is that that poster is assuming a style of DMing that would give the word "Gygaxian" a real workout.

That wouldn't surprise me. People of that opinion are perhaps more familiar with a style of DMing like that, and come into discussions of this sort discussing infinite nonsense, and assume it's because we all just have really lazy DMs waving around an APPROVED rubber stamp on everything, when largely we're actually discussing how the game works in a neutral setting without any assumptions on how the DM will adjudicate interactions. Taking the rules from that perspective, what can be done (regardless of whether it should be attempted or allowed) becomes clearer, and that it favors...certain classes above others becomes almost irreconcilable.

TL;DR My reply wasn't really directed at you (although one bit at the end was). It was more generally directed at the original post (which is gone now, gee I wonder why that is), which read like "wizards aren't overpowered, they're barely better than sorcerers at this really high op level", and my reply was attempting to say "first, wizards are more than a bit better than sorcerers at most op levels, but not so significantly that they're overpowered compared to sorcerers...but second, 'being better than sorcerers' isnt why people call wizards overpowered". But that doesn't matter at this point because they're gone. For now, anyway.

[NigelWalmsley]

*snip*

I get the point you're making. I can even kind of see how you could draw the conclusion that Wizards are overpowered from that. But if we step back, isn't the paradigm you're describing for Wizards, where they get to have useful abilities in all encounters and don't need to optimize and dumpster-dive to make a useful character obviously better than the other paradigm? So while I agree with you about most of the empirics, I disagree with your conclusion, or perhaps with the framing of that conclusion. It's not that Wizards are overpowered. It's the Fighters are underpowered. And it's true that there's a real sense in which those sentences are saying the same thing, but I think the latter points us in a more fruitful direction for future analysis.


I guess my issue with the position is that it seems to be built on the assumption that any build or spell use capable of surpassing designer expectations is something No True Roleplayer would do, something that is "overpowered cheese, and therefore disqualified as an argument in favor of wizards".

When talking about the game, we should be precise. We have a system that has produced a broken output: one character has half a dozen pets, any of which is as individually powerful as the entire rest of the party put together. And we've got two key elements in this system: Wizard and Planar Binding. Which one is instrumental to the outcome? It seems pretty clear to me that the answer is Planar Binding. If the Wizard was instead a Sorcerer or a Dread Necromancer, they could produce almost the same outcome. But if Planar Binding was any other spell the outcome would be completely different. So it seems to me that it's difficult to look at this and conclude "Wizard OP" rather than "Planar Binding OP".

You could try to make the case that the Wizard is broken because of Planar Binding. But you would have to do that by making the case that other uses of Planar Binding aren't broken. Take up the argument that the extra 10k the Dread Necromancer needs to get his army off the group is the difference between "broken" and "not broken". Convince me that getting Planar Binding at 11th level (when the Wizard gets it) is broken, but getting it at 12th level (when the Sorcerer and Dread Necromancer get it) is fine. Show how getting to use your 6th level spell slots for Planar Binding today and Acid Fog tomorrow and Legend Lore the day after that is the problem. But I think those arguments are very hard to make.

In general, I am suspicious of arguments that the Wizard is broken based on individual spells, because pretty much any trick you can do with an individual spell as a Wizard, you can do just as well as a Sorcerer. In many cases you can do them just as well as a Bard or a Dread Necromancer or some other class that no one is willing to defend as OP. For the commonly cited cases, you'd get 90% of the way there just by giving a Commoner the relevant SLA (as a thought experiment: how many daily uses of Planar Binding does an 11th level Commoner need per day to be as good or better than any other printed class?). I think if you want to make the case that the Wizard specifically is broken, you need to show that swapping between non-broken selections of spells day-to-day is broken. And I think that case is very hard to make, because doing things that aren't broken isn't broken.

[StevenC21]

The wizard isn't overpowered because of individual spells. He's OP because he can have *all* of those spells with very little effort, plus any situational spells he could ever want.

The sorc or, god forbid the dread necro, simply can't match that without resorting to high op tricks. For every op spell they take, that's one less other spell. And a lot of those op spells, well, aren't situational per se, but you wouldn't want to be stuck with JUST those spells. The sorcerer is much much closer to that than the wizard.

[sorcererlover]

The title says wizards arent overpowered.
The post rants about how wizards are overpowered

Yeah... I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say I'm not gonna have a real conversation with a ranter who doesn't even spell checks his own thread title so... adios.

[StevenC21]

I'm not the OP. The OP's post got deleted. I was refuting his argument.

[sorcererlover]

I'm not the OP. The OP's post got deleted. I was refuting his argument.

how does a first post get deleted? i cant delete first posts and mods just scrub them.

oh well. my apologies. maybe you should edit your post so people like me don't misunderstand.

[StevenC21]

Considering all of his posts in this thread have vanished, I would wager that his account was banned, or something. But that is a simple conjecture of mine.

[Kelb_Panthera]

OP being a ban-jumper (there was that one guy who made a dozen accounts in as many hours, a couple years ago) doesn't have much weight on the subject at hand. Unless the mods disagree, I don't see why we can't continue on without him.

__________________________________________________ ____


Well, it depend largely on what you mean by "overpowered."

If you mean that wizards are overpowered in the sense that they sit a -lot- higher on the power curve than most other classes then it's at least questionable. There are a few problem spells, looking at you, calling and polyorph subschools, but they're hardly unique to wizards. A gold dragonblood elixir lets a fighter polymorph if he wants and the candle of invocation laughs heartily at the idea that calling is in any way exclusive to anyone. That aside, the strenght of the class lies in its versatility and arguablly the best spell preparation mechanic in the game.

The overall wizard list is about as long as the cleric and druid lists combined and can cover -every- conceivable spell-intensive playstyle, although I advise sticking to the generalist problem solver archetype since dedicating to one or another is probably better handled by a different base caster.

When you combine the fact that a wizard can know virtually every spell of note without dramatic expense (barring direct GM interference) with the fact that he can leave slots open and prepare whatever's necessary on 15 minutes notice (See for yourself (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm#spellPreparationTime)), it's -very- difficult to pin a wizard down on a lack of preparation. Not impossible but difficult.

Now if you discount the problem spells, and I think you should because that is a separate issue IMO, then while the wizard is more potent than many classes, I don't know that I'd say with any certainty that it's so much so as to become a problem; to warrant the term "overpowered." The only class I unreservedly apply that label to in this sense is the StP erudite psion.




If, however, you mean "overpowered" in the sense that it's more than you can handle as a GM then I can -very- easily see that being true. For many, many DMs, a wizard played to the full capacity of what it can do is a mind-breaking problem with seemingly no solution but to nerf it into the ground or ban it outright. The class being core, most are pretty reluctant to choose the latter so you see a -lot- of houseruling bent toward keeping them in check. In this sense of the term, however, all of the big six and most of the T2s are also overpowered. For some GMs, even a couple of the high end T3s can be a problem.




Finally, if you mean "overpowered" in the sense that the system, as is, can't be used to deal with them without houseruling then I'd say certainly not. There are counters to pretty much -everything- a wizard (or other caster) can do, many of them available to non-casters, with the exceptions of the polymorph and calling spell issue. Those exceptions are a problem in themselves rather than a problem with the wizard, if you ask me, and should be handled directly rather than by measuring their weight against the wizard and doing something to it instead.

That said, -knowing- those counters and incorporating them in a way that makes the game better rather than making it center entirely on the wizard is no trivial task. Having studied the game for years, now bordering on decades, I still struggle with accomplishing it with some of the 9th level spells. They -can- be countered but the incorporation of those counters still often eludes me.

[Crichton]

Considering all of his posts in this thread have vanished, I would wager that his account was banned, or something. But that is a simple conjecture of mine.

No, banned accounts still show up in threads, there's just a 'banned' text under the username. For some reason his posts got deleted without mod comment, rather than scrubbed.

Or at least that's how it used to work. But given that this same thing happened to that guy's other wizard thread over in the 5e subforum, maybe that's not the case anymore...

Edit: his username doesn't show up in a search, so maybe his account got deleted, rather than banned?

[Kelb_Panthera]

No, banned accounts still show up in threads, there's just a 'banned' text under the username. For some reason his posts got deleted without mod comment, rather than scrubbed.

Or at least that's how it used to work. But given that this same thing happened to that guy's other wizard thread over in the 5e subforum, maybe that's not the case anymore...

Actually, the mods -choose- to leave up posts with "banned" under the username most of the time; a policy I appreciate. There have, however, been cases where they wiped an account and everything associated with it from the forum with ban jumpers, like the one I mentioned before.

And while I'm not instructing -anyone- on what to do, since I'm not a mod, I think it'd be best if we just drop the subject here. I'd have to double-check but I'm pretty sure that discussing banned users at length is against forum rules.

[Mordante]

Sigh.

Ok. The real reason that wizard list>clerics is a handful of really powerful spells that are not obscure, and are almost universally powerful. The poster children are Polymorph and Planar Binding. But also shapechange, limited wish, PAO and a number of others.

Polymorph is available by 7. It is the most powerful buff for your muggle at that level BY FAR. There will be virtually no fights where turning your fighter into a flying, fire resistant, huge weapon wielder with 4 arms isn’t amazing. It also lets you turn yourself into a form with amazing armor, energy immunity, and whatever movement form you like. It can be used to hide. Or as a disguise. No cleric spell short of miracle has that flexibility. And it’s core. There are other polymorph tricks for the advanced user that are even more broken.

Planar Binding is even worse. It duplicates dozens if not hundreds of spells, some higher level. The simplest, lowest op tricks let you summon a dozen fighter types which are individually competitive with low op fighter type PCs. The Sorcerer or Wizard can actually summon an arbitrary number of flying, melee competent angels with their own spell casting. And can fairly easily do it for free. Planar ally, the cleric version, has actual costs, and doesn’t let you pick your pets, which makes it way less a abusable. Again, core. Again, there are very few situations that can’t be solved with an arbitrarily high number of fighter/casters.

Just those core 2 spells, used RAW and liberally by a canny player, completely outclass anyone without similar tricks. That’s not high op, that’s core. The only way to stop wizards from being op is to nerf those spells (and half a dozen similar ones) into the ground. At which point, it is no longer a 3.5 wizard, and bears little resemblance to the power of a 3.5 wizard.

The real advantages of cleric/druids come from duplicating wizards with a better chassis. Like taking Polymorph via a domain (slightly weaker at low op due to uses per day). Or using Gate or Shapechange to duplicate wizard spells. It’s usually agreed that once 9th level spells are in play all tier 1 casters can replicate any tricks of the others.

Do DMs allow for this? I'm a part time DM. If a fighter would be changed in a 4 armed weapon wielder I still would not allow him to attack with all 4 arms. The fighter is not trained in this, yes he is able to use the 4 arms but not fight with 4 arms. Yes he cal fly, but you'd need a feed or something for aerial combat.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Do DMs allow for this? I'm a part time DM. If a fighter would be changed in a 4 armed weapon wielder I still would not allow him to attack with all 4 arms. The fighter is not trained in this, yes he is able to use the 4 arms but not fight with 4 arms. Yes he cal fly, but you'd need a feed or something for aerial combat.

The arial combat rules are pretty straightfoward. It doesn't take any sort of special preparation to use them.

As for polymorphed warriors, you can choose to do that but it's not such a big deal.

There are inherent penalties in using multiple weapons already and it's unlikely the warrior has multiweapon fighting or more than two weapons to use in the first place. Natural weapons are, likwise, pretty limited in what can be done with them and tend to be less potent than manufactured weapons. Nerfing such teamwork strikes me as a largely unnecessary knee-jerk.

[Batcathat]

The problem is, you can build a martial to be REALLY GOOD at one thing, like an ubercharger.

But your wizard can be REALLY GOOD at almost everything.

I think this is the real issue, to me at least, rather than actual power level or specific spells. I don't think people would mind that much if wizards were really, really good in one area but when a wizard can beat almost any class (there are exceptions, of course) in what should be their area of expertise, it's understandable if people get annoyed.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I think this is the real issue, to me at least, rather than actual power level or specific spells. I don't think people would mind that much if wizards were really, really good in one area but when a wizard can beat almost any class (there are exceptions, of course) in what should be their area of expertise, it's understandable if people get annoyed.

It is certainly the perceived problem. It gets horrifically, grossly overstated though.

With the right spells, a wizard (or other) can get to be competent in the field of one of the non-casters but, unless they bend a dramatic degree of their build resources to it, they can't just suddenly be better at it than an equally optimized, dedicated non-caster. If they do build for it, they can get to be better after a buff routine but they'll be less capable as a general caster and less able to simply cast their way to competence in other realms because of having to dedicate spells to their primary schtick.

It's only schroedinger's wizard that's better than everyone else at the role for which their classes were made.

[VladtheLad]

The issue with polymorph is it interacts with magic items melding rules. 3.5 ended in a weird situation where magic items do not meld unless you remove them and put them on again I think, or maybe this is wildshape? In any case if your dm rules, and I think there is some space for him to reasonable do so even in raw, that magic items do not always provide bonuses in a new shape then polymorph becomes severly weaker.

Planar binding hits on the "reasonable requests' snag.

Wizard in 3.5 had a bunch of very powerful spells both in core but also outside of it that had where direct and hard to argue against. Stuff like evards black tentacles, ray of enffeblement, glitterdust, enervation, solid fog, teleport and more that didn't interect much or at all with dm's interpretation.

On the other side due to damage reduction changes in 3.5 certain melee classes where unable to perform their take out the trash duties at least without out of core rulebook help.

[sorcererlover]

I never understood why people whine about polymorph. If you build around it, you're no better than a nova blaster because you can't have polymorph in every fight unless your DM only gives you one encounter per day. That alone is enough to prefer mundanes or gishes over polymorph wizards. And dispel magic utterly ruins wizards. Bring in one of many, many creatures with at-will dispel magic into a fight and gishes and polymorph wizards are worthless.

If dispel magic is rare thing then your DM just made the world to favor wizards. Not the game. Dispel Magic is the chief reason I don't play gishes and never will. It's too huge of an Achilles heel. Mundanes on the other hand, all of their buffs is from permanent magic items so they're immune to dispel magic.

Clerics have Planar Binding too. And they do it better than wizards because of Surge of Fortune. So if wizards are OP then Clerics are mega OP. For every broken wizard spell, you can damn well bet theres a domain that has it as a domain spell. So while Clerics can't have all wizard spells, they can get the one their build is built for. And you really only need one. If you have Polymorph Any Object, why would you need any other spell in the game?

Wizards are OP solely because they can get better mundanes through one of many minionmancy spells or tricks like dread warrior. Only reason. Nothing else. Not polymorph, not anything.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I never understood why people whine about polymorph. If you build around it, you're no better than a nova blaster because you can't have polymorph in every fight unless your DM only gives you one encounter per day.

Well that's just not true. It's true enough at level 7, sure, but by 10 you're up to at least 4 in a day, even for a conservatively built generalist. At the other extreme, a 14th level focused transmuter who's made himself a ring of wizardy IV is swinging around 11 fourth level slots and can do a -lot- more than just cast polymorph with them. He's also far enough into the game that fourth level slots are excellent candidates for leaving open for on the spot filling other than one "just in case" polymorph, which you can just put in the next one after you use it in each battle.

I don't think that's the best way to allocate your funds as a wizard, personally, but if you're in the "the spells are all that matter" camp then I should think it would be difficult to justify -not- getting the most powerful ring of wizardry you can get your grubby mits on.

Mind, that's specialized in transmutation in general, not polymorph in particular. You don't cross that line until you pick up something like assume supernatural ability or multiattack or start take levels in something like master transmogrifist.


That alone is enough to prefer mundanes or gishes over polymorph wizards. And dispel magic utterly ruins wizards. Bring in one of many, many creatures with at-will dispel magic into a fight and gishes and polymorph wizards are worthless.

If dispel magic is rare thing then your DM just made the world to favor wizards. Not the game. Dispel Magic is the chief reason I don't play gishes and never will. It's too huge of an Achilles heel. Mundanes on the other hand, all of their buffs is from permanent magic items so they're immune to dispel magic.

I prefer non-casters over casters for most of my melee builds but that's certainly not why. For one, you say "many, many creatures that can dispel at will" when I can't think of even one off the top of my head. A bit of google-fu reveals a few at the upper end of the CR scale, all with CLs that would have a tough time matching an equal level caster or even one a few levels lower.

Magic items, on the other hand, tend to have relatively low caster levels, outside of a few of the most basic +number items. They can't be permanently undone by a simple dispel or greater dispel but they very much can be suppressed for a few critical rounds.

Now as for dispelling in general being rare, you have a perfectly valid point. If your PCs never face a creature with it as an SLA or an enemy caster, that's very much letting the PCs slide on an area where you can, on occasion, nail 'em. It's hardly an achilles heel for most builds but it does warrant consideration from both sides of the screen.


Clerics have Planar Binding too. And they do it better than wizards because of Surge of Fortune. So if wizards are OP then Clerics are mega OP. For every broken wizard spell, you can damn well bet theres a domain that has it as a domain spell. So while Clerics can't have all wizard spells, they can get the one their build is built for. And you really only need one. If you have Polymorph Any Object, why would you need any other spell in the game?

Again, a half-truth. Planar binding (a problem in itself, rather than a problematic aspect of any particular class) is, indeed, available through domains (meaning to literally anyone). At the same time, there are -many- good wizard spells that do -not- appear on any domain list.

Also, shapechange is better than PAO. When you can nab the SUs of a whole host of creatures, the debuff and BFC uses of PAO become much less impressive.


Wizards are OP solely because they can get better mundanes through one of many minionmancy spells or tricks like dread warrior. Only reason. Nothing else. Not polymorph, not anything.

And this one's just flatly false. You can get something passable to fill the beatstick role but it won't come close to a dedicated PC beatstick. Even beyond that, skilled spell selection will allow you to buff, debuff, and corral allies and enemies such that otherwise impossible tasks become possible and difficult tasks become trivial for both you and your allies.

I mean, honestly, that's the whole wizard archetype in a nutshell: use a broad array of tools to bend reality to your favor such that problems get solved.

[NigelWalmsley]

The wizard isn't overpowered because of individual spells. He's OP because he can have *all* of those spells with very little effort, plus any situational spells he could ever want.

Again, no he cannot. Getting all the spells is actually fairly expensive. And to be honest with you, this isn't even actually true if you ignore that. If you had a Wizard with the top 10% of spells and a Wizard with the bottom 90% of spells, the former is almost certainly dramatically better. Frankly, a Sorcerer who picks from the top 10% is probably better than a Wizard who picks from the bottom 90%. That indicates to me that it's not the variety of spells that's causing issues.


I think this is the real issue, to me at least, rather than actual power level or specific spells. I don't think people would mind that much if wizards were really, really good in one area but when a wizard can beat almost any class (there are exceptions, of course) in what should be their area of expertise, it's understandable if people get annoyed.

I have to ask the same question I asked Vecna here: isn't "broadly competent at a range of tasks" exactly how characters should behave? And given that, isn't it more useful to describe the relationship "Wizards > Fighters" as "Fighters are underpowered" rather than "Wizards are overpowered"?


The issue with polymorph is it interacts with magic items melding rules.

The issue with Polymorph is that mixing and matching between your character and the MMs is not balanced. It's the same issue with Planar Binding and Dominate Monster.


Planar binding hits on the "reasonable requests' snag.

It could. But binding a low CR thing as a combat bodyguard is actually totally fine. If your 11th level Wizard is using Planar Binding to get a pet Chain Devil, that's honestly pretty okay. It's CR 6, and there's one of it. The problem is that with the spell as-written, there's essentially no way to draw a useful bright line between that and binding ten Barbed Devils, which is not remotely okay. That's the core problem with Planar Binding. It does okay things and broken things, and it's very hard to make a principled distinction.


Wizard in 3.5 had a bunch of very powerful spells both in core but also outside of it that had where direct and hard to argue against. Stuff like evards black tentacles, ray of enffeblement, glitterdust, enervation, solid fog, teleport and more that didn't interect much or at all with dm's interpretation.

Sure? But those things are not overpowered in any real sense. If your plan in combat is to cast Glitterdust on people, I don't think there's any especially worthwhile definition by which that is "overpowered".


If dispel magic is rare thing then your DM just made the world to favor wizards. Not the game. Dispel Magic is the chief reason I don't play gishes and never will. It's too huge of an Achilles heel. Mundanes on the other hand, all of their buffs is from permanent magic items so they're immune to dispel magic.

Actual literal Dispel Magic is fairly easy to beat. You just need to boost your CL up to 20, and it becomes impossible for anyone to use it to remove your buffs. At that point people need to break out the more sophisticated dispels (or tricks to increase the cap). And that's the DM prepping against you specifically, which causes problems for any character.


Wizards are OP solely because they can get better mundanes through one of many minionmancy spells or tricks like dread warrior. Only reason. Nothing else. Not polymorph, not anything.

Then aren't those spells, not Wizards, what's overpowered? Are Dread Warriors somehow okay if Sorcerers make them? Hell, you can build a passable Diplomancer out of NPC class levels. Is Expert OP?


And this one's just flatly false. You can get something passable to fill the beatstick role but it won't come close to a dedicated PC beatstick.

Dominate Person can mind control characters that are exactly PC beatsticks. Planar Binding can bind things that are several points of CR higher than APL. Also, you can just stack a bunch of castings of those spells. The idea that a PC sword guy is actually better than a minionmancy'd one is a fantasy.

[Batcathat]

I have to ask the same question I asked Vecna here: isn't "broadly competent at a range of tasks" exactly how characters should behave? And given that, isn't it more useful to describe the relationship "Wizards > Fighters" as "Fighters are underpowered" rather than "Wizards are overpowered"?

I can somewhat agree. It's nice with a character that is competent in several fields rather than being hyper-focused at doing just one thing. But with enough spells, a wizard can be competent in pretty much all the fields which mundanes really can't. A fighter who can also pick locks could be a nice character, a fighter who can also outperform a rogue at most things stealthy seems less nice (for the rogue, at least).

And yes, it might be that other classes are under powered rather than wizards being overpowered but to balance things that way the fighter can't just get better at fighting, it must get better at a wide range of things.

[heavyfuel]

The bigger issue is that when people say "Wizards are overpowered" what they actually mean is "Wizards are better than Fighters". Which is true, but a completely different point from the claim nominally being made. If you look at the caliber of opposition people are expected to be fighting, it's a little weird to claim that the casting classes are "overpowered". The Planetar casts as a 17th level Cleric, has a pile of SLAs, and a bunch of resistances. And it's CR 16. But it's a problem to have 16th level Cleric casting and basically no class features as a 16th level character. Sure.

That is absolutely not what I mean when I say "Wizards are OP".

What I mean when I say that is that a class that can end an encounter or circumvent a whole arc with a single standard action, and can greatly adapt with a 15 minute warning is too powerful, regardless of how poorly the Fighter is doing.

Your point about the Planetar is more a point on the CR-system being deeply flawed than it is a point about caster power.

[Gnaeus]

Do DMs allow for this? I'm a part time DM. If a fighter would be changed in a 4 armed weapon wielder I still would not allow him to attack with all 4 arms. The fighter is not trained in this, yes he is able to use the 4 arms but not fight with 4 arms. Yes he cal fly, but you'd need a feed or something for aerial combat.

Generally no, it doesn’t mean you can make 4 attacks like a marilith can.

What it means, practically, is that you can take something like a chain tripper. Make him huge, for 30 foot control range. Give him a mid 30s strength. Let him use a shield while swinging his 2 handed weapon. And likely give him some secondary natural attacks as well. He isn’t swinging 4 swords. But he’s playing a totally different game than he was before

[King of Nowhere]

wizards are overpowered IF - and only if - they are played at high optimization by players that are willing to devote a lot of effort into playing them well.
wizards are powerful because they are so versatile. if the player can use their toolkit to dismantle any puzzle, then they are overpowered. if the player has a fixed list of spells that he never bothers to change and he's basically the guy who cast fireball at the enemies, then the wizard is not overpowered. in fact, i've been in some low optimization games where wizards were distinctly underpowered, simply because the players were not the kind of people who would use wizards correctly.

and that's it. of course this forum can talk in circle for ages, but ultimately this forum fails to grasp the problem. this forum is made of very experienced, knowledgeable players that know how to play a wizard to best effect. they will be quick to point out "oh, just cast glitterdust and you solve an encounter", without considering that most casual players will never read the full spell list and will mostly focus on direct damage spells, overlooking utility stuff, and that many casual players won't optimize much the saving throw DC, so glitterdust with a low save dc isn't really all that strong.

[Batcathat]

wizards are powerful because they are so versatile. if the player can use their toolkit to dismantle any puzzle, then they are overpowered. if the player has a fixed list of spells that he never bothers to change and he's basically the guy who cast fireball at the enemies, then the wizard is not overpowered.

I would argue that even a wizard who never bothers changing their spell list is still a lot more versitile than most other classes, simply because spells cover pretty much any type of situation. And at least they have the option of adapting for an upcoming encounter in more meaningful ways than most non-wizards.

[StevenC21]

I never said that the wizard has to get every single spell. But the wizard can simply choose to get the *good* spells. Trivially. And he can still afford to grab some other spells if he wants to, whereas the sorcerer is extremely limited in that regard.

The wizard is so obviously more powerful than the sorcerer it's not even funny.

[Kalkra]

wizards are overpowered IF - and only if - they are played at high optimization by players that are willing to devote a lot of effort into playing them well.
wizards are powerful because they are so versatile. if the player can use their toolkit to dismantle any puzzle, then they are overpowered. if the player has a fixed list of spells that he never bothers to change and he's basically the guy who cast fireball at the enemies, then the wizard is not overpowered. in fact, i've been in some low optimization games where wizards were distinctly underpowered, simply because the players were not the kind of people who would use wizards correctly.

and that's it. of course this forum can talk in circle for ages, but ultimately this forum fails to grasp the problem. this forum is made of very experienced, knowledgeable players that know how to play a wizard to best effect. they will be quick to point out "oh, just cast glitterdust and you solve an encounter", without considering that most casual players will never read the full spell list and will mostly focus on direct damage spells, overlooking utility stuff, and that many casual players won't optimize much the saving throw DC, so glitterdust with a low save dc isn't really all that strong.

Forget Glitterdust, then. A Wizard who only prepares direct-damage spells will probably still have a higher damage output than a fighter who only hits things with a stick, except maybe at very low levels. I mean, the argument that you're making could also be used to claim that Wizards are worse than Warmages. I mean sure, you and muck up any class, but a low floor doesn't make the class bad if you can do better without any additional effort.

[Gnaeus]

No one has been discussing high op tricks. No ice assassins of gods. There was one mention of wierd unlimited casting PRCs early but nothing since then. We aren’t talking assume supernatural abilities. Or becoming a dwarf ancestor at 3 or selling walls of salt. These are core spells, used basically as it looks like they were intended to be used. You don’t need advanced statistics and system mastery to realize that summoning angels is awesome and turning the fighter into a giant is amazing.

[Segev]

The usual answers to polymorph and planar binding involve in-world consequences and/or nerfs. For polymorh, I've seen people impose research taxes (whether these take the form of having to max out your Knowledges to 'know about' the monster you want, or a more-restrictive effort to hunt them down to actually spy them with your own little eye), and for planar binding the fact that these creatures have memories and associates gets brought up.

I'm not sure how effective these pseudo-nerfs/drawbacks are at limiting the effectiveness and power of these abilities, though. With planar binding, in particular, it's one of those things that makes you ask if you're just playing "Mother, may I?" with the DM, which is a little frustrating as a game balancing mechanic. Though ideally the player and DM can at least be on a similar page as to who and what is likely to take offense and how effective that offense might be.

[King of Nowhere]

I would argue that even a wizard who never bothers changing their spell list is still a lot more versitile than most other classes, simply because spells cover pretty much any type of situation. And at least they have the option of adapting for an upcoming encounter in more meaningful ways than most non-wizards.

depends on the spells the player picks. clearly you've never seen the 18th level wizard without a single fly spell and without a single buff. as i said, most casual players never read their full spell list. of course they pick ineffective spells. and then they never bother to change them.


No one has been discussing high op tricks.
You don’t need advanced statistics and system mastery to realize that summoning angels is awesome and turning the fighter into a giant is amazing.

yes, you do. which is the point i was trying to make: we are so used to this, we don't realize how strong is what we already take as the low ceiling.
without internet or experienced players, it took me years to realize that kind of stuff is actually strong.
summoning angels via planar ally? the first times i did play, i completely skipped the spells. it "called an external with a certain amount of hit dice", it would have required me to go look at all those stats for a proper creature to summon. too much hassle. and it had an xp cost. no thanks.
turning the warrior into a giant? i didn't even realize you could stack magic buffs on it. i looked at the core stats of a giant, saw that they were lower than the warrior stats, and didn't think any more of it. Do you have any actual idea how difficult it is to figure out the stats of something polymorphed? between the stuff you keep and the stuff you get from your new form, it's very confusing. as a newbie i ignored that, but had i actually known, i still would have steered clear of the spell to avoid the hassle.

now, i'm not arguing wizards are bad, or are not overpowered. i'm just saying that they are only overpowered unless they are played competently. which is something easy for evreryone in this forum, but not for most people

[Batcathat]

depends on the spells the player picks. clearly you've never seen the 18th level wizard without a single fly spell and without a single buff. as i said, most casual players never read their full spell list. of course they pick ineffective spells. and then they never bother to change them.

Of course it happens but with most players there's a big difference between "not optimizing" and "barely caring at all". Using a player like this to judge the power level of a wizard is just as bad as using an extreme optimizer, the vast majority of players are somewhere between the extremes.

Also, I'm guessing the above mentioned flightless, buffless wizard is still more versetile than a lot of other classes, especially if those are played by a player of equal skills and interests.

[Calthropstu]

I have always maintained that sorcerers are easier to play, easier to break and, at the highest levels of play, out OP the wizard tremendously due to being able to, multiple times per day, reselect all of their spells via psychic reformation.
Wizards are not OP.

MAGIC is OP.

[Efrate]

Agree that magic is op, not wizards. The must be familiar with clause houserule I have always hated. I have +30 knowledge X, I know about creature Y, and arguing that my magic somehow makes me less effective and unable to do anything relevant is just fiat. I turn into something and I do not even know how to move or use the bodies features? Its magic, if it was just cosmetic it would be illusion not transmutation.

Polymorphing my fighter into a war troll does not make him less effective, and I feel it's bad faith to force that. He still hitting things with a weapon, he is just bigger and stronger, and the spell explicitly gives the EX so dazing blow is a go.

Also on binding, barring the torture etc. just binding things that share your goals, or explicitly do not get help from buddies to gain vengeance (devils), is a way to sidestep that clause. Or you know, just kill them. Cannot seek vengeance if they are dead. Oh darn you killed one of infinite fiends. Boo hoo. Or you know bind a demon and say go slaughter everything in said dungeon. They agree, go for free. They just had a great time. Cabal of undead necromancers hurting and killing a ton of townsfolk? Sure some Angel's would gladly agree to save those people. And so on.

[Droid Tony]

It is certainly the perceived problem. It gets horrifically, grossly overstated though.


This is very true. And mostly this problem is caused by two big game play choices: a low magic game or a just like Earth type game. Both types of games almost always make wizards overpowered. In a typical Low Magic play style the game world has very little magic, but the player characters magic is unaffected. Put a spellcaster in a world where they have just about the only magic around and they will be over powered. In a just like Earth world play style the game is made to be 'close' to historical Earth. This type of game style also creates over powered spellcasters.


I can somewhat agree. It's nice with a character that is competent in several fields rather than being hyper-focused at doing just one thing. But with enough spells, a wizard can be competent in pretty much all the fields which mundanes really can't.

The thing is wizards are only " competent in pretty much all the fields " if the game play style creates the frame work for that to happen along with rule usage and houserules.


I would argue that even a wizard who never bothers changing their spell list is still a lot more versitile than most other classes, simply because spells cover pretty much any type of situation. And at least they have the option of adapting for an upcoming encounter in more meaningful ways than most non-wizards.

This takes skill, intelligence, talent, game mastery, system mastery and a lot of common sense. Not many players can do it. Some can, but nowhere near all or even half.

And still, it requires a game play style creates the frame work for that to happen along with rule usage and houserules.

[nedz]

Edit: I am not the OP. His post was deleted in some fashion. I am not sure how.

Classic Troll behaviour perhaps ?

[Segev]

I will say this: I am clearly a fairly subpar player, because when I play casters in actual games, I spend a lot more time wishing I had different spells or more of them than I do being hyper-effective and outshining any of the other players' characters.

[Batcathat]

The thing is wizards are only " competent in pretty much all the fields " if the game play style creates the frame work for that to happen along with rule usage and houserules.

How we define "competent" might vary but at the very least most wizards can potentially contribute in a much wider range of situations than most non-wizards simply because there are spells for pretty much any type of situation, be it social, stealth, transport, any number of different types of combat and probably a few others I'm not thinking of. The average wizard might not have the spells for every situation but it's likely they have the spells for quite a few of them.


This takes skill, intelligence, talent, game mastery, system mastery and a lot of common sense. Not many players can do it. Some can, but nowhere near all or even half.

Again, I'm not talking about the sort of system mastery super-optimization that turns wizards into demigods who can solve any situation with little trouble. I stand by the conclusion that an average wizard played by an average player is usually a lot more versatile than a mundane played by the same player.

[Rynjin]

I will say this: I am clearly a fairly subpar player, because when I play casters in actual games, I spend a lot more time wishing I had different spells or more of them than I do being hyper-effective and outshining any of the other players' characters.

If you want a lowkey overpowered character without having to play the "What weaknesses do I target" metagame, just play a God Wizard.

That kind of thing is why Wizards are OP, not silly little tricks no GM would ever allow in an actual game.

The ability to be the most valuable person in any given party. The God Wizard doesn't look like much on the surface; you buff other people to do stuff for you and prepare a few utility spells to back it up.

But it's endemic of the overall issue with Wizards: they can do anything. For the average player, not EVERYTHING, but anything. Most classes have a niche, some kind of guiding or limiting factor that informs their party role.

Wizards can take any one of those roles, and beat a specialist at it. That in itself isn't such a bad thing necessarily, but the other side of it is: they can turn around and do it to a completely different role tomorrow.

Even a fairly low OP Wizard can outshine a similarly low OP party at their chosen role, and especially other buffers. That's pretty overpowered on its own, even if it's the kind of overpowered that people overlook because it's technically not "stealing the spotlight" from anybody.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Dominate Person can mind control characters that are exactly PC beatsticks.

Just... no.

They can use dominate to grab an NPC beatstick with levels in a PC class... maybe. Attempting to do so is not without risk, nat 20s happen, and attempting to hold one for an extended period is more dangerous that most other forms of minion use since they're subject to being turned around on you by a whole host of effects that can remove, suppress, or override your control. Seriously, walk into the wrong church and he's free to stab you in the back on the spot because (un)hallow suppresses dominate via its magic circle effect.

An actual PC beatstick spends a bit of cash or a feat and protects himself from such things. Or arranges a decent will save. Or arranges a circumstantial bonus on his will save. Or some combination of such things.


Planar Binding can bind things that are several points of CR higher than APL. Also, you can just stack a bunch of castings of those spells.

The only creatures that are available with a CR that's substantially above the level at which PB becomes available are the ones from MM2 (which tend to be improperly CRed) or are a result of cheesing early access to PB.

Even then, they're also subject to particular effects that render them moot, although fewer than enchanted minions and with much lower likelihood of turning them back on you.

For another thing, most PC beatsticks have a CR equal to their level +1 according to the DMG guidelines; having a prestige class bumps it up.

Finally, well built PC warriors tend to have more options for dealing with foes than any called creature that's not a straight-up caster. Between magic items, maneuvers, and simply diversifying tactics (hyper-specialization is bad); you're gonna have a tough time pinning a PC beater down (either figuratively or literally) in a fight.


The idea that a PC sword guy is actually better than a minionmancy'd one is a fantasy.

He's not better than a small army of them but he's definitely better than virtually any of them taken individually.


I can somewhat agree. It's nice with a character that is competent in several fields rather than being hyper-focused at doing just one thing. But with enough spells, a wizard can be competent in pretty much all the fields which mundanes really can't. A fighter who can also pick locks could be a nice character, a fighter who can also outperform a rogue at most things stealthy seems less nice (for the rogue, at least).

Competent, yes. To excel requires more than just a spell or three to ape what a specialist can do. As long as all your GM is asking for is competence, you're fine. If a task arises that requires excellence though, a generalist wizard just isn't gonna cut it.




I never said that the wizard has to get every single spell. But the wizard can simply choose to get the *good* spells. Trivially. And he can still afford to grab some other spells if he wants to, whereas the sorcerer is extremely limited in that regard.

The wizard is so obviously more powerful than the sorcerer it's not even funny.

Oh c'mon. A sorcerer has about 3/4 as many spells known and casts them just as hard and more flexibly before you start spending gold and other build resources to expand that. As you point out, there aren't -that- many excellent spells at any given level either. The difference in power isn't that big at all and any substantial degree of optimization all but erases it.

This is another one of those exaggerations that's been repeated so much that people take it a granted truth without really examining it.

[Segev]

If you want a lowkey overpowered character without having to play the "What weaknesses do I target" metagame, just play a God Wizard.

That kind of thing is why Wizards are OP, not silly little tricks no GM would ever allow in an actual game.

The ability to be the most valuable person in any given party. The God Wizard doesn't look like much on the surface; you buff other people to do stuff for you and prepare a few utility spells to back it up.

But it's endemic of the overall issue with Wizards: they can do anything. For the average player, not EVERYTHING, but anything. Most classes have a niche, some kind of guiding or limiting factor that informs their party role.

Wizards can take any one of those roles, and beat a specialist at it. That in itself isn't such a bad thing necessarily, but the other side of it is: they can turn around and do it to a completely different role tomorrow.

Even a fairly low OP Wizard can outshine a similarly low OP party at their chosen role, and especially other buffers. That's pretty overpowered on its own, even if it's the kind of overpowered that people overlook because it's technically not "stealing the spotlight" from anybody.
Done it, same problem. Oh, I was valuable to the party at times, but they weren't helpless without me and I certainly wasn't carrying the team. The god wizard is a fun build. But again, not overpowered. (Certainly not as defined by making the rest of the party redundant; the whole point of the god wizard is to be a magnificent team player.)

[Droid Tony]

How we define "competent" might vary but at the very least most wizards can potentially contribute in a much wider range of situations than most non-wizards simply because there are spells for pretty much any type of situation, be it social, stealth, transport, any number of different types of combat and probably a few others I'm not thinking of. The average wizard might not have the spells for every situation but it's likely they have the spells for quite a few of them.


Having all the magic is useless unless you know how to use it: and not every player does. It takes a good player to play a good spellcaster character.

And, as I said, you have to have a game play style, rulings and house rules that make a wizard versatile or over powered.




Again, I'm not talking about the sort of system mastery super-optimization that turns wizards into demigods who can solve any situation with little trouble. I stand by the conclusion that an average wizard played by an average player is usually a lot more versatile than a mundane played by the same player.

And again, this is only if you have the game play style, rulings and house rules that make a wizard versatile or over powered. It also high lights a big Role playing problem of the Character Sheet. Many players don't quite grasp the idea that in a RPG their character can try anything. Too many players fall into the idea that their character can only do what is written on their character sheet. So, spellcasters have the huge bonus here as they have a ton of spells, and the mundane characters have maybe a weapon and some armor. Though this is a game style choice.

Even more so is the unfairness: A DM that wants wizards to be versatile or over powered will have magic always work towards that game play goal. And, on the other hand, they will always have any mundane way fail.

[Batcathat]

And again, this is only if you have the game play style, rulings and house rules that make a wizard versatile or over powered.

You keep saying that but I don't feel like you've explained what you mean by it, at least the part about house rules.


It also high lights a big Role playing problem of the Character Sheet. Many players don't quite grasp the idea that in a RPG their character can try anything. Too many players fall into the idea that their character can only do what is written on their character sheet. So, spellcasters have the huge bonus here as they have a ton of spells, and the mundane characters have maybe a weapon and some armor. Though this is a game style choice.

Sure, a creative and inventive player can certainly do a lot more than what their character is "supposed" to do based on their class and abilities. But that applies equally to wizard players who also have more tools to work with in a lot of situations.

[Droid Tony]

You keep saying that but I don't feel like you've explained what you mean by it, at least the part about house rules.

Well, a good example of such a House Rule: The player of a wizard character can pick any spell from any source and their character knows that spell. Or giving a spellcaster a free feat or two.

A good example might be to think of something the versatile wizard can do, and then look at the house rule that needs to exist to make that happen.




Sure, a creative and inventive player can certainly do a lot more than what their character is "supposed" to do based on their class and abilities. But that applies equally to wizard players who also have more tools to work with in a lot of situations.

It's not about the tools, it's about the player. The only reason why spellcasters are better is the game is made that way.

[Batcathat]

It's not about the tools, it's about the player.

Maybe so, but if the players are equal, the one with the most tools probably does better. A great driver in a ****ty car can beat an average driver in a great car but if both drivers are good, the car is going to make a difference.


IThe only reason why spellcasters are better is the game is made that way.

Well... yeah. The only reason dragons are better than kobolds is that the game is made that way. The way the game depicts wizards is what we're discussing, isnt't it?

[Bohandas]

Wizards are much more powerful provided that their player has read the adventure ahead of time and knows what spells to prepare

[Doctor Awkward]

The bigger issue is that when people say "Wizards are overpowered" what they actually mean is "Wizards are better than Fighters".

Haven't been able to read through all of this but I wanted to touch on this idea quickly:

When people say "wizards are overpowered," we don't mean that they are better than fighters we mean they are better at being fighters than fighters. If you have a class that can do something better than another class that is supposed to specialize in that thing then you have a serious mechanical defect in the system somewhere. Either the specialist is grossly underpowered or the other guy is overpowered. There's no question where the source of the problem is in D&D 3.5.

[JNAProductions]

Haven't been able to read through all of this but I wanted to touch on this idea quickly:

When people say "wizards are overpowered," we don't mean that they are better than fighters we mean they are better at being fighters than fighters. If you have a class that can do something better than another class that is supposed to specialize in that thing then you have a serious mechanical defect in the system somewhere. Either the specialist is grossly underpowered or the other guy is overpowered. There's no question where the source of the problem is in D&D 3.5.

Both? You mean both, right? :P

[StevenC21]

There are more good spells per level than a sorcerer can afford to take and still maintain a good level of flexibility, sans high op tricks.

The wizard can get most of them on level up and bankroll the rest. And it's not even that expensive.

Furthermore, at any level 7 or above, Teleport is a spell you should memorize. In that oh-so-unlikely situation that the Wizard has no useful spells, just Teleport out and try again later. And if you try to add even more restrictions, then you're just creating a contrived scenario that explicitly is designed to target the theoretical weakness a Wizard has.

[Droid Tony]

Well... yeah. The only reason dragons are better than kobolds is that the game is made that way. The way the game depicts wizards is what we're discussing, isnt't it?

There is nothing in the game that makes wizards over powered or have more versatility. It's how people choose to play the game that creates the power or versatility.

For Example(1st level characters): The wizard and fighter fought a bunch of orc guards and killed them all. However, the orc leader did drop and lock the iron bars across the hallway...and died on the other side with the key tied to his belt. So the players need to figure out a way to open the locked bars...by getting that key.

In the over powered/versatile wizard game- The Wizard casts Mage Hand and grasps the key. The DM rules that the orc guard fell perfectly so the wizard could see the key and point to it and house ruled that the spell mage hand can effect two targets (the knot and the key) and can untie knots.

Now, you might notice the two house rules make mage hand both more powerful and more versatile.

And of course, if the player of the fighter even dared to ask to try something....like say use his rope to lasso the body and drag it over to the bars....the DM would just say No and dismiss it as impossible(or do the ''oh sorry the body is just out of rope toss range(but still in mage hand range, of course)).

And that is just an example using a 0 level spell.

[StevenC21]

Those things aren't examples of the versatility of wizards at all. It's more like... The orcs charge en masse and the wizard casts Grease which disabled half of them so they get pelted to death from range. So yeah, the Wizard just trivialized that encounter.

[NigelWalmsley]

I can somewhat agree. It's nice with a character that is competent in several fields rather than being hyper-focused at doing just one thing. But with enough spells, a wizard can be competent in pretty much all the fields which mundanes really can't.

I don't disagree. But which of those is a better paradigm for the game? One where every character, no matter how many resources they invest, will sometimes be told to sit down and shut up because they don't have relevant abilities, or one where all characters get to contribute to all encounters?


to balance things that way the fighter can't just get better at fighting, it must get better at a wide range of things.

I absolutely agree. And I think if you got people to accept a consensus framing of "Fighters are underpowered" rather than "Wizards are overpowered", they would make a game effort to solve that problem. Because they certainly make an effort to solve the other problem. They propose things like "what if we made everyone use Bard casting" or "what if we gave people way less spells per day". And it turns out that the result of that is mostly "it would make the game much worse, and it would push people towards broken spells, because those are almost inevitably the least effected by whatever nerf is being proposed".


What I mean when I say that is that a class that can end an encounter

So Fighter? We've been over this. Uberchargers exist, and high level, high optimization 3e is Rocket Launcher Tag. Frankly, I think this is another case where, once you dig down into the actual details, the Wizard is actually operating on a better paradigm than the Fighter is. The Fighter is pretty much a one trick pony, and his trick is usually "turn anything that isn't immune into fine red mist". Whereas while the Wizard has rockets, he has a variety of them, and his tactical choices therefore matter. You can imagine a situation in which Finger of Death is useless, but Acid Fog is not.


or circumvent a whole arc with a single standard action

Again, so can Fighters. Imagine you had a plot set up where players need to gather resources, allies, and circumstantial advantages to defeat an Ogre. And then you threw it at a party of 9th level characters. And the party Fighter observed that he could simply stab the Ogre to death his own damn self. Boom! Arc circumvented! Now, I hear you saying "well that adventure wasn't level appropriate for the party, of course they could bypass it". And no, it wasn't. Just like an adventure that can be bypassed with Teleport isn't appropriate for a party with a 9th level Wizard in it.

And, no, it is not impossible to write adventures that account for the abilities of casters. It's actually pretty easy. Take one of the problems Vecna brought up: a Sherlock Holmes-esque character in a world with Speak With Dead. Surely he'd have problems contributing, right? Well, not really. Consider a recent story with a Sherlock Holmes-esque character: Knives Out. It's a murder mystery, and while Speak With Dead would definitely help, it doesn't short-circuit the plot. The dead guy doesn't actually know the big twist. And it's not like Johnson was particularly trying to write a plot that foils Speak With Dead. It turns out that it's just not the silver bullet people think it is if you write compelling plots.


Your point about the Planetar is more a point on the CR-system being deeply flawed than it is a point about caster power.

It seems to me that the parsimonious resolution of the facts that "Wizards are better than other classes" and "the CR system includes challenges that are clearly closer to the power level of Wizards than non-casters" is to conclude that non-casters are underpowered. Your position here seems like post hoc reasoning from the conclusion that Wizards must be at an unacceptably high power level.


Wizards can take any one of those roles, and beat a specialist at it.

Except they can't. Because the specialist you should be comparing a Wizard to is a specialized caster. Because that's the power level a Wizard is at. And Wizards can't beat comparably powerful specialists. If you have a stealth mission, a Wizard cannot simply sit down one day, prepare the right spells, and beat a Beguiler. You can build a Wizard that can beat a Beguiler, but that Wizard is also specialized.

Frankly, even the degree to which a Wizard can beat a Rogue is greatly overstated. At low levels, spells aren't clearly better than skills. Knock is cleaner and faster than Open Lock, but it's also something you get a single-digit number of uses of per day. A secure facility can keep out a party relying on "prepare Knock" as their answer to locked doors by having a hallway with locked doors on both ends. I've literally lived in dorm rooms that a Wizard who prepared Knock would not be able to get into, but a Rogue would. And it's true that Teleport beats Open Lock, but that's because the Wizard is getting a new ability at 9th level and the Rogue is still relying on their ability from first level. Of those two paradigms, it seems pretty obvious to me that the Wizard's is the one that's better for the game. So, yes, there's an imbalance. But the way to address it is by giving the Rogue useful abilities, not by trying to nerf the Wizard.


There's no question where the source of the problem is in D&D 3.5.

Yeah, it's the Fighter. And the fact that it basically doesn't get class features or abilities that let it advance the plot. There are a lot of arguments being advanced that there are spells that are very good, or that there are classes that are worse than the Wizard. But no one seems to be willing to do the work to explicate how that makes the Wizard the problem. I agree that Polymorph and Planar Binding are too good. Why should we address that problem by poking the Wizard when those spells are also too good if they are used by the Sorcerer (and, frankly, would be too good if given to the Commoner as SLAs)?

[Droid Tony]

Those things aren't examples of the versatility of wizards at all. It's more like... The orcs charge en masse and the wizard casts Grease which disabled half of them so they get pelted to death from range. So yeah, the Wizard just trivialized that encounter.

So the wizard made some grease in a single ten foot square, and half of a large group of orcs all moved through that single square and they all failed a DC 10 balance check/reflex save?

Is this encounter like with 20 orcs all in a single line and each moves through the greased area....and the DM rolls one d20 for all 20 orcs, gets a ''2'' and says yup half the orcs are disabled.

Just think of the encounter if it was not set up to make the wizard powerful and versatile. The 20 orcs would surround the group and come in from all sides. So the wizard might be able to effect two orcs with the grease....and maybe disable one.....and the other 18-19 orcs attack!

[Blackhawk748]

Oh c'mon. A sorcerer has about 3/4 as many spells known and casts them just as hard and more flexibly before you start spending gold and other build resources to expand that. As you point out, there aren't -that- many excellent spells at any given level either. The difference in power isn't that big at all and any substantial degree of optimization all but erases it.

This is another one of those exaggerations that's been repeated so much that people take it a granted truth without really examining it.

And one level of Sandshaper winds up with the Sorc knowing more spells than base Wizard. You're even slower now, but that is a ton of spells.

And someone did point out Wizards biggest problem: they don't have a specific Niche. Sorcs do simply by spell choice. Once you pick it, you're generally stuck with it. Wizards can change up their list a fair amount every day, even before they put money into things. Also, if you ever fight enemy Wizards, you can steal their book. Yes writing stuff in gets pricey (I did the math once, it's waaaay too much to put in even a quarter of all the spells) but it's worth a couple hundred GP to have Vortex of Teeth and Laams Finger Darts for those weird moments were you want them.

So ya, God Wizard is what happens when someone is playing a Wizard well with little effort being put in. It doens't take much time and its not over complicated, and noone really notices that you're doing it


So the wizard made some grease in a single ten foot square, and half of a large group of orcs all moved through that single square and they all failed a DC 10 balance check/reflex save?

Is this encounter like with 20 orcs all in a single line and each moves through the greased area....and the DM rolls one d20 for all 20 orcs, gets a ''2'' and says yup half the orcs are disabled.

Just think of the encounter if it was not set up to make the wizard powerful and versatile. The 20 orcs would surround the group and come in from all sides. So the wizard might be able to effect two orcs with the grease....and maybe disable one.....and the other 18-19 orcs attack!

He said Charge, not "Move at Half Speed" so they need to make a standard Reflex save, so a 14 or 15, and most Orcs at Level 1 will fail that. Also yes, I can see many situations were they all need to go through that point. Like a hallway. In a Dungeon.

[Efrate]

And if you send 20 orcs at level 1 pcs you tpk. At level 1, 2 orcs is a level appropriate encounter. So disabling 2 orcs does win the encounter. And if all you encounters take place in a massive field that's flat yes it does change things. But with a +0 reflex a moderate wizard with just 16 casting stat is forcing a save that they have a 30% chance to make. Then they have a 50% chance of maxing the balance check. You disable one likely, gang up on it getting the +4 to hit and forcing it to take a penalty on its attacks. You took care of half an encounter which should be 2 people, which means you are still punching above your weight.

Also wand of knock is cheap, cheaper to make, and will last long enough. Make a few, because you can. Also thieves tools only get 10 uses each, which people also seem to forget.

[King of Nowhere]

Of course it happens but with most players there's a big difference between "not optimizing" and "barely caring at all". Using a player like this to judge the power level of a wizard is just as bad as using an extreme optimizer, the vast majority of players are somewhere between the extremes.


i don't know. in my experience casual wizards tend to be very limited and to stay limited unless instructed by someone more experienced, while beatsticks tend to improve by themselves a bit more. not to ubercharger level, but at least to a decent two-handed build with good numbers.
perhaps the extremely long spell list just causes most casual players to go "nah, that's way too much effort" so they never improve past the beginning.
perhaps it's that doing anything but direct damage in the most generic available form causes so many modifiers and status conditions to keep track of.
perhaps it's that beatsticks are inherently easier to use even for a noob; the experienced guy tell them what feats and items to take, then all they have to do is charge and/or full attack. you tell a noob what spells to take for their wizard, they still won't be able to apply them effectively.
perhaps it's just a quirk of the players i played with; there were only a handful, not enough for a good statistics.

but regardless of the actual reason, building and using a competent beatstick is far easier than doing so with a caster. except perhaps a codzilla, that can still hit decently in melee even if he does not know he's supposed to buff himself.

[JNAProductions]

So the wizard made some grease in a single ten foot square, and half of a large group of orcs all moved through that single square and they all failed a DC 10 balance check/reflex save?

Is this encounter like with 20 orcs all in a single line and each moves through the greased area....and the DM rolls one d20 for all 20 orcs, gets a ''2'' and says yup half the orcs are disabled.

Just think of the encounter if it was not set up to make the wizard powerful and versatile. The 20 orcs would surround the group and come in from all sides. So the wizard might be able to effect two orcs with the grease....and maybe disable one.....and the other 18-19 orcs attack!

That’s an EL 7 encounter, assuming they’re all big standard orcs. So I’d hardly EXPECT Grease to handle it entirely, being a level 1 spell. Fireball though...

[NigelWalmsley]

My experience of casual caster players is that they basically pick at random between the directly offensive spells of whatever level they're looking at, and how effective they are varies wildly based on which spell they happened to think was cool. Sometimes they take Stinking Cloud and are great, other times they take Magic Missile and are ineffectual.


And if you send 20 orcs at level 1 pcs you tpk. At level 1, 2 orcs is a level appropriate encounter. So disabling 2 orcs does win the encounter.

Though to be fair, expending a 1st level spell slot is about what the game thinks it should take to win a 1st level encounter. So the fact that Grease does that is not really a mark against anything.


Also wand of knock is cheap, cheaper to make, and will last long enough. Make a few, because you can. Also thieves tools only get 10 uses each, which people also seem to forget.

The Rogue can also use a Wand of Knock.

[King of Nowhere]

Yeah, it's the Fighter. And the fact that it basically doesn't get class features or abilities that let it advance the plot.

that's a leftover from the old days when there was no plot besides "explore this dungeon, defeat some monsters, get loot". the fighter is equipped perfectly well to advance that kind of "plot".
when we started to introduce downtime and cities and social interactions and the big bad wasn't just sitting in a convenient dungeon to storm but required some work to get to, then the fighter fell out of favor

[StevenC21]

Nigel, you seem to be operating at an entirely different baseline for what constitutes "normal" levels of power. You are starting with the Wizard as the "normal and acceptable" level of power and then, rightfully, noting that many classes fall far below. This is a valid interpretation.

However, this is not, and likely will never be, the stance that most people here will subscribe to. The issue is that the game designers themselves made (and have explicitly stated that) their basic assumption when designing the game is one blasty wizard, a healbot cleric/druid that uses a ****ing scimitar as his primary weapon, a basic rogue, and possibly a beatstick.

The game claims to be developed around that standard, so we use that standard when deciding what is good or not. We can see that with that baseline, using control tactics as a Wizard is both far superior to blasting tactics, and completely trivializes the encounter. The game isn't actually assuming that a 1st level spell can end an encounter. You are, because you are able to see just how good Wizards are: WoTC didn't. The thing is, even with WoTC standards, the fighter just doesn't do his job even then. And the Wizard does way more than he was ever intended to.

That is why people say the fighter is underpowered and the wizard overpowered. Because their power scale starts far lower than yours. Because theirs (and mine) is built off what WoTC told us, even though we now know that is not necessarily a perfect reflection of the game.

[NigelWalmsley]

You are starting with the Wizard as the "normal and acceptable" level of power and then, rightfully, noting that many classes fall far below.

No, I'm not. It doesn't matter what you consider "normal and acceptable". Whichever way you come to it, the Wizard is better than the Fighter. We don't disagree about that. What we disagree about is the appropriate way of framing that inequality, and the conclusions we should draw from that framing.

If you're going to say that the problem is "the Wizard is overpowered", you should explain why making the Wizard more like the Fighter will make the game better. But thus far, when people describe differences between the Wizard and other classes, they're all ways the Wizard is better! Not in the sense of "more powerful", in the sense of "better designed". If you think the problem is the Wizard, then explain how the Wizard is actually worse. Tell me how the game is less fun when you get to contribute to all the parts of it. Tell me how the game is more fun when you have to dumpster-dive to make an effective character. Maybe you can do that. But if you can't, you agree with me -- we should be making other classes more like the Wizard, not making the Wizard more like other classes.

[StevenC21]

No. The game is cooperative, and within the specific context of what most people consider D&D to be, that means that each character has a well-defined role and niche. You notice this in almost all artwork, books, etc, for D&D and even a lot of generic fantasy. The party of, typically four, individuals all are different and do different things. When the door is locked, everyone steps back and lets the rogue handle it. When the big monster comes charging down the hall, typically the big fighter/barbarian goes charging in to hold him off. When a character gets downed, the cleric heals him. And when the party needs artillery support or some esoteric effect, the Wizard handles it.

This is how the game is assumed to work. This is how it should work. I truly don't see how it would be in any way good for everybody to be able to do everything, or even most things. That's boring when you have everybody clamoring to do everything. Then the guy who just wanted to be a master lockpick feels bad because everyone else can do his thing just as well, or even adequately. He asks "why am I even here? They don't need me", and gets discouraged.

This is a game that thrives upon well-defined, and separate character roles that support cooperation and teamwork. When you have a class, like the Wizard, who can blatantly contribute to, or in many cases completely steamroll over, another character niche, it diminishes the value of that other character and inflates the value of the Wizard. When you have everybody doing that, then nobody feels like any of their abilities are meaningful because half the party can do it too. When each character adds unique (and more importantly, necessary) abilities to the table, then everyone will feel valued and useful. The Wizard as it currently is undermines this.

[Rynjin]

No, I'm not. It doesn't matter what you consider "normal and acceptable". Whichever way you come to it, the Wizard is better than the Fighter. We don't disagree about that. What we disagree about is the appropriate way of framing that inequality, and the conclusions we should draw from that framing.

If you're going to say that the problem is "the Wizard is overpowered", you should explain why making the Wizard more like the Fighter will make the game better. But thus far, when people describe differences between the Wizard and other classes, they're all ways the Wizard is better! Not in the sense of "more powerful", in the sense of "better designed". If you think the problem is the Wizard, then explain how the Wizard is actually worse. Tell me how the game is less fun when you get to contribute to all the parts of it. Tell me how the game is more fun when you have to dumpster-dive to make an effective character. Maybe you can do that. But if you can't, you agree with me -- we should be making other classes more like the Wizard, not making the Wizard more like other classes.

Saying people want to "make the Wizard more like Fighter" is a pretty big strawman. I have never seen anybody say that.

The idea, in one aspect is, why do more specialized classes exist at all, when a Wizard can just do the job?

You even make my argument for me here:


Except they can't. Because the specialist you should be comparing a Wizard to is a specialized caster. Because that's the power level a Wizard is at. And Wizards can't beat comparably powerful specialists. If you have a stealth mission, a Wizard cannot simply sit down one day, prepare the right spells, and beat a Beguiler. You can build a Wizard that can beat a Beguiler, but that Wizard is also specialized.

What is the point of printing a class that is essentially a specialized Wizard when you could just...make a specialist Wizard?

What's the point of a class system at all when a few of the strongest classes can take on any role? Build versatility is nice, but there should be some kind of limit on it. The idea of the game being balanced around "Fighter Wizard Cleric Rogue", which is supposedly the default assumption, seems very weird when you can do equally as well or better with a Cleric, Druid, and two Wizards.

Mind I come from a Pathfinder background, where apparently all these classes are weaker at the high OP levels too, and I've seen it in play. Aram Zey's Focus alone makes Rogues completely pointless, as an example.

[NigelWalmsley]

No. The game is cooperative, and within the specific context of what most people consider D&D to be, that means that each character has a well-defined role and niche.

Sure? But that's totally unrelated to the question of "should the game exclude people from contributing to certain challenges".

Imagine you've got your standard four-man party. There's a Rogue, who is sneaky and skilled, and has a generally Han Solo-ish or Jack Sparrow-ish idiom. There's a Wizard, who is knowledgeable and mighty of magic, and has a generally Gandalf-ish or Dr. Strange-ish idiom. There's a Barbarian, who is strong and wild, and has a generally Conan-ish or Thor-ish idiom. There's a Cleric, who is holy and talks to the gods, and I can't think of good examples I'd expect to be well-known for the character.

Now, consider some challenges you might have in a typical fantasy story. You could have a giant monster, an invading army, a treacherous court, or a long journey. And you can imagine all the characters having some stuff that is idiomatically appropriate for dealing with each of those. The Rogue backstabs the giant monster, sends saboteurs after the army's supply lines, blackmails the nobles of the court, and uncovers a smugglers route that reduces the length of the journey. The Barbarian beats up the giant monster, leads a horde of warriors against the army, cows the nobles with shows of force, and calls upon the spirits to make the journey faster. Those things are all within the character's niches, and they are all effective actions they could take in those circumstances. But, with the exception of the giant monster and maybe the treacherous court, D&D does not give the Rogue or the Barbarian the tools to do those things.


When the big monster comes charging down the hall, typically the big fighter/barbarian goes charging in to hold him off.

But all the characters fight. The Barbarian fights differently from the Wizard, who in turn fights differently from the Rogue, who in turn fights differently from the Cleric. But everybody has abilities they can use in the combat minigame that advance the cause of their side. Why shouldn't that also be true when the challenge is "the wheat harvest failed and the kingdom faces a famine" or "the planes have become unstable and demons are coming into the kingdom through hell-breaches"?


Then the guy who just wanted to be a master lockpick feels bad because everyone else can do his thing just as well, or even adequately. He asks "why am I even here? They don't need me", and gets discouraged.

Then why don't people feel this way about combat? I have never once seen someone complain "why does it matter that I can do damage, Greg's character also does damage". People complain when one character is more effective in combat, but not that characters get to participate.


What is the point of printing a class that is essentially a specialized Wizard when you could just...make a specialist Wizard?

There are probably more PrCs trying to support "Gish" as a character concept than any single other concept in 3e. Maybe "Dragon Powers" beats it, but even that would be close. And yet people are excited about the Duskblade and the Magus. People like the Ninja, and that's just a "a Rogue, but from Japan". The reason you write the Beguiler isn't because it is absolutely necessary for the Beguiler to exist in order for people to play sneaky casters. It's because the Beguiler is a class that people like.

[StevenC21]

But, with the exception of the giant monster and maybe the treacherous court, D&D does not give the Rogue or the Barbarian the tools to do those things.

Combat is not exactly that situation. But then the problem remains, and in fact is more obvious. No one character is supposed to win an encounter in D&D. At least, that is the default assumption. In theory, it will require the cooperation of an entire team of characters. But as it is, certain classes, eg. Wizard, can do the whole thing themselves. This is clear evidence that the Wizard has too much power.

Whether the Fighter-type classes need more power is a different argument.


Then why don't people feel this way about combat? I have never once seen someone complain "why does it matter that I can do damage, Greg's character also does damage". People complain when one character is more effective in combat, but not that characters get to participate

Once again, the Wizard is blatantly more combat effective. However, in general, the characters typically don't perform the same ways to get that done. The barbarian gets in there and Power Attacks: He feels big and strong and a big threat. The sneaky rogue goes in and stabs in the ribs, he feels agile and cunning. The two characters did similar things, but they are intended to be working together to do this, and they are complementing each other. You can't complement another character who's unlocking something, or deciphering an ancient tome, etc. Those are tasks for one character. Combat is a cooperative task.

[Rynjin]

Then why don't people feel this way about combat? I have never once seen someone complain "why does it matter that I can do damage, Greg's character also does damage". People complain when one character is more effective in combat, but not that characters get to participate.

...Because all characters get to participate, you answered your own question. People tend to get mad when they CAN'T participate, which is what happens when a Wizard SoLs an entire encounter.

The "master lockpicker" scenario is inherently different from combat because when combat starts, all 4-6-ish players roll Init and join in. Lockpicking is a one and done; if one person does it, another person doesn't get to do it at all.

[NigelWalmsley]

Combat is not exactly that situation. But then the problem remains, and in fact is more obvious. No one character is supposed to win an encounter in D&D.

Sure they are. An 8th level character is expected to be able to beat up an Ogre and take its proverbial lunch money. And, no, that's not a level appropriate encounter. But you haven't actually demonstrated that Wizards can solo clear level-appropriate encounters to any particularly worrying degree. The game's difficulty guidelines are not particularly stressed by the notion that a character might make a large contribution to victory in a level-appropriate encounter by expending a large portion of their resources, and that is all your Grease example demonstrates.


Once again, the Wizard is blatantly more combat effective.

Once again, I don't dispute this. But what you have consistently failed to do is provide a bridge that takes us from there to "overpowered" in any kind of testable, objective way. Define "overpowered" and show that a Wizard can be made to reach your definition while other classes cannot.


You can't complement another character who's unlocking something, or deciphering an ancient tome, etc. Those are tasks for one character. Combat is a cooperative task.

Can you complement a character who is stabbing some particular enemy? It seems to me that you can. You might buff him, or debuff the enemy, or stab another enemy. It's true that none of those involve you directly participating in his action, but we all understand taking additional actions that contribute to the overall victory as "complementing" in this context. Similarly, if you got the party to the door, or used whatever knowledge was deciphered from the tome, those things would complement the actions of deciphering or unlocking.


...Because all characters get to participate, you answered your own question. People tend to get mad when they CAN'T participate, which is what happens when a Wizard SoLs an entire encounter.

Or, you know, as is vastly more common, when there is a non-combat encounter and the Fighter doesn't get to do anything because his class doesn't have non-combat abilities. If we're concerned about people not getting to participate, the Wizard is absolutely the class we want to be emulating. Because the Wizard gets to participate in encounters.

[StevenC21]

This is getting very tiresome. You are just repeating the same arguments over and over without listening to my words whatsoever. And that forces me to reiterate, which is incredibly boring and sucks the fun out of arguing.

Win the encounter =/= Kill all the monsters yourself.

Win the encounter = turn the encounter into cleanup duty for everyone else/suck the fun out of it by removing all measure of challenge.

Being blatantly more combat effective is the most clear and obvious measure of "overpowered" I can think of, period.

Wizards can definitely cooperate in combat, yes. But they have easily accessible options to do far beyond that. You don't measure a class' power with the assumption that the player is intentionally gimping themselves.

Once again, it is OK FOR A CHARACTER TO NOT GET TO PARTICIPATE IN A GIVEN THING. I stated this several times. That is ok, that might even be a GOOD thing. Because it makes specialization meaningful. The Wizard does a whole lot more than other classes, and that is bad. He should do less.

[NigelWalmsley]

Being blatantly more combat effective is the most clear and obvious measure of "overpowered" I can think of, period.

So is the Fighter "overpowered" because he is "blatantly more combat effective" than the Commoner? Is the Warblade "overpowered" because he is "blatantly more combat effective" than the Truenamer? Is it even true that the former classes are "blatantly more combat effective" than the latter ones?

The problem with what you're saying is that it doesn't actually mean anything. You have some notion of "blatantly more combat effective", and you have decided it describes the Wizard. But you haven't explained what that means. You haven't proposed a definition or a framework by which someone who is not you might figure out if something is "blatantly more combat effective" to a degree we ought to be worried about. So what am I actually supposed to do to persuade you? You have not explained what it means for the Wizard to be "blatantly more combat effective", how could I possibly make the case that it isn't?


Because it makes specialization meaningful.

Actually, it doesn't. Specialization isn't meaningful if no one else can compete. If you're the only guy with Bluff, it doesn't matter if your Bluff check is +3 or +30. If there's a problem where Bluff needs to be rolled, you roll it, and you hope you roll high enough. But if your Bluff check is +15, and another guy's Bluff check is +10 base, but +20 if he spends a spell slot he could use for a level-appropriate combat effect, your number matters. Your specific ability matters, and you can shine in specific circumstances, not just get told "well, you might as well".


The Wizard does a whole lot more than other classes, and that is bad. He should do less.

Again, you have not explained why it is good to tell people to go sit in the corner while the rest of the group gets to do things. Why is it better for the game if the Cleric and Wizard (or Rogue and Paladin or Psion and Warblade) solve the "invading army" challenge on their own while the rest of the group twiddles their thumbs than for everyone to contribute to the group's success? We like that everyone gets to take meaningful actions in combat, why shouldn't everyone be allowed the same privilege outside it?

[StevenC21]

No, the fighter isn't overpowered, because the Commoner is a NPC class that is explicitly intended to be worse than RHD. And the Truenamer is garbage design and everybody knows it. The Truenamer can't do his role well enough at all, but the Warblade does his job.

Combat effectiveness is defined quite simply. Have a combat encounter with the typical party. Assume that each party member makes rational, intelligent choices that are intended to cause the encounter to end as fast as possible, with the best possible outcome for the party. Choose the character whose combat effectiveness you would like to measure. Run the encounter again, sans that character. Determine the difference in how long the encounter took/how much damage the party took/how many consumables were expended/etc. It is quite simple.

It is clear that removing the Wizard will have a drastically bigger effect than removing the Fighter, therefore, the Wizard is more combat effective.

Specialization IS meaningful if nobody else can compete. That's what makes it meaningful. It means that your character is a useful, vital in fact, member of the party who provides useful and unique benefits to his team for his inclusion. If multiple people can do the same thing, then suddenly there becomes intra-party competition, which is bad. People feel that their niche is being encroached upon, which is quite obviously bad for characters like the Rogue, who just can't adapt, unlike the Wizard.





Why is it better for the game if the Cleric and Wizard (or Rogue and Paladin or Psion and Warblade) solve the "invading army" challenge on their own while the rest of the group twiddles their thumbs than for everyone to contribute to the group's success? We like that everyone gets to take meaningful actions in combat, why shouldn't everyone be allowed the same privilege outside it?


Because it often doesn't make any sense? You can't have two people simultaneously open the lock. Therefore, you have to pick a guy to do it. Now, if the options are, say, the Wizard and the Rogue, you should pick the Wizard, because he just straight up does it BETTER. But this marginalizes the usefulness of the rogue, which is bad. Instead, the rogue should have a monopoly on opening locks, so that his niche is preserved and his character's skills provide a meaningful benefit to the party. There can only be one character at a time who does any given role out of combat. Otherwise, you're just being inefficient. Why would I let the Rogue with his +15 do anything if the Wizard can just prepare another Knock to get +20? Or even if he's out, just wait a few hours and prepare more... it's really quite simple.

Wizard can do everything => Wizard does everything => Other party members get marginalized because the Wizard is blatantly better than them at what is supposed to be their class specialty => the party loses cohesion. It doesn't make sense to exacerbate this problem by letting even MORE characters do everything, it just makes characters even more same-y, and then you problems like in Starfinder, where everybody in the party has the same number of ranks in Engineering as the Mechanic, even though the Mechanic thought it would be his specialty, and he isn't actually any better at it than anyone else.

[Droid Tony]

I agree that every character does not have to do something super amazing every second of game play. There might be times when a player does nothing for some time: that is normal. Yes, it's not fun to be that player, bu that is just how social games work.

The whole every body gets a special action is what 4E and some other games do or tried to do: Each character gets a special unique action(spell, exploit, ability, whatever) set that they can use all the time.


But really, it comes back to the Game Play Style, Rule Interpretations and House Rules of each individual game. If the wizard is over powered and the fighter is weak in a given game: it's because of the Game Play Style, Rule Interpretations and House Rules. If a wizard can trivialize an encounter or over power something: it's because of the Game Play Style, Rule Interpretations and House Rules.

And as part of the game play style two big ones that favor wizards are low magic games and just like Earth games. If you put a locked door in front of a wizard the player can be half asleep and say they use knock. But what if it's anything except a door? What if it's a Mechanical Device? What if the thing that is locked is not a door, box or chest? So for example, a place might have a locked sliding wall or a locked book or a locked window. Note that knock can not open any of them...use less you house rule knock can open anything to make it all powerful. Now note the skilled character can try an open any lock on any thing.

And really the above example is just the tip of the iceberg.

For combat, a martial character can fight anywhere......but lots of places will give spellcasters problems. Underwater is a great example (not an underwater set up campaign...just a section of an adventure underwater). The best thing about under water, or in the air or in complex locations is the 360 degree battle. This can really effect a spellcaster....and worse a lot of their spells are two dimensional.

And this does not even touch location magic or magical traps or strange, unknown magical effects yet.

[StevenC21]

Fighting underwater is literally impossible for the majority of characters WITHOUT the spellcaster.

Also you seem to be using the term "house rules" incorrectly. I have never seen any discussion of optimization of Wizards, PO or TO, where blatant houseruling like in your examples takes place, nor have I played in a game where it takes place. Regardless, I can think of a number of ways a Wizard can easily get around any of those rather minor issues... really, really easily, in fact.

And with regard to the 360 degree fighting underwater, martial characters are penalized far more if you want to extend the game that much. They basically can't wear their armor, they will need to swap out magic items for some means of breathing underwater (unless, of course, there was some sort of character class that might have a solution for something like that...), and any character who uses ranged weapons is just absolutely made useless.

In actuality, spellcasters are the characters who are penalized LEAST by fighting underwater... except, perhaps, the odd rogue, but even then, he's only even down there because Mr. Friendly Party Wizard happened to know the right spell to let him breath underwater.

Wizards aren't powerful because of houserules at all. Throughout this thread, we have named countless instances of Wizards just, being, really, good. And they don't require strange houseruling like your examples. Granted, those houserules would favor a Wizard, but I am arguing that they aren't happening nearly as often as you suggest. In fact, the vast majority of optimization comes from doing the exact opposite: Reading the spell exactly how it's written, without regard for intent. Your houserules seem to do the opposite: Ignore what might have potentially been intended for what is exactly on the page.

[Doctor Awkward]

Yeah, it's the Fighter. And the fact that it basically doesn't get class features or abilities that let it advance the plot. There are a lot of arguments being advanced that there are spells that are very good, or that there are classes that are worse than the Wizard. But no one seems to be willing to do the work to explicate how that makes the Wizard the problem. I agree that Polymorph and Planar Binding are too good. Why should we address that problem by poking the Wizard when those spells are also too good if they are used by the Sorcerer (and, frankly, would be too good if given to the Commoner as SLAs)?

Because wizards can also make better rogues than a rogue, better nobles than a noble, better bards than a bard, and so on to infinity.

The reason why nerfing "a spell" doesn't really do anything to a wizards overall level of power is because they invariably have at least one more spell that also lets them win in a much similar fashion at that same spell level. Sure, it makes the wizard less interesting because he'll have fewer options that he'll want to use, but he isn't any less powerful if he has to win the encounter by casting Cloudkill instead of Polymorph or Smoky Confinement instead of Planar Binding.

When one class is causing problems for multiple other classes, and those other classes are essentially fine with respect to each other, how does it make more sense to patch and adjust everyone else besides the problem child?

[Batcathat]

For Example(1st level characters): The wizard and fighter fought a bunch of orc guards and killed them all. However, the orc leader did drop and lock the iron bars across the hallway...and died on the other side with the key tied to his belt. So the players need to figure out a way to open the locked bars...by getting that key.

In the over powered/versatile wizard game- The Wizard casts Mage Hand and grasps the key. The DM rules that the orc guard fell perfectly so the wizard could see the key and point to it and house ruled that the spell mage hand can effect two targets (the knot and the key) and can untie knots.

Now, you might notice the two house rules make mage hand both more powerful and more versatile.

And of course, if the player of the fighter even dared to ask to try something....like say use his rope to lasso the body and drag it over to the bars....the DM would just say No and dismiss it as impossible(or do the ''oh sorry the body is just out of rope toss range(but still in mage hand range, of course)).

You seem to assume a very specific type of DM. Most DMs I've played with (and me when DM:ing) would probably allow, or at least consider, both options.

Anyway, even in your example wizards are still more versatile since they can try Mage Hand and try tossing a rope. A clever player can think of a lot of unexpected outside the box solutions to a problem but that's just as true of a wizard player as any other player and wizards have access to a wider range of inside the box solutions in the form of spells.

[Gruftzwerg]

Overpowered Flexibility? Yes
Overpowered Combat/Specialization Strength? No

Imho it's sole the flexibility of the shier endless overpowered spell list. Wizards are strong in every aspect of the game if they have access to the needed spells. And since you get free spells at lvl up, you can tailor your selection according to the adventure/game plot that your are playing.

Other classes (especially those without spells) rely much more on class abilities, skills and feats to accomplish anything. And those things are totally tight in optimized builds. You can't say at lvl 9, "ohw, since we have to face XXX now, I'll better go the other build route". It doesn't work. While a wizard can always alter his known spells easily via lvl up or gold.

When it comes to specializing in a single area, other classes may pull of better results. Especially when it comes down to simple killspeed. The wizard is not really frontloaded burst. But regards whatever specialization we are talking about, the sole fact that wizards are too versatile still remains. While a specialized build may be better in a single thing, the wizard is still strong in every other aspect of the game...

[Kelb_Panthera]

There are more good spells per level than a sorcerer can afford to take and still maintain a good level of flexibility, sans high op tricks.

Not sure when "buy a (rune)staff and a couple (eternal) wands" became high op, exactly. I'd honestly call that minimal investment, really.


The wizard can get most of them on level up and bankroll the rest. And it's not even that expensive.

And as long a you can take a 15 minute break and have a few slots open, that's a -really- good thing. When either of those isn't true, having them in your book doesn't amount to jack. As a wizard you have the fewest spell slots of any full caster in the game. That concern of having slots open is -not- a small one. Striking the balance between preparing spells that you're going to need "right now" when you need them, how many of each to pepare, and leaving slots open to prep later has a -steep- learning curve. It's a whole lot easier to get wrong than the sorcerer's 'will this spell be generally helpful" yes/no binary.

In a nutshell, if a wizard is asked "do you have 'spell X' ready to go right now?" he's a -lot- more likely to say no than a sorcerer is when "spell X" is one of the "good" spells. That's not nothing. That's rather substantial, in fact. It's not until you've got a day or more to spare that the wizard clearly pulls ahead.


Furthermore, at any level 7 or above, Teleport is a spell you should memorize. In that oh-so-unlikely situation that the Wizard has no useful spells, just Teleport out and try again later. And if you try to add even more restrictions, then you're just creating a contrived scenario that explicitly is designed to target the theoretical weakness a Wizard has.

That's easier said than done.

First, surely you mean "level 9" since little old dimension door can't even guarantee "out of danger" much less "out of the dungeon." 680 feet isn't even out of bowshot.

WIth teleport, there's a simple dice roll for failure that's absolutely -trivial- to trigger even before you start looking at reasonable counter-measures of which any intelligent foe might avail themselves.

For teleportation as a strategem, it's okay for getting away from big dumb beasts and mooks in semi-random encounter situations but against real, determined enemies it very quickly drops to a "maybe" unless your GM really does coddle like Tony's been suggesting this whole thread.


Because wizards can also make better rogues than a rogue, better nobles than a noble, better bards than a bard, and so on to infinity.

Generalist wizards can't.

Stealth spells can make you passably sneaky but past a certain point you -need- real stealth skill. That point. The line there is drawn just ahead of creatures with extraordinary senses and dedicated hunter NPCs with high-class detection skill. A rogue does it better.

Enchantment and illusion can go a -long- ways toward manipulating groups of people into acting how you'd like them to but the truth has a way of finding the light and genuine loyalty, status, and raw manpower go a -lot- further. The noble does it better (props for the obscure base class choice though.)

Bard... how exactly do you even plan to -do- that as a wizard? Unless you're just using "bard" as a shorthand for general support and problem solver, you have somewhere between "zero" and "no" ability to ape the bardic music effect of even just a straigh bard, much less one that's PrCed or optimized his music in any way. Pete's sake, man, bard is the single most heavily supported class in the system outside of core. Even a bard that does it poorly does it better.


The reason why nerfing "a spell" doesn't really do anything to a wizards overall level of power is because they invariably have at least one more spell that also lets them win in a much similar fashion at that same spell level. Sure, it makes the wizard less interesting because he'll have fewer options that he'll want to use, but he isn't any less powerful if he has to win the encounter by casting Cloudkill instead of Polymorph or Smoky Confinement instead of Planar Binding.

It is, in fact, -much- less powerful. Cloudkill does -one- thing. It does one thing that the enemy can directly resist and is far less effective against some targets than others. It's also on the list of "need it right now" spells that your limited slots keep you from guaranteeing you have on hand. If it's one of your highest level spells, and you've got one for ref and one for will in the other slot or two you have that high, you're suddenly not influencing the gameworld around you so much as you otherwise could have today. It's also competing with that teleport spell you said you really wanted prepared.

Compared to polymorph or planar binding's "I can do umpteen things with this," it's very obviously less powerful. Even summon monster V is more likely to have a relevant effect when you need your slots to go as far as they can.


When one class is causing problems for multiple other classes, and those other classes are essentially fine with respect to each other, how does it make more sense to patch and adjust everyone else besides the problem child?

It's not the class. The class' limitations are actually more limiting than they're given credit for. The problem is a handful of things that circumvent those limitations without any substantial or explicit drawback. Isolating and either nerfing or eliminating them isn't terribly difficult and goes miles toward fixing the problem, such as it is. The polymorph and calling subschools of magic contain the overwhelming majority of the culprits.

[NigelWalmsley]

It is clear that removing the Wizard will have a drastically bigger effect than removing the Fighter, therefore, the Wizard is more combat effective.

But if, as you do, we concede that this is also true of the Truenamer and the Warblade, that would seem to indicate that we need to ban the Warblade as well. How can we tell that the Truenamer is a garbage class, but the Fighter isn't?


If multiple people can do the same thing, then suddenly there becomes intra-party competition, which is bad.

Is it bad that both the Warmage and the Rogue can do direct damage? Is it bad that both a Tripstar and a God Wizard can provide BFC? The combat minigame is, generally, the most broadly functional and well-regarded party of 3e. And it functions in exactly the way you insist is unacceptable.

More broadly, your goal of absolutely role protection is simply untenable from a mathematical perspective. Suppose you have ten roles that need doing. How many niches does each character need? Well, at least 2.5 by simple division (you'll note that this is more than the majority of non-casters can cover by any meaningful standard already). But even if everyone gets three roles, you're still looking at a nearly 25% chance that the party won't have any particular role. Each character needs to be covering six different roles before that chance falls below 5% (and this is without accounting for 3 man parties or duplicated classes). And if each character covers six roles, it is mathematically impossible that there is no duplicated role.

And this is not some frivolous example I'm making up on the spot. Mandatory roles that few classes cover already cause problems with the Rogue (who you need for traps) and the Cleric (who you need for healing). Someone being forced to play the healer is already a thing that sucks for the game, what you are asking for is, quite explicitly, that more people be forced to play characters they don't want to play so that people can have abilities whose specifics do not matter. That is a bad design choice, and the game should not make it.


characters like the Rogue, who just can't adapt, unlike the Wizard.

Once again, you are describing a way that the Wizard is better designed than other classes, without changing your conclusion that the Wizard is the problem.


Because it often doesn't make any sense? You can't have two people simultaneously open the lock. Therefore, you have to pick a guy to do it. Now, if the options are, say, the Wizard and the Rogue, you should pick the Wizard, because he just straight up does it BETTER.

Except he doesn't. Knock opens one lock, and it costs you a useful combat spell. Open Lock opens any lock you find. The Wizard is better if the challenge is "there's a single lock on the throne room". The Rogue is better if the challenge is "you need to search a bunch of locked rooms, which might be down locked hallways or have locked chests in them". Having that tradeoff seems obviously more interesting to me than just pointing the Rogue at every lock. Not just as a designer, but as a Rogue.


Why would I let the Rogue with his +15 do anything if the Wizard can just prepare another Knock to get +20? Or even if he's out, just wait a few hours and prepare more... it's really quite simple.

Because the Wizard can't prepare an infinite number of Knocks? Again, I have literally lived in a dorm room that had enough locks between it and the outside world that a 3rd level Wizard could exhaust all their 2nd level spell slots preparing Knock and be unable to get in. If you can't imagine a scenario where there is a meaningful difference between "open a few locks perfectly" and "open as many locks as you want pretty well", I think that's a failure of imagination on your part more than anything.


everybody in the party has the same number of ranks in Engineering as the Mechanic, even though the Mechanic thought it would be his specialty, and he isn't actually any better at it than anyone else.

That seems like a problem with the design of the Mechanic. If he's supposed to be the Engineering specialist, shouldn't he have some abilities that make him better at Engineering than some random dude with a bunch of ranks in it?


The reason why nerfing "a spell" doesn't really do anything to a wizards overall level of power is because they invariably have at least one more spell that also lets them win in a much similar fashion at that same spell level. Sure, it makes the wizard less interesting because he'll have fewer options that he'll want to use, but he isn't any less powerful if he has to win the encounter by casting Cloudkill instead of Polymorph or Smoky Confinement instead of Planar Binding.

This is correct in general, but not true of those specific spells. Planar Binding really is massively better than Smoky Confinement. It's true that the Wizard has a large number of spells that are about as good as each other, but once the Wizard is using those spells, I don't think he's a problem. I don't think you can make a principled argument that we need to get rid of Wizards who use Cloudkill because they're better than Warblades that doesn't also say we need to get rid of Warblades because they're better than Truenamers.

[VladtheLad]

The issue with Polymorph is that mixing and matching between your character and the MMs is not balanced. It's the same issue with Planar Binding and Dominate Monster.


Yes but my point was, if you don't get magic item bonuses its far weaker and less useful.


It could. But binding a low CR thing as a combat bodyguard is actually totally fine. If your 11th level Wizard is using Planar Binding to get a pet Chain Devil, that's honestly pretty okay. It's CR 6, and there's one of it. The problem is that with the spell as-written, there's essentially no way to draw a useful bright line between that and binding ten Barbed Devils, which is not remotely okay. That's the core problem with Planar Binding. It does okay things and broken things, and it's very hard to make a principled distinction.

My point is its up to the dm on how much leeway he gives you with the spell, so it shouldn't be used as an arguement wizard is overpowered, at least without a disclaimer.
I agree with what you are saying though.
My take is that all minion controlling spells/powers should be balanced by the fact that the minions can break or twist the control you have over them if the context/situation is correct. This fits the fluff I like more than going simply for a straight up a game balance solution and it still creates some short of weird balance.
The problem is this would require essentially an entry for each and every controlable creature and how it interacts with the spell.


Sure? But those things are not overpowered in any real sense. If your plan in combat is to cast Glitterdust on people, I don't think there's any especially worthwhile definition by which that is "overpowered".

I am not sure I claimed they make the wizard overpowered, but thinking about it, maybe they can contribute to the wizard being overpowered? Note those are a few low level spells, I think they in combination with the wizards ease of concetration checks at high levels, actual high level spells like maze, otiluke's irresistible dance, out of core prestige classes and, as I mentioned above, out of core spells make (avasculate, brilliant blade, elemental body and many many more) wizards are able to appear overpowered not only compared to the fighter but even when dealing with cr appropriate monsters(maybe outsiders and dragons can compete but these are arguably under cred).
They can do that even without the very broken planar binding, simulacrum and etc shenanigans, in a pretty straightforward way that has basically zero rules interpretations.
I believe those spells are the main culprits for the actual play stories of a wizard appearing to be overpowered, maybe with the adition of the wizard turning into a 12 headed hydra or PAOing the fighter into a whatever giant. I haven't heard many stories about planar binding/simulacrum causing trouble in campaigns though.

Again my point isn't that wizard is or isn't overpowered, I just noted some misconceptions about certain spells.

Also I wouldn't underestimate glitterdust. It ignores spell resistance, targets will (so ignores immunity to fortitude saves) and causes blindness which a lot of things aren't immune to. :smalltongue:

[Bohandas]

Because it often doesn't make any sense? You can't have two people simultaneously open the lock. Therefore, you have to pick a guy to do it. Now, if the options are, say, the Wizard and the Rogue, you should pick the Wizard, because he just straight up does it BETTER.?

The spell slot spent on Knock is a spell slot that's not being spent on something else

[Calthropstu]

No, the fighter isn't overpowered, because the Commoner is a NPC class that is explicitly intended to be worse than RHD. And the Truenamer is garbage design and everybody knows it. The Truenamer can't do his role well enough at all, but the Warblade does his job.

Combat effectiveness is defined quite simply. Have a combat encounter with the typical party. Assume that each party member makes rational, intelligent choices that are intended to cause the encounter to end as fast as possible, with the best possible outcome for the party. Choose the character whose combat effectiveness you would like to measure. Run the encounter again, sans that character. Determine the difference in how long the encounter took/how much damage the party took/how many consumables were expended/etc. It is quite simple.

It is clear that removing the Wizard will have a drastically bigger effect than removing the Fighter, therefore, the Wizard is more combat effective.

Specialization IS meaningful if nobody else can compete. That's what makes it meaningful. It means that your character is a useful, vital in fact, member of the party who provides useful and unique benefits to his team for his inclusion. If multiple people can do the same thing, then suddenly there becomes intra-party competition, which is bad. People feel that their niche is being encroached upon, which is quite obviously bad for characters like the Rogue, who just can't adapt, unlike the Wizard.



Because it often doesn't make any sense? You can't have two people simultaneously open the lock. Therefore, you have to pick a guy to do it. Now, if the options are, say, the Wizard and the Rogue, you should pick the Wizard, because he just straight up does it BETTER. But this marginalizes the usefulness of the rogue, which is bad. Instead, the rogue should have a monopoly on opening locks, so that his niche is preserved and his character's skills provide a meaningful benefit to the party. There can only be one character at a time who does any given role out of combat. Otherwise, you're just being inefficient. Why would I let the Rogue with his +15 do anything if the Wizard can just prepare another Knock to get +20? Or even if he's out, just wait a few hours and prepare more... it's really quite simple.

Wizard can do everything => Wizard does everything => Other party members get marginalized because the Wizard is blatantly better than them at what is supposed to be their class specialty => the party loses cohesion. It doesn't make sense to exacerbate this problem by letting even MORE characters do everything, it just makes characters even more same-y, and then you problems like in Starfinder, where everybody in the party has the same number of ranks in Engineering as the Mechanic, even though the Mechanic thought it would be his specialty, and he isn't actually any better at it than anyone else. [/INDENT]
[/LIST]

I have tried this before.
Removing any character generally adds 1 round per missing character no matter which one it is, with the exception of rogues who rarely get significant damage in. Getting in flanks is often quite tough, so they have the hardest time contributing in combat.
Removing wizards has highly varying effects often not affecting anything. It can also have huge effects, doubling the number of rounds when fighting large mobs.
To be honest, I rarely see wizards do much useful outside of a few encounters a day. By the time it's time to fight the boss, unless the boss is the only one you fight that day, wizard is often tapped out. It's all fine and good to say "wizards can have the right spell at the right time to handle any encounter" but the entire class is highly flawed. Spellbooks, babying for watch, heavy costs for new spells... they need a lot of concessions from the group to be useful. No wizards I have played with have succeeded at doing the "I am everything" because they didn't have the time or resources to maintain their spellbook.

[StevenC21]

I've decided that I am done with this circular argument. I have, more than once, provided a clear logical argument, and I am unsatisfied with the opposition.

I've already explained in detail the start point that people on this forum use, how your start point is different, why we use the start point we do, and why we make the conclusions we make.

You are free to say that by your metrics, the Wizard isn't overpowered, but you are in a very small minority and it is very misleading when you presume that everyone is using the metrics you are using. I suggest making that clear before you engage people in the way you have.

[Efrate]

That what marvelous mansion and/or fast time planes are for. If you are not under massive time pressure, especially at higher levels, why face the boss when tapped out? Set up a mansion or a tiny hut or an extended rope trick and go in fully loaded. You would not go into a big fight at 30% HP, why go when out of spells? Ideally you would use lower level spells to solve encounters, you do not need to blow a million spells a fight, one or two generally suffice. Once you crest about level 7 you should never run out of spells, assuming standard 4 fights of appropriate EL a day. Even up to about 6 fights a day you should be ok no later than about level 9. And again fast time planes which if you keep your knowledge up and once you have plane shift patch it up if you need more. Or just hut it up as needed. You do not continue when your cleric is out of healing, when your frontline is out of hp, why punish wizards when their primary resource is low?

[Calthropstu]

That what marvelous mansion and/or fast time planes are for. If you are not under massive time pressure, especially at higher levels, why face the boss when tapped out? Set up a mansion or a tiny hut or an extended rope trick and go in fully loaded. You would not go into a big fight at 30% HP, why go when out of spells? Ideally you would use lower level spells to solve encounters, you do not need to blow a million spells a fight, one or two generally suffice. Once you crest about level 7 you should never run out of spells, assuming standard 4 fights of appropriate EL a day. Even up to about 6 fights a day you should be ok no later than about level 9. And again fast time planes which if you keep your knowledge up and once you have plane shift patch it up if you need more. Or just hut it up as needed. You do not continue when your cleric is out of healing, when your frontline is out of hp, why punish wizards when their primary resource is low?

Right. Because the boss is TOTALLY going to sit around doing nothing while you do that. "Ok, we've slaughtered our way to the boss' last room. Let's rest now, go and recap spells, and we can take him on in the morning..."

"Why is the boss and all his treasure gone?"

or "Why is our exit point surrounded by undead?"
or "Why is the person we were trying to rescue dead?"
etc.

Resting in the middle of an adventure is insanely stupid, unless what you are fighting is either trapped or even more stupid.

[Zarrgon]

You seem to assume a very specific type of DM. Most DMs I've played with (and me when DM:ing) would probably allow, or at least consider, both options.

Anyway, even in your example wizards are still more versatile since they can try Mage Hand and try tossing a rope. A clever player can think of a lot of unexpected outside the box solutions to a problem but that's just as true of a wizard player as any other player and wizards have access to a wider range of inside the box solutions in the form of spells.

I agree. But I think a lot of players of spellcasters don't see past their spells. They are not thinking what their character can do, they are thinking what spells their character can use.


That mage hand example does get me thinking....I've alowed such things as letting a mage hand tie or untie a knot. But, now, looking back at the spell it does seem I made a ruling that made the spell more powerful and more versatile. And that is just one example. If we go spell by spell, I bet we will have a whole list of over powered versatile rulings that are not in the rules.

[Calthropstu]

I agree. But I think a lot of players of spellcasters don't see past their spells. They are not thinking what their character can do, they are thinking what spells their character can use.


That mage hand example does get me thinking....I've alowed such things as letting a mage hand tie or untie a knot. But, now, looking back at the spell it does seem I made a ruling that made the spell more powerful and more versatile. And that is just one example. If we go spell by spell, I bet we will have a whole list of over powered versatile rulings that are not in the rules.

Oh the shenanigans of mage hand. Mage hand is such a useful spell.
In skulls and shackles there is a point where you need to go and get a particular gem. It has all sorts of defenses, and getting to it is rather difficult. But they did not protect it from mage hand.
I have also used it to snag all sorts of treasure.

[Zarrgon]

Oh the shenanigans of mage hand. Mage hand is such a useful spell.


But is this not the problem? Mage Hand really is not that useful of a spell. By the book description all it does is let a wizard move one very light item. That's it. Anything you add to that changes the spell, and would be a house rule spell change right?

So when you make mage hand weak telekinesis your making the wizard both more powerful and more versatile.

[Rynjin]

Oh the shenanigans of mage hand. Mage hand is such a useful spell.
In skulls and shackles there is a point where you need to go and get a particular gem. It has all sorts of defenses, and getting to it is rather difficult. But they did not protect it from mage hand.
I have also used it to snag all sorts of treasure.

Yeah...no. I know exactly the part you're talking about, in The Island of Empty Eyes.


Target one non-magical, unattended object weighing up to 5 lbs.

The object is VERY magical and likely weighs far more than 5 lbs; it's a device created by Cyclopes, and is described as "large" in the book.

Misreading something doesn't make it powerful.

[NigelWalmsley]

Yes but my point was, if you don't get magic item bonuses its far weaker and less useful.

It's not really "far" weaker. It's weaker, but it's weaker to a directly quantifiable degree that is not especially large. At the level where you get Polymorph, magic item bonuses to most stats are going to be in the low single digits. Losing that is a cost, but it's not one that's nearly large enough to make Polymorph balanced or okay in any meaningful sense.


My take is that all minion controlling spells/powers should be balanced by the fact that the minions can break or twist the control you have over them if the context/situation is correct. This fits the fluff I like more than going simply for a straight up a game balance solution and it still creates some short of weird balance.

This sounds nice, but it turns out to be pretty terrible in practice. The demon killing its summoner because he used "will" instead of "shall" sounds cool in single-author fiction, but in D&D all it does is turn every casting of Planar Binding into an opposed Profession (Lawyer) check between the player and the DM. That is not nearly as satisfying, and has a very real chance of resulting in the DM not finding an opening and the spell being broken anyway.


(maybe outsiders and dragons can compete but these are arguably under cred).

Again, I think this argument is rather circular. If casters can deal with monsters, and other classes can't, it seems like the parsimonious solution is that other classes are underpowered, not that casters are overpowered and also monsters are under-CRed


The spell slot spent on Knock is a spell slot that's not being spent on something else

Exactly. Knock has a cost. It's actually a very high cost, because 2nd level offensive spells are super good. But people seem to think that spells are literally free, and that there is therefore no reason to have a Rogue. But spells are not free, and every door your Rogue unlocks is another time the Wizard gets to cast Web or Glitterdust or Cloud of Bewilderment.


I've decided that I am done with this circular argument. I have, more than once, provided a clear logical argument, and I am unsatisfied with the opposition.

Yes, I imagine you find it quite unsatisfying that I'm asking you to define your terms and defend your position instead of immediately surrendering. But you haven't provided a logical argument. You've made a blithe assertion (that Wizards are "blatantly more combat effective"), defined it in such a way that it described Warblades as well, tried to define that problem away with another blithe assertion (that Truenamers are "garbage class"), and now rather than defend that you're giving up. I'm not saying you can't leave, but be honest about what happened beforehand.


Resting in the middle of an adventure is insanely stupid, unless what you are fighting is either trapped or even more stupid.

Resting in the middle of the adventure is necessary. The overlap in the Venn Diagram of "things you can afford to face with your resources depleted" and "things you can't afford to give a day to prepare" is very, very small.

[Doctor Awkward]

Generalist wizards can't.

There is very little that an Elven Generalist with the right ACF's and feats and prestige classes cannot do.


Stealth spells can make you passably sneaky but past a certain point you -need- real stealth skill. That point. The line there is drawn just ahead of creatures with extraordinary senses and dedicated hunter NPCs with high-class detection skill. A rogue does it better.

It's not just about sneaking around. The open lock skill check is obviated by a spell. Disarming traps is obviated by a spell. By the time you reach the point that extraordinary senses make silence and invisibility impractical, the wizard is scrying and teleporting into places they need to get and reaching into the Astral Plane to steal something they need. Yes there are spells to fight back against all of this but that makes just makes the rogue even less relevant.


Enchantment and illusion can go a -long- ways toward manipulating groups of people into acting how you'd like them to but the truth has a way of finding the light and genuine loyalty, status, and raw manpower go a -lot- further. The noble does it better (props for the obscure base class choice though.)

My point was that spells are once again obviating skill checks. Regardless of how you build a noble they are still going to have to roll. A cleverly played wizard often doesn't.
All of that is about good roleplaying. You don't need to make skill checks to accomplish any of those things. You can command respect and fear by simply listening to your enemy and saying, "Yes, but I am a wizard though."
The sole fact that you present yourself as literally untouchable does things for RP that a skill check can never do.


Bard... how exactly do you even plan to -do- that as a wizard? Unless you're just using "bard" as a shorthand for general support and problem solver, you have somewhere between "zero" and "no" ability to ape the bardic music effect of even just a straigh bard, much less one that's PrCed or optimized his music in any way. Pete's sake, man, bard is the single most heavily supported class in the system outside of core. Even a bard that does it poorly does it better.


Yes, I meant bard as a stand-in for the general support role. There are entire guides written around the fact that a wizard is the ultimate support character to any given party. They are GOD. The party succeeds because the wizard enables them to succeed. And alternatively they can just prepare different spells that day and win the encounter themselves without the party's help.

In any given balance discussion, the well-played wizard is always the problem.


It is, in fact, -much- less powerful. Cloudkill does -one- thing. It does one thing that the enemy can directly resist and is far less effective against some targets than others. It's also on the list of "need it right now" spells that your limited slots keep you from guaranteeing you have on hand. If it's one of your highest level spells, and you've got one for ref and one for will in the other slot or two you have that high, you're suddenly not influencing the gameworld around you so much as you otherwise could have today. It's also competing with that teleport spell you said you really wanted prepared.

Compared to polymorph or planar binding's "I can do umpteen things with this," it's very obviously less powerful. Even summon monster V is more likely to have a relevant effect when you need your slots to go as far as they can.

It still wins encounters. It's not the difference between winning and not winning. It's winning and winning more.

[Calthropstu]

Yeah...no. I know exactly the part you're talking about, in The Island of Empty Eyes.



The object is VERY magical and likely weighs far more than 5 lbs; it's a device created by Cyclopes, and is described as "large" in the book.

Misreading something doesn't make it powerful.

I used it to manipulate something to grab it off the pedestal. Placed a basket underneath the pillar, knocked the gem off with a piece of wood and brought the basket back. Our GM never said it was large, but describing gems as large well...
The largest opal ever found was 3450 carats which is roughly 7 pounds. While the absolute largest gemstone is the bahrai emerald weighing in at a massive 837 pounds, that is absurdly rare. Most super valuable gems are about 1 pound or less. A gem weighing at over 5 pounds would be worth a million gp just based off the gem. So yeah, I think it was valid.

[StevenC21]

Actually, I defined all my terms quite well, and they were repeatedly and potentially deliberately misconstrued. This combination of handwaving away all forms of optimization (of course, only for Wizards), and then pointing out that yeah, Wizards can't spam spells all day until level 10+ isnt really a fair stance to argue from.

I still believe wizards are absolutely overpowered, even within the constraints you have set. But those constraints are arbitrary, and without them, the conclusion is even more apparent.

[NigelWalmsley]

It's not just about sneaking around. The open lock skill check is obviated by a spell.

No, it isn't. Knock is not free. You have to prepare it, and that comes at the cost of not preparing other spells. If you try to open every door with Knock, you will rapidly find yourself without enough spells to do anything else. And you can't just come back tomorrow, people can just relock the doors.


In any given balance discussion, the well-played wizard is always the problem.

No, the imbalance is the problem. And the imbalance is a function of both the Wizard and the Fighter. People aren't upset by the powers of the Wizard because they think that it is somehow fundamentally unfair for one character to get Teleport, Lesser Planar Binding, Cloudkill, and Cone of Cold. They're upset because they think those abilities overshadow other claasses. And the reason those abilities do that, to the degree that they do, is because of the way those classes are written. It is not difficult to imagine a Binder or Warblade or Incarnate who is not overshadowed by the Wizard.


It still wins encounters. It's not the difference between winning and not winning. It's winning and winning more.

The players are expected to win encounters. The difference between "winning" and "winning more" is exactly what "being overpowered" means.


Actually, I defined all my terms quite well

No, you didn't. You eventually produced a handwaved definition of "blatantly more combat effective". But when I pointed out that, by the definition you provided, a Warblade is "blatantly more combat effective" compared to a Truenamer, you declared that the Truenamer is a "garbage design". You have yet to explain why that describes the Truenamer, but not the Fighter.


This combination of handwaving away all forms of optimization (of course, only for Wizards)

I didn't handwave it away. Consider, for example, the discussion of Planar Binding. I think I was pretty clear about why I thought Planar Binding was a problem separate from, and not particularly attributable to, the Wizard. I even explained some things you could argue to persuade me otherwise. As far as I can tell, people did not make those arguments. Probably because it's pretty obvious that the difference between "Planar Binding" and "an ability it is okay for people to have" is a lot more than the 10k it costs a Dread Necromancer to use it.


and then pointing out that yeah, Wizards can't spam spells all day until level 10+ isnt really a fair stance to argue from.

I don't even understand what you think the problem here is. Apparently it's bad form to point out that Wizards don't have an unlimited number of spells per day because it makes you less right than you would like to be? It's not my fault you're making arguments that assume Wizards can cast unlimited number of spells.

[StevenC21]

I never claimed that wizards have unlimited spells. But they have enough that they (1) almost certainly won't run out, and (2) can have items such as scrolls or wands. Just buy a wand of Knock. That's fifty straight uses right there, and you still have spell slots. Or any of the other multitude of spells that outmode character classes and abilities utterly. Then sure, let the rogue UMD it. He still isn't doing anything. It's the wizard.

First off, the fighter does his job fine. He fights. He gets his stick and he hits the other guy. If you're smart about it, he can hit him pretty hard, too. He's pretty basic. Sure, he needs some support, but that's just team play. No one character should cover every base.

The Truenamer, by contrast, is plagued by constant shortages of it's most basic abilities, as well as being forced to make ever increasing checks throughout the day to even use said abilities. The fact that it gets Gate at level 20 is irrelevant. I said the class has garbage design, and it does. It fails to create a class that can be effective and carry it's own weight without extreme optimization.

The difference between the Warblade and the Wizard is that the Warblade was more or less explicitly designed to be a Fighter that has a more active role. He's also typically better. But he's better than one class. At that one class' thing. The barbarian is also better than the fighter and that doesn't mean that I'm complaining about it. That's a way more minor issue than the Wizard. The issue is, the Wizard can completely overshadow anyone he chooses, at anything, and can trivially cast spells/use items to keep doing this. Unless, of course, your dorm room has more than fifty locks... But I doubt you'd burn through a Wand of Knock opening a few dungeon doors.

The crux of our disagreement seems to stem from fundamentally different points of view. You seem to think that it is bad for characters to have well defined niches, and to not act outside those niches (for the most part). I think this is good, and I have explained why several times already. Nobody's forced to play any class, either. Thats what's nice about D&D. The DM can taylor the game towards the players, so it's perfectly ok for a given group to not have certain capabilities.

There's also the matter of cooperation. That should happen before the dice start rolling. You are acting like people randomly decide what class they will be, while this is not the case. In literally every game I've been in, the group comes together before the first session and sorts out who will fill what roles, and it works out. If two people want the same class, go for it. But they are accepting ahead of time that there will be another character with their abilities. It isn't being suddenly and confusingly thrust upon them, like when the wizard rolls up his sleeves and crafts a bunch of wands/staffs/scrolls to obsolete the Rogue/Fighter/whatever.

[Calthropstu]

I never claimed that wizards have unlimited spells. But they have enough that they (1) almost certainly won't run out, and (2) can have items such as scrolls or wands. Just buy a wand of Knock. That's fifty straight uses right there, and you still have spell slots. Or any of the other multitude of spells that outmode character classes and abilities utterly. Then sure, let the rogue UMD it. He still isn't doing anything. It's the wizard.

First off, the fighter does his job fine. He fights. He gets his stick and he hits the other guy. If you're smart about it, he can hit him pretty hard, too. He's pretty basic. Sure, he needs some support, but that's just team play. No one character should cover every base.

The Truenamer, by contrast, is plagued by constant shortages of it's most basic abilities, as well as being forced to make ever increasing checks throughout the day to even use said abilities. The fact that it gets Gate at level 20 is irrelevant. I said the class has garbage design, and it does. It fails to create a class that can be effective and carry it's own weight without extreme optimization.

The difference between the Warblade and the Wizard is that the Warblade was more or less explicitly designed to be a Fighter that has a more active role. He's also typically better. But he's better than one class. At that one class' thing. The barbarian is also better than the fighter and that doesn't mean that I'm complaining about it. That's a way more minor issue than the Wizard. The issue is, the Wizard can completely overshadow anyone he chooses, at anything, and can trivially cast spells/use items to keep doing this. Unless, of course, your dorm room has more than fifty locks... But I doubt you'd burn through a Wand of Knock opening a few dungeon doors.

The crux of our disagreement seems to stem from fundamentally different points of view. You seem to think that it is bad for characters to have well defined niches, and to not act outside those niches (for the most part). I think this is good, and I have explained why several times already. Nobody's forced to play any class, either. Thats what's nice about D&D. The DM can taylor the game towards the players, so it's perfectly ok for a given group to not have certain capabilities.

There's also the matter of cooperation. That should happen before the dice start rolling. You are acting like people randomly decide what class they will be, while this is not the case. In literally every game I've been in, the group comes together before the first session and sorts out who will fill what roles, and it works out. If two people want the same class, go for it. But they are accepting ahead of time that there will be another character with their abilities. It isn't being suddenly and confusingly thrust upon them, like when the wizard rolls up his sleeves and crafts a bunch of wands/staffs/scrolls to obsolete the Rogue/Fighter/whatever.

No, they won't run out of spells.
They run out of USEFUL spells. They have to start struggling to find ways to use the spells they have, often failing. Because they have to prepare ahead of time, at a point where the usability of a given spell is unknown, they have to prepare a wide array of spells. Often, the wizard prepares a "often used" list of spells and just prepares that.
But when the person your party is chasing goes underground... the fly spells just got a whole lot less useful. A limited example, but you get what I am trying to say.
A 9th level wizard with 18 int might have 19 spells, but only about 8 of them will be useful.

[Zarrgon]

No, the imbalance is the problem. And the imbalance is a function of both the Wizard and the Fighter. People aren't upset by the powers of the Wizard because they think that it is somehow fundamentally unfair for one character to get Teleport, Lesser Planar Binding, Cloudkill, and Cone of Cold. They're upset because they think those abilities overshadow other claasses. And the reason those abilities do that, to the degree that they do, is because of the way those classes are written. It is not difficult to imagine a Binder or Warblade or Incarnate who is not overshadowed by the Wizard.

But the imbalance is a game problem. In a lot of ways.

No spellcaster can even come close to overshadowing another class unless the make a build that can do only that and nothing else and they will still be a lesser shadow, and then they can only do it a couple times a day. The martial character can do the abilities at will.

It requires a fairly easy game where the DM lets the wizard player get away with anything because they like magic or think magic should be all powerful.

And part of that is having a mundane game were foes have little or no magic. And having a game where foes have little or no common sense.

Really the complaint is more that ever class does not get the exact abilities the wizard gets.

[StevenC21]

Yeah, that is definitely a concern for the Wizard. Probably the biggest in fact.

This is another reason that it's really best to not prepare all your spells at once, and carry scrolls! The Wizard has Scribe Scroll as a class feat for a reason. Scrolls are good for exactly those sorts of scenarios where you might want that odd utility spell, but perhaps not right now. Or a wand, or really any consumable. You understand my meaning. The wizard's magic is only just beginning with his spell slots.

[NigelWalmsley]

I never claimed that wizards have unlimited spells. But they have enough that they (1) almost certainly won't run out, and (2) can have items such as scrolls or wands. Just buy a wand of Knock. That's fifty straight uses right there, and you still have spell slots. Or any of the other multitude of spells that outmode character classes and abilities utterly. Then sure, let the rogue UMD it. He still isn't doing anything. It's the wizard.

It's the item. The only class feature the Wizard has that's useful for using a Wand of Knock is "has Knock on his spell list". That's a class feature the Trapsmith, the Beguiler, and anyone with the Greed domain have. Are all of those classes overpowered?


It fails to create a class that can be effective and carry it's own weight without extreme optimization.

But what's the standard for carrying one's own weight? The Truenamer isn't literally useless, it has abilities, and they do things. Why isn't that level of thing-doing the baseline against which classes should be judged? Saying the Fighter is fine, but the Truenamer isn't is just as arbitrary as saying the Wizard is fine and the Fighter isn't.


The issue is, the Wizard can completely overshadow anyone he chooses, at anything, and can trivially cast spells/use items to keep doing this.

Except he can't. He can't completely overshadow a Beguiler, or a Psion, or a Cleric. There are, in fact, classes that can meaningfully compete with the Wizard, particularly in specific niches. You could reasonably make the argument that it's disappointing that they're all basically casters, but they do in fact exist.


You seem to think that it is bad for characters to have well defined niches, and to not act outside those niches (for the most part).

I have explained to you that this is false. You even quoted and replied to the post. You are conflating "has a niche" with "is unable to participate in some encounters". It is entirely possible for a character to have a defined niche, but still be able to contribute in a variety of situations. That is, in fact, how the game should work. Thus far your argument against this is that you are unable to imagine a scenario where a limited number of guaranteed successes is worse than an unlimited number of likely successes. That is a failure of imagination on your part.


The DM can taylor the game towards the players, so it's perfectly ok for a given group to not have certain capabilities.

But it makes the DM's job harder. The reason the CR system works is because the game is designed to allow you to make robust assumptions about the capabilities of characters in combat. And the CR system is a tremendously effective tool for allowing DMs to design adventures and encounters, because it massively reduces the amount of effort required to avoid overtuning or undertuning fights. We could have a similar system for non-combat encounters if we could make similarly robust assumptions there. Why would that be bad? What do we get from forcing the DM to look over everyone's character sheets so he doesn't send a party with no flight on a cloud city adventure?


You are acting like people randomly decide what class they will be, while this is not the case. In literally every game I've been in, the group comes together before the first session and sorts out who will fill what roles, and it works out.

Yes, you can force people to play the classes the group needs rather than the ones they want. But, again, why do we want to do that? Why not just set things up so people can play the classes they want to and have things work out without finagling the rest of the party or DM fudging? I understand that you can have fun playing a Fighter. But that doesn't mean all the design decisions that go into the Fighter are good. Thus far your defense of the class appears to be that it is not literally so bad that you are better of not playing D&D. Which, sure. But can you maybe see how people might aspire to a slightly higher standard than that? How we might want class designs that are "actively good" instead of "not offensively terrible"?

[StevenC21]

Nobody forced anyone into any class. The whole point of that was, people get to pick the class they want, and it works. It's no more difficulty on the DM: He was already tailoring encounters to the party.

Yes, other classes can do things like item crafting. But the Wizard does it best. Arcane spell list > Divine spell list for crafting, and the Wizard gets the most arcane spells typically, therefore, he has the most options for crafting. Which means he can craft way better than those other classes... Which reinforces my point.

The Psion and the Cleric are other examples of hopelessly broken classes, I hope you realize that. I will say that the primary problem with the system is magic, not wizards specifically, but I believe that Wizards are best equipped to push into other niches.

Ok. Speaking of niches. What I am trying to communicate is that it is good for players to cooperate, when the situation involves more than one person. In that case, sure, it's fantastic to have two guys with beaty sticks to keep beating the bad guys with. But as before, unlocking doors, being sneaky, etc, the Wizard does it all best. And he can craft items to do it all day long without using up his precious spell slots. And a lot of those out of combat activities only require one person doing them, so it only makes sense for the person to who does it best to do them.

I will confess that you had a good enough argument before about the Wizard losing out on other spells by preparing Knock... But then I remembered he can just craft a wand and get 50 uses, no spell slots required. Even other caster classes have a bigger investment due to their spell lists being more constricted (ex. Sorcerer) or just flatly limited (ex. Beguiler).

The Wizard can in fact pull off any tricks the Beguiler can, and due to the wealth of ACFs and other neat little hidden gems, he can actually end up with more spell slots than the Beguiler. Sure, in that particular case, he can lose versatility, but as always, there are ways around it. And as long as he isn't an idiot and ban Conjuration, he'll still almost certainly have a wide range of spells. Depending on the method you use, it could be as simple as a Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle.

Or you could just make some scrolls on days you feel like being a Beguiler-but-better...

[Doctor Awkward]

No, it isn't. Knock is not free.
Indeed it is not. It costs 4,500 gp: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wands.htm
At the rate of exchange of a fully charged wand, that's fifty doors or chests for 90 gp each. One midnight run into the castle vault and the wand more than pays for itself.



No, the imbalance is the problem. And the imbalance is a function of both the Wizard and the Fighter. People aren't upset by the powers of the Wizard because they think that it is somehow fundamentally unfair for one character to get Teleport, Lesser Planar Binding, Cloudkill, and Cone of Cold. They're upset because they think those abilities overshadow other claasses. And the reason those abilities do that, to the degree that they do, is because of the way those classes are written. It is not difficult to imagine a Binder or Warblade or Incarnate who is not overshadowed by the Wizard.

On the contrary I'm having quite a hard time imagining how anyone could think that any other classes ability to hit things is even remotely comparable to the wizard's ability to stop time on a whim.


The players are expected to win encounters. The difference between "winning" and "winning more" is exactly what "being overpowered" means.

Players are expected to overcome encounters, not "win" them. Mechanically, D&D is supposed to be a game about resource management. The fact that there's a good chance a wizard has at least one spell prepared that can end an encounter with a single casting is fundamental problem of the wizard that skews this mechanic far worse than any other singular class feature in the game.

[Psychoalpha]

It is not difficult to imagine a Binder or Warblade or Incarnate who is not overshadowed by the Wizard.

This goes back to the age old problem that people want martials who are both not overshadowed by casters AND who don't rely on any anime style nonsense. I'm not one of those people, I think Book of Nine Swords was a step in the right direction but not far enough due to not enough versatility in much of it, and I'd like to see more of it. 4E ironically did the best job of this by both eliminating most out of combat power use and homogenizing the kind of stuff classes could do, while still giving them plenty of epic looking powers, but most everyone seems to have despised it for... doing exactly that.


In literally every game I've been in, the group comes together before the first session and sorts out who will fill what roles, and it works out.

This is my experience as well, but it's come up more than a few times here that this is not only not always the case, but that it's actually pretty normal for people to have no idea what anyone else is going to play in games run online or in game stores, etc. I find it an entirely unwise way to run a game, but it is what it is.


Nobody forced anyone into any class. The whole point of that was, people get to pick the class they want, and it works.

Maybe not deliberately 'force' anyone into a class, but I've absolutely played a Cleric or Wizard a few times specifically because looking at the rest of the team composition I was going to have to build as universally competent a build as I could just to shore up the glaring weaknesses in the party composition. My one forray as an Archivist was after finding out everyone else wanted to play martials and we were otherwise going to have no Arcane or Divine magic even after the DM warned he wasn't going to alter the world to compensate.

All of which also ties back to the other argument that goes around here: It doesn't matter how OP casters are to any given table that's fine with it, because the players aren't jerks who do more than they need to just because they can, or rub everyone's faces in it.


Beguiler

Man, I loved the Beguiler. I still think 'Wizard' would have been better off split into a bunch of those classes: Beguiler, Warmage, Dread Necromancer, etc. But with better class design where necessary, I seem to recall Dread Necromancer had a few issues.

I had some responses to Droid Tony, but I honestly can't even imagine a perspective where somebody thinks the only way Wizards or other casters are more powerful and versatile than Fighters is one where the DM is house ruling things in their favor. Like... yes, if a given DM goes out of his way to screw over martials and favor casters that will be the case, and if the DM goes out of his way to screw over casters and favor martials the opposite will be true, but in a situation where the DM isn't trying to screw anyone over and offers equal opportunities to act to everyone casters are more powerful and more versatile because they have more ways to act in more situations. That's just some basic reality of how the game is written.

[sorcererlover]

Well that's just not true. It's true enough at level 7, sure, but by 10 you're up to at least 4 in a day, even for a conservatively built generalist. At the other extreme, a 14th level focused transmuter who's made himself a ring of wizardy IV is swinging around 11 fourth level slots and can do a -lot- more than just cast polymorph with them. He's also far enough into the game that fourth level slots are excellent candidates for leaving open for on the spot filling other than one "just in case" polymorph, which you can just put in the next one after you use it in each battle.

I don't think that's the best way to allocate your funds as a wizard, personally, but if you're in the "the spells are all that matter" camp then I should think it would be difficult to justify -not- getting the most powerful ring of wizardry you can get your grubby mits on.

Mind, that's specialized in transmutation in general, not polymorph in particular. You don't cross that line until you pick up something like assume supernatural ability or multiattack or start take levels in something like master transmogrifist.

Most of d&d happens at low levels. When polymorphing into hydras is the optimal play you don't have enough polymorphs. Once you do have enough polymorphs polymorphing into hydras is a terrible thing to do because you're exposing yourself to Save or Dies which are now fully available to your opposition. And Dispel Magic. And like you said rings of wizardry aren't worth it and you need to blow all of your WBL to get one level relevant one.


I prefer non-casters over casters for most of my melee builds but that's certainly not why. For one, you say "many, many creatures that can dispel at will" when I can't think of even one off the top of my head. A bit of google-fu reveals a few at the upper end of the CR scale, all with CLs that would have a tough time matching an equal level caster or even one a few levels lower.

Magic items, on the other hand, tend to have relatively low caster levels, outside of a few of the most basic +number items. They can't be permanently undone by a simple dispel or greater dispel but they very much can be suppressed for a few critical rounds.

Now as for dispelling in general being rare, you have a perfectly valid point. If your PCs never face a creature with it as an SLA or an enemy caster, that's very much letting the PCs slide on an area where you can, on occasion, nail 'em. It's hardly an achilles heel for most builds but it does warrant consideration from both sides of the screen.

At-will, 3/day, it's all the same thing. If your opponent has enough dispel magics for like 3 rounds you're good as useless. And this is assuming polymorph. If you're a gish that uses long duration buffs then even one dispel magic is too many let alone 3. Or 6 because your DM threw in more than one dispeller.

Magic Items don't get suppressed unless directly targeted by dispel magic. Since that is a terrible waste of action economy dispellers will only do targeted dispels on creatures or not do it at all.

If your DM doesn't throw in dedicated dispellers in most encounters he's giving spellcasters a license to go nuts. How do you stop a encounter ending BFC spell? Counter spell it. Simple as that. DMs have enough tools to deal with spellcasters to the point wizards need fighters to take out the dispellers first. So honestly it's the DM's fault if wizards outfight fighters.


Again, a half-truth. Planar binding (a problem in itself, rather than a problematic aspect of any particular class) is, indeed, available through domains (meaning to literally anyone). At the same time, there are -many- good wizard spells that do -not- appear on any domain list.

Why do you need all good wizard spells when you have all good cleric spells and access to most if not all of the best wizard spells? Shapechange, Wish, Planar Binding, PaO, Disjunction, etc. All of them are on a domain.


Also, shapechange is better than PAO. When you can nab the SUs of a whole host of creatures, the debuff and BFC uses of PAO become much less impressive.

Why do you need shapechange when you have the no-save-just-die spell that is PaO? And PaO is better because white ethergaunt stuff for impossibly high save dcs are better unless you're cheesing wishes out of Su abilities. For wizards that is. Ethergaunts are useless to clerics.


And this one's just flatly false. You can get something passable to fill the beatstick role but it won't come close to a dedicated PC beatstick. Even beyond that, skilled spell selection will allow you to buff, debuff, and corral allies and enemies such that otherwise impossible tasks become possible and difficult tasks become trivial for both you and your allies.

I mean, honestly, that's the whole wizard archetype in a nutshell: use a broad array of tools to bend reality to your favor such that problems get solved.

I bring out a pit fiend, a core monster, at level 15 with a core spell, my martial party members and DM are gonna get angry. Martials maybe able to do more damage in the right build but none can come close to the pit fiend's sheer survivability.

[Kelb_Panthera]

There is very little that an Elven Generalist with the right ACF's and feats and prestige classes cannot do.

ACFs, feats, and prestige classes are permanent build resources. The claim that you can do anyone's role better than they can -and- switch from one role to the next day by day is broken the instant you expend a permanent resource.

I don't know how anyone could argue, in good faith, that taking a prestige class that combines wizard with a specialized class is not, in fact, becoming a specialist in the same role. A wizard/ rogue/ unseen seer is -very much- in the skillful skirmisher role just like a bog-standard rogue is. It's probably as good or better at it than an equally optimized rogue. I think you'd be awfully hard pressed to say that wizard was at the core of such a character's identity though.



It's not just about sneaking around. The open lock skill check is obviated by a spell. Disarming traps is obviated by a spell. By the time you reach the point that extraordinary senses make silence and invisibility impractical, the wizard is scrying and teleporting into places they need to get and reaching into the Astral Plane to steal something they need. Yes there are spells to fight back against all of this but that makes just makes the rogue even less relevant.

Knock, even a wand of the same, is far from a perfect solution to the problem of locked doors and portals. For one, it's utterly useless if the door is too big. It's -loud- and, in the case of wands and scrolls, expensive too. 90gp per door (minimum) is pretty abysmal compared to the rogue's 0 recurring cost. Rogues can, probably should, carry a wand of knock too, just in case a take 20 isn't adequate or stealth's already blown and you're in a -big- hurry. After a certain point it's pretty unlikely that a take 20 won't be adequate. At high level, hitting the DC to open most locks as a move or even a free action on a take 10 shouldn't be out of reach. That last is something a wiard can't emulate at all unless he is specialized to the same role and can hit similar check results.

What spell did you have in mind for obviating traps? I can think of ways to attempt to skip past them and to set them off from a "safe" distance but, other than dispel magic with magical traps, nothing springs to mind for disarming them and in any case you still have to find them. Find traps is a cleric spell, not a wizard one, and it ony allows you to make the check with a bonus. It doesn't actually make you good at it.


My point was that spells are once again obviating skill checks. Regardless of how you build a noble they are still going to have to roll. A cleverly played wizard often doesn't.

You say "obviate," I say "ape poorly." People that realize they have been charmed rarely take kindly to the fact. Those who are dominated even less so and those around someone who's been replaced get downright irate about it when they find out. Like, figurative pitchforks and torches irate.


All of that is about good roleplaying. You don't need to make skill checks to accomplish any of those things. You can command respect and fear by simply listening to your enemy and saying, "Yes, but I am a wizard though."
The sole fact that you present yourself as literally untouchable does things for RP that a skill check can never do.

People react -very- differently to being convinced to do things than they do to being coerced or manipulated into it. The might makes right approach you're presenting here is the only one you -can- do with magic. Being able to speak convincingly, nevermind avoid being verbally deceived, is a function of skill checks. It's as simple as that.

As for being untouchable, powerful nobles -are- largely untouchable and are perfectly capable of using the exact same threat/argument. You can get there with the leadership and landlord feats on any character, regardless of class.




Yes, I meant bard as a stand-in for the general support role. There are entire guides written around the fact that a wizard is the ultimate support character to any given party. They are GOD. The party succeeds because the wizard enables them to succeed. And alternatively they can just prepare different spells that day and win the encounter themselves without the party's help.

I tend to agree that the best use for a wizard is to fulfill the role of party support when he's not doing the few things that -only- a caster can do. That doesn't change fact that there are things a bard can do that a wizard simply can't. The wizard preparing the perfect spells to win an encounter are pretty dependent on him knowing that encounter is coming. All the best generalit approaches are better suited to supporting other characters than enabling the wizard to do it.


In any given balance discussion, the well-played wizard is always the problem.

Yeah but a -lot- of those discussions center on class to the exclusion of all else or spring from a wizard that's well out of line with the rest of his party and GM on the optimization curve. The rest hilight the problem spells and attribute them to the wizard even though they're a unique problem that is just most frequently manifest from a wizard even though they're -far- from exclusive to him.


It still wins encounters. It's not the difference between winning and not winning. It's winning and winning more.

It wins -some- encounters. It helps in others without altogether ending them, and in still others it's completely useless. Polymorph is almost always relevant and, if you know the right forms and have a suitable target, it's usually potent enough to trivialize an encounter without giving the enemy a chance to do anything about it unless they can either interupt, counter, or dispel the casting.

In a nutshell; you might regret having prepared cloudkill on any given day. You'll almot never regret preparing polymorph.

If the name of the game is resource management, and the wizard's tradeoff for being able to pick from an absolute laundry list of options for his limited resource is that he has absolutely less of it than other classes and functionally less still, then it's completely against the wizard's design goal to have an option that's dramatically better than anything else of the same level (and a lot of stuff up to a few levels higher) that works for most situations. it's actually a problem for any class that casts spells and has access but it's most egregious on a wizard.

Polymorph et al is just a badly designed spell and planar binding et al is even worse. At least wildshape is limited to one of the weakest types in the game unless you're going to sink -major- resources into improving it. If natural spell didn't exist it'd probably even be outright acceptable.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Most of d&d happens at low levels. When polymorphing into hydras is the optimal play you don't have enough polymorphs. Once you do have enough polymorphs polymorphing into hydras is a terrible thing to do because you're exposing yourself to Save or Dies which are now fully available to your opposition. And Dispel Magic. And like you said rings of wizardry aren't worth it and you need to blow all of your WBL to get one level relevant one.

Level 10 is hardly what I'd call "high level." It's pretty squarely in the middle, actually. A focused specialist transmuter (still not a polymorph specialist) has 3 fourth level slots the instant he gets them and that bumps up to 5 by the next level with near certainty. Those first 3 all have to be transmutations so there's no good reason not to drop a polymorph in one of them. That's at least one encounter you get to just "nope" without substantially impeding whatever else you might want to do that day. 350 gp and 28xp a pop for scrolls isn't exactly bank-breaking either and it's not like there's much difference between a scroll and a slot on the level you get it.

Like I said, a level 7 generalist (both class and archetype) probably isn't popping off more than one on a given day but that's because it's likely the best thing he can do with his only L4 slot and his 2s and 3s are still pretty relevant.

Polymorphing yourself into a hydra is almost never the optimal play unless your whole group is comprised of squishy caster types or you're a full-on gish. If there's a dedicated warrior present, hit him with the polymorph. He'll make better use of the enhanced abilities than you anyway and you can continue casting as needed. At higher levels, that remains true and a whole host of better options that are compatible with PC gear have opened up too. Polymorph is almost always a good solution to a problem. That doesn't necessarily mean that polymorphing -yourself- is always that solution.

And of course, I can't get into a polymorph argument without reminding everyone that it's -not- exclusive to anyone. It appears on several lists and domains and can even be bought in a non-magical one-off version for 1700 gp; a gold dragon blood elixir.



At-will, 3/day, it's all the same thing. If your opponent has enough dispel magics for like 3 rounds you're good as useless. And this is assuming polymorph. If you're a gish that uses long duration buffs then even one dispel magic is too many let alone 3. Or 6 because your DM threw in more than one dispeller.

No, my dude. That's a -huge- difference. A dispel at CL=CR is gonna knock off less than half of a caster's buffs unless it's a CR a few points higher than the party's level. Then there's the other 2 or 3 enemies it might want to hit. If it can dispel at will, it can kite you until enough of 'em stick to even the fight out a bit. With only a couple per day; it's gotta shoot, cross its proverbial fingers, and get on with it.

If it's one of several in a larger battle, you might have a point for boss fights. At EL equal to party level though, those are gonna be at a CL even further below the mage's and you'll be lucky if -any- of them get stripped away on any given attempt. A dozen dispels at 6 to 8 CL lower than you might make you nervous but they're unlikely to actually be a problem.

All of that, assuming that we're actually looking at a level low enough that dispel magic isn't hitting its +10 CL dispel check cap or that the creature has greater dispel.


Magic Items don't get suppressed unless directly targeted by dispel magic. Since that is a terrible waste of action economy dispellers will only do targeted dispels on creatures or not do it at all.

That's your opinion and highly situational. Dispelling the fighter's sword when you are or can be incorporeal is hardly a wasted action. Wacking a sorcerer or wizard's runestaff to reduce his combat options is pretty solid too. Still likewise; a rogue's ring of invisibility, both in and out of combat. Trying to sweep away a buff suite is definitely a good use of the effect but it's hardly the only good one.


If your DM doesn't throw in dedicated dispellers in most encounters he's giving spellcasters a license to go nuts. How do you stop a encounter ending BFC spell? Counter spell it. Simple as that. DMs have enough tools to deal with spellcasters to the point wizards need fighters to take out the dispellers first. So honestly it's the DM's fault if wizards outfight fighters.

Woah, woah, woah. Dispelling is a -long- ways from the only way to deal with spellcasters. BFC can be handled by having creatures with multiple movement modes and/or incorporeal/ethereal capability. There's also using areas that are too open or too tight for most BFC to be a viable option. Then there's using creatures that are outright immune to the PC's favored BFC. Prime example: have you ever tried to use BFC on a xorn in an underdark tunnel that's only 20 ft wide? It just plain doesn't work. You're -not- pinning it down and if you cut off the tunnel you limit your own options for escape in an environment where teleportation is potentially dangerous. If it decides to scoot and rat you out to other denizens of the deeps, there's not a lot you can do about it either.

Now on the matter of dispel magic as a fight complication, somebody actively casting it from a slot or SLA isn't strictly necessary either. Real fun one: hallowed ground. Once each round a dispel magic effect sweeps through the whole area and it can be set to hit either everyone or everyone of a given faith or alignment. Alternately, intelligent trap that's on the defender's side and just spams chained dispel magic at everyone and everything that it doesn't recognize as an ally until it stops detecting magic auras. Then there's simple antigmagic sigils (SBG) just hedging out -all- of the magic that anyone would use in a room.

And of course, there're a hundred and one specific counters to specific spell effects, a lot of them non-magical.




Why do you need all good wizard spells when you have all good cleric spells and access to most if not all of the best wizard spells? Shapechange, Wish, Planar Binding, PaO, Disjunction, etc. All of them are on a domain.

You can get all of those by combining a couple but there's no single domain with all of them. You can get 'em all on one cleric. That said, those are only "the best" spells, not all of the good ones on the wizard list. The spell domain goes a -long- way toward enabling use of most of them but you only get -a- domain slot per level per day. If you want the wizard's versatility -and- staying power, you need to actually be one.

Not that cleric isn't one of the top 6 anyway. He does, indeed, have a number of good spells at each level on his own list. He's pretty tough to deal with too but the slightly inferior preparation mechanic just edges him out for potency. A cleric has to prepare his spells at the one, designated time of day every day and doesn't have the option to leave them open for on the spot prep like a wizard does.


Why do you need shapechange when you have the no-save-just-die spell that is PaO? And PaO is better because white ethergaunt stuff for impossibly high save dcs are better unless you're cheesing wishes out of Su abilities. For wizards that is. Ethergaunts are useless to clerics.

Not sure where you're getting that "no save" idea but it's just plain wrong. The spell offers a save to anyone you target with it and if you're using it to buff yourself then it's no different from it's little brother. Pumping your int by going black ethergaunt is nice but hardly a game breaker and only lasts for an hour at a time unless you're cheesing a persist. Shapechanging into one, on the other hand, gets you outright immunity to arcane spells that offer spell resistance of level 6 and lower, lasts more than twice as long, and allows you to swap forms from round to round as a free action. Sounds a heck of a lot better to me than a save DC boost, even as big a one as the +6 you're potentially talking about here.


I bring out a pit fiend, a core monster, at level 15 with a core spell, my martial party members and DM are gonna get angry. Martials maybe able to do more damage in the right build but none can come close to the pit fiend's sheer survivability.

On the numbers game, a warrior class PC is in a dead heat with the pit fiend at the designers idea of minimum competence. Seriously, take a human, start at 15 str, improve it at each level up, and get all the level appropriate +X to Y bonus items and you hit just as hard, are just as hard to hit, and are largely unconcerned by effects that call for a fort save. You've also still got a pretty substantial chunk of your WBL left.

If you back most expensive elements of that up by one step, spend smart with the rest of your remaining WBL, and pick a race that actually gives you -something- then you're easily just as capable if not moreso even if you kinda half-ass the optimization of your class. Go high op with it all around and you'll laugh in that stupid devil's face right before you rip it off.

This is one of those memes in this community that just really needs to die already.

[NigelWalmsley]

Yes, other classes can do things like item crafting. But the Wizard does it best. Arcane spell list > Divine spell list for crafting, and the Wizard gets the most arcane spells typically, therefore, he has the most options for crafting. Which means he can craft way better than those other classes... Which reinforces my point.

Magic item crafting is not really that big of a deal. You trade GP for XP and time at some rate, and you spend your feats on magic item crafting instead of stuff that makes you directly more powerful. To use the specific example, I am not at all convinced that getting a Wand of Knock for 4,500 GP is "okay" and getting it for 2,250 GP, 180 XP, five days crafting time, and taking Craft Wand is "not okay". That's what the Wizard is actually getting.


The Psion and the Cleric are other examples of hopelessly broken classes, I hope you realize that.

Of course, they can compete with the Wizard, which we know a priori is overpowered. Therefore they must be overpowered. It can't possibly be that D&D 3.5 has a range of power levels, and they are at one of them.


Ok. Speaking of niches. What I am trying to communicate is that it is good for players to cooperate, when the situation involves more than one person.

Then shouldn't people have abilities that allow them to be involved in a variety of situations? People keep saying "it is good to do <thing Wizards do>", observing that other classes don't do it and the Wizard does, and blaming the Wizard. That doesn't make any sense!


the Wizard does it all best.

No, he doesn't. There are classes that compete with the Wizard. You can also think those classes are broken (in fact, you do). But they exist.


And a lot of those out of combat activities only require one person doing them, so it only makes sense for the person to who does it best to do them.

A lot of out of combat activities get glossed over because most characters can't contribute to them. If people had relevant abilities, they would be more richly detailed. You don't have to solve the infiltration challenge by just having the Rogue roll Open Lock, it just ends up happening that way because if you made it more involved, the Fighter would have to sit down and shut up until it was over. That's a bad paradigm, and you fix it by making classes more like the Wizard.


Even other caster classes have a bigger investment due to their spell lists being more constricted (ex. Sorcerer) or just flatly limited (ex. Beguiler).

The Beguiler has a smaller investment in using Knock. She can dynamically swap combat spells for Knock, rather than committing to a tradeoff before the day begins. That is an advantage she has over the Wizard, because the Wizard is, in fact, not straight up better than every other class. He's better than classes he's better than, but so is the Warblade.


Indeed it is not. It costs 4,500 gp: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wands.htm
At the rate of exchange of a fully charged wand, that's fifty doors or chests for 90 gp each. One midnight run into the castle vault and the wand more than pays for itself.

You understand that Rogues get UMD, right? It's a skill they can take, and it allows them to use a Wand of Knock as well. So it's hard to make the case that Wands of Knock allow Wizards to obsolete Rogues. You could make the case that it's kind of stupid for a magic item to replace a skill check, and I would probably agree, but it seems to me that the problem there is with the item, not the class. Knock coming out of spell slots -- i.e. the thing the Wizard actually does as a class -- is not unbalanced compared to Open Lock.


On the contrary I'm having quite a hard time imagining how anyone could think that any other classes ability to hit things is even remotely comparable to the wizard's ability to stop time on a whim.

I don't remotely understand how you think this is responsive. Yes, the Wizard is better than the Fighter. That's totally true. The problem is that it's ridiculous to say that the only reason that's true is because of the Wizard. It's a comparison between two things. The result of that comparison is based on both things. The reason the difference between 4 and 12 is 8 isn't exclusively "because of 12".


Players are expected to overcome encounters, not "win" them.

Distinction without a difference. The expected outcome is that the opposition is defeated and the players are not. That is a state of affairs that any reasonable person would call "winning".


Mechanically, D&D is supposed to be a game about resource management. The fact that there's a good chance a wizard has at least one spell prepared that can end an encounter with a single casting is fundamental problem of the wizard that skews this mechanic far worse than any other singular class feature in the game.

The Wizard isn't winning most encounters with a single spell. If you disagree, feel free to show me how a Wizard with an a priori reasonable spell selection wins a slate of encounters you think is representative with a single spell at some level or levels. This should be fairly easy to do if you are right, as you can just list the single spell.

But even insofar as you are right about how many resources the Wizard needs to expend to win encounters, you are wrong that he's warping resource management more than any other class. He's still expending resources to win encounters. He has some finite number of spells, and even if every single one of them wins a level-appropriate encounter, he will eventually run out. That is not true of, say, a Warlock. Modulo a couple of things you don't really care about (e.g. Fiendish Resilience), all the Warlock's abilities are at will. He simply doesn't expend resources to win encounters.

[Efrate]

On binding a pit fiend, the problem more arises from you can get for free an equal or better fighter than fighter at most op. levels. Your average fighter making smart choices does not compare. Most fighters I have played with or DM for will not make optimal choices because there is too many traps and they want to play guy who hits stuff good. In practical terms it means no shock trooper or PA doubling stuff, no extreme size strength and reach trippers. No dungeon crashers, no zhent fighters. Just pretty basic non prc fighters.

Even if you use one of those builds it is a significant amount of you wbl etc. and/or dependency on your caster. It's a few spell slots for your wizard to bring a pretty competent above EL threat that is totally expendable. That requires no wbl, a few slots which renew daily that you cast once Even just 1 bound pit fiend is pretty equivalent to a 5th party member which skews in your favor, and has a good chance to make someone feel obsolete, plus it comes with a bunch of slas for even more use.

Not necessarily just a wizard but definitely a GPB problem.
The fact that for virtually no cost you get a passable or superior fighter is an issue.

[Kelb_Panthera]

On binding a pit fiend, the problem more arises from you can get for free an equal or better fighter than fighter at most op. levels. Your average fighter making smart choices does not compare. Most fighters I have played with or DM for will not make optimal choices because there is too many traps and they want to play guy who hits stuff good. In practical terms it means no shock trooper or PA doubling stuff, no extreme size strength and reach trippers. No dungeon crashers, no zhent fighters. Just pretty basic non prc fighters.

Even if you use one of those builds it is a significant amount of you wbl etc. and/or dependency on your caster. It's a few spell slots for your wizard to bring a pretty competent above EL threat that is totally expendable. That requires no wbl, a few slots which renew daily that you cast once Even just 1 bound pit fiend is pretty equivalent to a 5th party member which skews in your favor, and has a good chance to make someone feel obsolete, plus it comes with a bunch of slas for even more use.

Not necessarily just a wizard but definitely a GPB problem.
The fact that for virtually no cost you get a passable or superior fighter is an issue.

Just went over this at the end of a much longer post. You would have to be so fundamentally incompetent at character design that you thought a gray elf, single class fighter with vow of poverty was a good idea to not be able to match the pit fiend on the numbers with a pretty good chunk of money leftover.

You can get a -barely- passable fighter replacement through calling spells. Now that can be a problem when no cost is assessed, as with the common interpretation of how planar binding works, but that's -still- a problem with the spell, not the class that casts it.

[Calthropstu]

Indeed it is not. It costs 4,500 gp: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wands.htm
At the rate of exchange of a fully charged wand, that's fifty doors or chests for 90 gp each. One midnight run into the castle vault and the wand more than pays for itself.




On the contrary I'm having quite a hard time imagining how anyone could think that any other classes ability to hit things is even remotely comparable to the wizard's ability to stop time on a whim.


Players are expected to overcome encounters, not "win" them. Mechanically, D&D is supposed to be a game about resource management. The fact that there's a good chance a wizard has at least one spell prepared that can end an encounter with a single casting is fundamental problem of the wizard that skews this mechanic far worse than any other singular class feature in the game.

Other classes can also stop time on a whim. Sorcerers can also do it and, as I have pointed out, even out wizard the wizard at high levels of optimization. Same with psions. Clerics CAN do it as well with the time domain. Oracles in PF can do so as well. You can also purchase items that will allow you to do so. The higher the optimization, the less OP wizards become.
It is not wizards, but magic that is op.

@NigelWalmsley Yes, that is exactly what I am saying as well. And, given how often I see wizards just fall apart, I am MUCH more inclined to agree with wizards being far weaker than other spell casting classes. I watch wizards VERY often have literally nothing to throw at an enemy. More so than any other class. "I fire my crossbow" is far more often stated than a sorcerer of equal level.

[Segev]

Years ago, when the WotC Optimization Forum was in its frenzy over absolute game balance that eventually led to 4E, I was in an Epic-level D&D game. There was another player who, for reasons I won't go into, had a personal dislike of me, and had gone out of his way to find an excuse to kill my last character. When he heard I was bringing in a new one, he decided to create a new character with a more flexible alignment (which I'm sure had nothing to do with wanting an IC excuse to kill the other new character). He decided to build a primary caster who would demonstrate that a rogue is entirely obsoleted at epic levels by a spellcaster.

He is one of the best optimizers I have ever met. He nevertheless got frustrated and quit when his myriad tricks turned out to be resource-intensive in terms not only of spell slots, but of action economy. He kept trying to take multiple swift and immediate actions every turn, without any extras of them. He optimized hard to bend spells towards sneaking and dodging and bypassing locks, but got stymied by simple things that an actual rogue would have just rolled a skill check to breeze past.

I don't even remember the last straw, but in the end, he quit the game because his spellcaster-to-replace-a-rogue proved to be less useful than a fairly straight-foward barbarian build at doing rogue things in truly epic levels. The DM wasn't even deliberately targeting him; the DM just had epic level monsters and NPCs who did things like rig up AMFs and have Dispel traps.

So, in my experience, while wizards might be able to replace any class by dedicating themselves to it, they still won't do it as well as that original class. Sure, they're still wizards with more other versatility, but the harder they try to be a replacement character class, the less of that versatility they bring to bear.

[StevenC21]

That's an anecdote, and a bad one at that. If he is truly a competent optimizer, at epic levels he should have arbitrarily high INT (and thus, arbitrarily high spell slot numbers). As well as being able to take hundreds of actions a round.

Your friend is not a very good optimizer.

[NigelWalmsley]

Years ago, when the WotC Optimization Forum was in its frenzy over absolute game balance that eventually led to 4E

This is revisionism. It wasn't concerns over game balance that lead to 4e, it was the faction that militantly described those concerns as "Wizards OP". 4e is exactly what you get when you listen to people who think the Wizard is the problem. That's part of why I'm so opposed to that perspective on the problem. We've seen the solutions it leads you to, and they produced the most unpopular edition of D&D ever made.

[StevenC21]

4e was a result of way more than "wizard op". That, sir, is the example of historical revisionism I'm seeing. Besides, precious few people seem to truly hate the 4e combat system, in theory. The usual complaints are that that's ALL the game is, a tabletop game translated to a MMO and then backtranslated to a tabletop game again. 4e has a good combat system with well defined character roles, who don't trod over each other. And it works really well, actually. It just so happens that there were a few poor implementation details, such as the overreliance on having access to real, physical grids to play on, and how the fans were skeptical of the new style (not abilities, style) of the magic system. The idea of having one-off cards (daily/encounter powers) was not well received by those who were used to preparing spells the good old Vancian way.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Guys, 4e is the result of WotC being a for-profit company and the market for 3e being pretty thoroughly saturated. A new edition is -much- more appealing to a wide swath of players than just another splatbook and it lacking the splat-bloat makes it more likely to attract new players.

The design goals that led to every class being so samey certainly stemmed from the incessant whinging about balance, I'm sure, but to attribute it to any particular class or set of classes seems to be naked conjecture with little basis in anything to me. There's no doubt that some ideas where picked up from the forums but I strongly suspect the balance point they were aiming at was somewhere between the two extremes of poorly optimized CW samurai and heavily optimized StP erudite. Exactly where in between is -very- difficult to say.

[NigelWalmsley]

Besides, precious few people seem to truly hate the 4e combat system, in theory. The usual complaints are that that's ALL the game is,

Wow, it's almost like they discarded the class with the most non-combat utility because they thought it was the problem. Which class was that again? Oh, right, it was the Wizard. If you were mad that 4e didn't have non-combat stuff for you to do, and you also think the Wizard is the problem in 3e, your position is just not coherent.

Also, people do hate the 4e combat system. It's super grindy, super boring, and results in fights that are over in ever meaningful sense long before they actually finish.


Guys, 4e is the result of WotC being a for-profit company and the market for 3e being pretty thoroughly saturated.

I mean, maybe WotC thought that, but it was clearly not. Pathfinder continued to print basically-3e material for most of a decade, and at various points outsold 4e. There was certainly a market for a new edition, but the market was very much for something that iterated on 3e, not something that lit it on fire and danced on the ashes.

[StevenC21]

That's a straw man argument. They didn't just strip out the Wizard's out of combat functionality, they ripped out ALL of it. From all classes, equally.

Naturally, the Wizard got hit far harder than other classes of course, because he has way way too much utility.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I mean, maybe WotC thought that, but it was clearly not. Pathfinder continued to print basically-3e material for most of a decade, and at various points outsold 4e. There was certainly a market for a new edition, but the market was very much for something that iterated on 3e, not something that lit it on fire and danced on the ashes.

Nah, they were right enough. Pathfinder is -very- similar to 3e but it's just different enough to be, effectively, a new version. The streamlining (:smallyuk:), the creation of the archetype system, the overhaul of some of the more egregious elements of the system (even if they did go and make the same mistakes afterwards) all added up to something new enough that there was exactly the same kind of changeover that 4e D&D saw.

If anything, the only thing WotC was wrong about on that front was just how much they really needed to change. TBF, they went -way- off the mark on that one. Far enough that I'm comfortable putting forward the idea that PFs success can be attributed, in no small part, to 4e's overzealous overcorrections. 5e is -much- closer to where they should've gone in the first place. I honestly wonder if 5e's mechanics had been what we got for 4e, would patfinder have been half the success it was? Would there even be a 5th edition of D&D yet?

[upho]

This is revisionism. It wasn't concerns over game balance that lead to 4e, it was the faction that militantly described those concerns as "Wizards OP". 4e is exactly what you get when you listen to people who think the Wizard is the problem.You mean a D&D edition in which the class named "wizard" is the most powerful in its "controller primary combat role" category and one of the most powerful and versatile classes in the entire game? Yeah, what you say here just makes such perfect sense! And it's so refreshingly free of the revisionism and obvious confirmation bias which plague other people's comments on 4E. You know, those guys who have very little actual 4E system mastery, yet point to the edition as if it was some kind of disaster waiting to strike again unless everyone agrees with their particular ideas and opinions on D&D...


That's part of why I'm so opposed to that perspective on the problem. We've seen the solutions it leads you to, and they produced the most unpopular edition of D&D ever made.Amen. And of course 4E is the one and only possible outcome if you give the Evil militant "Wizards OP"-faction as much as an inch. Which is indeed confirmed when following the obvious traces leading up to each and every catastrophic design failure in that abomination of a D&D game, all of them leading straight back to a main objective on that Evil militant wizard-hating faction's agenda.


4e was a result of way more than "wizard op". That, sir, is the example of historical revisionism I'm seeing. Besides, precious few people seem to truly hate the 4e combat system, in theory. The usual complaints are that that's ALL the game is, a tabletop game translated to a MMO and then backtranslated to a tabletop game again. 4e has a good combat system with well defined character roles, who don't trod over each other. And it works really well, actually. It just so happens that there were a few poor implementation details, such as the overreliance on having access to real, physical grids to play on, and how the fans were skeptical of the new style (not abilities, style) of the magic system. The idea of having one-off cards (daily/encounter powers) was not well received by those who were used to preparing spells the good old Vancian way.Yep. And thankfully, it seems that as an increasing number of people have become capable of looking at 4E with more objective eyes rather than those of a crazed zealot in the edition wars, the willingness to pilfer and reuse the game's greatest design ideas has grown (notably the many quite fantastic melee combat related concepts and mechanics). I think this can be quite clearly seen in for example the class designs and martial maneuvers found in DSP's excellent PoW series, and even in some of the later and more interesting Paizo primarily non-caster options.


Guys, 4e is the result of WotC being a for-profit company and the market for 3e being pretty thoroughly saturated.That this even needs to be said is kinda weird and a little sad IMO...


The design goals that led to every class being so samey While this was true in regards to the mostly uniform AEDU resource subsystem and the relatively small variation in certain level dependent numbers (notably skill and attack bonuses), it really wasn't in many other regards, especially not by the end of the edition's life-cycle. For example, no other edition of D&D has included as many, distinct and meaningful mechanical variations for melee, nor given melee focused PCs as many, distinct and meaningful tactical choices.


certainly stemmed from the incessant whinging about balance, I'm sure,That seems highly plausible, I agree. However, I think one should also keep in mind that 4E actually wasn't particularly balanced, a fact which becomes blatantly obvious when looking at the huge differences in the capabilities of a casual low-op build and a high-op one. Sure, the differences might seem small when compared to those found in 3.5, but that's most likely true also when comparing 3.5 to an overwhelmingly large majority of class based RPGs.


but to attribute it to any particular class or set of classes seems to be naked conjecture with little basis in anything to me.To me as well (just in case someone somehow managed to miss this when reading my reply to NigelWalmsley above).

[NigelWalmsley]

Naturally, the Wizard got hit far harder than other classes of course, because he has way way too much utility.

Then they didn't strip equally. They took basically nothing from the Fighter. He gets skills and nothing else in 3e, he gets skills and nothing else in 4e. The Wizard was the class that lost things, and if you think losing things was bad, you are saying the Wizard is not the problem with 3e.


Nah, they were right enough. Pathfinder is -very- similar to 3e but it's just different enough to be, effectively, a new version.

Pathfinder literally marketed itself as compatible with 3e. If that's "different enough to be a new version", what wouldn't be?


the creation of the archetype system

You mean the existence of Alternate Class Features? I guess maybe it's more like Racial Substitution Levels because sometimes they offer things at more than one level, but it's not a novel concept.


You mean a D&D edition in which the class named "wizard" is the most powerful in its "controller primary combat role" category and one of the most powerful and versatile classes in the entire game?

Yes? Like, unironically, yes. If you look at the things the "boo Wizards" people are complaining about in this thread, it's not that the Wizard is the best class at what it does. Steven has been quite emphatic re: the Warblade that it's totally okay to be better than other classes. The thing he objects to is that the Wizard is adapatable and can contribute in a variety of situations and has a variety of abilities. Those are exactly the things 4e characters don't do.


Amen. And of course 4E is the one and only possible outcome if you give the Evil militant "Wizards OP"-faction as much as an inch. Which is indeed confirmed when following the obvious traces leading up to each and every catastrophic design failure in that abomination of a D&D game, all of them leading straight back to a main objective on that Evil militant wizard-hating faction's agenda.

I understand you are being sarcastic, but this is actually way truer than you think. Two of the biggest flaws of 4e (lack of meaningful utility and grindy combat) are the direct result of repudiating things people complained about Wizards doing (having meaningful utility and SoDs). Obviously there's no single cause of the problems in 4e, but "trying to fix the perceived problems of Wizards" is a far bigger one than "trying to make a balanced game". As you point out, the game isn't even balanced!


I think this can be quite clearly seen in for example the class designs and martial maneuvers found in DSP's excellent PoW series, and even in some of the later and more interesting Paizo primarily non-caster options.

Can you give some specifics here? Because my perception there is more "PoW and 4e both borrow from ToB" than "PoW borrows from 4e directly".


For example, no other edition of D&D has included as many, distinct and meaningful mechanical variations for melee, nor given melee focused PCs as many, distinct and meaningful tactical choices.

I think you need to define your terms and give examples here. Because this is not at all my perception. 4e is very fiddly, but that's not the same as offering meaningful choice.

That said, I overall agree with your thesis that 4e had good ideas. I don't think your particular examples hold (though I'm open to being persuaded), but some things I thought were good:

Tiers. One of the big problems 3e had was that it was never especially clear how the game was supposed to work at any particular level. There were monsters, and that gave you a decent enough guide to what combat was supposed to look like. But the game never really had any kind of guidelines for what kind of adventures you were supposed to go on, or what kind of non-combat problems you were supposed to solve. 4e's proposal of having tiers that defined how the game was supposed to change as it went on was a good one, though many parts of the implementation are lacking.

Skill Challenges. Smarter people than I have dissected the failures here (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49652). But the core concept is actually a very good one. Having a general set of rules for non-combat stuff that is more complicated than a single skill check was a good idea.

Monsters. This one is a little shakier, because I think there were some things here that were bad design choices, not just implementation issues (e.g. minions, solos being too grindy). But the basic idea of monster roles was a better classification than anything 3e had, and having the standard fight be "four or five PCs versus four or five monsters" was better than having it be "four or five PCs versus one monster".

Power Levels: This one is more minor, but the fact that the ability you get at 3rd level is a "3rd level power" rather than a "2nd level spell" is much less stupid than the way things are labeled in 3e.

4e was a bold experiment. That was kind of weird, because the people weren't asking for a bold experiment, but that's what it was. And there genuinely are a lot of good ideas in there. But they are unfortunately tarnished by the fact that the game that proposed them was very bad.

[StevenC21]

Removing some versatility isn't equivalent to stripping out everything about a class and then rebuilding it with a few paltry abilities that only work in a fight.

And to be clear, it'd be nice if there was a perfect world were the Warblade is exactly as strong as the Fighter, but as it is, they seem to the serve the same role, but the Warblade does that job better WITHOUT invading another niche.

[Zarrgon]

Tiers. One of the big problems 3e had was that it was never especially clear how the game was supposed to work at any particular level. There were monsters, and that gave you a decent enough guide to what combat was supposed to look like. But the game never really had any kind of guidelines for what kind of adventures you were supposed to go on, or what kind of non-combat problems you were supposed to solve. 4e's proposal of having tiers that defined how the game was supposed to change as it went on was a good one, though many parts of the implementation are lacking.

This has always been one of D&D's greatest strengths.....but also one of it's greatest weaknesses. The game and the rules never quite gets around to telling people how to do this, but assumes they will figure it out. Even what little guidance is give is mostly useless as it's vague and confusion. Worse when anyone starts talking about how to play the game it is with just suggestions, and vague ones at that. They can tell you a hundred times to have fun, but that is meaningless.

The Tier idea goes back at least to D&D, the BECMI D&D: Level 1-3 small town adventure, 4-10 country/nation adventure, 11-20 otherworldly and continent adventures; 20-25 beyond otherworldly, world wide adventures. And the big part here was the otherworldly bit: at 11th level you were not sneaking into a mundane castle: it was a castle made of frozen time floating in space in a star storm.


The big thing was that in 1E, 2E and BECMI this was all left up to the DM. Not just the otherworldly bits, but the whole adventure. As something just made up by the DM, it was something beyond the rules. The DM says frozen time does X, and the game goes on. Starting with 3E, you get the rules problem. If it's not specificity written out in game details in the rules, it does not exist in the game. Or so many players will say. There are a lot of lines in the rules that say something like ''odd and powerful magic might effect this", but then gives no rule mechanic details. And if a DM might just make something up, the players will cry fowl and demand something silly like they want to play a game that only follows the official by the book rules. This has made a bit of a come back in 5E.

[Calthropstu]

4e was a result of way more than "wizard op". That, sir, is the example of historical revisionism I'm seeing. Besides, precious few people seem to truly hate the 4e combat system, in theory. The usual complaints are that that's ALL the game is, a tabletop game translated to a MMO and then backtranslated to a tabletop game again. 4e has a good combat system with well defined character roles, who don't trod over each other. And it works really well, actually. It just so happens that there were a few poor implementation details, such as the overreliance on having access to real, physical grids to play on, and how the fans were skeptical of the new style (not abilities, style) of the magic system. The idea of having one-off cards (daily/encounter powers) was not well received by those who were used to preparing spells the good old Vancian way.

I HATED THAT SYSTEM.
Every single character was exactly the same, no out of combat powers or abilities, absolutely nothing to make any of the classes feel different. It was horrible in every sense of the word.

[StevenC21]

But everybody was allowed to contribute to all the encounters! They gave everybody ways to do things!

How in the world did that make the characters boring and same-y?

[/S]

[NigelWalmsley]

Removing some versatility isn't equivalent to stripping out everything about a class and then rebuilding it with a few paltry abilities that only work in a fight.

Except it is. Taking away the ability to do things that aren't "fight" is exactly removing versatility.


And to be clear, it'd be nice if there was a perfect world were the Warblade is exactly as strong as the Fighter, but as it is, they seem to the serve the same role, but the Warblade does that job better WITHOUT invading another niche.

Except they're not actually different. Because, by your own admission, the DM will tailor encounters to whatever it is the PCs can do. So it's just a question of how good you are at what you do.


And if a DM might just make something up, the players will cry fowl and demand something silly like they want to play a game that only follows the official by the book rules. This has made a bit of a come back in 5E.

I've never seen anyone do that. What I have seen is people complaining about the DM making up stuff that amounts to "guess what number the DM is thinking of". Not because it's bad for the DM to make stuff up, but because that specific dynamic is bad, whether its showing up in homebrew or official material. And it is. Having your spell fail because the enemy took a countermeasure is fine. It doesn't even really matter if that countermeasure is something explicitly in the rules (e.g. Anticipate Teleport when you try to do a teleport ambush), something kinda supported by fluff text, or something made up entirely. What matters is that the countermeasure is "fair". It has meaningful limitations, it's reproducible, it's consistent, it's not just the DM saying "nope, doesn't work" because he doesn't want it to work.



But everybody was allowed to contribute to all the encounters! They gave everybody ways to do things!

No, they didn't do that. They took away the ability of characters to contribute to things that aren't "combat". What capabilities do 4e characters have that equivalent 3e characters don't? Surely there must be some, if that was the problem.

[StevenC21]

Your arguments continually misrepresent and straw-man me. Please stop.

And no, they aren't equivalent, obviously. There's a broad spectrum and that's at the absolute extreme of it.

And sure, the DM will tailor the encounters to the party, to the best of his ability. But DMs make mistakes, and it's sometimes... messy when that happens. Better for a Warblade to be there than the fighter, as he has a better chance of keeping the party alive.

Well, for one, Tome of Battle's style was implicitly adapted for 4e characters, on a large scale. That's how basically every class functions now. So the vast majority of classes got the ability to use varied, one-off, or at least limited use abilities which before was mostly exclusive to (wait for it!) Wizards and other spellcasters.

The 3e fighter can only roll attacks for BAB in 3e. The 4e fighter has at-will, daily, and encounter powers. Same with the Rogue/Barbarian/Ranger, in order of descending applicability.

[NigelWalmsley]

And no, they aren't equivalent, obviously. There's a broad spectrum and that's at the absolute extreme of it.

Then articulate the specific thing you are advocating for that is not that. Your position is, as far as I can tell, that people should have sharply-defined roles that they cannot step outside, but that the version of the game that actually did that was bad because reasons. If you want me to stop "strawmanning" you, you need to articulate a position that is sufficiently detailed to not fall apart on close examination.


And sure, the DM will tailor the encounters to the party, to the best of his ability. But DMs make mistakes, and it's sometimes... messy when that happens. Better for a Warblade to be there than the fighter, as he has a better chance of keeping the party alive.

Then equally better for a Wizard to be there than either, no? Again, your position seems to be "it's okay for a class to be better than another class, unless the class that's better is called Wizard or has magic". Now, perhaps your position is factually more nuanced than that. But you have not articulated that nuance, and I am forced to respond to the things you are actually saying, which are only really consistent in that you seem to not like Wizards.


The 3e fighter can only roll attacks for BAB in 3e. The 4e fighter has at-will, daily, and encounter powers. Same with the Rogue/Barbarian/Ranger, in order of descending applicability.

But those powers don't really do anything that that a Fighter couldn't do in 3e. The fact that you have a daily power doesn't inherently mean that your power does anything particularly effective or mechanically interesting. In many respects, it's a downgrade, because the 3e Fighter's abilities were all at-will, and now some of them are dailys (and therefore usable less often) simply so he fits on the same progression as everyone else.

[StevenC21]

It's not a downgrade, and I have no idea why you would think that.

3e fighter: I have at will hit hard in face
4e fighter: I have an at will hit hard in the face power, an encounter flurry attack power, a daily decapitation power, etc etc.

The 4e fighter HAS the 3e at will options, and then he has strictly MORE options on top of that.

I've said this over and over and you still aren't getting it. It is GOOD to give characters more ability to do their niche. It is BAD to let characters step outside the niche and trample over other character's abilities. It is BAD to have more utility to perform another class' niche, while simultaneously being effective at your own. 4e gave more utilities to help classes do their niche. 3e Wizards have all the utility to step far outside their niche, and remain effective at their own. They are effectively double dipping.

The Warblade is better than the fighter at fighting, but they both have the "fighting" niche. The Wizard can be better than the rogue at getting into places/sneaking around, heck, in some cases even sneak attacking (not necessarily explicitly referring to the class feature), and STILL have his niche as well. He then gets two niches. The Warblade still only ever has one. This is not hard, and it is very tiresome to have to continually spell out everything to the letter.

[NigelWalmsley]

It's not a downgrade, and I have no idea why you would think that.

Probably because you seem to not understand what you're talking about. It does not matter if you can do a thing with a at-will basic attack, an at-will power, an encounter power, or a daily power. It matters what things you can do. The fact that the 4e Fighter has more kinds of options doesn't mean he has more options, in the same way that if a store sells things for $1, $3, or $5, that does not inherently cause it to have more merchandise than a store that sells only things that cost $1. The 4e Fighter has things in more buckets, but he has less total things, and his ability to use the options he has is limited by the nature of the buckets.


It is GOOD to give characters more ability to do their niche. It is BAD to let characters step outside the niche and trample over other character's abilities. It is BAD to have more utility to perform another class' niche, while simultaneously being effective at your own.

You still have not squared this with combat. No class has the "combat" niche, classes have niches in combat. Often these niches overlap. A Bardblade, a Totemist, a Swift Hunter, and a Rogue all have fairly similar "several attacks with bonus damage" niches. A Tripper, a Wizard, and a Beguiler all provide battlefield control. A Marshal, a Bard, and a War Weaver all provide buffs for their allies. A Druid, a Dread Necromancer, and a Summoner all put minions on the battlefield that absorb damage and make attacks. We don't role-protect "contributing to combat". So why should we role-protect "contributing to infiltration"? More broadly, why should role-protection operate by saying "this is mine, stay out" and not by giving people comparative advantages? Why is "the Rogue gets Open Lock and no one else gets anything" better than "the Rogue gets Open Lock and other classes can trade Knock for combat spells"?


This is not hard, and it is very tiresome to have to continually spell out everything to the letter.

Imagine how I feel, having to explain to you that the fact that if you have three things, but one is painted blue and two of them are painted red, you do not have more things than someone with four things which are all painted blue.

[StevenC21]

No, its actually worse than that. I have to explain to you that having one thing (I hit them for BAB) is actually not having more options than I hit them or I dash and hit or I parry or I get a HP buff etc etc.

The 3e fighter literally has one thing. He does one thing. He hits with his stick. That is IT.

You are generalizing too much. IT DOES NOT MATTER IF TWO CLASSES CAN FULFILL THE SAME ROLE. It does matter, however, if ONE CLASS can fulfill TWO roles at once. Which the Wizard can. Not the fighter, not the rogue, not the Beguiler, not the Warblade. They pick one thing and they do it pretty good. The Wizard can pick anything and do it great and still do everything else really well.

I'm going to take a break for a little while. This feels heated and I have no desire to escalate it to rule violations. I'll still reply to whatever you say, but it will likely be delayed.

[NigelWalmsley]

No, its actually worse than that. I have to explain to you that having one thing (I hit them for BAB) is actually not having more options than I hit them or I dash and hit or I parry or I get a HP buff etc etc.

Ah, but that's not what you actually said, is it? You weren't making the argument that the 4e had abilities that did different stuff, you were making the argument that he had abilities that were daily. If you want to make a different argument about what those daily abilities actually do, then feel free.

That said, this argument is not particularly persuasive. A 3e Fighter does have more options than just "I hit them". He can trade to-hit for AC or damage. He can use various combat maneuvers. He can use options provided by Tactical feats or Martial Study. He has various prestige classes he can take for additional options. I'm sure Kelb could go into far more detail than I can, but it's inaccurate to say the 3e Fighter has only a single option.


Which the Wizard can. Not the fighter, not the rogue, not the Beguiler, not the Warblade.

It seems to me that depends on what niches you've defined. Which, once again, you haven't. Apparently one of the niches is "something about traps" and another is "whatever you think it is okay for Wizards to do". You can see how it might be difficult for me to engage substantively with that position, as I'm having difficult identifying what substance you're trying to articulate.

But regardless, it seems quite likely to me that at least some of those classes probably can fill two niches. The Warblade gets Diplomacy as a class skill. Is that enough for him to fulfill the "Face" role? Is "Face" even a role we're protecting? The Beguiler gets a pretty wide range of spells, a lot of skills, and has the potential to expand her list. Surely that's enough that she can cover more that one niche. Even the Rogue potentially covers multiple skill-based niches, depending on precisely which ones we've defined. Again, it seems to me that you haven't actually considered if the standard by which you'd like to damn the Wizard damns anyone else.

[Zarrgon]

I've never seen anyone do that. What I have seen is people complaining about the DM making up stuff that amounts to "guess what number the DM is thinking of". Not because it's bad for the DM to make stuff up, but because that specific dynamic is bad, whether its showing up in homebrew or official material. And it is. Having your spell fail because the enemy took a countermeasure is fine. It doesn't even really matter if that countermeasure is something explicitly in the rules (e.g. Anticipate Teleport when you try to do a teleport ambush), something kinda supported by fluff text, or something made up entirely. What matters is that the countermeasure is "fair". It has meaningful limitations, it's reproducible, it's consistent, it's not just the DM saying "nope, doesn't work" because he doesn't want it to work.


It's fairly common. As soon as the DM says it's ''distigentrtion fog" the players will look through the rules and then cry fowl that the DM made something up. And most players of ''overpowered" wizards will get very mad if their characters spells fail more then like once a game. And they really get mad if the waste things and get nothing from it. The fair bit is just a trap: after all the player will always say anything they don't like if unfair.



It does matter, however, if ONE CLASS can fulfill TWO roles at once. Which the Wizard can. Not the fighter, not the rogue, not the Beguiler, not the Warblade. They pick one thing and they do it pretty good. The Wizard can pick anything and do it great and still do everything else really well.

The above is only true depending on the campaign and maybe most of all the DM.

A typical general adventuring wizard would have a hard time with a typical adventure giving the limits of spells per day. If an adventure has say 30 encounters, plus six random encounters, plus 15 other side activities, that wizard will be out of spells in no time. And even magic items will be quickly drained. But the mundane classes can do things all day long.

And, that is only if the DM is inexperienced, not very game rule mastery, not very imaginative...or just flat out is letting the wizard character be over powered as they agree with that idea. Spells have limits, check them out: a wizard suddenly is less powerful if you do so. Plus while a wizard might have a good spell to be sort of sneaky, it's easy enough for a DM to make a challenging encounter that will tax or exceed the wizards bag of tricks. To be sneaky, quiet, unseen, and then balance and climb takes a lot of magic. And it's very unlikely that a general wizard will have such things like darksense or hide in plain sight, unless they scarfeic wizardly power to do so.

The big trick is......this requires a complex encounter. Something the DM takes some time to craft and make. For a lot of games the DM does not want to bother, finds it too hard, does not feel like it, only wants to improv the game or, of course, wants the wizard and magic to be over powered. So the result is the encounter is just ''like a room with a locked door", and sure the wizard character can magic all over that.

[Quertus]

The problem with Planar Binding, fundamentally, is that it allows the Wizard to hog the spotlight. Instead of the fight being "the party versus monsters" it's "the Wizard and his pets versus monsters". Having encounters where antagonists whose story is entirely about a confrontation with the Wizard show up later doesn't fix that, it makes it worse. Every encounter that is a "consequence" of Planar Binding is another encounter that is about the Wizard.

So… being able to get spotlight time is good; otherwise, it would just be the GM telling the players a story as they sit around and listen.

Hogging the spotlight is bad… but one can do that with a Commoner, simply by talking a lot, by not paying attention & asking for a recap every time it's your turn in combat, etc etc. No class abilities are required.

Subsequently, my question is, how do you perceive Planar Binding to inherently involve only the bad behavior of hogging the spotlight, completely bypassing the good behavior of obtaining the spotlight?


This is very true. And mostly this problem is caused by two big game play choices: a low magic game or a just like Earth type game. Both types of games almost always make wizards overpowered. In a typical Low Magic play style the game world has very little magic, but the player characters magic is unaffected. Put a spellcaster in a world where they have just about the only magic around and they will be over powered.

And now I want to play a "low combat" game, where everyone but the Fighter gets 0 BAB. :smalltongue:

[StevenC21]

So what you're saying is, you need the DM to literally tailor each encounter specifically to the Wizard's weakpoints to avoid it from straight up overshadowing other classes?

That sounds pretty overpowered. Also, your encounter is trivialized by Invisibility+Fly, two spells that any Wizard should really have on Wands. Maybe even Eternal Wands.

[Gnaeus]

I HATED THAT SYSTEM.
Every single character was exactly the same, no out of combat powers or abilities, absolutely nothing to make any of the classes feel different. It was horrible in every sense of the word.

To be fair it was only the worst pile of garbage pretending to be a game system in the last 15 years until Paizo decided to compete in the race for the bottom with PF2.

[NigelWalmsley]

Subsequently, my question is, how do you perceive Planar Binding to inherently involve only the bad behavior of hogging the spotlight, completely bypassing the good behavior of obtaining the spotlight?

It doesn't only have the bad behavior, but it has the bad behavior, and there's not really a reasonable way to draw a distinction between the ones that are good and bad. If you bind some Earth Elementals to build structures, that's probably fine. But there's not really any mechanical difference between that and binding an army of demons that is stronger than any other ability any character in the party (including you) is bringing to the table.


So what you're saying is, you need the DM to literally tailor each encounter specifically to the Wizard's weakpoints to avoid it from straight up overshadowing other classes?

What he seems to be saying is that if you design encounters without considering the abilities players have, players will be able to trivialize those encounters. Which is totally true. And it's true of everyone. It's just that Wizards have more abilities, and conventional wisdom has settled on "complain that the Wizard is OP" rather than "take the Wizard's abilities into account" as a solution. As I have pointed out, it is genuinely not that hard to design adventures that are resilient to many "campaign breaking" spells.

[Zarrgon]

So what you're saying is, you need the DM to literally tailor each encounter specifically to the Wizard's weakpoints to avoid it from straight up overshadowing other classes?

That sounds pretty overpowered. Also, your encounter is trivialized by Invisibility+Fly, two spells that any Wizard should really have on Wands. Maybe even Eternal Wands.

Well, no. Unless the game stlye is already very bias and pro wizard with a Dm that just sits back and lets the player of a wizard character be overpowered and run the game. Then you might need to do some tailoring to get the game style back to normal.

Remember if a player of fighter has a bad encounter that negatively effects their character, like say a wide moat of acid or a monster immune to normal weapons when the character has no magic weapons, too many people will say that is just fine: it's all a normal and natural part of the game because fighters suck. If the player of a wizard character has a bad encounter that negatively effects their character, like say a wall of anti magic or a monster immune to magic, too many people will whine and complain: it's not normal or right for such an encounter to exist and effect the poor wizard and the poor player. See the double standard?

I would say encounters just need to be complex, engaging, imaginative, wondrous, and interesting. If the encounter is ''there are a couple trees and the foes stand still all together for a perfect group spell target" then, yes you should change up your encounters.

Eternal Wands are fun. Question: So assuming an non-Ebberon game and your a player that just cherry picks whatever you want from any book and utterly ignores the fluff, how do you feel about the DM using the eternal wands too? And not just on like one spellcaster that has them, how do you feel about say whole groups of arcane foes with eternal wands zapping away? Is that ''too much"? Why?

[Bartmanhomer]

Wizards are overpowered. Where have you been? :annoyed:

[StevenC21]

You do realize that if the result of the DM not tailoring encounters to the Wizard is that player steamrolling everything, that's a pretty good sign that the class is overpowered, right?

Most classes don't need encounters to specifically target their weaknesses to be challenging. That isn't the case with the Wizard. The DM can easily make an arbitrarily difficult encounter, but that doesn't change the difficulty level of the campaign, it just makes it more biased against that class. You guys keep saying "well, if the DM sits back and LETS the Wizard be op". That literally means that the DM needs to take precautions and countermeasures to actively prevent the Wizard from steamrolling everything... that's an incredibly obvious indicator that the class is imbalanced. This isn't hard.

[Bartmanhomer]

You do realize that if the result of the DM not tailoring encounters to the Wizard is that player steamrolling everything, that's a pretty good sign that the class is overpowered, right?

Most classes don't need encounters to specifically target their weaknesses to be challenging. That isn't the case with the Wizard. The DM can easily make an arbitrarily difficult encounter, but that doesn't change the difficulty level of the campaign, it just makes it more biased against that class. You guys keep saying "well, if the DM sits back and LETS the Wizard be op". That literally means that the DM needs to take precautions and countermeasures to actively prevent the Wizard from steamrolling everything... that's an incredibly obvious indicator that the class is imbalanced. This isn't hard.
Sorry I haven't read the whole thread. I thought this was very obvious. But in all seriousness the wizard is overpowered and it pretty much defeats the whole purpose to even have a difficult challenge for a DM to come up with a difficult encounter to throw at the wizard.

[Quertus]

It doesn't only have the bad behavior, but it has the bad behavior, and there's not really a reasonable way to draw a distinction between the ones that are good and bad. If you bind some Earth Elementals to build structures, that's probably fine. But there's not really any mechanical difference between that and binding an army of demons that is stronger than any other ability any character in the party (including you) is bringing to the table.

I'm not sure if I'm reading you right… are you saying that the problem is the inability to mechanically differentiate the bad behavior from the good, that you can't just patch it with mechanical house rules? If so, then… I don't see how that's different from the mechanic-free bad behaviors I mentioned in my post. I don't view "spotlight hogging" as an inherently mechanical issue. But maybe most such spotlight hogging you've experienced you have found to be solvable through mechanics? If so, then I guess that stance makes sense.

Or are you saying something completely different?


Eternal Wands are fun. Question: So assuming an non-Ebberon game and your a player that just cherry picks whatever you want from any book and utterly ignores the fluff, how do you feel about the DM using the eternal wands too? And not just on like one spellcaster that has them, how do you feel about say whole groups of arcane foes with eternal wands zapping away? Is that ''too much"? Why?

I mean, they make great loot - why would anyone complain? :smallconfused:

EDIT:
You do realize that if the result of the DM not tailoring encounters to the Wizard is that player steamrolling everything, that's a pretty good sign that the class is overpowered, right?

Um… player > build > class, so this gets complicated, but… yes? However, the floor on Wizards is amongst the lowest in the game, so… Wizards are demonstrably brokenly underpowered, and everything overpowered about them can therefore be attributed to build and player.

If there was only one Wizard build, and, no matter who played it, it steamrolled every "equal CR" challenge, whereas other classes performed significantly worse, then, yes, Wizard would be overpowered. But that's not what actually happens.

Now, yes, if you told me that (most) Playground Wizards fared slightly better than (most) Playground muggle builds at the Same Game Test, I wouldn't be terribly surprised. But I think I've heard more tales of and seen more "GM help" threads involving muggle builds steamrolling everything that the GM threw at them than I have for Wizards. Occasionally, there was a truly OP build, but IME these threads all but invariably boiled down to the fact that the GM's content was very samey, only targeting the Fighter's strengths. It's the same thing here: if all the encounters you have the party face are ones for which the Wizard is optimal, then, yes, the Wizard will be unfairly unbalanced. But the same is true for many other classes (I would say "all", but there's classes like truenamer).

So, no matter what, the GM should learn to automatically vary their content, regardless of the party, to include the full spectrum of rock scissors paper lizard Spock, rather than just producing content that's as samey as a box of rocks, and wondering why paper is so OP.

[StevenC21]

Sorry I haven't read the whole thread. I thought this was very obvious. But in all seriousness the wizard is overpowered and it pretty much defeats the whole purpose to even have a difficult challenge for a DM to come up with a difficult encounter to throw at the wizard.

No, no, I am agreeing with you. My comment was directed at the person above you.

[Bartmanhomer]

No, no, I am agreeing with you. My comment was directed at the person above you.

Oh I'm sorry. I'm glad that you agreeing with my me. First time in GITP Forum that someone agree with me. Actually your the second person who agrees with me. :biggrin:

[Batcathat]

Remember if a player of fighter has a bad encounter that negatively effects their character, like say a wide moat of acid or a monster immune to normal weapons when the character has no magic weapons, too many people will say that is just fine: it's all a normal and natural part of the game because fighters suck. If the player of a wizard character has a bad encounter that negatively effects their character, like say a wall of anti magic or a monster immune to magic, too many people will whine and complain: it's not normal or right for such an encounter to exist and effect the poor wizard and the poor player. See the double standard?

Yes, this would be a double standard but I've never seen any evidence that the above reactions are standard. Wizard players complain when an encounter isn't in their favor, as do fighter players, rogue players and pretty much any other kind of player (or rather, some players with those classes complain, not everyone). I don't think I've seen this attitude of "the wizard players are right to be mad, the fighter players should suck it up" that you speak of.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Wizards are overpowered. Where have you been? :annoyed:

They are not. They are inherently powerful in a way most other classes aren't but they're not at all difficult to keep in check within the system but for a few effects that are not unique to the wizard.


You do realize that if the result of the DM not tailoring encounters to the Wizard is that player steamrolling everything, that's a pretty good sign that the class is overpowered, right?

Same can be said for uberchargers. Breaking the game is utterly trivial with most classes if you refuse to account for their abilities. A while back, SchneekyTheLost put together a CW samurai that would scare away everything that had a mind capable of experiencing fear.


Most classes don't need encounters to specifically target their weaknesses to be challenging. That isn't the case with the Wizard. The DM can easily make an arbitrarily difficult encounter, but that doesn't change the difficulty level of the campaign, it just makes it more biased against that class. You guys keep saying "well, if the DM sits back and LETS the Wizard be op". That literally means that the DM needs to take precautions and countermeasures to actively prevent the Wizard from steamrolling everything... that's an incredibly obvious indicator that the class is imbalanced. This isn't hard.

You're not presuming the same level of competence with all classes in this statement. Fireball wizard isn't gonna break the game any more than sword-and-board barbarian. If you're looking at somebody that's at least gone through the Batman or God wizard guides and poorly aped the advice, the accurate comparison is an uber-charger or a jack-b-quick that's done the same. Somebody that deeply understands the system will shatter it with whatever class he wants -unless- the GM tailors his encounters at least somewhat.

A spellcaster (I'd peg sorcerer or cleric before wizard, honestly) is more likely to break the game accidentally than non-casters are but it's not a given that either class of character will or won't break the game if the GM doesn't tailor to them. How many times have we all seen stories about DMs convinced that the monk is overpowered and started slinging nerfs and tailoring things?

[AntiAuthority]

The title's right, Wizards aren't overpowered... If you think being able to play Sauron on steroids after devouring the powers of other spirits is ok when other (lower tier) classes are playing Bilbo or Frodo. And they're all traveling together in the same party.

There's a reason why a lot of BBEG seem to be Wizards/magic users, and it's because they have abilities that were reserved for antagonists or even mythological gods in the past. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntagonistAbilities) Wizards don't make much sense as a PC class if they also get to be the Dark Lord and Mythological God class as well, while other classes are waaaaay below them.

But if being able to play Sauron (on steroids) in a party with Bilbo Baggins and Gimli sounds not overpowered to you, sure.

[Bartmanhomer]

They are not. They are inherently powerful in a way most other classes aren't but they're not at all difficult to keep in check within the system but for a few effects that are not unique to the wizard.



Same can be said for uberchargers. Breaking the game is utterly trivial with most classes if you refuse to account for their abilities. A while back, SchneekyTheLost put together a CW samurai that would scare away everything that had a mind capable of experiencing fear.



You're not presuming the same level of competence with all classes in this statement. Fireball wizard isn't gonna break the game any more than sword-and-board barbarian. If you're looking at somebody that's at least gone through the Batman or God wizard guides and poorly aped the advice, the accurate comparison is an uber-charger or a jack-b-quick that's done the same. Somebody that deeply understands the system will shatter it with whatever class he wants -unless- the GM tailors his encounters at least somewhat.

A spellcaster (I'd peg sorcerer or cleric before wizard, honestly) is more likely to break the game accidentally than non-casters are but it's not a given that either class of character will or won't break the game if the GM doesn't tailor to them. How many times have we all seen stories about DMs convinced that the monk is overpowered and started slinging nerfs and tailoring things?

Then please explain to me why Wizards are Tier 1 since you said that wizards aren't overpowered. :annoyed:

[Vaern]

The DM doesn't necessarily have to tailor anything specifically or against the wizard. With sufficient divination abilities, the wizard should be able to know ahead of time what they're up against and prepare accordingly regardless of what the DM had planned. All the DM needs to counter the wizard is sufficient warding against divination to prevent him from knowing everything ahead of time, or perhaps just be vague enough to cause uncertainty in the wizard's preparation.
All in all, though, the argument that "scenario X can be countered by spell Y" makes wizards extremely powerful in theory, but in practice they generally don't have the resources to learn any and every spell which makes them much less effective at the actual table.

[StevenC21]

They actually have the resources to learn any spell, though perhaps not every spell.

Thankfully, for every Planar Binding, there's a dozen Bigby's Tickling Hand(s), so you don't really need all the spells.

[AntiAuthority]

The DM doesn't necessarily have to tailor anything specifically or against the wizard. With sufficient divination abilities, the wizard should be able to know ahead of time what they're up against and prepare accordingly regardless of what the DM had planned. All the DM needs to counter the wizard is sufficient warding against divination to prevent him from knowing everything ahead of time, or perhaps just be vague enough to cause uncertainty in the wizard's preparation.
All in all, though, the argument that "scenario X can be countered by spell Y" makes wizards extremely powerful in theory, but in practice they generally don't have the resources to learn any and every spell which makes them much less effective at the actual table.


They actually have the resources to learn any spell, though perhaps not every spell.

Thankfully, for every Planar Binding, there's a dozen Bigby's Tickling Hand(s), so you don't really need all the spells.

It would also depend on how many other Wizards/arcane spell casters with spell books they run into and if they can find said Wizard's spell book to add that Wizard's spells to their own. In theory they could learn every spell...

Even without the spell book part, they cast Blood Money and (Limited) Wish, they can theoretically use any Wizard/Sorcerer or non-Wizard/Sorcerer spell below certain spell levels.

Not all the spells, but a good chunk of them if they don't run into any other Wizards with differing spells on their adventures.

[Bartmanhomer]

It would also depend on how many other Wizards/arcane spellcasters with spell books they run into and if they can find said Wizard's spellbook to add that Wizard's spells to their own. In theory, they could learn every spell...

Even without the spellbook part, they cast Blood Money and Limited Wish, they can theoretically use any Wizard/Sorcerer or non-Wizard/Sorcerer spell below certain spell levels.

Not all the spells, but a good chunk of them if they don't run into any other Wizards with differing spells on their adventures.
Except for banned spells which prohibited the two schools that the Wizard selects.

[AntiAuthority]

Except for banned spells which prohibited the two schools that the Wizard selects.

Does that apply to Universalist Wizards?

[Bartmanhomer]

Does that apply to Universalists?

No. Universal Spells aren't banned.

[AntiAuthority]

No. Universal Spells aren't banned.

I probably should have specified I was talking about Universal Wizards that don't pick a banned school. My bad. But they (unless I'm misunderstanding something) have the potential to use almost any (Wizard or otherwise) spells with Blood Money and Limited Wish/Wish.

... To be honest, there's not much stopping such a Wizard from just possessing the body of something with a higher Strength Score/HP than their original body and casting the spell from that body. Or shapeshifting into something with a bunch of Ht Points/Strength and performing the spell that way. Though said Wizard also has the potential to use Wish to increase their Strength and Constitution scores to make using Blood Money + (Limited) Wish easier if they go through with transforming themselves and using their new body's blood for the spell.

If I got something wrong, my apologies, not exactly the best min-maxer or optimizer.

[Bartmanhomer]

I probably should have specified I was talking about Universal Wizards that don't pick a banned school. My bad. But they (unless I'm misunderstanding something) have the potential to use almost any (Wizard or otherwise) spells with Blood Money and Limited Wish/Wish.

... To be honest, there's not much stopping such a Wizard from just possessing the body of something with a higher Strength Score/HP than their original body and casting the spell from that body. Or shapeshifting into something with a bunch of Ht Points/Strength and performing the spell that way.

If I got something wrong, my apologies, not exactly the best min-maxed or optimizer.
Universal spells don't even have a school. I mean any wizards can get these spells.

[AntiAuthority]

Universal spells don't even have a school. I mean any wizards can get these spells.

Oh, sorry lol. But agreed.

[Bartmanhomer]

Oh, sorry lol. But agreed.

It's ok. We all made mistakes. :wink:

[Vaern]

It would also depend on how many other Wizards/arcane spell casters with spell books they run into and if they can find said Wizard's spell book to add that Wizard's spells to their own. In theory they could learn every spell...

Even without the spell book part, they cast Blood Money and (Limited) Wish, they can theoretically use any Wizard/Sorcerer or non-Wizard/Sorcerer spell below certain spell levels.

Not all the spells, but a good chunk of them if they don't run into any other Wizards with differing spells on their adventures.

Oh, I wasn't even referring to access to spells. I was considering gold cost, particularly from a low or mid level perspective. At 100 gp per page, when you also need to account for the cost of other gear - wands, scrolls, equipment, etc - you need to pick your spells carefully. I'm not familiar with blood money, but as far as (limited) wish goes you still need to at least keep the XP cost in mind if you plan to fall back on it whenever you're missing a spell.

[AntiAuthority]

Oh, I wasn't even referring to access to spells. I was considering gold cost, particularly from a low or mid level perspective. At 100 gp per page, when you also need to account for the cost of other gear - wands, scrolls, equipment, etc - you need to pick your spells carefully. I'm not familiar with blood money, but as far as (limited) wish goes you still need to at least keep the XP cost in mind if you plan to fall back on it whenever you're missing a spell.

In the Pathfinder 1E version, you don't have to sacrifice XP for Limited Wish or Wish, just a material components worth a certain amount of GP. Limited Wish being components worth 1,500 GP and Wish costs 25,000 GP... Sounds like it'd cost money to use but...

And Blood Money is a 1st Level arcane spell that:


You cast blood money just before casting another spell. As part of this spell’s casting, you must cut one of your hands, releasing a stream of blood that causes you to take 1d6 points of damage. When you cast another spell in that same round, your blood transforms into one material component of your choice required by that second spell. Even valuable components worth more than 1 gp can be created, but creating such material components requires an additional cost of 1 point of Strength damage, plus a further point of damage for every full 500 gp of the component’s value (so a component worth 500–999 gp costs a total of 2 points, 1,000–1,500 costs 3, etc.). You cannot create magic items with blood money.


Couple these together and you barely lose anything by using either Wish spell, especially if you buffed yourself already to have higher bonuses to your stats (Inherent Bonuses from earlier castings of Wish to Strength and Constitution, Form of the Dragon, Animal Growth, Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, etc...) and... Yeah. Or just hijack something else's body (with a higher Strength and Constitution) and cast the spells then jump back into your own body.

[Vaern]

Ooo, that sounds fun. I'm not terribly familiar with Pathfinder, so I wasn't aware of the component cost change... Does blood money still work if you somehow gain immunity to strength damage? Or, I suppose, you could (lesser) wish for a restoration to fix yourself up afterward.

[exelsisxax]

Wish costs too much for blood money to work, and if you don't take strength damage you gain no benefit from blood money. It is stupid nonsense for entirely different combos at lower levels.

[Segev]

In the Pathfinder 1E version, you don't have to sacrifice XP for Limited Wish or Wish, just a material components worth a certain amount of GP. Limited Wish being components worth 1,500 GP and Wish costs 25,000 GP... Sounds like it'd cost money to use but...

And Blood Money is a 1st Level arcane spell that:



Couple these together and you barely lose anything by using either Wish spell, especially if you buffed yourself already to have higher bonuses to your stats (Inherent Bonuses from earlier castings of Wish to Strength and Constitution, Form of the Dragon, Animal Growth, Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, etc...) and... Yeah. Or just hijack something else's body (with a higher Strength and Constitution) and cast the spells then jump back into your own body.The self-buffing only prevents you from collapsing, not from suffering the losses. And if they're temporary buffs, you still drop to 0 when they go away if you use more than your own permanent strength.

Magic jar, on the other hand, is a viable and downright wicked way to handle it, and thus loads of fun. Hop into enemies, cast expensive spells with their blood to deal unresistable strength damage, and then go to another one.


Wish costs too much for blood money to work, and if you don't take strength damage you gain no benefit from blood money. It is stupid nonsense for entirely different combos at lower levels.

25,000 gp for wish. That's 25,000/500 + 1 = 51 points of strength. While a LOT, it's not more than you can find a body to possess that has it. (I'm too lazy/busy right now to go hunting for PF monsters that have taht score, but high strength rarely corresponds with particularly high will saves, so....)

Still, even 4 str points for limited wish is pretty nice compared to 1500 gp a pop, again especially if you can borrow somebody else's body to make them pay the price for it.

[exelsisxax]

The self-buffing only prevents you from collapsing, not from suffering the losses. And if they're temporary buffs, you still drop to 0 when they go away if you use more than your own permanent strength.

Magic jar, on the other hand, is a viable and downright wicked way to handle it, and thus loads of fun. Hop into enemies, cast expensive spells with their blood to deal unresistable strength damage, and then go to another one.



25,000 gp for wish. That's 25,000/500 + 1 = 51 points of strength. While a LOT, it's not more than you can find a body to possess that has it. (I'm too lazy/busy right now to go hunting for PF monsters that have taht score, but high strength rarely corresponds with particularly high will saves, so....)

Still, even 4 str points for limited wish is pretty nice compared to 1500 gp a pop, again especially if you can borrow somebody else's body to make them pay the price for it.

Free wishes are still a no because you can't wish or blood money anymore if you possess something, because they're not any of the listed retained abilities or attributes.

[AntiAuthority]

Free wishes are still a no because you can't wish or blood money anymore if you possess something, because they're not any of the listed retained abilities or attributes.

Listed retained abilities or attributes? Where is this list? This is the first time I'm hearing of being unable to cast spells in a possessed body...

The Magic Jar page says:


If you are successful, your life force occupies the host body, and the host’s life force is imprisoned in the magic jar. You keep your Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, level, class, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, alignment, and mental abilities. The body retains its Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, hit points, natural abilities, and automatic abilities. A body with extra limbs does not allow you to make more attacks (or more advantageous two-weapon attacks) than normal. You can’t choose to activate the body’s extraordinary or supernatural abilities. The creature’s spells and spell-like abilities do not stay with the body.


It doesn't say anything about the caster not being able to cast spells, just that the spell doesn't stay with the body, implying the spells and mental abilities of the caster go into the new host body with the caster's soul, while the caster can't just use any spells the host body had prior to being possessed.

[exelsisxax]

It lists things that you keep, and spells aren't any of them. If they wanted you to keep spells, it would be listed - just as it is called out that you specifically don't get to use many of their abilities.

[AntiAuthority]

It lists things that you keep, and spells aren't any of them. If they wanted you to keep spells, it would be listed - just as it is called out that you specifically don't get to use many of their abilities.

Looking online, there are various questions about casting Magic Jar, a Reddit post said there was nothing RAW preventing a caster from using spells while in a host body. The only site I found that sort of agrees with you was one where it was asking about casting another Magic Jar while inside of a host body, nothing about, "You can't cast spells while possessing another creature." A Paizo forums post about abuse Magic Jar, none of the comments said anything about, "You can't access your spells while in the host body." Another Paizo forums post asks, "Can I use my spells while in the host body?" and all the responses were, "Yes."

There's also that you keep your level and class, which spells are tied to while possessing the host body. Since you have your class, level and mental abilities, you should be able to cast spells as long as you have the material components necessary.

If they wanted to specify you lose your spells, I think the description would have specified that's what you lose, but it outright says you keep levels and classes (which are tied to spells), so you should be able to keep your ability to use spells as well as long as the components are there.

[Segev]

Free wishes are still a no because you can't wish or blood money anymore if you possess something, because they're not any of the listed retained abilities or attributes.


It lists things that you keep, and spells aren't any of them. If they wanted you to keep spells, it would be listed - just as it is called out that you specifically don't get to use many of their abilities.So, by your reading, you don't have armor class, saving throws, movement speed, skills, or class features that aren't psionic powers (which are about the only "mental abilities" I can think of in the game)?

Sorry, this sounds a lot like, "Oh, you named something I found broken, so obviously the rules don't allow it. Let me find a way to read them so they don't."


Looking online, there are various questions about casting Magic Jar, a Reddit post said there was nothing RAW preventing a caster from using spells while in a host body. The only site I found that sort of agrees with you was one where it was asking about casting another Magic Jar while inside of a host body, nothing about, "You can't cast spells while possessing another creature." A Paizo forums post about abuse Magic Jar, none of the comments said anything about, "You can't access your spells while in the host body." Another Paizo forums post asks, "Can I use my spells while in the host body?" and all the responses were, "Yes."

There's also that you keep your level and class, which spells are tied to while possessing the host body. That you're able to control when the spell ends also supports that you can still use magic while in the host body too.

If they wanted to specify you lose your spells, I think the description would have specified that. Everything I've seen supports you keep the ability to cast spells while in the host body, especially since you keep both your class and level while in the host's body.
This seems a more reasonable way to read the spell and its effects. It calls out some specific things you might have questions about, but assumes you're still YOU possessing a new body. It calls out things you DO NOT get from the possessed body.

Nothing in it suggests you lose class features, and it seems very likely you'd use your own skill ranks and feats, etc. Unless you have a mental ability score adding to AC, you'd use the AC of the creature since you keep everything about the creature that contributes.

[Vaern]

Is there anything stopping you from just using Blood Money to take, say, 10 points of strength damage to replace 5000 gp worth of materials to Fabricate into a diamond worth three times that, then cast Blood Money again to take 4 points of strength damage to Limited Wish for a Restoration to heal the ability damage?
If that's reasonably possible, you could just use Blood Money to stockpile the materials for a big Wish instead of trying to find convoluted ways to dump 51 points of strength into a single spell...

[NigelWalmsley]

I'm not super familiar with the ins and outs of PF, but I'm confused why you'd bother with Magic Jar + Blood Money to get infinite/free Wishes. Wish just costs money in PF. Can't you use some infinite wealth loop, get your infinite wealth, and then just ... buy Wishes for money? For example, assuming I'm understanding things right, Fabricate lets you launder temporary components from Blood Money into permanent items you can sell for real money. So what are you supposed to get out of screwing around with Magic Jar?


I'm not sure if I'm reading you right… are you saying that the problem is the inability to mechanically differentiate the bad behavior from the good, that you can't just patch it with mechanical house rules?

You can patch it with mechanical house rules. You can patch anything with mechanical house rules. But doing that admits that the stock mechanics are broken.


I don't view "spotlight hogging" as an inherently mechanical issue.

It's not. But it can be mitigated through mechanics. Certainly, a good group dynamic can prevent it, and a bad group dynamic can't be fixed through pure mechanics. But most groups aren't good or bad, at least not in their entirety. They're somewhere in the middle, and good mechanics can guide them towards good outcomes.


But I think I've heard more tales of and seen more "GM help" threads involving muggle builds steamrolling everything that the GM threw at them than I have for Wizards.

This has to do with something I mentioned earlier. Optimized mundane builds produce a worse dynamic than optimized caster builds. An optimized mundane has one trick that he's really good at. Usually some form of "do enough damage to turn any reasonably level-appropriate opposition into chunky salsa". Whereas an optimized caster has a variety of spells that do different things. The former is actually much more difficult to make interesting encounters for than the latter, even if the latter may be "more powerful" in some absolute sense. This is one of the reasons why I think we're better off understanding the problem as "the Fighter is underpowered" rather than "the Wizard is overpowered".


But if being able to play Sauron (on steroids) in a party with Bilbo Baggins and Gimli sounds not overpowered to you, sure.

Please, explain to me how I'm going to get to Sauron on steroids from 5th level Wizard. Because that's the amount of Wizard you get in a party with Bilbo and Gimli.

[AntiAuthority]

Is there anything stopping you from just using Blood Money to take, say, 10 points of strength damage to replace 5000 gp worth of materials to Fabricate into a diamond worth three times that, then cast Blood Money again to take 4 points of strength damage to Limited Wish for a Restoration to heal the ability damage?
If that's reasonably possible, you could just use Blood Money to stockpile the materials for a big Wish instead of trying to find convoluted ways to dump 51 points of strength into a single spell...

Looking it up and looking at a few answers... It seems iffy on if RAW lets you do something like that with the diamond part (there was actually a question asking what mostly what you're describing) (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qwqu?Blood-money-fabricate-and-wish-for-stats). The Restoration bit with Blood Money and Limited Wish sounds like fair game though.

The only real thing about Blood Money is that it has to be used up within the same round or it turns back into regular blood if not used. But with Fabricate, you're creating more of the valuable materials which may or may not just turn back into regular blood after that round is over... The materials would basically be cubic feet of diamond at that point and technically not made up of your blood anymore? This is getting confusing, so it'd be left up to the DM probably.





This has to do with something I mentioned earlier. Optimized mundane builds produce a worse dynamic than optimized caster builds. An optimized mundane has one trick that he's really good at. Usually some form of "do enough damage to turn any reasonably level-appropriate opposition into chunky salsa". Whereas an optimized caster has a variety of spells that do different things. The former is actually much more difficult to make interesting encounters for than the latter, even if the latter may be "more powerful" in some absolute sense. This is one of the reasons why I think we're better off understanding the problem as "the Fighter is underpowered" rather than "the Wizard is overpowered".

I agree, bring up the Fighter is my solution. I say the solution would be to give Fighters BBEG powers as well. A Wizard can only be OP in comparison to most other things being drastically weaker. Getting rid of being drastically weaker would solve that.



Please, explain to me how I'm going to get to Sauron on steroids from 5th level Wizard. Because that's the amount of Wizard you get in a party with Bilbo and Gimli.

I never said 5th level Wizard, my point was that the D&D Wizard is more suited to being a BBEG while the lower tier classes would be the "underdog heroes" in any other story. A Wizard is OP in the sense that they're essentially what you'd get if you had a BBEG traveling around with the party, while not giving the other party members BBEG abilities as well. You also have Gandalf who travels with the party, but he's not allowed to go all out to my understanding (mostly based on what I've heard online about being restricted in the books)... A D&D Wizard wouldn't have any such restrictions to my knowledge.

And about being Sauron on steroids, since 3.5E (well D&D) was inspired by Lord of the Rings, I was pointing out how D&D Wizards are much stronger than Sauron. They're essentially Sauron + a bunch more powers is what I meant. Not the biggest LotR lore buff, but...

A 3.5E Wizard can potentially change shapes (Polymorph, Alter Self, etc.), Fly (Fly), use Telepathy (Telepathy), the ability to manipulate elements (Move Earth, Pyrotechnics, etc.), crafting magic rings and presumably turn invisible (since his ring could do it). A 3.5E Wizard can do all these things that Sauron can do and more. This is what I meant by, "Playing Sauron on steroids."

I'm perfectly ok with Wizards getting basically BBEG powers on steroids, I just wish lower tier classes got the same thing. A more balanced party member would Kharn the Betrayer/really powerful Chaos Marine on steroids replacing Gimli in that scenario I mentioned or something as a random example for me, but eeeeh...

[Zarrgon]

Yes, this would be a double standard but I've never seen any evidence that the above reactions are standard. Wizard players complain when an encounter isn't in their favor, as do fighter players, rogue players and pretty much any other kind of player (or rather, some players with those classes complain, not everyone). I don't think I've seen this attitude of "the wizard players are right to be mad, the fighter players should suck it up" that you speak of.

It's common enough. Think of how many times in a game a fighter has to just sit back as they can't do anything to contribute to the encounter. Now think of how many times the wizard has to just sit back as they can't do anything to contribute to the encounter. And see how people say that is just how the game is and nothing can be changed or done about it.

So see what I am saying is you can change the way the game is played: change your set play style, the one that creates and exasperate the overpowered wizard, and wizards are not overpowered .

[Kelb_Panthera]

Then please explain to me why Wizards are Tier 1 since you said that wizards aren't overpowered. :annoyed:

T1 and overpowered are not the same thing.

It comes down to a definition of terms.

Overpowered in the sense that they're more than a lot of GMs know how to handle when played to their full potential, sure. If that's the definition you're working with then they absolutely are. So are all the rest of the T1s, all of the T2s, and even some of the higher end T3s. I don't think that's a terribly useful definition though.


Overpowered in the sense that the system can't be used to handle them and provide decent challenges, nope. Even without pitting them against another T1, all the tools to meaningfully challenge them exist within the system. You just have to know how to exploit the limitations inherent in the spells themselves. Being able to do so is no mean feat, I'll grant you, but it's very much doable.


Overpowered in the sense that they're dramatically more powerful than any other class, again no. They're arguably not even the most powerful of the T1s and if they are then they're certainly not the runaway winner. In actual play, when the limitations of the characters actually matter, they're not even as dramatically more powerful than lower tier classes as these white-room discussions would suggest.

Wizards are not overpowered. Just potentially quite powerful.

[Batcathat]

It's common enough. Think of how many times in a game a fighter has to just sit back as they can't do anything to contribute to the encounter. Now think of how many times the wizard has to just sit back as they can't do anything to contribute to the encounter. And see how people say that is just how the game is and nothing can be changed or done about it.

I still don't recognize it. I mean, I'm sure you're right that it's common in some circles but hardly in all of them. I think it's more down to the individual player, the player who complains when the monster is immune to his magic will probably complain when it's immune to his weapons too.


So see what I am saying is you can change the way the game is played: change your set play style, the one that creates and exasperate the overpowered wizard, and wizards are not overpowered.

Yes, you can change the way the game is played but even assuming wizards and other classes are treated completely equally the wizards will still be a lot more powerful and a lot more versatile than most of the other classes.

Could a GM tailor an adventure to make sure that the wizard is more or less balanced with everyone else? Sure, but that would probably take a lot of work and having to ask yourself "How can I limit the wizard here?" in every situation is hardly a sign that the class isn't overpowered.

[Calthropstu]

Sorry I haven't read the whole thread. I thought this was very obvious. But in all seriousness the wizard is overpowered and it pretty much defeats the whole purpose to even have a difficult challenge for a DM to come up with a difficult encounter to throw at the wizard.

Lol. Bring it.
I eat wizards for breakfast.
Give me any wizard of any level, and I will show you ways to force him to retreat that are raw "level apropriate".
Many of them won't even involve magic.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Lol. Bring it.
I eat wizards for breakfast.
Give me any wizard of any level, and I will show you ways to force him to retreat that are raw "level apropriate".
Many of them won't even involve magic.

That seems needlessly confrontational, even if it certainly may be true.

Part of me kind of wants to take you up on that though. Are we talking strictly wizard levels or can I get a little wild with multiclassing as long as it's still chiefly a wizard? For my dollar, my favorite "wizard" is an ultimate magus build.

[Segev]

Lol. Bring it.
I eat wizards for breakfast.
Give me any wizard of any level, and I will show you ways to force him to retreat that are raw "level apropriate".
Many of them won't even involve magic.

To be fair, "force [a wizard] to retreat" is a low bar because "retreat and come back with the optimal spell loadout" is one of the touted STRENGTHS of the wizard.

So, "I can force him to retreat" is like saying you can defeat the USA at Pearl Harbor. Sure, you've put him on his back foot and made him actually have to gear up to deal with you, but he's GOING to be back. You haven't won yet.

You can make him actually expend effort against you, rather than just casually smiting you with whatever he happens to have in reach from his Lay-Z-Boy.

[Bartmanhomer]

T1 and overpowered are not the same thing.

It comes down to a definition of terms.

Overpowered in the sense that they're more than a lot of GMs know how to handle when played to their full potential, sure. If that's the definition you're working with then they absolutely are. So are all the rest of the T1s, all of the T2s, and even some of the higher-end T3s. I don't think that's a terribly useful definition though.


Overpowered in the sense that the system can't be used to handle them and provide decent challenges, nope. Even without pitting them against another T1, all the tools to meaningfully challenge them to exist within the system. You just have to know how to exploit the limitations inherent in the spells themselves. Being able to do so is no mean feat, I'll grant you, but it's very much doable.


Overpowered in the sense that they're dramatically more powerful than any other class, again no. They're arguably not even the most powerful of the T1s and if they are then they're certainly not the runaway winner. In actual play, when the limitations of the characters actually matter, they're not even as dramatically more powerful than lower-tier classes as these white-room discussions would suggest.

Wizards are not overpowered. Just potentially quite powerful.

Well, that makes sense. I'll take your word for it. :smile:

[MeimuHakurei]

Lol. Bring it.
I eat wizards for breakfast.
Give me any wizard of any level, and I will show you ways to force him to retreat that are raw "level apropriate".
Many of them won't even involve magic.

I don't think the Wizard is easily the strongest Tier 1 class (the early game weakness is very notable and difficult to optimize around) but I figure it's the primary showcase for the overpoweredness of magic because Wizards have basically nothing going for them except spells. Spell-to-power Erudites and Archivists have much bigger versatility and Clerics and Druids have enough staying power in the early game along with much more convenient spell access.

As for the challenge, I'd like to point out that you do have a lot of playing room making extremely potent encounters way stronger than stock monsters at that CR, so I would believe you can bust some of the less optimized wizards (and possibly even into higher op). The tricky part is making wizard-beating encounters that lower tier classes don't get obliterated by.

[Vaern]

Clerics and druids may have the advantage of not having to learn their spells individually, but wizard/sorcerer spells tend to have better utility applications. You could argue that divine casters' automatic access to their entire spell list makes them inherently more powerful, but a wizard still has far better potential to overcome a wide variety of challenges due to their spell list's versatility.

[Calthropstu]

To be fair, "force [a wizard] to retreat" is a low bar because "retreat and come back with the optimal spell loadout" is one of the touted STRENGTHS of the wizard.

So, "I can force him to retreat" is like saying you can defeat the USA at Pearl Harbor. Sure, you've put him on his back foot and made him actually have to gear up to deal with you, but he's GOING to be back. You haven't won yet.

You can make him actually expend effort against you, rather than just casually smiting you with whatever he happens to have in reach from his Lay-Z-Boy.

Well, killing them is quite easy. But as a gm, it isn't my goal to kill players. It's to challenge them. Challenging wizards is probably the easiest of all t1-3 classes. I have a harder time with bards than I do wizards to be honest.

[Calthropstu]

I don't think the Wizard is easily the strongest Tier 1 class (the early game weakness is very notable and difficult to optimize around) but I figure it's the primary showcase for the overpoweredness of magic because Wizards have basically nothing going for them except spells. Spell-to-power Erudites and Archivists have much bigger versatility and Clerics and Druids have enough staying power in the early game along with much more convenient spell access.

As for the challenge, I'd like to point out that you do have a lot of playing room making extremely potent encounters way stronger than stock monsters at that CR, so I would believe you can bust some of the less optimized wizards (and possibly even into higher op). The tricky part is making wizard-beating encounters that lower tier classes don't get obliterated by.

Easiest way is archery. Even into mid levels, some well placed archers far enough away can shoot a wizard at a point where spells simply cant reach them without advancing. In PF, there are arrows that bypass both wind wall and even wall of force. While the party fighter and ranger can easily return fire, the wizard is left helpless.

Other ways include shadow walking creatures that jump behind party lines and go after the spell caster. At mid to high levels, phase locking a wizard and stabbing at him with a pair of rogues is fairly effective against most wizards.

In PF, negative energy channeling clerics can wreck a wizards day. Very little will protect from it.

I have a lot of tactics against wizards that simply force them to run for their lives without overpowering other classes.

[Hackulator]

Wizards are overpowered in a game where they are allowed to have any possible option without regards to story or rp based requirements and without any limitations on what exists or can easily be learned in the game world. Wizards are fine at almost any reasonable table I've actually sat down at where, like every class, they are limited by the world the game is being played in. It's only in these abstract discussions where wizards have access to every possible ability from every splat book ever written that they are really problematic. Oh and also astral projection but honestly once you're a wizard casting 9th level spells you should probably be stupid.

[NigelWalmsley]

The fact that you can make up an encounter that beats up on the Wizard is not really particularly interesting. For any character, you can make an encounter that beats up on them. And for any given encounter, you can make a character that beats up on it, This is true even within the restraints of a particular class. For some Wizard build, with some set of spells prepared, you can make a fight they lose to. But then I can make some other Wizard build, with some other set of spells prepared, that wins that fight. And then you can make a fight that Wizard beats. And so on and so forth until one of us gets bored.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because class power is not about "is there a fight that beats this character". It's about the expected utility of the class across encounters you can expect to face. And it's not necessarily clear what the best way to measure that is, but it seems fairly obvious to me that neither "there's a fight this class auto-wins" nor "there's a fight this class auto-loses" is decisive in either direction.


I never said 5th level Wizard

You said Gimli and Bilbo. Those are 5th level characters, so it's appropriate to compare them to a 5th level Wizard.


my point was that the D&D Wizard is more suited to being a BBEG while the lower tier classes would be the "underdog heroes" in any other story. A Wizard is OP in the sense that they're essentially what you'd get if you had a BBEG traveling around with the party, while not giving the other party members BBEG abilities as well.

I agree with your overall point -- that the Wizard gets kinds of abilities other classes don't, and that's a problem -- but I don't think those are BBEG abilities. They're just high level caster abilities. Stories in which the protagonist is a high level caster involve using those abilities. The Chronicles of Amber is an entire book series where every character you care about gets Plane Shift at will.

[AntiAuthority]

You said Gimli and Bilbo. Those are 5th level characters, so it's appropriate to compare them to a 5th level Wizard.

Yeah, well, maybe a little lower level lol. I was going with the mindset of "Level 20 Fighters are like Gimli and Bilbo", that was my bad, sorry.


I agree with your overall point -- that the Wizard gets kinds of abilities other classes don't, and that's a problem -- but I don't think those are BBEG abilities. They're just high level caster abilities. Stories in which the protagonist is a high level caster involve using those abilities. The Chronicles of Amber is an entire book series where every character you care about gets Plane Shift at will.

First time I'm hearing of that series, but what I meant by BBEG is that they tend to have abilities you'd associate with antagonists rather than heroes in the past. Though that's certainly changed in the last few decades.

Then again, your point about higher level caster abilities... You're right. They have higher level caster abilities, and BBEG tend to be higher levels than the plucky group of heroes that are trying to defeat them.

And I would say 3.5E Wizards are overpowered, not just in terms of the game, but in terms of what, "These abilities would let me win at ancient mythologies." Like a Super Zeus or something... Seems overpowered when other classes aren't advancing at a similar rate.

[Calthropstu]

The fact that you can make up an encounter that beats up on the Wizard is not really particularly interesting. For any character, you can make an encounter that beats up on them. And for any given encounter, you can make a character that beats up on it, This is true even within the restraints of a particular class. For some Wizard build, with some set of spells prepared, you can make a fight they lose to. But then I can make some other Wizard build, with some other set of spells prepared, that wins that fight. And then you can make a fight that Wizard beats. And so on and so forth until one of us gets bored.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because class power is not about "is there a fight that beats this character". It's about the expected utility of the class across encounters you can expect to face. And it's not necessarily clear what the best way to measure that is, but it seems fairly obvious to me that neither "there's a fight this class auto-wins" nor "there's a fight this class auto-loses" is decisive in either direction.



You said Gimli and Bilbo. Those are 5th level characters, so it's appropriate to compare them to a 5th level Wizard.



I agree with your overall point -- that the Wizard gets kinds of abilities other classes don't, and that's a problem -- but I don't think those are BBEG abilities. They're just high level caster abilities. Stories in which the protagonist is a high level caster involve using those abilities. The Chronicles of Amber is an entire book series where every character you care about gets Plane Shift at will.

wait... what ability does a wizard get that others don't? Spell casting is hardly restricted to wizards. Every spell on their list is duplicable in some other class. So what exactly do they get?

[NigelWalmsley]

First time I'm hearing of that series, but what I meant by BBEG is that they tend to have abilities you'd associate with antagonists rather than heroes in the past. Though that's certainly changed in the last few decades.

FYI, the first book of The Chronicles of Amber (Nine Princes in Amber) was published in 1970. Zelazny in published a bunch of stuff where the protagonist were broadly high level casters, and much of it was released before D&D was. I'll give you that in typical, LotR-ish fantasy these abilities are reserved for the BBEG, but that's never been the only kind of fantasy.


And I would say 3.5E Wizards are overpowered, not just in terms of the game, but in terms of what, "These abilities would let me win at ancient mythologies." Like a Super Zeus or something... Seems overpowered when other classes aren't advancing at a similar rate.

That might be true, but it doesn't feel accurate to me to call that "being overpowered". The game never says "Zeus is supposed to be able to slap you around" (or when it does, it's by postulating a Zeus that has 40 character levels and a bunch of divine ranks). And I don't completely agree with you saying Wizards become Super Zeus. Comparisons between D&D and other media are complicated by a variety of factors, and while Wizards get a wider variety of abilities than Zeus, there are also things he can do that they can't.


wait... what ability does a wizard get that others don't? Spell casting is hardly restricted to wizards. Every spell on their list is duplicable in some other class. So what exactly do they get?

Well, if we want to be pedantic, there are a couple of Wizard-only spells out there. But I (and I think a lot of people in this thread) have been broadly gesturing to "Wizard" as "spellcasters, maybe just 9-level spellcasters, in general" and "Fighter" as "martial classes, particularly the weaker ones, in general" (although I've also made arguments about things that are exclusive to the Wizard, so maybe it's needlessly confusing). So what I'm talking about is things like Teleport. It's true that Sorcerers and Clerics can also get Teleport, but neither Fighters nor Rogues get it (or anything particularly equivalent) from their class.

[AntiAuthority]

That might be true, but it doesn't feel accurate to me to call that "being overpowered". The game never says "Zeus is supposed to be able to slap you around" (or when it does, it's by postulating a Zeus that has 40 character levels and a bunch of divine ranks). And I don't completely agree with you saying Wizards become Super Zeus. Comparisons between D&D and other media are complicated by a variety of factors, and while Wizards get a wider variety of abilities than Zeus, there are also things he can do that they can't.


I'll try to explain it the best I can. If it's still confusing let me know. Left a tldr incase this gets confusing because I say Zeus like 20 times and I'm referring to different interpretations of them...

I agree D&D isn't a perfect 1:1 for any type of media, not even for LotR. Mythological Zeus can be replicated by a Level 10 3.5E Wizard. Mythological Zeus can shape shift himself into humans and animals, shape shift others, become invisible, throw lightning bolts, fly, become a a golden shower to get into a building and become lightning itself (maybe... I think?). A D&D Wizard can use Alter Self for human shape shifting or Beast Shape for animals, Baleform Polymorph to shape shift others, Invisible for being invisible, Lightning Bolt for lightning bolts, Fly for flight, Gaseous Form is the closest approximation for that time he turned himself into a golden shower or maybe Elemental Body and Storm Step to become electricity itself. Mythological Zeus can do all of these things, so can a 3.5E Wizard... At Level 10. Thing is, a 3.5E Wizard can also dabble in creating fireballs, reanimating the dead as zombies (Zeus didn't step on his big brother's toes), crafting magical weapons (Mythological Hephaestus is no longer necessary), controlling water (Zeus didn't really step on his other big brother's toes), use Dimension Door into the building he was trying to get into (instead of doing that thing where he turned himself into a golden shower), etc. All of these are around 5th level spells or lower. A 3.5E Wizard can do things Zeus can do, as well as several other Greek Gods. That's why I was calling this Wizard a Super Zeus.

And about 3.5E Zeus being statted out in 3.5E... I was referring to Mythological Zeus who definitely isn't on par with a 3.5E Wizard or such in terms of versatility. Greek Gods were supposed to be better than mortals at everything, though that could just be their excessive pride talking... Even then, for what it's worth (take it as you will), the Deities and Demigod version of Zeus is a Level 10 Cleric.

By Level 10, magic users are basically in the realm of mythological gods, but tend to be more versatile than them. Me saying they're overpowered isn't coming from them being able to pull off feats that would get them labeled as gods in ancient mythologies, I'm saying they're overpowered compared to the classes that don't get to meet (and eventually surpass) their mythological inspirations as well.

As an aside (not covered in tldr) about the overpowered thing, but in regards to what's been covered above... Wizards can cast lower level Druid and Cleric spells with Limited Wish at Level 13 (Clerics and Druids don't have a way to cast Arcane spells to my knowledge). If we use the Pathfinder spell Blood Money, they barely have to sacrifice anything or can just hijack a body and cast the spell from there with Blood Money without losing anything at all to their original bodies... This is overpowered, as they get the powers of mythological deities and even other 3.5E full caster classes that specialized in this sort of thing as a spell they can just get upon leveling up, so they start to step on Cleric and Druid's toes too. Admittedly this isn't a Wizard specific thing, more an Arcane class thing, but Wizards can potentially learn all spells, unlike Sorcerers...

Then there's the ability to put themselves under a Rage, Stoneskin to replicate Achilles' unbreakable skin, the ability to grow in size like some Son Wukong thing, meaning they have abilities from mythological warrior archetypes as well...

Tldr: 3.5E Zeus is a Super Zeus compared to Mythological Zeus. A Level 20 3.5E Wizard is a Super Zeus compared to Mythological Zeus. They're not overpowered for being more powerful than mythological gods at about Level 10, I only consider them overpowered because they're one of the few classes that do that (as well as being given spells from virtually every magic archetype and archetypes where the character isn't a even a spell caster) while other classes don't do that at around Level 10.

[Segev]

No offense, AntiAuthority, but I think you're grossly underestimating mythological gods. Yes, you can replicate certain feats they've canonically performed with a level 10 wizard, but a level 10 wizard can't match their sheer numbers. To model them accurately, you have to consider that they just plain seem not to OFFER saving throws, for instance. They want to turn you into a spider, you're a spider. It doesn't even matter if that's something within their purview; half the time, we associate things with a god's purview after a myth adds some random association or ability to their list.

They can summon and control animals indefinitely, on intricate tasks. (Hera sending snakes to try to kill Hercules in the crib.) They can transform people anywhere in the world on a whim (several nymphs and pretty-boys who became various plants when praying to be saved from the predatory advances of various gods, "saved" by goddesses supposedly sympathetic to their plights). They have to actively conceal their nature behind illusions and shapeshifting NOT to insta-gib any mortal who looks upon their true magnificence (a fear of Eros/Cupid's regarding Psyche, and something that happened to at least one version of Dionisus's mother when Hera tricked her into coercing her lover, Zeus, into showing her his true form).

Sure, a wizard has spells to kill people, but "I can kill you" is not the same as "I am so amazing that I have to work NOT to kill you."

Wizards - and other classes, too - are very powerful at 10th level and higher, but mythological gods are plot devices.

[AntiAuthority]

No offense, AntiAuthority, but I think you're grossly underestimating mythological gods.

None taken, but I have a few thoughts on what you said.


To model them accurately, you have to consider that they just plain seem not to OFFER saving throws, for instance. They want to turn you into a spider, you're a spider. It doesn't even matter if that's something within their purview; half the time, we associate things with a god's purview after a myth adds some random association or ability to their list.


As to not offering saving throws, the Greek Gods usually transformed plain old humans into things. The Human Experts that probably had terrible saves.

Arachne was probably a 5th Level Expert.

That also brings up the question of, if they can do things without saving throws, why didn't Zeus just go, "Nope, and you're an ant" to Typhon or any of his other enemies? Or Hera didn't just turn Hercules into an animal instead of sending snakes after him? Also Hera making Hercules fly into a violent rage that made him kill his family is doable with the Rage spell being cast on him.

I believe the majority of people who were shape shifted by the gods were all very low level beings and had a very good chance at failing (as low level beings would be when higher level beings have spells casted on them). The ones that the gods never bothered on tended to be on similar levels of power (or plot armor, but there's no way to argue for or against that...).


They can summon and control animals indefinitely, on intricate tasks. (Hera sending snakes to try to kill Hercules in the crib.)


Summon Minor Monster, Summon Monster, etc. I'm not entirely sure if it was shown they had indefinite control over the the animals they summoned or if it was only a temporary thing though.

Reason I doubt they have 100% control over every animal is when Hercules was doing that labor involving the birds, Athena didn't just force them with her god powers to stand still while Hercules killed them, so it's not 100% accurate control... And those animals being more powerful than ordinary animals are probably why Athena didn't just control them. (Or it's plot again, but nobody can really argue for or against plot armor so...)


They can transform people anywhere in the world on a whim (several nymphs and pretty-boys who became various plants when praying to be saved from the predatory advances of various gods, "saved" by goddesses supposedly sympathetic to their plights).

The characters being transformed were all low level Experts, but I agree you're right in regards to range. (Without bringing in the Pun-Pun abuse thing of course, THAT would be able to get able to get over the range part I believe, but that changes everything so I'm leaving that out.) Though something similar to being aware of prayers over large distances can be replicated by the Clairaudience-Clairvoyance (not quite around the world levels, but still very impressive distances), Teleport and Baleful Polymorph to "save" the person in danger.


They have to actively conceal their nature behind illusions and shapeshifting NOT to insta-gib any mortal who looks upon their true magnificence (a fear of Eros/Cupid's regarding Psyche, and something that happened to at least one version of Dionisus's mother when Hera tricked her into coercing her lover, Zeus, into showing her his true form).


That sounds like it could be replicated with Elemental Aura for the elemental damage thing coming off their bodies. Call the Void could also apply in that "standing near me will kill you". Draconic Malice if you want the emotional variety of aura. Remember, most of the characters they transformed were very likely low level Experts, and weren't particularly much more durable than real life people...

I'm agreeing with you the Greek Gods are badasses, but my point is that a 3.5E Wizard is pulling off stuff that would get them labeled as gods in ancient mythologies by about Level 10, and able to do several things when the Greek Gods are typically limited to one element or sphere of influence or portfolio or whatever you want to call it.

Greek Gods have more raw power (such as the range thing) or may appear to have more raw power because they tended to Baleful Polymorph what would be low level Experts with very likely poor saves (like bullies), but 3.5E Wizards can do most of the same things through spells at Level 10, have more variety in terms of elements (Zeus sticks to lightning and rain, Poseidon sticks to water, etc.) and begin playing around with the fabric of reality through Time Stop, Greater Create Demi-Plane and Wish. Still badasses though, but a 3.5E Wizard wouldn't be out of place in a Greek Pantheon at about Level 10 in terms of abilities, expect they'd be more versatile in how they have the potential to gain spells for control over more elements than a single Greek God can and begin messing around with the fabric of reality at higher levels. That's why I called them a Super Zeus.



If I had to put a 3.5E level on Mythological Greek Gods... Not a perfect 1:1 obviously, but... I'd say the Mythological Greek Gods are about the same level of abilities as a Level 10-12 Wizard. They have more raw power and scale, but that might be replicated through taking feats to augment their magic. Zeus in particular can't generate lightning bolts by himself, as they're a weapon forged for him, while a 3.5E Wizard can produce lightning by their own power. The strongest monsters the Greek Gods fought were usually just big monsters, and the Greek Gods were pretty much bullying lower level NPCs with their spells. A 3.5E Wizard's only real shortcoming is that they will eventually run out of spells, but otherwise, they would have spells that replicate things even Greek Gods couldn't pull off like messing with the fabric of reality.

Only real downside is a 3.5E Wizard would eventually run out of spells... Though I recall this thing in Pathfinder where you can make a Timeless Demi-Plane, make it Permanent, Plane Shift into the Timeless Demi-Plane, Time Stop in the timeless demi-plane, because time doesn't exist there the spell lasts indefinitely because of apparent time, prepare your spells in the timeless Demi-Plane, end the spell and Plane Shift back out and you're back to full spells again and wait for/dispel the Time Stop spell on the original Plane you were on and you don't get retroactively hungry/thirsty/whatever because time didn't pass in the frozen demi-plane... So that way, a Level 20 Wizard can technically have infinite spells if they just manage their spell slots carefully and redo it? At that point, I don't think there's much stopping them from just upgrading themselves from "Discount Greek God" to something along the lines of "nigh omnipotent" levels of power because they've overcome their limitation of only having so many spells per day and can mess with the fabric of reality plenty of times per day if this exploit is used. Essentially, any spells that aren't instantaneous are considered to be permanent in a Timeless Demi-Plane, and Time Stop isn't instantaneous, and it seems the time in the Timeless Demi-Plane is 1:1 with the Prime Material Plane's flow of time, so the Wizard is accelerating themselves so much that they're basically the Flash and can rest, prepare spells or whatever in the slowed down time.... This also questions how 8 hours can pass in frozen time, but it also specifies "apparent time", since the spell usually ends after 1d4+1 apparent time rounds, so subjective time seems to apply. So it as long as the Wizard gets "apparently" 8 hours or sleep and an apparent hour to prepare their spells, they're good. You come back out after an apparent 8 hours of rest and 1 hour of preparing your spells and, to the people on the Prime Material Plane, you were gone for about a round or so. It mostly depends on how you want to interpret the rules in regards to apparent time in a timeless plane of existence inside stopped time in regards to apparent time (this is confusing on so many levels). But it depends on how you want to interpret apparent time in a timeless plane of existence while you're being accelerated and it's implied you're still moving this fast compared to the flow of time in the Prime Material Plane.



This is the description for a Timeless Plane (without the Time Stop exploit): "If a plane is timeless with respect to magic, any spell cast with a noninstantaneous duration is permanent until dispelled."

So even without Time Stop and essentially maybe super accelerating your perception of time, the Pathfinder Level 20 Wizard can have permanent summons (like elementals), permanent transformations into things like dragons, permanent buffs, and such as long as they remain in their own personal plane of existence, revive the dead with Temporary Resurrection (but permanent because RAW), Charm Monster (RAW), create Simulacrums of their most powerful enemies, and... In this plane, they're basically able to do whatever they want, for however long they want, and they can just freeze time with Time Stop rest and recover their spells, dispel, recast all these spells all over again and repeat to and populate/grow their plane as large as they want. Using Blood Money to cover low material costs (after possessing the bodies of one of their buffed summons of course, which they can technically possess for as long as they want by RAW) and possibly abuse Fabricate to create an infinite stream of money and... They're clearly far beyond what the Greek Gods are capable of at this point in terms of versatility and now have a nigh infinite number of spell slots per day, so they're Zeus + Hades + Poseidon + Hephaestus + Hera + whatever in terms of abilities.

Anyone can probably tell why I think a Level 20 Wizard is overpowered with this in mind... Pathfinder Wizards at least. With or without the Time Stop exploit thing even.

... This grew a lot longer than expected when I was just explaining what I meant by 3.5E Wizards being Super Zeus. I feel like I learned some stuff typing this out lol.

[Segev]

None taken, but I have a few thoughts on what you said.

(...)

Anyone can probably tell why I think a Level 20 Wizard is overpowered with this in mind... Pathfinder Wizards at least. With or without the Time Stop exploit thing even.

... This grew a lot longer than expected when I was just explaining what I meant by 3.5E Wizards being Super Zeus. I feel like I learned some stuff typing this out lol.

I don't entirely disagree, but my main point is that "I can fake being a badass in the pro wrestling ring" and "I can beat up literal armies" are two different things. Just because a wizard can replicate some feats doesn't mean he's in the same league.

When Goku casually lifts a 500 lb. weight and carries it across the field without even thinking about it, and Mr. Satan manages to pretend he's not struggling with all his might as he replicates the feat, that doesn't mean Goku is no stronger than Mr. Satan.

A high school track star who, on his best day, after training for months, stretching, and warming up, and running with all his might, manages to beat Usain Bolt's time* IS impressive, but that doesn't mean that Usain Bolt is just an average high school track star.

* when Usain Bolt was doing a casual warm-up jog

Not saying the gods were always sandbagging or being casual, but the scope and scale of what they do is a power and quality all its own. When they show up in person, even the legendary heroes are largely powerless against them, unless they put their all into just not being stomped. And several of those "commoners" are potent fey and demigods in their own rights.

Also, yes, you could "hear a prayer" with clairaudience, but you'd have to know to be listening; no amount of praying from half a continent away will let you know you need to cast the spell to listen in.


Glad you had fun! It's neat how close a mid-level wizard can come to faking godhood by mythic standards, but the need for proximity and the limited juice to keep it up, plus uncertain chances of success all add up to making it faking, not actually demonstrating true god-like power.

[Calthropstu]

FYI, the first book of The Chronicles of Amber (Nine Princes in Amber) was published in 1970. Zelazny in published a bunch of stuff where the protagonist were broadly high level casters, and much of it was released before D&D was. I'll give you that in typical, LotR-ish fantasy these abilities are reserved for the BBEG, but that's never been the only kind of fantasy.



That might be true, but it doesn't feel accurate to me to call that "being overpowered". The game never says "Zeus is supposed to be able to slap you around" (or when it does, it's by postulating a Zeus that has 40 character levels and a bunch of divine ranks). And I don't completely agree with you saying Wizards become Super Zeus. Comparisons between D&D and other media are complicated by a variety of factors, and while Wizards get a wider variety of abilities than Zeus, there are also things he can do that they can't.



Well, if we want to be pedantic, there are a couple of Wizard-only spells out there. But I (and I think a lot of people in this thread) have been broadly gesturing to "Wizard" as "spellcasters, maybe just 9-level spellcasters, in general" and "Fighter" as "martial classes, particularly the weaker ones, in general" (although I've also made arguments about things that are exclusive to the Wizard, so maybe it's needlessly confusing). So what I'm talking about is things like Teleport. It's true that Sorcerers and Clerics can also get Teleport, but neither Fighters nor Rogues get it (or anything particularly equivalent) from their class.

The thread isn't "spell casting is overpowered" it's "wizards are overpowered." I agree with spell casting being overpowered. But wizards by themselves? Negatory.
That said, I do not think "giving fighters teleport" or upgrading the fighter is the answer here. Nor do I think downgrading the spells is an answer. A real answer would be making it harder to cast. Make spellcraft rolls required to cast spells. Make it harder to cast in melee, with more combatants increasing the dc. Make it more obvious that casting is being used. Increase magic's cost. There are a lot of ways for increasing casting deficiency while still maintaining the effects.

[Zarrgon]

I still don't recognize it. I mean, I'm sure you're right that it's common in some circles but hardly in all of them. I think it's more down to the individual player, the player who complains when the monster is immune to his magic will probably complain when it's immune to his weapons too.

Well, I'm not just talking about players complaining....most players do that. I'm talking about what happens after that complaint:

Wizard Complaint- "Oh, my, well ok, will will change and alter and redo the way we play the game and the game rules to make sure the wizard is not just powerful, but overpowered, and then we will say that this way is the only possible way to play the game."

Fighter Complaint- "Sorry that is just the way the game is because fighters suck"




Yes, you can change the way the game is played but even assuming wizards and other classes are treated completely equally the wizards will still be a lot more powerful and a lot more versatile than most of the other classes.

This will only be true if you don't change the game enough. And to just remove all the special protections and rules that many games give wizards would be a huge start.



Could a GM tailor an adventure to make sure that the wizard is more or less balanced with everyone else? Sure, but that would probably take a lot of work and having to ask yourself "How can I limit the wizard here?" in every situation is hardly a sign that the class isn't overpowered.

If your game is very unbalanced to both create and exacerbate the overpowered wizard problem you might need to do this. Though just making interesting, unique, dynamic, and detailed encounters is a huge step in the right direction. Yes it takes time....part of the burden of being the DM.


Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because class power is not about "is there a fight that beats this character". It's about the expected utility of the class across encounters you can expect to face. And it's not necessarily clear what the best way to measure that is, but it seems fairly obvious to me that neither "there's a fight this class auto-wins" nor "there's a fight this class auto-loses" is decisive in either direction.

Note I mean Encounter to be anything, not just a pure fight.

[Calthropstu]

Well, I'm not just talking about players complaining....most players do that. I'm talking about what happens after that complaint:

Wizard Complaint- "Oh, my, well ok, will will change and alter and redo the way we play the game and the game rules to make sure the wizard is not just powerful, but overpowered, and then we will say that this way is the only possible way to play the game."

Fighter Complaint- "Sorry that is just the way the game is because fighters suck"




This will only be true if you don't change the game enough. And to just remove all the special protections and rules that many games give wizards would be a huge start.



If your game is very unbalanced to both create and exacerbate the overpowered wizard problem you might need to do this. Though just making interesting, unique, dynamic, and detailed encounters is a huge step in the right direction. Yes it takes time....part of the burden of being the DM.



Note I mean Encounter to be anything, not just a pure fight.

Wizard: I wield arcane forces that are both powerful and dangerous and is believed to hold the planes themselves together.
Fighter: I swing a sharp metal stick.
It's easy to see why spell casting gets all the love.

[Zarrgon]

Wizard: I wield arcane forces that are both powerful and dangerous and is believed to hold the planes themselves together.
Fighter: I swing a sharp metal stick.
It's easy to see why spell casting gets all the love.

Not really, as D&D magic is not really like that. More like:

Wizard: I can wave my hands around to do a couple very detailed, very exact, very specific things.

There is very little dangerous about D&D magic it has effects or does damage just like anything else in the game. And it never, ever turns on the spellcaster.

[Calthropstu]

Not really, as D&D magic is not really like that. More like:

Wizard: I can wave my hands around to do a couple very detailed, very exact, very specific things.

There is very little dangerous about D&D magic it has effects or does damage just like anything else in the game. And it never, ever turns on the spellcaster.

It doesn't? Tell that to planar binding. Or the rod of wonder. Or spell turning. Or wild magic zones.

[NigelWalmsley]

I only consider them overpowered because they're one of the few classes that do that

I broadly agree with Segev's response to the rest of your post, so I'm focusing in on this, because I don't think it's a good argument. I think, as I've said previously, that the fact that a class is better than other classes is a poor argument for calling it overpowered. If we accept this line of reasoning, it's hard to see how it doesn't send us into a downward spiral until the best classes in the game are Truenamer and Monk.

Yes, most classes aren't at the Wizard's power level. But most classes aren't at any particular power level. Most classes aren't at the Warblade's power level. Most classes aren't at the Ninja's power level. I don't think the set of classes at the Wizard's power level is particularly smaller or less diverse than the set of classes at any particular other power level you could choose. So I reject the notion that because that power level happens to be the biggest, it is necessarily overpowered.


No offense, AntiAuthority, but I think you're grossly underestimating mythological gods. Yes, you can replicate certain feats they've canonically performed with a level 10 wizard, but a level 10 wizard can't match their sheer numbers.

Another thing to consider is that mythological feats are often described impressively without producing impressive effects. The fact that Zeus can shapeshift into a bull and impregnate a woman is weird, but the effect of that is just that a woman becomes pregnant. That's not really an effect we need to reserve for high level characters. The really impressive feats of gods are things like "causes there to be day", which Wizards can't come close to replicating without Epic Spellcasting. IMO, looking at the range of feats is wrong, and it's better to look at the most impressive single feats.


That said, I do not think "giving fighters teleport" or upgrading the fighter is the answer here. Nor do I think downgrading the spells is an answer. A real answer would be making it harder to cast. Make spellcraft rolls required to cast spells. Make it harder to cast in melee, with more combatants increasing the dc. Make it more obvious that casting is being used. Increase magic's cost. There are a lot of ways for increasing casting deficiency while still maintaining the effects.

Casting in combat isn't really the problem. Casting in combat is honestly fine. I have yet to see an argument I'd consider compelling that Cloudkill or Acid Fog is an ability the game can't deal with. And while you could nerf out of combat magic, it seems to me that giving players abilities that advance the plot is good. We don't need to make Teleport cost more, we need to make it so that sometimes the Rogue or the Fighter does something instead of just having the Wizard cast Teleport.


Note I mean Encounter to be anything, not just a pure fight.

Sure, but I don't think that changes the principle. D&D is a system with a huge range of options. There are no perfect answers, but there are also no unanswerable questions.

[Segev]

We don't need to make Teleport cost more, we need to make it so that sometimes the Rogue or the Fighter does something instead of just having the Wizard cast Teleport.


Exactly. It can be things as simple as rangers or assassins having a "Relentless as the Terminator" tree of abilities that includes being able to follow you anywhere you go, even when you teleport or plane shift away. Less free-acting? More reactive? So what? It's scary and effective.

One thing that does come to mind that exists in the rules already: encumberance. A wizard may well want a fighter or a beast of burden to teleport with him because he can only transport as much as they can carry. (Or is it "them plus 50 lbs?" If so, that's potentially devastating to any fighters he brings along, as it might leave them naked on the far side! Not that anybody pays attention to those rules if they exist....)

I'm also fond of rules and abilities that let characters be better targets for buffs. "I automatically add +2 to enhancement bonuses given to me by spells with a duration of less than 24 hours," or "I automatically extend spells cast on me if I choose," and now you're a better target for buffing than, say, that conjured outsider.

Scry-and-die is made a big deal over. However, it always presumes knowing enough to target the victim. Rogues who can hide behind layers of identities and false faces should be able to dodge it, and ones who investigate such things should be able to gather information that paints a pretty good picture before he even gets back to the wizard with the stolen scrap of clothing worn by the elusive target a few weeks back.

[StevenC21]

Rogues who can hide behind layers of identities and false faces should be able to dodge it, and ones who investigate such things should be able to gather information that paints a pretty good picture before he even gets back to the wizard with the stolen scrap of clothing worn by the elusive target a few weeks back.

Hahahaha no.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/legendLore.htm

"Hmm I hear there's a Nasty assassin probably named Bob who kinda wants to kill me. "

*Casts Legend Lore in fast time plane*

Oh I see. So his real name is Charlie!

*Casts Legend Lore again*

And now I know where he lives!

Charlie died that afternoon.

[Segev]

Hahahaha no.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/legendLore.htm

"Hmm I hear there's a Nasty assassin probably named Bob who kinda wants to kill me. "

*Casts Legend Lore in fast time plane*

Oh I see. So his real name is Charlie!

*Casts Legend Lore again*

And now I know where he lives!

Charlie died that afternoon.

Remember how I posited stealthy non-mage rogues might have abilities that make them hard to scry out? Such things would apply here. (You did mention the Nasty Assassin Bob, so he's presumably a reasonably-appropriate challenge for you, if not the whole party.) Remember, I'm fond of giving high-level characters of all sorts both Ex and Su abilities, even if they're not mages/casters. They're just that good. So good, they're magical.

[StevenC21]

I too am fond of homebrewing ways to help mundane classes have even a chance to be relevant next to a Wizard.

[Zarrgon]

We don't need to make Teleport cost more, we need to make it so that sometimes the Rogue or the Fighter does something instead of just having the Wizard cast Teleport.

D&D is set up so that by the time the wizard can cast teleport, much of the world is protected against it. This is the same with most everything in the game: the power level climbs. The problem starts when you don't use it. Many a DM wants a low magic world, or does not want to take the time and effort or simply wants the wizard to be overpowered.




Hahahaha no.
*Casts Legend Lore in fast time plane*

So questions:

1.I'd guess in your house rules an ''important person" is simply ''anyone the wizards says so". Do you place any limit on this spell, or can it just effect anyone as you simply ignore the important part.

2.I'd guess in your house rules legends are ''whatever the wizard wants to know"? Do you place any limit on this spell, or can it just effect anyone as you simply ignore the legend part. Do you count only class levels or effective character levels or something else?

3.I'd guess in your house rules legends are 100% true and factual information always. Even though by any definition a ''legend" is not.

See how interpretations of the rules makes wizards overpowered?

And say there was a 20th level character with a false cover identity, how are you assuming there must be a ''legend" that tells you that characters real identity?

[NigelWalmsley]

I'm also fond of rules and abilities that let characters be better targets for buffs. "I automatically add +2 to enhancement bonuses given to me by spells with a duration of less than 24 hours," or "I automatically extend spells cast on me if I choose," and now you're a better target for buffing than, say, that conjured outsider.

I don't think this dynamic is great. Character should stand on their own. If you try to address imbalance by forcing synergy, you end up pissing people off by forcing them into a dynamic they don't necessarily want. Maybe the Wizard wants to BFC. Maybe the Fighter doesn't want to rely on buffs.


I too am fond of homebrewing ways to help mundane classes have even a chance to be relevant next to a Wizard.

Did you not read the literal first sentence of the post you where replying to, where Segev postulated a homebrew ability to fix the balance problem by making mundanes better? Because, to me, that suggested that we might be talking about changing the mechanics somewhat to address problems we have about the dynamics that exist under RAW.

[StevenC21]

Zarrgon:

I'm disappointed. It very clearly states that characters level 11+ are "Legendary". That's what is required for Legend Lore. It's not a houserule at all.

Nigel:

Yes I did, but I wanted it to be very clear to anyone else reading that the argument being made was not relevant to whether or not Wizards are overpowered, which is still the primary discussion.

Zarrgon has several times claimed that wizards are op because of these supposed (read: nonexistent) houserules, while he himself claims we should FIX the problem with even more!

[NigelWalmsley]

Yes I did, but I wanted it to be very clear to anyone else reading that the argument being made was not relevant to whether or not Wizards are overpowered, which is still the primary discussion.

I think "can you fix the problem by buffing non-Wizards" is a relevant part of the discussion. If you can, that suggests the problem is that they are underpowered, rather than that the Wizard is overpowered. If you recall, part of my original contention was that the "Fighter underpowered" framework was more useful precisely because it pointed us towards better solutions.

[Zarrgon]

Zarrgon:

I'm disappointed. It very clearly states that characters level 11+ are "Legendary". That's what is required for Legend Lore. It's not a houserule at all.

Well, you are claiming casting Legend Lore would automatically reveal the real identity of a Rogue who hides behind layers of identities and false faces? Correct? Even though the spell effect is not ''the wizard knows whatever they want to know"?

Maybe you never read the spell in the PH where it gives examples of the spell results?



Zarrgon has several times claimed that wizards are op because of these supposed (read: nonexistent) houserules, while he himself claims we should FIX the problem with even more!

To say ''Legend Lore is a spell that tells my wizard whatever they want to know" sure would be a house rule.

Though I'm also talking about how the game is played: game play styles that create and exasperate the over powered wizard.

A low magic game, one where the wizard character is by the book rules, but the whole world is no/low magic does make for an overpowered wizard. The is a game style choice.

No lurkers or surprise attacks on the party. Any sudden attack where the wizard character with both not be ready with all their spells and defenses but also does not know the foe. This is a game stye choice.

Stopping the game so the wizard character can rest. The wizard can burn out all their spells and other magic in a single hour of game play...and when the DM is like ''ok game pause and everyone rests" Again, this is a game style choice.

And so on.

[upho]

Then they didn't strip equally. They took basically nothing from the Fighter. He gets skills and nothing else in 3e, he gets skills and nothing else in 4e.Sorry for the late reply, I've had a few busy days.

Yes, there's "basically nothing" the 3e fighter does better than the 4e fighter. But there's a lot of stuff a 4e fighter does which the 3e fighter doesn't do. A few examples (in one single build):

multi-target standard action weapon attacks
reliably hampering or outright voiding a wide variety of enemy actions multiple times per round
numerous different kinds of very reliable hard control, including through multiple different sets of weapon hit effects (such as knock prone, blind, daze, stun, slow, halt, immobilize, push, slide etc, all independent of size differences)
numerous kinds of action-efficient soft control, including through various hit debuff effects and specific swift and immediate actions (often protecting allies by directing aggression from multiple enemies towards the fighter)
action-efficient self-healing and removal of a wide variety of detrimental conditions
weapon attacks which target defenses other than AC
the ability to make all damage dealt be of a certain previously chosen type, which may be any the nine existing in the game (including for example psychic, radiant, force and thunder) for benefits distinctly unique for the specific damage type(s)
permanent flight (as a feature)
ritual casting

In summary, unlike the 3e fighter, the 4e one actually deserves its name, having both the numbers and the wide range of abilities to be truly great at fighting practically any kind of 4e enemies in any circumstances. And unlike the 3e fighter with its few weak and poorly matching features and options restraining builds to a single-target melee damage niche and viability to the first 10 levels, the 4e fighter has synergizing features and options allowing for multiple distinctly mechanically different builds highly effective in combat during all levels. (For example, the 4e fighter can be made into great melee control/debuff focused "primary defender" builds which don't care much about damage, but also into great single- and/or multi-target melee damage focused "secondary/tertiary defender" builds.) And outside of combat, ritual casting alone provides more utility than anything the 3.5 fighter can get through his poor skills.


Pathfinder literally marketed itself as compatible with 3e. If that's "different enough to be a new version", what wouldn't be?Except PF was only marketed as 3e compatible in the beginning of the game's life cycle. So while the first release of the CRB was indeed marketed as 3e compatible, I'm pretty darn certain that compatibility had been removed from the PDT's list of PF design objectives/policies no more than a couple of years later (nor did compatibility continue to be expected by players for long AFAIK). And IIRC not even adventures published after 2010 or so - or even errata of the CRB or printings after the first - was marketed as 3e compatible. So out of the 11 years during which Paizo made hundreds of PF releases, 3e compatibility was used in the marketing for probably less than the first 3 years, and most likely wasn't a design goal for any player options other than those few found in the CRB (the vast majority of options and features also for the classes in the CRB are actually found in material first published at least 3 years after the CRB).

And there's a good reason for this, since PF was no longer similar enough to 3.5 it could be called compatible, and it moved further and further from being so with especially each new larger release of player related rules material. I'd say PF had most definitely turned into basically "D&D 3.75e" with the release of the Advanced Class Guide in 2014.


Yes? Like, unironically, yes. If you look at the things the "boo Wizards" people are complaining about in this thread, it's not that the Wizard is the best class at what it does. Steven has been quite emphatic re: the Warblade that it's totally okay to be better than other classes. The thing he objects to is that the Wizard is adapatable and can contribute in a variety of situations and has a variety of abilities. Those are exactly the things 4e characters don't do.First off, if you know of any info relevant to the topic at hand which was only recently made available to the public by a trustworthy source, could you please point us to where we may read up on that info?

And if you don't know of any such new info, just how in the Nine Hells does the objectively factual statements

"The 4e wizard doesn't have nearly as extreme relative versatility and role/function adaptability as the 3.5 wizard."

"Classes in 4e classes are more balanced than classes in 3.5, with no classes being as superior or inferior to any other classes in their role/function, and no classes having the ability to change primary roles/functions from one day to the next."

"A guy on the internet says, 12 years after the 4e wizard was published, that he thinks it's totally okay for one class to be better than another class with the same general role, but not for a class to be able to change their primary role from one day to the next and also to be better than most classes with that role."

lead to the conclusion

"The 4e wizard does not have nearly as extreme relative versatility and role adaptability as the 3.5 wizard because the 4e wizard adheres to the general design goals of 4e classes, which are different than the design goals of classes in 3.5. Nor is it because those qualities of the 3.5 wizard (and other 3.5 full casters) had actually never been intended, but are mostly a result of the designers greatly underestimating the potential of the options available to the wizard and insufficient playtesting. Instead, the only logically possible conclusion is that this difference between the editions' wizard classes is specifically and exclusively because the designers of 4e listened to a certain group of people on the internet which do not mind one class being better than another class, but object specifically to the 3.5 wizard being adaptable and able to contribute in a variety of situations and has a variety of abilities."

Second, it appears an important point I tried to make in the sentence you quoted wasn't nearly as obvious as I had believed it would be. To clarify, here's a detailed long version:

Another of the 4e classes in the "controller primary combat role" category is the druid. And the 4e druid is definitely both less capable than the 4e wizard is in the controller role and less powerful and versatile overall relative other 4e classes than the 4e wizard is. In contrast, during most levels the 3.5 druid is arguably both more able to overshadow other 3.5 classes in their intended role than the 3.5 wizard is and more powerful overall relative other 3.5 classes than the 3.5 wizard is. Similarly, the 4e cleric isn't particularly strong as a leader compared to other 4e leader classes or overall compared to other 4e classes, but the 3.5 version is known as one of the most powerful in the game and easily more superior to several other classes in their primary roles. How can these facts be consistent with your claim that "a faction" who saw class balance concerns strictly as "Wizards OP" were behind the 4e design, considering that faction has no reason to nerf the 3.5 cleric or druid?


I understand you are being sarcastic, but this is actually way truer than you think. Two of the biggest flaws of 4e (lack of meaningful utility and grindy combat) are the direct result of repudiating things people complained about Wizards doing (having meaningful utility and SoDs).The 4e wizard's relative lack of SoDs and utility (IMO a bit exaggerated by people likely ignorant of basic build concepts like "Orbizard" as well as 4e's ritual casting) of course could at least theoretically have been minor causes contributing to those flaws (which are IME also rare in higher-op 4e games). But I can immediately come up with quite a few other causes which I'm pretty certain a large majority of other people active in the hobby during the time would consider equally or far more plausible than your "wizard-centric" causes. And when also considering that most of these causes are so blatantly obvious, I'm frankly doubting whether you're actually being serious.

But assuming you are being serious, I'd be grateful if you could give a little experiment an honest try: simply pretend for a moment for example that the 3.5 wizard was a low T4 blaster with about as much utility as say the 3.5 ranger, and try to come up with plausible causes for mentioned flaws under this assumption. Then do the same by pretending say that no edition before 4e had included out of combat utility beyond that granted by say 3.5 skills and 1st and 2nd level spells on the 3.5 bard's list, and no SoDs of a spell level lower than 9th. Or try imagining that C/MD had never been seen as an issue in 3.5 (but without imagining any changes to 4e's design).

Once you've come up with a few plausible causes for each scenario, discard those which absolutely cannot possibly be true in reality. Then ask yourself whether those causes which remain are actually more or less plausible than "because people complained about 3.5 wizards had meaningful utility and SoDs, so 4e wizards didn't have those things". And finally, please let me know the results of the experiment and your thoughts on it in your reply. Maybe then your reasoning will make sense to me also when I'm not wearing my tin-foil wizard's hat... :smallwink:


Obviously there's no single cause of the problems in 4e, but "trying to fix the perceived problems of Wizards" is a far bigger one than "trying to make a balanced game".I think we need to come back to this after you've done the experiment I suggested above. But I recommend you at the very least seriously question whether it seems realistic that the rather niche "problems of Wizards" and the "faction" which "militantly" promoted this view had the power to actually dictate the overall design goals 4e, and ask yourself to which extent you're being biased by your personal opinion of 4e wizards lacking the qualities of the 3.5 wizard which you enjoyed the most.


As you point out, the game isn't even balanced!Seems I unintentionally gave you the impression I think of RPG balance is some kind of one-dimensional binary true/false quality, when it's in fact a relative point on multiple scales between pairs of variable extremes.

So to clarify: in comparison to 3.5, I'd say 4e definitely has more balanced classes in some regards and far more in most regards. But in comparison to many other class based RPGs, including 5e and PF2, I don't think 4e's overall range from weakest to strongest class is particularly small. And I think especially 4e's play and build optimization balance - i.e., "4e's balance between the classes'/hybrids' play and build optimization floor and ceiling" - is actually rather poor in such a comparison. (Although this isn't very strange when considering that 4e also has a far greater mechanical complexity and tactical depth than many other RPGs, and thus 4e also rewards especially player/group experience, teamwork ability and system mastery more.)

And regardless, I fail to see why the differences between 4e and 3.5 wizards specifically have much to do with this. Heck, simply removing the wizard class from both games would have a minuscule impact on the general strengths and weaknesses of the respective systems, and be barely noticeable in the specific area of PC balance.


Can you give some specifics here? Because my perception there is more "PoW and 4e both borrow from ToB" than "PoW borrows from 4e directly".I believe the "unofficial alpha version"/equivalent of 4e was actually made before ToB, and IIRC the original purpose of several things found ToB had been to test some of those first 4e design concepts.

When it comes to PoW, I believe DSP had to be careful about copying ToB content since none of it is a part of the OGL (and AFAICT there wouldn't have been much more interest in simply converting ToB content for PF even if it had been OGL). And beyond some basic rules and game terms of the initiation system itself, there are actually surprisingly few obvious traces of ToB found even in the first PoW book, and practically none in the rest of the series.

I'd guess most of the PoW writers recognized 4e as a good source of inspiration and ideas, especially for certain melee concepts and mechanics. But aside from a rare few more concrete and obvious 4e elements (such as the class descriptions having a "Role" section using the 4e terms, or the warder's marking feature (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/path-of-war/classes/Warder/#TOC-Armiger-s-Mark-Ex-)), the more important similarities to 4e are found on a more conceptual level. For example, related to the mentioned combat role terms and warder marking, as with the most well-designed 4e classes, the intended combat role(s) of a PoW class is clearly reflected in a large majority of its class features, while there's also more than enough alternative options and universally beneficial mechanics to allow for a variety of very different builds, each of which may put more or less emphasis on the original primary and secondary roles and/or take on those roles using different methods and mechanical combos. I believe these similarities become quite obvious when comparing similar classes in the games, such as for example the PoW warder with its archetypes and disciplines and the 4e fighter with its basic build variants, related powers and PPs. (Btw, one of the more noticeable differences is IME that PoW builds have a higher op-ceiling and the classes allow for an even greater mechanical build variety, while 4e builds can often do their thing from an earlier level.)

When it comes to later Paizo material, the conceptual similarities to 4e are mostly found in role enabling combos for especially melee, and of course their components are concentrated to fewer option categories (especially combat feats) than the equivalent combos do in PoW and 4e (also including several maneuvers/powers). Regardless, just like 4e, 1PP PF has more powerful martial options with a considerably greater mechanical variety than 3.5 without ToB, most notably in the form of class features and combat feats.

For example, it's perfectly possible to make even a single-classed PF fighter into a highly effective melee control/debuff defender who doesn't care about boosting damage at all, yet ends up able to reliably take multiple CR 25+ foes out of a fight each and every round, during own turns as well as enemy turns, typically via combat maneuver and/or demoralization combos resulting in devastating action-denial lasting multiple rounds (imposing conditions like dazed, tied up and/or cowering). And that's on top of being able to cut through layers of enemy spells like a hot knife through butter (with far more effective at-will dispelling than any caster of the same level has) and having some actually useful abilities also outside of combat. And this potential for true effectiveness during all levels in combat roles other than the "full attack single-target damage"-niche has a lot more in common with 4e than with 3.5, as does many of the mechanics used, even though they're of course typically the combined result of very different options.


I think you need to define your terms and give examples here. Because this is not at all my perception. 4e is very fiddly, but that's not the same as offering meaningful choice.Oh, I certainly agree 4e can often be way too fiddly, and no, that's definitely not what I'm referring to. Instead, I'm primarily talking about build combos as well as potentially party-wide combos consisting of synergizing elements like free attack triggers, multi-target attacks and multiple hit effects on top of damage. And both putting together such 4e builds and especially playing them typically comes packed with meaningful choices, often unique to each situation, and often with a significant impact on especially the outcome of combats.


That said, I overall agree with your thesis that 4e had good ideas. I don't think your particular examples hold (though I'm open to being persuaded),Well, I think you can easily find out whether my examples hold or not by simply asking yourself whether a melee focused martial build in 3.5 or any earlier edition can gain as powerful, reliable and versatile control and defense combat abilities as those I listed in the beginning of this post.


Tiers. One of the big problems 3e had was that it was never especially clear how the game was supposed to work at any particular level. There were monsters, and that gave you a decent enough guide to what combat was supposed to look like. But the game never really had any kind of guidelines for what kind of adventures you were supposed to go on, or what kind of non-combat problems you were supposed to solve. 4e's proposal of having tiers that defined how the game was supposed to change as it went on was a good one, though many parts of the implementation are lacking.Totally agree. Especially the wildly varying quality of PPs and EDs made this great concept considerably less fantastic in reality. That said, the number of quality options did increase quite significantly over time, even though I personally would've preferred PC advancement with a steeper power curve, especially in terms of utility and versatility.


Skill Challenges. Smarter people than I have dissected the failures here (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49652). But the core concept is actually a very good one. Having a general set of rules for non-combat stuff that is more complicated than a single skill check was a good idea.Agree again.


Monsters. This one is a little shakier, because I think there were some things here that were bad design choices, not just implementation issues (e.g. minions, solos being too grindy). But the basic idea of monster roles was a better classification than anything 3e had, and having the standard fight be "four or five PCs versus four or five monsters" was better than having it be "four or five PCs versus one monster".Yep. I think a major issue with especially elites and solos was that such a large proportion of their "standard monster x2/x5" effective "value" was typically represented by increased passive durability (especially hp) instead of a larger number of actions, better active defenses and more powerful offensive special abilities. That said, it wasn't particularly difficult to put together 4e strikers able to one-shot even the highest level solos in the game.


Power Levels: This one is more minor, but the fact that the ability you get at 3rd level is a "3rd level power" rather than a "2nd level spell" is much less stupid than the way things are labeled in 3e.Definitely.


4e was a bold experiment. That was kind of weird, because the people weren't asking for a bold experiment, but that's what it was. And there genuinely are a lot of good ideas in there. But they are unfortunately tarnished by the fact that the game that proposed them was very bad.Though I have a higher opinion of the end result, I certainly agree that many great ideas were severely damaged by poor implementation. Kinda like PF2, except the issue is seen in virtually every single aspect of that game (4e is a far greater game than PF2 IMO).

[AntiAuthority]

I don't entirely disagree, but my main point is that "I can fake being a badass in the pro wrestling ring" and "I can beat up literal armies" are two different things. Just because a wizard can replicate some feats doesn't mean he's in the same league.

When Goku casually lifts a 500 lb. weight and carries it across the field without even thinking about it, and Mr. Satan manages to pretend he's not struggling with all his might as he replicates the feat, that doesn't mean Goku is no stronger than Mr. Satan.

A high school track star who, on his best day, after training for months, stretching, and warming up, and running with all his might, manages to beat Usain Bolt's time* IS impressive, but that doesn't mean that Usain Bolt is just an average high school track star.

* when Usain Bolt was doing a casual warm-up jog

Not saying the gods were always sandbagging or being casual, but the scope and scale of what they do is a power and quality all its own. When they show up in person, even the legendary heroes are largely powerless against them, unless they put their all into just not being stomped. And several of those "commoners" are potent fey and demigods in their own rights.

Also, yes, you could "hear a prayer" with clairaudience, but you'd have to know to be listening; no amount of praying from half a continent away will let you know you need to cast the spell to listen in.


Glad you had fun! It's neat how close a mid-level wizard can come to faking godhood by mythic standards, but the need for proximity and the limited juice to keep it up, plus uncertain chances of success all add up to making it faking, not actually demonstrating true god-like power.

In truth... I don't see the comparison to Mr. Satan. The Wizard isn't faking their power or anything, it's something they actually have... Mr. Satan is literally lying about everything he can do.

There's no real way to tell if a Level 10 Wizard's lightning bolts are less than, equal to, or greater than Zeus' lightning bolts. For all we know, a Level 10 Wizard's lightning is just as powerful as Zeus', but there's no way to tell that. What there is a way to tell, however, is that a Level 10 Wizard is more versatile than Zeus, that's why I called them a Super Zeus. Zeus' greatest enemy was a big monster that breathed fire... A Level 20 Wizard is a reality warper. Zeus can't produce lightning bolts on his own, and a Wizard can only do so as long as they have spell slots and materials needed, take away the bucket and take away the Wizard's spell components and... Yeah, neither one of them are throwing around lightning. If a Level 10 Wizard can do things Zeus can do, and more, they're like a Super Zeus because of the amount of extra abilities they have. We don't know if Zeus' lightning is stronger or if the Wizard's is, but we do know one can perform most of the same feats as the other, along with plenty of other ones that are exclusive to other gods, but this Wizard can do the things gods can at Level 10. Super Zeus in that way. Though I suppose Super Greek God or Omni Greek God might be a more appropriate title...

And the Greek Gods were powerful, but a dude with a spear managed to make the god of war run off... I don't think Athena was buffing the guy with the spear or anything, he was just made able to see the gods and made Ares run off. That sort of stuff is why I think they're about mid level at most.




I broadly agree with Segev's response to the rest of your post, so I'm focusing in on this, because I don't think it's a good argument. I think, as I've said previously, that the fact that a class is better than other classes is a poor argument for calling it overpowered. If we accept this line of reasoning, it's hard to see how it doesn't send us into a downward spiral until the best classes in the game are Truenamer and Monk.

Yes, most classes aren't at the Wizard's power level. But most classes aren't at any particular power level. Most classes aren't at the Warblade's power level. Most classes aren't at the Ninja's power level. I don't think the set of classes at the Wizard's power level is particularly smaller or less diverse than the set of classes at any particular other power level you could choose. So I reject the notion that because that power level happens to be the biggest, it is necessarily overpowered.

Define what you consider overpowered without power levels or abilities being bigger than everyone else's, then I can understand where you're coming from.



Another thing to consider is that mythological feats are often described impressively without producing impressive effects. The fact that Zeus can shapeshift into a bull and impregnate a woman is weird, but the effect of that is just that a woman becomes pregnant. That's not really an effect we need to reserve for high level characters. The really impressive feats of gods are things like "causes there to be day", which Wizards can't come close to replicating without Epic Spellcasting. IMO, looking at the range of feats is wrong, and it's better to look at the most impressive single feats.


Yeah... I still stand by the Level 10 thing by the abilities they displayed. And the causing there to be day thing, that's something inherent to Apollo's chariot and not the god himself... Anyone in the chariot can pull the sun around. I don't think that's a measure of power for the Greek Gods if any random person could get into it and start towing around the sun and burning the land because they don't know how to drive the thing. Apollo being able to control the horses is cool, but the horses pulling the chariot are what makes the sun move and the sun itself is doing the burning...

[NigelWalmsley]

I'm disappointed. It very clearly states that characters level 11+ are "Legendary". That's what is required for Legend Lore. It's not a houserule at all.

I missed this the first time, but it doesn't actually say that. It says they are legendary "as a rule of thumb". The spell absolutely leaves room for there to be 11th level characters it does not give you information about.


multi-target standard action weapon attacks

The Fighter can take Martial Study for whatever the Iron Heart maneuver that lets you stab two guys with one attack is.


reliably hampering or outright voiding a wide variety of enemy actions multiple times per round

This seems insufficiently defined to be meaningfully argued with. What's "reliably hampering"? What's "wide variety"? What 4e ability are you referring to?


action-efficient self-healing and removal of a wide variety of detrimental conditions

My understanding of Healing Surges was that popping them yourself in combat was not particularly effective. Is that not the case?


weapon attacks which target defenses other than AC

This isn't really an end in and of itself. The ability to hit a different defense is worthwhile if the difference between that defense and the other defense is bigger than the difference between your bonus to hit the two defenses. A 3e Fighter has relatively little trouble getting to the point where his versus-AC attacks hit all the time, so he's not losing anything by only having those attacks.


the ability to make all damage dealt be of a certain previously chosen type, which may be any the nine existing in the game (including for example psychic, radiant, force and thunder) for benefits distinctly unique for the specific damage type(s)

Again, this only matters insofar as different damage types have differential effectiveness. It is my impression that the difference between the damage output of a 3e Fighter and a 4e Fighter (relative to opposition) is greater than the value of an optimized damage type in 4e.


permanent flight (as a feature)

You can get permanent flight as an item.


ritual casting

This is just scrolls.


And unlike the 3e fighter with its few weak and poorly matching features and options restraining builds to a single-target melee damage niche and viability to the first 10 levels, the 4e fighter has synergizing features and options allowing for multiple distinctly mechanically different builds highly effective in combat during all levels.

The 4e Fighter is viable over a wider range of character levels, but the nature of 4e's "extending the sweet spot" paradigm is that those levels cover a smaller number of power levels. I don't think either is inherently wider than the other.


(For example, the 4e fighter can be made into great melee control/debuff focused "primary defender" builds which don't care much about damage, but also into great single- and/or multi-target melee damage focused "secondary/tertiary defender" builds.)

You can do this in 3e by building a tripper.


And there's a good reason for this, since PF had seized to be similar enough to 3.5 it could be called compatible, and it moved further and further from being so with especially each new larger release of player related rules material. I'd say PF had most definitely turned into basically "D&D 3.75e" with the release of the Advanced Class Guide in 2014.

Sure, there was some Ship of Theseus-ing going on. But that happened within 3e too. I'm not convinced that the difference between 2014 PF and 2009 PF is fundamentally different from the difference between 2006 3e and 2001 3e. If anything, I suspect it's smaller, because one of those is 3.5 and the other one is 3.0.


"Classes in 4e classes are more balanced than classes in 3.5, with no classes being as superior or inferior to any other classes in their role/function, and no classes having the ability to change primary roles/functions from one day to the next."

I don't think this is an "objectively factual statement". I don't think 4e classes are more balanced than 3.5 classes. I think 4e removed a very small number of broken abilities, that it is not more balanced than 3e would be without those abilities, and that those abilities do not constitute a class balance issue. I do not believe the ability to change roles on a day-to-day basis has any inherent relation to class balance. Consider, for example, the Incarnate and the Dread Necromancer. The former has far greater ability to change its primary function day-to-day, but the latter is obviously more powerful.


Instead, the only logically possible conclusion is that this difference between the editions' wizard classes is specifically and exclusively because the designers of 4e listened to a certain group of people on the internet which do not mind one class being better than another class

I don't think this is a fair account of my position. My position is not that listening to the "Wizards OP" faction is the primary reason 4e turned out the way it did. My position is that, to the degree that listening to community opinions effected the direction of 4e, "Wizards OP" was a more influential opinion, and more strongly correlated with the weaknesses of 4e, than "imbalance bad".


For example, related to the mentioned combat role terms and warder marking, as with the most well-designed 4e classes, the intended combat role(s) of a PoW class is clearly reflected in a large majority of its class features, while there's also more than enough alternative options and universally beneficial mechanics to allow for a variety of very different builds, each of which may put more or less emphasis on the original primary and secondary roles and/or take on those roles using different methods and mechanical combos.

That's not a 4e concept. That's just good class design (as you note, since you're only comparing to "the most well-designed 4e classes"). I'm sure there were well-designed classes in 4e, but that doesn't mean everything that has good class design is coming from 4e.


Regardless, just like 4e, 1PP PF has more powerful martial options with a considerably greater mechanical variety than 3.5 without ToB, most notably in the form of class features and combat feats.

How are we defining "martial options"? Is the Cleric Archer a "martial option"? The Duskblade? The Totemist?


Define what you consider overpowered without power levels or abilities being bigger than everyone else's, then I can understand where you're coming from.

"Overpowered" just means "higher than your target power level". It's not actually a deeply meaningful term. Which is why I think it's more useful to talk about how classes behave than just "this is overpowered".

[AntiAuthority]

"Overpowered" just means "higher than your target power level". It's not actually a deeply meaningful term. Which is why I think it's more useful to talk about how classes behave than just "this is overpowered".

Higher than your target power level means what exactly? What is the "target power level" anyway? Is it the power level of a Fighter, Bard, Wizard or some other class at X Level? How do we determine the target power level?

I'm all for raising the power of other classes to be comparable to a Wizard, but you disagreed with raising up classes I considered under powered compared to the Wizard so I need better context on what you mean.

[NigelWalmsley]

Higher than your target power level means what exactly? What is the "target power level" anyway? Is it the power level of a Fighter, Bard, Wizard or some other class at X Level? How do we determine the target power level?

In order:

Depends on how you define your target power level. Presumably you want some way of checking if things are at your target power level, so presumably you've defined some way of determining this.

Whatever you define it to be. There's no objectively correct one. You can try to glean things from the rules, but there isn't a clear answer there. CR says one thing, Adventure Paths say another thing, sample characters say a third thing.

It could be. As I said, there's not really a correct answer. Even if we could figure out an answer from the rules, someone could easily say that they think that part of the rules is poorly designed.

As noted, there's no correct way to do so.

If you can't tell from context, I don't think this is actually an especially important question. I don't think the party dynamic of a balanced party is particularly different if that balanced party is balanced at the power level of the Fighter, the Bard, the Wizard or some other class. I think it's more useful to look at the properties of classes than their power levels. So I'm interested in the fact that the Wizard can do a variety of things, because that seems like a good dynamic to me, but I don't particularly care that it's better than the Fighter, because I think you should fix balance problems, so existing ones don't really speak to the fundamentals of the class.


I'm all for raising the power of other classes to be comparable to a Wizard, but you disagreed with raising up classes I considered under powered compared to the Wizard so I need better context on what you mean.

Did I? I didn't intend to. I am generally sympathetic to the notion of solving this problem with buffs.

[Batcathat]

Well, I'm not just talking about players complaining....most players do that. I'm talking about what happens after that complaint:

Wizard Complaint- "Oh, my, well ok, will will change and alter and redo the way we play the game and the game rules to make sure the wizard is not just powerful, but overpowered, and then we will say that this way is the only possible way to play the game."

Fighter Complaint- "Sorry that is just the way the game is because fighters suck"

Again, this is not some objective fact of all players ever. I'm sure that's your experience but it's not mine and it's not everyone's.


If your game is very unbalanced to both create and exacerbate the overpowered wizard problem you might need to do this. Though just making interesting, unique, dynamic, and detailed encounters is a huge step in the right direction. Yes it takes time....part of the burden of being the DM.

I agree, an encounter should be all of those things and maybe that makes spellcasters a little less overpowered. But at the end of the day an average wizard will still have far more options for almost any situation than most other classes. Even if we avoid all rule-bending cheesy shenanigans they can get up to, their abilities cover a far greater range of things than, say, a fighter's.

[Kelb_Panthera]

RE; foiling the legend lore spell:

Spymaster level 7 (as low as ECL 12) gets the deep cover feature. Any divination that would give you info about the target gets you info about his cover identity instead. You -explicitly- get nothing about any of his other covers or actual identity. Legend lore simply fails.

[StevenC21]

That doesn't matter.

The purpose of scry n die is to find and kill you.

Legend Lore "I heard there's a guy looking to kill me". It doesn't matter if his name is wrong. You can't fake the location he is in.

Also, burning seven levels for the sole purpose of beating a single type of spell is kind of expensive. That's kind of expensive.

And by ECL 12, a Wizard can be teleporting around and is not unlikely to be living in a very hard to access location. Preferably one only accessible via Teleport.

Kinda hard for an assassin to do his job when that's a factor ...

[Zarrgon]

Again, this is not some objective fact of all players ever. I'm sure that's your experience but it's not mine and it's not everyone's.

Though you do note a huge group of people do say ''wizards are over powered" as a fact? It's not even a question in many peoples minds, it ''just is". And note how people don't even admit it's possible that wizards might not be over powered? Note how many people just say it's true and don't want to talk about it or just say that anything said is wrong or does not matter or does not apply?





I agree, an encounter should be all of those things and maybe that makes spellcasters a little less overpowered. But at the end of the day an average wizard will still have far more options for almost any situation than most other classes. Even if we avoid all rule-bending cheesy shenanigans they can get up to, their abilities cover a far greater range of things than, say, a fighter's.

Well, if your just counting that the wizard gets 2000+ some spells and the fighter gets...five or so fighter feats, then, sure you will say a wizard has more options. But this really is a theoretical of the fighter has the option of doing 'attack' or maybe two or three skills and the wizard can do anything.

And, most of all it's the game style. When the DM rolls out the red carpet for the wizards they have more options and are over powered. And that is my whole point...roll up that red carpet.




Legend Lore "I heard there's a guy looking to kill me". It doesn't matter if his name is wrong. You can't fake the location he is in.

I'm still a bit in wonder how your version of the spell Legend Lore works. I guess your homebrew version is just a Lore Wish where the player can ask any question and get all the completely true facts? If your version is even close to that, it's a great example of a house rule that makes wizards over powered.



And by ECL 12, a Wizard can be teleporting around and is not unlikely to be living in a very hard to access location. Preferably one only accessible via Teleport.

Kinda hard for an assassin to do his job when that's a factor ...

Well, except for a teleporting assassin, right? And NPCs can use your version of Legend Lore to know anything they want to, right?

[StevenC21]

Legend Lore explicitly states that the typical level 11+ character is legendary and thus a target for the spell.

The "rule of thumb" bit is OBVIOUSLY designed to imply that some characters/objects under level 11 may be Legendary. And sure, if you have a personal vendetta against Wizards, you are welcome to intentionally interpret the rules in a way that is contrary to the intent. But to do otherwise is in no way homebrewing or rolling out a red carpet. It's just using the rules how they are designed.

So no. Unlike what you seem to think is best, I think we should use the rules as written. I fail to see why this is even a question.

If the assassin is teleporting, then either he has a mage's assistance or you are likely homebrewing, which is the very thing you are advocating against.

[Zarrgon]

So no. Unlike what you seem to think is best, I think we should use the rules as written. I fail to see why this is even a question.

I'm not talking about the target of the spell.

1.You seem to be saying that Legend Lore lets the caster ask a question and get an true complete answer? Where do you see this in the spell description?

2.Have you ever read the examples of what the spell does in the Players Handbook? Do you ignore those examples or simply choose to change how the spell works?

By the book, all Legend Lore does is tell you a single, often cryptic, legend about a single legendary person, place or thing.

So how does your version of the spell work for casting the spell and asking "I heard someone is tiring to kill me" and you get the answer of who that person is and their exact location and maybe many other details?




If the assassin is teleporting, then either he has a mage's assistance or you are likely homebrewing, which is the very thing you are advocating against.

I wonder why an assassin can't teleport? Are you thinking that D&D must be mundane vs magic?

[StevenC21]

Well, in my initial example, it is quite clear that the theoretical caster used it several times (which you are explicitly allowed to do in the spell description). Did you read the spell description?

And yeah, it kinda is. If the only hope for an assassin to kill a Wizard is via magic... Well, that's not just an assassin anymore, presuming that the assassin in question is one that might realistically take, for example, Spymaster levels.

A Wizard could theoretically be an assassin (all it means is to kill an important person), but the typical example is a sneaky guy with knives. Who can't teleport. Unless of course he has help from a Wizard. Or you're homebrewing because you don't like Wizards and they must be stopped at all costs, in which case definitely Wizards can be beat by a guy with a couple pokey sticks.

[Zarrgon]

Well, in my initial example, it is quite clear that the theoretical caster used it several times (which you are explicitly allowed to do in the spell description). Did you read the spell description?

But even if you cast it 100 times the spellcaster NEVER gets to ask a question. And each casting will simply give you a legend about the subject. That is it.



And yeah, it kinda is. If the only hope for an assassin to kill a Wizard is via magic... Well, that's not just an assassin anymore, presuming that the assassin in question is one that might realistically take, for example, Spymaster levels.

A Wizard could theoretically be an assassin (all it means is to kill an important person), but the typical example is a sneaky guy with knives. Who can't teleport. Unless of course he has help from a Wizard. Or you're homebrewing because you don't like Wizards and they must be stopped at all costs, in which case definitely Wizards can be beat by a guy with a couple pokey sticks.

You do know in D&D Assassins are spellcasters right? It's a class feature for them. And any character can take levels in any class. And characters have magic items too.

So if your saying a high level assassin character, with no magic what so ever, can't beat a wizard, that is a bit odd.

[StevenC21]

The Assassin class spellcasting is a joke, and certainly doesn't extend up to long distance teleportation.

By all means show me a long range teleportation magic item that doesn't require a mage to create.

From Legend Lore:

These may be legends that are still current, legends that have been forgotten, or even information that has never been generally known.

"One of Bob the assassin's greatest exploits is his ongoing quest to murder Wizard xyz"

"Bob the assassin's hidden citadel in abc is rumored to have numerous fiendish traps"

"Bob the assassin tends to use strategy qwe when trying to kill a target"

All plausible results. And please, this is all ECL 12 stuff.

At higher levels your character is even more of a joke. I won't even get into it.

[Zarrgon]

The Assassin class spellcasting is a joke, and certainly doesn't extend up to long distance teleportation.

By all means show me a long range teleportation magic item that doesn't require a mage to create.

I guess you just forgot D&D has lots of spellcasting classes? Or did you mean all spellcasting classes when you said mage?






All plausible results.

Well, only plausible in like I said, a game style set up to make wizards over powered. Though I think you proved my point as your version of the spell just rolls out the red carpet for the wizard to be over powered.

[StevenC21]

Mage is a generic term for spellcaster, yes.

And once again, no... It's not "my version of the spell", it's "literally how the spell functions".

And this is irrelevant for a number of reasons, regardless:

At the levels where Legend Lore is the choice divination, the Wizard can teleport and the Assassin can't unless he's getting help from somebody else. Since AFAIK, there's no in game item of Teleport that would be usable by the archetypical assassin (And don't forget, it has to be usable several times because the Wizard can and should have lots of scrolls).

At higher levels when the Assassin probably can get reliable teleportation, then the Wizard is chilling in his own personal Demiplane, and has contingency Plane Shift to his own No-Time demiplane with countless summoned monsters who by virtue of No-Time will never end their duration (and guess what, that's literally in the definition, it's not even arguable). And arbitrary amounts of money. And the ability to use Discern Location, which beats the Spymaster ability because it explicitly states it beats normal means of evading Divination. So yeah. Once again, Wizard wins.

Oh and also, the actual Wizard exists in a separate demiplane, and you've only ever been dealing with his Astral Projection.

So yeah. The Wizard is always ten steps ahead of the assassin.

[Calthropstu]

Casting in combat isn't really the problem. Casting in combat is honestly fine. I have yet to see an argument I'd consider compelling that Cloudkill or Acid Fog is an ability the game can't deal with. And while you could nerf out of combat magic, it seems to me that giving players abilities that advance the plot is good. We don't need to make Teleport cost more, we need to make it so that sometimes the Rogue or the Fighter does something instead of just having the Wizard cast Teleport.



I disagree. Making it more difficult for the wizard to contribute to combat makes the fighter stand out much more. And removing the spell knock and find traps removes the intrusion into rogue territory. That way, teleport and other out of combat spells keeps a niche available to the wizard. A few simple fixes like this should help balance quite a bit without intruding on anyone's niche or increasing or decreasing anyone's overall contribution potential to a large extent.

[Calthropstu]

Hahahaha no.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/legendLore.htm

"Hmm I hear there's a Nasty assassin probably named Bob who kinda wants to kill me. "

*Casts Legend Lore in fast time plane*

Oh I see. So his real name is Charlie!

*Casts Legend Lore again*

And now I know where he lives!

Charlie died that afternoon.

Might want to look at that spell again.

"I hear that a nasty assassin named Bob that wants to kill me."

*Starts casting Legend Lore*

2 weeks later, wizard was found dead while trying to cast a spell with casting time of 2-12 weeks.

[StevenC21]

What level range are we talking here.

Level 12? I'm living ten miles underground in a sealed cavern.

Level 15? I'm living on another plane.

Level 17? I'm living on a plane I personally created, that you have no chance of penetrating.

Good luck getting to me during those two weeks.

[NigelWalmsley]

The "rule of thumb" bit is OBVIOUSLY designed to imply that some characters/objects under level 11 may be Legendary.

I don't think that's particularly obvious. Now, to be honest, I do basically agree that if the DM just declares that your level 11 opponent is arbitrarily not legendary, that is stupid. But the spell pretty clearly does allow for that.


I disagree. Making it more difficult for the wizard to contribute to combat makes the fighter stand out much more.

But why is that good? Why is "the Wizard casts Black Tentacles and that is pretty good" a problem we need to solve? We could make the Fighter worse and that would make the Monk and the Barbarian better. That doesn't make it a good idea.


And removing the spell knock and find traps removes the intrusion into rogue territory.

Again, I don't see how this is a problem we need to solve. I think you could make a pretty compelling case that wands of those spells are a problem, and that charged items need to be reworked, but the basic paradigm of "the Wizard can open a small number of locks perfectly, the Rogue can open a large number of locks pretty well" seems entirely reasonable to me. That seems like the kind of meaningful tradeoff that encourages decision-making and is key to good design. Why is it better to have a lock be a problem that you just point the Rogue at than to have it be a problem where the solution varies by circumstance and party composition?

[Calthropstu]

But why is that good? Why is "the Wizard casts Black Tentacles and that is pretty good" a problem we need to solve? We could make the Fighter worse and that would make the Monk and the Barbarian better. That doesn't make it a good idea.

I am not saying "remove the ability to cast black tentacles." I am saying "make the casting of black tentacles dependant on the ability to successfully cast the spell." Just as a fighter rolls to hit with a sword, a wizard should roll to successfully cast. And abilities and spells targeting that ability, just as buffs and debuffs exist for the ability for the fighter to hit, should also exist. Making it more fair to the other classes. I am not saying "weaken black tentacles." I am saying "maybe black tentacles won't go off dependent on a roll" just as the attacks of a fighter can miss their mark.


Again, I don't see how this is a problem we need to solve. I think you could make a pretty compelling case that wands of those spells are a problem, and that charged items need to be reworked, but the basic paradigm of "the Wizard can open a small number of locks perfectly, the Rogue can open a large number of locks pretty well" seems entirely reasonable to me. That seems like the kind of meaningful tradeoff that encourages decision-making and is key to good design. Why is it better to have a lock be a problem that you just point the Rogue at than to have it be a problem where the solution varies by circumstance and party composition?

There IS an alternative. A lesser alternative available to any class.

You see a locked door. You can:
a: have a capable rogue in the party and stealthily open it, disable all the traps on it and keep everything in pristine working order.

or b: Smash through and hope for the best. A wizard can cast disintegrate, a fighter can bash through, a cleric can blast the door with holy fire.

[StevenC21]

Casters rolling to successfully cast is an awful idea.

That's the point of Save DCs. And Ranged Touch Attack rolls. Sometimes both at once.

Black Tentacles already requires rolling dice for the grapple.

[Calthropstu]

Casters rolling to successfully cast is an awful idea.

That's the point of Save DCs. And Ranged Touch Attack rolls. Sometimes both at once.

Black Tentacles already requires rolling dice for the grapple.

Well, the common belief is that casters are overpowered.
This will alleviate that. The only other idea, "give everyone magic", is, and I will put this bluntly, patently stupid and the direction that 4e took. Let's avoid that garbage.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That doesn't matter.

The purpose of scry n die is to find and kill you.

Legend Lore "I heard there's a guy looking to kill me". It doesn't matter if his name is wrong. You can't fake the location he is in.

Also, burning seven levels for the sole purpose of beating a single type of spell is kind of expensive. That's kind of expensive.

And by ECL 12, a Wizard can be teleporting around and is not unlikely to be living in a very hard to access location. Preferably one only accessible via Teleport.

Kinda hard for an assassin to do his job when that's a factor ...

You misunderstand. You don't get a wrong name. You don't get anything at all. As far as the spell is concerned, the guy you're trying to look into simply doesn't exist. Only his deep cover identity exists and you didn't look into that -entirely- different person with your legend lore effect. You're told vague legends about the subject you wanted to know about, not his daily routine or current pseudo-identity.

There's also that nasty casting time issue that you seem to be ignoring; 5 to 6 -days- to cast the spell. Vision gets it done in a standard action but requires a CL check, most likely at dc 30, to accomplish getting you vague info.


Wizard: tell me about the man trying to kill me.
Spymaster: *is in deep cover and cannot be divined*
Legend lore: vague story about one of your many -other- enemies.

Kick it up a notch after taking the abusive reading of CoP to divine the future

Wizard: tell me about the man that is supposed to come kill me on tuesday.
Spymaster: *still can't be divined*
Legend lore: What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?

Though I suppose in that latter it could -still- tell you about somebody else altogether if you're having a rough week.

[OrbanSirgen]

"I heard there's someone who wants to kill me."
"Yes, everyone."

[StevenC21]

I dealt with the casting time problem in another comment. I suppose that particular bit really depends on how you interpret the nature of deep cover. I would argue that the deep cover character still desires to kill the wizard, and thus could be LL'ed.

It's by no means a bad trick, to be clear. It's one of the better counters a mundane can have. But with sufficient use, the character can still be narrowed down and then targeted while I chill in my secret sealed lair ten miles underground in an unknown location to anyone but me. I've got all the time in the world. Worst case scenario, I just make some contingent teleport effect "teleport me to the nearest long-term safe location when I am about to be severely harmed by someone in deep cover". Magic triggers aren't reliant on knowledge, they just occur if the condition is true, by RAW.

And now I know what you look like.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I dealt with the casting time problem in another comment. I suppose that particular bit really depends on how you interpret the nature of deep cover. I would argue that the deep cover character still desires to kill the wizard, and thus could be LL'ed.

You'd be wrong.

While tim the spymaster definitely wants to kill you (presumably because you're at some cross purpose), bob the baker (his current deep cover) certainly doesn't. Wouldn't even dream of it.

Because you -explicitly- get no information about the spymaster's true identity while he's making use of deep cover, there's nothing for legend lore to tell you.


It's by no means a bad trick, to be clear. It's one of the better counters a mundane can have. But with sufficient use, the character can still be narrowed down and then targeted while I chill in my secret sealed lair ten miles underground in an unknown location to anyone but me. I've got all the time in the world. Worst case scenario, I just make some contingent teleport effect "teleport me to the nearest long-term safe location when I am about to be severely harmed by someone in deep cover". Magic triggers aren't reliant on knowledge, they just occur if the condition is true, by RAW.

Except you can't because LL gives you nothing at all. While under deep cover, Tim simply doesn't exist to divinations.

That's, at best, a questionable use of contingency. Even if it does work that way, all Tim's gotta do is open with a dimensional anchor or arrange to make his move while your'e in an area that bars dimensional travel and it fails.


And now I know what you look like.

Why on earth would you assume any spy or assassin would ever wear his real face, basically ever, if not for absolute necessity.

As for your hideaway, it's certainly -difficult- to reach certain places but it's not impossible to get anywhere except the space between the folds of reality where vestiges dwell.

Deep underground: that almost feels like you're not even trying. What's good for the goose is good for the gander with the old scry-and-teleport options. There are ways to prevent this, and if you're hunting wizards you should damned well know them and employ them in your own base of operations.

Off-plane: okay now you really aren't trying. Even if single use plane-shifting items weren't a thing, several sources describe naturally occuring paths between the material and elsewhere as well as between the various planes themselves.

Demiplane: now we're talking. Here's the thing. There is a point on the ethereal to which your demiplane is coterminous. If I cast precipitate complete breach on that spot then there's a decent chance, at the GM's discretion, that I rip your front door wide open. Alternately, I just get a hold of -any- creature that can use planeshift as a SLA and have him hop me in there. I'm also pretty sure there was a magic item that could force an opening but I can't quite remember what it was called or where it was listed.

[StevenC21]

I'm going to be clear here; the point of the different homes was for different level ranges. I picked what I feel is an appropriate home for a character of that level. You won't have a demiplane till 17th level in all likelihood.

I'll say that you make a good point about LL. You might even be right. I'll sleep on it and tell you what I think tomorrow.

Contingent spells aren't Divination effects, so they aren't affected by Deep Cover, period. So the teleport effect works. Also I'm using Craft Contingent Spell, not the crappy evocation.

And breaking into my demiplane? Good luck. The problem remains that I can fill it with NI perma-summoned monsters. And you can't do anything about it. I can also fill the area where you'll appear with a painful amount of area of effect attacks. Imagine walking in only to be immediately hit for 500d6 points of Sonic damage from an elemental admixtured Wall of Fire (or similar, can't remember if WoF actually has the right descriptor). Oh, and I have another contingent spell that sets off a plane shift to another one of my demiplanes. Which is filled with even more goodies. Oh, and it also will trigger the Gate spell trap to Call a Hecatoncheires... Have fun with that.