Fixing wizards (just a few ideas)

[Alex12]

If you spend any time at all here, you realize that Wizards are stupidly powerful. This thread is for different ideas on how they could be brought down, power-wise, so as to be more balanced. Feel free to use any or all of the ideas here.

1.Lower spells learned. Make it so that when levelling up, Wizards don't automatically get new spells. They have to get another wizard to share spellbooks, find a scroll or something similar to copy it from, or (new thing here!) learn it from a Sorcerer or Bard (same mechanics as learning from a spellbook, except teacher must be there the whole time, probably be expensive) This would also have the effect of making non-Wizard arcane casters more desireable.

2.Eliminate them. Replace them with Psions.

3.Limit number of splatbooks they can get spells from.

4.Wizards don't get a spellbook at the beginning, they have to buy one.

5.XP cost (say, 25XP base cost + 25XP/spell level) to copy spells into your own spellbook

Any other ideas?

[Reinboom]

1. Nifty idea on the learning, though, I think a wizard should still at least learn 1 spell each level up automagically.
2. Good idea. Add in 'reflavor psion to be a wizard instead'.
3. I don't quite agree, I believe spell choices should be observed by the DM of course, but most of the issues of spellcasting is core. There's a few problem spells in other books. But there's a few problem everything in other books. It's easier to just restrict them.
4. So... the wizard can't do anything at the beginning? Bad idea.
5. XP costs are a bad mechanic. They just provide intimidation of gaining features rather than a true cost.

I just remove the wizards from my settings, personally..
Idea that I have been playing around with in theory:
6. A wizard must lose 1 level of spellcasting by level 7. They must forgo 2 levels by 14, and 3 levels by 19. This both encourages the nifty spellcasting prestige classes that get no attention because they lose a couple spellcasting levels.
7. Go on a banning spree of both spells and prestige classes. Important: If you use the option #6... either add in another prerequisite or ban fate spinner (as it will be defaulted to).

[Arbitrarity]

Hm, my current favorite is to increase spell casting time on std action spells to one round. Makes the entire casting process much more difficult, interruptable. Quicken spell is modified a lot as well. (+2 for full round action +3 for standard action, +5 for swift).

[hamstard4ever]

Idea that I have been playing around with in theory:
6. A wizard must lose 1 level of spellcasting by level 7. They must forgo 2 levels by 14, and 3 levels by 19. This both encourages the nifty spellcasting prestige classes that get no attention because they lose a couple spellcasting levels.

I've thought about something like this too, and taken it to a more extreme level: apply it to almost all full casters, and require one lost level of spellcasting for every 3 total levels. I was actually running some playtests for this concept on the boards here, although they got derailed due to lack of time for updating (it remains to be seen if I'll be able to jump-start them again).

On further thought, the idea of "must lose a level of spellcasting by level X" is kind of a clumsy rule, regardless of how far you take it. A more elegant way of achieving a similar effect might be to impose a limit on maximum spell level, since that's the biggest reason people don't want to give up caster level. Using your numbers as an example, you'd use the following chart:

{table=head]Wizard spell level|Minimum ECL

4th|8

5th|10

6th|12

7th|15

8th|17

9th|20[/table]

The idea is that you can take as many wizard levels as you want, but since your access to higher level spells is restricted anyhow, a pure wizard isn't getting higher level spells any sooner than a wizard who gives up a few spellcasting levels. That's the big reason why giving up caster levels is regarded as such a big sacrifice. Doing it this way means wizards are never required to take a loss in caster level, but there's much less incentive to maintain 20 levels of full casting progression: a pure-classed Wizard 7 won't be getting 4th level spells until he's a Wizard 8, which is the same level he'd get them at if he was a Wizard 7/something else 1.

My much more extreme variant would be:

{table=head]Spell level|Minimum ECL

2nd|4

3rd|7

4th|10

5th|13

6th|16

7th|19[/table]

although obviously that leads to a much more drastically changed game.