Oh No, I'm Nerfing Casters! [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

NerdHut

2023-01-09, 04:04 AM

Hey, let's not beat around the bush; I wanna nerf casters. I completely understand if you're against the concept, that's just a difference in our priorities. But for me the power differential is frustrating to run a game with, so I'm mulling over an addition to mediate the problem. I am well aware there is nothing short of a complete system overhaul that will solve the problem. I just want the problem to be less pronounced.

I'm posting this to garner constructive criticism. Please don't just tell me the idea is bad, that's for my gaming group to decide when I run my next game. But I trust the forum members here to spot glaring mechanical issues and iron out details.

My idea is to incorporate a casting check. Within the lore it's an attempt to stabilize the magical energy you're channeling. This option keeps all the high level spells in play, but makes them harder to use effectively. I've got the first draft of the concept in the first spoiler.

Spells are unstable by nature. Though the magic can be focused in such a way as to make it less volatile, simply casting brings a level of risk.

When casting a spell, a character will often be subject to a Stabilization check, performed by rolling a d20 plus their caster level. Each spell has a Stabilization DC equal to three times its spell level. If the caster cannot roll low enough to fail the check, they should not roll. They automatically succeed.

Stabilization checks need only be made when casting a spell using a spell slot. Magic items, spell-like abilities, and other magical abilities which resemble spells are not subject to this check.

On a successful Stabilization check, the spell is cast normally (subject to any exterior failure chances).
On a failed Stabilization check, the spell is not cast, and the caster takes damage equal to the spell’s level, but the spell slot is not expended.
On a roll of 1 on the d20, the spell is not cast, the caster takes damage equal to the spell’s level, the spell slot is expended, and the caster must roll on the mishap table.

When determining a spell’s level, use the effective level of the spell. That is, a spell with metamagic applied is treated as a spell of the same level of slot it requires to cast. Using a higher level spell slot to cast a low level spell does not necessarily increase its spell level (e.g., using a 2nd level spell slot to cast Open/Close when lower spell slots have already been expended).

Mishap Table

d12
Result

1
Roll again on this table, twice. If you roll 1 again, treat it as 11.

2
You and every creature within a 50-ft radius of you take 1d4 ability score damage. The ability damaged is determined randomly.

3
A thunderous boom emanates from you, dealing 4d8 sonic damage within a 20-ft radius, and half as much to a distance of 40-ft (Fort save for half damage, DC equal to the normal DC for that spell level). This may destroy vulnerable structures.

4
Double the damage you take from your failed Stability Check.

5
You are cursed become completely immobile, like a statue. You are still aware of your surroundings and conscious, but unable to perform any actions that require more than mental activation. Roll another d12. On a 1, this curse is permanent until removed by break enchantment, limited wish, miracle, remove curse, or wish. Otherwise, the curse lasts for 24 hours.

6
You cannot attempt to cast this spell again for 1d8+1 days.

7
6000 lbs of gravel (roughly half a 5-ft cube) appears around you in your space, and scatters outward to make a 15-ft by 15-ft square of difficult terrain. This weight my collapse some platforms.

8
You cannot attempt to cast this spell again for 24 hours.

9
The spell is cast, but delayed. It activates at the beginning of your turn 1d3 rounds from the time you cast it.

10
The magical energy of the spell slot you attempted to use solidifies into a pellet, which falls from your fingertips. As a free action you can attempt to catch it with a DC 13 Dexterity check. It has a number of hit points equal to the spell level used, 0 hardness, and takes fall damage if it falls far enough. The spell activates when the pellet is broken. While holding the pellet, you can use a standard action to break it.

11
No additional mishap, beyond bruised pride.

12
Your spell-casting ability increases by 2 for one hour.

Concerning the Mishap Table, those options are not necessarily finalized, but they're at about the level of consequence I want.

Beyond that, I figured I'd include the math on how frequently a caster could expect to fail at casting their spells. In the second spoiler is a screenshot of my spreadsheet on failure percentages.

https://i.imgur.com/Wk7dHN9.png

ciopo

2023-01-09, 05:02 AM

first blush impression : what about paladin/rangers or "standalone" prestige class that have a worse progression of caster level versus spell level?

I would say make it a character level check, regardless of actual caster level. This way you aren't incentivizing "doubling down" on keeping caster level as high as possible, making the stabilization simply easier for higher level characters

I don't like the miscast all that much, I would keep it somewhat simplier, I feel like a somewhat streamlined behavior would be to reduce the caster level (to a minimum of 1) based on the stabilization check, ? reducing the effective caster level means lower duration, less dice of damage, less HD influenced. making generally the spells "less powerful" while still having the effect. Reducing the caster level by "N per difference between the check and the DC" could be quite harsh as is. Like if N is 3 and you miss the DC by 2, that's 6 less effective caster level, with all that entails.

Mostly it's because "no effect at all" is the most unfun result.

Random question, would you allow to take 10 on these stabilization checks, when in nonstressfull situations?

NerdHut

2023-01-09, 05:27 AM

first blush impression : what about paladin/rangers or "standalone" prestige class that have a worse progresison of caster level versus spell level?

I would say make it a character level check, regardless of actual caster level. This way you aren't incentivizing "doubling down" on keeping caster level as high as possible, making the stabilization simply easier for higher level characters

That's a good catch, and I had defintely overlooked it.

I'm not certain character level will be better, but class level (combining base and prestige classes when appropriate) may be a good option. It could keep classes like Ranger from struggling to cast basic spells, make some prestige classes more relevant, and keep barbarian levels from improving a sorcerer's spells.

I don't like the miscast all that much, I would keep it somewhat simplier, I feel like a somewhat streamlined behavior would be to reduce the caster level (to a minimum of 1) based on the stabilization check, ? reducing the effective caster level means lower duration, less dice of damage, less HD influenced. making generally the spells "less powerful" while still having the effect. Reducing the caster level by "N per difference between the check and the DC" could be quite harsh as is. Like if N is 3 and you miss the DC by 2, that's 6 less effective caster level, with all that entails.

The main issue I have with that is that it wouldn't effect some spells. Bestow Curse, for example, would function the same no matter the caster level (assuming we don't get into the caster level requirements for spells, which seems against the spirit of your suggestion). But you do have a point about "nothing happens" not being terribly fun. That's why I wanted some mishaps. I suppose I could switch to a mishap table that is more neutral (or even positive) overall but more frequently used.

Random question, would you allow to take 10 on these stabilization checks, when in nonstressfull situations?

It's tempting, but I kinda like the idea of a wizard being distrusted by the town because the top of his tower keeps blowing up.

DrMartin

2023-01-09, 05:41 AM

I think that the first advice should be: talk with your players about what you think makes casters dominant, and why that is an issue at the table, and see if there's a compromise that works at your table outside of the game first.

but assuming that doesn't work, or that you want for some reason a baked in mechanical solution:
Making that stabilization roll would mean discouraging caster from using their spells, and casting their spell is arguably exactly what a player wants to do when rolling a caster character. so i'd personally try to act on other parameters to address the possible issue without adding a "gotcha", random mechanic.

Caster are dominant because, among other things...
- spells sidestep entire parts of the game in ways that other classes need either special skills to at best emulate or cannot do at all (knock, invisiblity, fly)
- spells are freely available to select from an enormous array of possibilities (even when restricted to core) - be it with your free picks at level up or by buying scrolls
- spells are quick, easy and safe to cast, in combat or otherwise
- you can use spells during downtime to fix many issues, almost any issue you put your mind to
- a canny player with save or die or save or suck spells can target an opponent's weakest save and end the fight without engaging with the hit point system at all

with that in mind, some other ideas to mitigate caster supremacy, by reverse-engineering what made caster be not so dominant in ad&d:

- make all casting time higher (one standard action become a full round, summon spells take two rounds, quicken spell brings it down one step). keep it as it is for reaction spells like feather fall, but otherwise: casting magic is cumbersome and takes time.

- no concentration checks if you are damaged while casting a spell. you lose the spell and that's it. you can keep concentration for casting under duress (while grappled, entangled, in a storm, etc) or just say that casting requires perfect focus.

- all saves against all spells use your best save. If you are primarily a caster (to exclude part time casters like rangers and paladin) all your saves against all spells use your worse save. a "gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you" kind of thing.

- wizards and wizard-like casters like archivist receive their starting spell out of a random roll or the GM's whim, and do not gain 2 free spells/level. All new spells are found or have to be researches for. random scroll in treasures become more valuable. specialist get 1 free spell from their school when they unlock a new level of spells. This plays for the "get creative with the tools you are given" spirit which should be at the core of the class.
- sorcerers and similar "pick your set of spells" caster need to adhere to a theme. If you are familiar with pathfinder, it'd be something like picking only bloodline adjacent spells. they can only use magic from items which similarly adheres to their theme.

casters in town will face similar limitations so the supply of which spells are available in a settlement to buy as scroll should also reflect that. If you want that stinking cloud you have to hike to the lair of the gassy sorcerer and see what they'll want for it. Now getting the spells becomes a quest reward.

These changes bring new tactical limitations to casters that they have to work around and deal with, but do not punish them for wanting to use the main tool in their toolkit.

ciopo

2023-01-09, 05:48 AM

martixy

2023-01-09, 05:59 AM

As someone who has tried this before, the first thing you need to understand is that you will inevitably run into Grod's law.

A casting check, in general is not a bad idea. In fact there are already variants where players roll all the dice (e.g. a save is a flat defense and the caster rolls some kind of check).

But I would argue everything you do runs into the annoyance problem. It's all flat values and mishaps are effectively a fumble table. And I and many players do not like, nay despise fumbles.

This is the most basic trap of game design: Let's introduce a flat random failure chance and call it a day. It's lazy and feels horrible to the user.

The easiest approach is to look at other things that work.
There's many ways to reduce effectiveness. Introducing failure chance is only one approach. But do we have an instance where that works? Sure we do - weapon attacks. But what's the difference to what you're doing? Well weapons are opposed by AC and both parties have control of their respective values. An intricacy your current version lacks.
So what about doing something similar for spells? Well saves somewhat fulfill that role, with a few minor, but ultimately inconsequential details. Or what about something more universal? There is already a mechanic for that too. It's called Spell Resistance. Yielding a somewhat obvious answer of "give every creature SR".

There are other approaches as well. Limiting availability or power. In the base game spell slots implement the former and spell levels and caster level parameters implement the latter. Those are also knobs you can tweak.
That's just what we see in D&D. Other games will also have original or interesting solutions to these problems.

NerdHut

2023-01-09, 06:06 AM

Making that stabilization roll would mean discouraging caster from using their spells, and casting their spell is arguably exactly what a player wants to do when rolling a caster character. so i'd personally try to act on other parameters to address the possible issue without adding a "gotcha", random mechanic.

Well, the idea actually was to make those top-tier spells less desirable, so while it's a valid concern, that's kinda what I'm going for. It's only really a gotcha if you don't know about it before choosing to be a caster.
And to be clear, it only disincentivizes the caster's higher-level spells. Again, totally understand if that's something you're against, but it is intended.

with that in mind, some other ideas to mitigate caster supremacy, by reverse-engineering what made caster be not so dominant in ad&d:

- make all casting time higher (one standard action become a full round, summon spells take two rounds, quicken spell brings it down one step). keep it as it is for reaction spells like feather fall, but otherwise: casting magic is cumbersome and takes time.

- no concentration checks if you are damaged while casting a spell. you lose the spell and that's it. you can keep concentration for casting under duress (while grappled, entangled, in a storm, etc) or just say that casting requires perfect focus.

- all saves against all spells use your best save. If you are primarily a caster (to exclude part time casters like rangers and paladin) all your saves against all spells use your worse save. a "gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you" kind of thing.

- wizards and wizard-like casters like archivist receive their starting spell out of a random roll or the GM's whim, and do not gain 2 free spells/level. All new spells are found or have to be researches for. random scroll in treasures become more valuable. specialist get 1 free spell from their school when they unlock a new level of spells. This plays for the "get creative with the tools you are given" spirit which should be at the core of the class.
- sorcerers and similar "pick your set of spells" caster need to adhere to a theme. If you are familiar with pathfinder, it'd be something like picking only bloodline adjacent spells. they can only use magic from items which similarly adheres to their theme.

I do quite like some of these alternatives, but I'm not sure they'd do quite what I want.

Longer casting time is very tempting, but it feels pretty heavy handed on the lower levels in particular. But perhaps the longer time could be applied to your highest level spells or something in a similar vein to the scaling checks I had in mind.

The scaling/nonscaling saves are something I've had in mind for other reasons, but I'll consider how/whether to incorporate them.

And while I like the theming/specialist idea, I'm not sure it'd provide the result I want either.

So considering everything you've mentioned, I do get another idea. Keeping some sort of difficulty (be it slower casting, failure chance, or something else) for your highest level spells, but improving the way lower level spells scale. Less attractive 6th level spells in exchange for more effective 3rd level spells may not be an equal tradeoff, but it would soften the nerf, I think.

Silva Stormrage

2023-01-09, 06:11 AM

DrMartin

2023-01-09, 06:14 AM

I get the intention better now. If it's just for when the caster takes out "the big guns" the random roll is not so bad. fun, even.

But in that scenario, I don't think casters need the buff on the low level spells, to be honest.

NerdHut

2023-01-09, 06:19 AM

Mmm, what if failing the stabilization results in also a reduction of the saving throw DC for resisting the spell? That and caster level more or less covers everything in the "easy bake". The other two possible parameters remaining would then be perhabs circumstance malus to penetrate spell resistance, and a general malus to attack bonus for landing touch attack. Those are the broad categories of variability I think

This almost exclusively effects combat. And I'm wanting something a little broader. That also makes for a lot of moving parts, which I'd prefer to avoid (though you could argue I'm not avoinding it very well with what I already have).

The easiest approach is to look at other things that work.
There's many ways to reduce effectiveness. Introducing failure chance is only one approach. But do we have an instance where that works? Sure we do - weapon attacks. But what's the difference to what you're doing? Well weapons are opposed by AC and both parties have control of their respective values. An intricacy your current version lacks.
So what about doing something similar for spells? Well saves somewhat fulfill that role, with a few minor, but ultimately inconsequential details. Or what about something more universal? There is already a mechanic for that too. It's called Spell Resistance. Yielding a somewhat obvious answer of "give every creature SR".

There are other approaches as well. Limiting availability or power. In the base game spell slots implement the former and spell levels and caster level parameters implement the latter. Those are also knobs you can tweak.
That's just what we see in D&D. Other games will also have original or interesting solutions to these problems.

I understand where you're coming from on alternative checks. And for combat, broadening spell resistance actually sounds like a great option. But that doesn't do anything to address spells that aren't targeting an enemy. So on one hand, yeah that's actually a pretty good possibility for addressing part of the problem. I am going to add that to my list of options. But I still want something that applies more broadly out of combat.

Lowering spell slot availability would definitely have about the right effect, I just don't know what I would do to best implement that. I'd want it somewhere between "reduce spells slots by one per spell level" and "I have created new tables for every single casting class."

NerdHut

2023-01-09, 06:27 AM

It feels like a lot of casters would pick up arcane mastery which lets them take 10 on caster level checks and thus stabilization checks.

Not sure if that's intended but a feat tax on casters isn't a bad thing. Still it seems like an interaction you would want to take note of due to how much and easily it bypasses this system.

I had actually though of a different possible feat tax until I reread the description (Practiced Spellcaster), but Arcane Mastery would fill a similar role as it seems. I wasn't exactly intended, but it's something I more-or-less thought of and was okay with. I always feel hesitant to add a feat tax, since so much of my house rules is removing them, but this one feels like much less of a problem, especially if I take measures to make casting easier for Rangers and Paladins.

I get the intention better now. If it's just for when the caster takes out "the big guns" the random roll is not so bad. fun, even.

But in that scenario, I don't think casters need the buff on the low level spells, to be honest.

Yeah, it was mostly the "big guns" I had in mind. All about taking the edge off the power differential, not hobbling every action of a wizard.

And despite the whole point of this thread, I may still look at buffing low level stuff, but only at high character level (but thats for a different thread where I threaten to ruin my entire game).

zlefin

2023-01-09, 07:17 AM

The mishap table feels like it's too punitive towards low level casters. At level 1 the thunderous boom effect could cause a party wipe. At low level if the statue effects permanent clause happens, you don't have the means to remove it, which would mean a more or less dead char unless you can find a friendly caster of high enough level; and even then it means basically dead until you bring them back to town. Whereas a higher level party will more likely have the means to remove the status effect and can take the damage much easier. Most of the other mishap effects are not that onerous.

NerdHut

2023-01-09, 07:29 AM

pabelfly

2023-01-09, 07:35 AM

The easiest approach is to look at other things that work.
There's many ways to reduce effectiveness. Introducing failure chance is only one approach. But do we have an instance where that works? Sure we do - weapon attacks. But what's the difference to what you're doing? Well weapons are opposed by AC and both parties have control of their respective values. An intricacy your current version lacks.
So what about doing something similar for spells? Well saves somewhat fulfill that role, with a few minor, but ultimately inconsequential details. Or what about something more universal? There is already a mechanic for that too. It's called Spell Resistance. Yielding a somewhat obvious answer of "give every creature SR".

Blasting is the build with the least balance problems, and everything having SR encourages players to play more buff spells (still okay) and encounter-negating spells instead, which are much harder to balance against.

Zarvistic

2023-01-09, 07:43 AM

I think ciopo's idea of using character level is really good. You can't really boost it beyond whatever the level a player is at and it might incentivize more interesting multi-class builds, similar to how blade magic works.

In one game I played a while ago, the max spell level was 6 using the bards progression. That seemed to work out pretty well, perhaps worth considering.

Rynjin

2023-01-09, 09:02 AM

Put me in the camp of "balance by annoyance" is never worthwhile. It just makes the game swingier. "Oh the Wizard can still break my game but now he needs to make a random roll to do it!" doesn't fix the stated problem.

Instead, address the issue at its root: some stuff is broken, don't use it.

SimonMoon6

2023-01-09, 09:39 AM

Thought #1: The true power of a wizard is his versatility.

Suggestion: Limit his versatility. So, if you want to introduce a d20 roll in order to cast a spell, why not make it a skill check, with every category of spells requiring a different skill? (This is a mechanic that several games have used.)

For example, to cast an Evocation spell, a wizard would have to roll on Spellcasting (Evocation), whereas to cast an Abjuration, a wizard would have to roll on Spellcasting (Abjuration). So, there would be multiple skills vying for a wizard's precious skill points. A wizard would be unlikely to be able to maximize all of those skills.

(Some games also introduce the notion of needing to know the "nouns" to go with each "verb". For example, to cast a lightning bolt spell, a wizard would have to "evoke lightning", needing the verb "evoke" as a skill and the noun "lightning" as well (as a skill? or a feat? or a limited choice class ability?), but I'm not sure how to fit that into this system.)

The skills don't have to be those exact groupings either. Maybe there's a skill for other categories of spells, like the various cleric domains each being a skill.

However, this would be harder for other classes (Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid, etc), but there are options. Maybe Sorcerers (who don't know anything about anything) just get to use their class plus CHA mod as their "skill". Clerics and Druids would gain a couple of skills for "free", like their domains (and druids get Animal and Plant domain skills).

martixy

2023-01-09, 11:18 AM

Blasting is the build with the least balance problems, and everything having SR encourages players to play more buff spells (still okay) and encounter-negating spells instead, which are much harder to balance against.

Every creature and EVERY spell. I guess it isn't as obvious if you don't read through the whole thread.

Another knob you can tweak is action economy.

A more targeted approach might be addressing individual extremes like the wizard, but I am left with the impression we are looking for a more global solution.

Quertus

2023-01-09, 11:35 AM

Where to start?

“I kinda like the idea of a wizard being distrusted by the town because the top of his tower keeps blowing up.”

It also explains why almost everyone in your setting is an atheist - nobody wants to go to church when Boom! everybody’s dead. And “dirty bomb” just means “the Druid who snuck into town and began casting”. :smallamused:

Also… the Wizard in his tower is unlikely to cast sleep; however, if they were allowed in town, the 1st level Cleric would have a high demand for his healing spells from the townsfolk. So your image should definitely be of the “rewards” of faith, as churches keep exploding, rather than the exploding Wizard’s tower.

“I'm not certain character level will be better, but class level (combining base and prestige classes when appropriate) may be a good option. It could keep classes like Ranger from struggling to cast basic spells, make some prestige classes more relevant, and keep barbarian levels from improving a sorcerer's spells.”

Yeah, several classes really got the shaft that don’t deserve it. You might be better off finding an excuse to use a “related classes” BAB test rather than a caster level test. It’s a pity it’s so hard to make the fluff and crunch line up there.

“Yeah, it was mostly the "big guns" I had in mind. All about taking the edge off the power differential, not hobbling every action of a wizard.”

That’s… an interesting goal. I think a funny alternate goal would be to switch the fail states up to affect lower-level spells instead, for “I’ve forgotten more about these weak magics than you’ll ever know”. But your stated goal could easily allow for mechanics and fiction to match - a big bonus over many proposed changes.

This encourages numerous strategies, like metamagic, or finding ways to “take 10”; otherwise, it very much becomes a “party leader” call whether or not to pull out the big guns.

Although it’s nice that the fluff and crunch can be easily aligned, the world building is a little tricky. You can no longer have Dragons with hidden caves of treasure, or secret cult meetings, because Boom! they keep giving away their position, blowing up their hiding places, and destroying their treasure.

On the flip side, I’m loving the idea of “the hidden cult of Mystra / other deities that usually operate openly”. :smallbiggrin:

Rynjin

2023-01-09, 11:36 AM

Every creature and EVERY spell. I guess it isn't as obvious if you don't read through the whole thread.

Another knob you can tweak is action economy.

A more targeted approach might be addressing individual extremes like the wizard, but I am left with the impression we are looking for a more global solution.

What he's saying is that giving every enemy SR just encourages casters to, quite frankly, veer toward the stronger, more gamebreaking spells in the first place: buffs and SR: No spells.

It disincentivizes use of blasting spells, because at that point there are two points of failure (a save AND Spell Resistance) and a point of mitigation (resistances).

Even if you make every spell interact with SR, all you're doing is turning every caster into a buffbot, because it is simply not worth doing anything else. Unless your intention is also to give all players SR, in which case drop the bull**** and just ban casters.

To compare it to the martial equivalent (an attack roll vs AC), imagine if you also gave every creature in the bestiary varying levels of Concealment.

It would be obnoxious.

Darg

2023-01-09, 12:55 PM

It would be obnoxious.

It already is when players have it. Makes us take more deadly risks because the odds are favorable. The god of luck doesn't always smile on some one.

blackwindbears

2023-01-09, 02:03 PM

Hey, let's not beat around the bush; I wanna nerf casters.

Looking over the suggestion it's unclear to me precisely what problem you're trying to solve. Most D&D games are pretty idiosyncratic to the players and the DMs and I rarely, if ever, see forum theory crafting bear out. (The most broken build in my last 1-20 game was a ranger ffs).

What specific things are full casters doing in your games that's making them break?

How many encounters usually happen before a long rest?

What sort of monsters do you typically use in an encounter?

How tightly coupled are the PCs to the official wealth by level?

What level range do you typically play?

If the game isn't broken, but instead unbalanced, how do the balance issues usually manifest?

Here's how I would answer the same questions for my current game:

My party has a Psion/Meditant, Barbarian/Bear Warrior, Ranger, and Cleric/Malconvoker. All level 13 and 14.

1) Currently no one has broken my game

2) Typically 3-6 encounters between long rests, except for random encounters during downtime

3) Running age of worms, so there's lots of undead. The most recent adventure included some devils as well. These creatures have DR which substantially cut the damage output of the ranger when he's unprepared.

3) PCs are behind on wealth by level, trying to catch it up

4) This is age of worms, we're going 1 to 21

5) The biggest intraparty balance issues is

A) the Ranger has nothing interesting for downtime. The Barbarian took over a lizardfolk tribe in the mistmarsh and uses ACKs rules to manage the kingdom. I gave them the old 2nd edition "Call the Horde" ability. The Psion manages a school. The Cleric researches fiends to bind. And has been focused on making tuning forks.

B) The ranger isn't optimized enough to put impressive amounts of damage out in combat. And isn't really pulling weight.

C) The Psion can put out some *very* high DC dominate monster effects.

To fix this I first tried to set him up with a ranch. It burned down. The combat effectiveness didn't improve so we decided to basically respect the character.

I decided to do this rather than nerf the other characters because the rest of the party was in a spot that feels good in and out of combat. I am keeping an eye on the Psion. I'm worried with him that I'm in a situation where combats are all or nothing. In my case the main issue is just the DC.

-------------------------------------

Looking at your fix for my game I think two things would happen.

1) Combats would go longer because the support won't support as well. Longer combats will further emphasizing how little the Ranger can do against opponents with DR he isn't prepared for.

2) The Psion would still be a random chance from ending single boss encounters. In his case this is pretty equivalent to just reducing his DCs by a chunk. But would also add an additional die roll to everything he does, dragging out combat a little more. It also hits teleport and other utility spells. When going into danger this isn't a huge deal, just recast. When escaping this is potentially a TPK cause.

3) This would hurt the Malconvoker which already randomly loses summon spells to damage. Her and the Bear Warrior are really in the sweet spot right now and making the Malconvoker 20% less powerful is an unacceptable trade off to me

By going through this exercise it made obvious to me that for **my game** narrower changes make more sense. In future games, I'm probably going to make the Meditant ability that boosts mental stats an enhancement bonus, rather than an untyped bonus. Just because once stacked with everything else the DCs get somewhat inappropriate for the level.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-01-09, 03:58 PM

I agree that trying to staple on a blanket fix like this will produce less than wanted effects.

Is the problem that the spells themselves are too strong (inherently solve too many problems)? Then nerf/ban the offenders. <---this is likely impractical due to the sheer number of 3e spells, at least if you allow suppliments.

Is the problem that casters can cast too many spells? Then reduce the number they can cast, such as by removing the bonus spell slots for having high casting modifier.

Is the problem buff stacking? Then limit the number of buffs you can have up at any instant.

Is the problem metamagic stacking? Then tackle that.

Each of these requires a different, targeted approach. You actually have to reduce the annoyance in the system, not just shove it behind a random check.

Arael666

2023-01-09, 04:22 PM

Wouldn't it be easier to just outright ban tier 1 (and maybe tier 2) classes?

Darg

2023-01-09, 04:55 PM

Thunder999

2023-01-09, 04:55 PM

Just tell players you hate casters, ban them, and delete every single mosnter ability that inflicts anything other than hp damage or conditions that will go away on their own by the time the fight is done, rather than making them a liability.

RandomPeasant

2023-01-09, 08:18 PM

Fumble tables are basically always a bad idea. Don't do fumble tables. If you want to nerf casters, the easiest way is to reduce spellcasting progression somehow. You could do it like E6 does, and simply play at only the levels before casters reach power levels where you think they're a problem. You could reduce people to Sorcerer or Bard progression (though if you do the latter, either move it forward a level or start at 2nd level or higher -- no on deserves to be running around with only Cantrips to their name). But don't put fumble tables in your game.

Is the problem that the spells themselves are too strong (inherently solve too many problems)? Then nerf/ban the offenders. <---this is likely impractical due to the sheer number of 3e spells, at least if you allow suppliments.

This is not really true. There are a lot of spells, but most of them fall into an acceptable power range. The fact that you can go dig up sword of darkness from the Spell Compendium has essentially nothing to do with what makes spellcasters powerful. If you want to nerf the problem spells, you just say "no spells that let you control other creatures", "no spells that let you change into another creature", and "no spells that let you act multiple times per round" and you solve the overwhelming majority of problems with a very small number of false positives. And as a bonus, all of those things are annoying to deal with even if they aren't overpowered.

Is the problem that casters can cast too many spells? Then reduce the number they can cast, such as by removing the bonus spell slots for having high casting modifier.

I would caution against doing this, unless you give casters some kind of sustain option (like free reserve feats) to offset it. Otherwise you risk a dynamic where casters get to do all the abusive encounter-ending things you're worried about, but also there are a bunch of encounters where they don't do anything. That's not really fun for anyone.

Thought #1: The true power of a wizard is his versatility.

Suggestion: Limit his versatility. So, if you want to introduce a d20 roll in order to cast a spell, why not make it a skill check, with every category of spells requiring a different skill? (This is a mechanic that several games have used.)

For example, to cast an Evocation spell, a wizard would have to roll on Spellcasting (Evocation), whereas to cast an Abjuration, a wizard would have to roll on Spellcasting (Abjuration). So, there would be multiple skills vying for a wizard's precious skill points. A wizard would be unlikely to be able to maximize all of those skills.

(Some games also introduce the notion of needing to know the "nouns" to go with each "verb". For example, to cast a lightning bolt spell, a wizard would have to "evoke lightning", needing the verb "evoke" as a skill and the noun "lightning" as well (as a skill? or a feat? or a limited choice class ability?), but I'm not sure how to fit that into this system.)

The skills don't have to be those exact groupings either. Maybe there's a skill for other categories of spells, like the various cleric domains each being a skill.

However, this would be harder for other classes (Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid, etc), but there are options. Maybe Sorcerers (who don't know anything about anything) just get to use their class plus CHA mod as their "skill". Clerics and Druids would gain a couple of skills for "free", like their domains (and druids get Animal and Plant domain skills).

The problem with this (as those other games demonstrate) is that simply grouping spells into categories doesn't inherently limit versatility to a meaningful degree. Shadowrun players can attest to the degree of "Manipulation bloat" that happened in various games, and starting from D&D's hilariously-unbalanced schools seems unlikely to produce a better result. If you want to do something like this, I would suggest limiting people to the Warmage-type casters (making or finding some for Abjuration/Conjuration/Divination/Transmutation).

Crake

2023-01-10, 12:37 AM

The issue isnt casters, the issue is spells. If you want to nerf casting, you need to look at alternate spell systems (not casting systems, spell systems). Either cap spell level earlier, like, 6th level or something, and make 7-9th level spells ritual-based plot spells, or use a completely different system entirely, like spheres of power, or wordcasting. If you want to make spellcasting finicky and riddled with failure chance, thats okay, but then remove it as a main class mechanic. Make it so anyone can try and cast spells, but they need to make certain skill checks to do so, and just remove spellcasting classes completely.

Lorddenorstrus

2023-01-10, 04:48 PM

NerdHut

2023-01-11, 08:44 AM

You're beating around the bush mate, that mishap table is a Spellcaster Fumble table. So it actuality.. its not an issue with casters... it's an issue with them avoiding a homebrew fumble table you're probably using on the martials... so you've made a caster fumble table. Fumble tables are bad game design. I enjoy martials, but one DM i played with had such an atrocious ****ed up table everyone played casters to avoid it and he whined about not getting to use it. Ever consider people are playing casters because they hate your fumble system?

You're not taking the biggest thing into concern. The players themselves. D&D is a co-op experience most issues can be resolved by simply talking to the players and asking them to help you fix the issue you're struggling with. Do the players care about balance in the first place, is the underperforming RPer just happy and doesn't care. Is 1 guy going buckwild on a caster and causing problems? This is all playerside kinda fixes... that are much more elegant than trying to slap D&Ds crappiest idea onto casters as well.

Wow, you're making some huge assumptions. This, if added to my games, would be the only fumble chart, and could be adapted again later if the players (or for that matter, if I) hated it.

Bad game design is incredibly subjective, as well. I love the concept of fumble tables, but have avoided them in the past because penalties are hard to get right, as well as to apply them at an appropriate frequency (hence asking for constructive criticism). It is, in fact, possible to design satisfying penalties in games, and fumble tables are merely a subset of penalties.

The reason I have this idea at all is because of how easy it is to accidentally become overpowered as a full caster. That's a system issue, not a player issue, same as underpowered fighters. We don't blame new players for struggling to keep up as fighters, because the system is the root of the problem.

Don't forget that the DM is a player too, and shouldn't have to run a game they don't enjoy just because the party got to a level of play that breaks things.

I can talk to my future players and see if they would prefer a "gentleman's agreement" to deliberately avoid becoming one-man armies. But my pre-existing group cannot meet up post-pandemic because life happens. So I don't know who will be in that new group.

Some people would prefer to have a mechanical restriction than have to guess at what will be a problematic build (I prefer that, and players I have previously played with prefer that).

That is why I present this idea. So I'm not coming up with something on the fly later. This is an OPTION to have at the ready.

Fouredged Sword

2023-01-11, 08:58 AM

The problem with skill checks is that you run into the Truenamer problem.

Skill checks are one of three things - Impossible, variably successful, or trivial. The problem is that the range that the skill check isn't ether impossible or trivial is 20 wide. That's the problem you are going to be grappling with. It is generally easy to have a larger than 20 point swing between optimized and unoptimized skill checks. Any DC high enough to still be variably successful for players who don't optimize that skill check is going to be trivial for players who do.

So I expect this sort of DC check on spells to be completely pointless to players who it most needs to restrain and completely frustrating for the players it doesn't.

If you make the check absolutely static with no ways for players to work around it or reduce in any way you are going to be denying a lot of player agency and this makes for an unfun game.

Honestly, I am going to recommend you implement one of the more tried and true solutions to caster supremacy. Play E6. Reduce spells of higher than 3rd level to rituals that require significant expense and time.

Gnaeus

2023-01-11, 09:21 AM

Every creature and EVERY spell. I guess it isn't as obvious if you don't read through the whole thread.

So, if I'm casting Planar Binding, 3 days prior to the adventure (or teleport, or Animate Dead), I don't care about most of those results. Cleric heals the damage within 24 hours. I only care about the result where you can't cast again for days, and the paralysis result if we rolled a 1 and don't have another caster with the cure. And thats only for the nat 1 fumbles. A simple failure is "I take a cure light wounds charge or two or damage and recast next round". It only affects blasting and control because those are spells that are cast IN COMBAT. And most of the chart effects we don't care about if we aren't in combat. Buff builds don't care much, and minionmancy doesn't care at all.

There are also some chart results that are really bad only for fixed list casters. Especially the "you can't use this spell again for duration" results. If you are a T1, you just vary your attack spells. As in "No Fireball? Lightning Bolt! No Black Tentacles? Solid Fog!" For a sorcerer you could easily be barred from casting your best spells for days.

It also hits the basic fumble table problem. Which is that it disproportionately screws PCs over NPCs and leads to potential disasters. Because the NPC casters are mostly fights that they are narratively intended to lose. If they lose a bit faster, maybe it deprives the group of a good fight, but no real loss. Unless it is the BBEG for a big section of the campaign arc (which is also bad... Strahd casts a spell at you on round 1 and is now immobile for 24 hours. Hope that dispatching his still body is exciting) fumbles by enemy casters won't change fight outcomes at all. A PC is going to be rolling for failed casts multiple times per day, and a bad roll in a close fight could easily lead to TPK or at least player death. Now, I'm odd, and actually enjoy player death (because I can make a new PC). But I at least want my deaths to be a result of a player error or a tense fight, rather than a fumble table. A typical sorcerer 10 will be fumbling once on average every other day, and only in fights where he feels a need to use powerful spells, meaning any combat fumble is potentially disastrous (unless, again, he respeccs to avoid ever casting high level spells in combat, only outside combat, a generally more optimized approach).

Do spell completion items trigger checks? If yes, the ones who are really hurt are UMD types like rogues, because wands are typically minimal caster level, so will always be more expensive or risk issues. If no, you have Harry Potterized your combats, because the easy way around it is to craft a wand or staff for your combat spells. Which again, mostly just hurts blasters, the least optimized casters, because the haste from a stick is about as good as a cast haste, but the fireball is not.

The_Snark

2023-01-11, 10:25 AM

Thought #1: The true power of a wizard is his versatility.

Suggestion: Limit his versatility.

I think this is one of the most promising avenues of restricting casters, although it's also one of the most difficult. I'm not sure I like the skill idea - as someone above me just mentioned, the Truenamer illustrates some of the issues with that. You could maybe write a good skill-based magic system, but I think you'd have to do it from the ground up, with the power of spells scaling based on your result rather than being a binary "if you hit the DC you cast the spell, if you don't nothing happens" check.

My preferred solution is slightly simpler: ban wizards. And sorcerers, and any full caster whose spell list is too broad and vaguely defined. The Generic Magic-User who can do just about anything is the enemy, here: it gives full casters immense power and far more flexibility than non-casters. My model classes here are the beguiler and the dread necromancer - specialist classes, powerful within their niche, but with a much more limited toolset than the traditional wizard.

The obvious problem here is that we don't have nearly enough classes like that to cover all the magical archetypes a player might want. Just looking at the schools of magic, the beguiler handles enchantment and illusion, the dread necromancer is necromancy (obviously), and the warmage kind of covers evocation (although not very well); that leaves abjuration, conjuration, divination, and transmutation all lacking in access. (I don't think classes should necessarily correspond one-to-one with a school of magic, but it's a starting point.) Either you* have to write several classes of your own to cover the remaining territory, or you hack something together where you let people play wizards and sorcerers but they only get to pick 2-3 schools of magic. While the latter is much easier, it's also less satisfying on the player end: "you can play an illusionist wizard, but you have to ban 5 schools of magic" feels punishing, whereas "here's the beguiler class, its spell list is way more limited than a wizard but you get interesting perks and powers to compensate" is more of a give-and-take. And then you need to figure out what to do with the divine casters; the cleric probably needs to be chopped up into 2-3 different classes as well, but the archetypes that compose itare much less intuitive to me than they are for arcane magic, and the druid is borderline (it has a tighter theme than clerics and wizards, but "nature" is still awfully broad and there are so many spells printed)...

*Or you use someone else's work. I think I've seen at least one project like this undertaken on these forums, but I can't recall details.

Anyway. I don't know that this translates to anything easily usable; the above is me musing about how an ideal rework would look rather than offering anything actionable. But I think restricting spell access is worth thinking about. D&D's Generic Wizard, whose powers could theoretically include almost anything, is a really hard concept to balance.

Gnaeus

2023-01-11, 10:53 AM

I think this is one of the most promising avenues of restricting casters, although it's also one of the most difficult. I'm not sure I like the skill idea - as someone above me just mentioned, the Truenamer illustrates some of the issues with that. You could maybe write a good skill-based magic system, but I think you'd have to do it from the ground up, with the power of spells scaling based on your result rather than being a binary "if you hit the DC you cast the spell, if you don't nothing happens" check.

My preferred solution is slightly simpler: ban wizards. And sorcerers, and any full caster whose spell list is too broad and vaguely defined. The Generic Magic-User who can do just about anything is the enemy, here: it gives full casters immense power and far more flexibility than non-casters. My model classes here are the beguiler and the dread necromancer - specialist classes, powerful within their niche, but with a much more limited toolset than the traditional wizard.

The obvious problem here is that we don't have nearly enough classes like that to cover all the magical archetypes a player might want. Just looking at the schools of magic, the beguiler handles enchantment and illusion, the dread necromancer is necromancy (obviously), and the warmage kind of covers evocation (although not very well); that leaves abjuration, conjuration, divination, and transmutation all lacking in access. (I don't think classes should necessarily correspond one-to-one with a school of magic, but it's a starting point.) Either you* have to write several classes of your own to cover the remaining territory, or you hack something together where you let people play wizards and sorcerers but they only get to pick 2-3 schools of magic. While the latter is much easier, it's also less satisfying on the player end: "you can play an illusionist wizard, but you have to ban 5 schools of magic" feels punishing, whereas "here's the beguiler class, its spell list is way more limited than a wizard but you get interesting perks and powers to compensate" is more of a give-and-take. And then you need to figure out what to do with the divine casters; the cleric probably needs to be chopped up into 2-3 different classes as well, but the archetypes that compose itare much less intuitive to me than they are for arcane magic, and the druid is borderline (it has a tighter theme than clerics and wizards, but "nature" is still awfully broad and there are so many spells printed)...

*Or you use someone else's work. I think I've seen at least one project like this undertaken on these forums, but I can't recall details.

Anyway. I don't know that this translates to anything easily usable; the above is me musing about how an ideal rework would look rather than offering anything actionable. But I think restricting spell access is worth thinking about. D&D's Generic Wizard, whose powers could theoretically include almost anything, is a really hard concept to balance.

Probably easier is to make spells have prerequisites. Mostly other spells, but also potentially feats, attributes, etc. You want Overland Flight? Take Fly, Levitate, Gust of Wind and Feather Fall. Then just limit Cleric/wizard spells known from All to Some appropriate number. The more OP the spell for its level, the more prereqs it needs. The theming will follow from the prereqs.

RandomPeasant

2023-01-11, 11:04 AM

It only affects blasting and control because those are spells that are cast IN COMBAT. And most of the chart effects we don't care about if we aren't in combat. Buff builds don't care much, and minionmancy doesn't care at all.

Basically, when you're proposing a caster nerf, you should ask yourself "does this make the Warmage worse". If it does, your nerf is probably a bad idea, because the Warmage is at a power level that's fine.

There are also some chart results that are really bad only for fixed list casters. Especially the "you can't use this spell again for duration" results. If you are a T1, you just vary your attack spells. As in "No Fireball? Lightning Bolt! No Black Tentacles? Solid Fog!" For a sorcerer you could easily be barred from casting your best spells for days.

It's not even really fixed-list casters, it's specifically Sorcerers. A Warmage has ten different 4th level spells they could reasonably use in combat. That's really quite a lot, their issue is just that more than half of them are Orb spells and almost all of them are damage spells, so they don't have that much versatility in practice. But if you randomly lock them out of orb of fire, they can just use orb of sound or orb of cold and be basically as effective. But half the time a Sorcerer has literally one top-level spell, so rolling the wrong mishap is going to make them dramatically less useful.

A typical sorcerer 10 will be fumbling once on average every other day, and only in fights where he feels a need to use powerful spells, meaning any combat fumble is potentially disastrous (unless, again, he respeccs to avoid ever casting high level spells in combat, only outside combat, a generally more optimized approach).

There's also the related issue that fumbles will happen more often to people you would expect to be experts, because they cast spells more often. An apprentice Wizard who casts one or two spells per day fumbles much more rarely than an archmage who's been casting spells for decades, but casts dozens of spells each day.

You could maybe write a good skill-based magic system, but I think you'd have to do it from the ground up, with the power of spells scaling based on your result rather than being a binary "if you hit the DC you cast the spell, if you don't nothing happens" check.

I'm quite skeptical that you can write a good skill-based magic system. The basic problem is this: either your skill check has a predictable correlation with your level (in which case your "skill-based" magic is a level check with extra steps and no different from any other form of magic) or your skill check does not have a predictable correlation with your level (in which case your skill-based magic is broken in some direction or other). Skill-based magic systems are tempting, but in a level-based system they're just not a good idea.

My preferred solution is slightly simpler: ban wizards. And sorcerers, and any full caster whose spell list is too broad and vaguely defined. The Generic Magic-User who can do just about anything is the enemy, here: it gives full casters immense power and far more flexibility than non-casters. My model classes here are the beguiler and the dread necromancer - specialist classes, powerful within their niche, but with a much more limited toolset than the traditional wizard.

I would not ban the Sorcerer. It is true that you can build Sorcerers to do a wide variety of things, but any given Sorcerer does a very narrow set of things, which are known in advance of any particular encounter or adventure you might have to create for them. And the Sorcerer fills an important niche in the world of fixed-list casters, allowing you to build a character that fits into whatever arbitrary niche you haven't provided a fixed-list caster for. If someone wants some of the Dread Necromancer's SoDs that target Fort saves and also some of the Beguiler's SoDs that target Will saves (but not the Dread Necromancer's spells that create undead minions or the Beguiler's illusions, and so on), that's really fine. But you can't create a class for that and also for every other idiosyncratic combination of abilities people want. At a certain point you need a catch-all, and the Sorcerer does that well.

the warmage kind of covers evocation (although not very well)

The Warmage covers evocation about as well as the school can be covered. Evocation does direct damage, and the Warmage does direct damage. It doesn't get contingency, but honestly if you're trying to limit casters, reducing access to contingency is a fine thing to incidentally do (in the same way that for this purpose taking away the minionmancy aspects of the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer would be fine).

While the latter is much easier, it's also less satisfying on the player end: "you can play an illusionist wizard, but you have to ban 5 schools of magic" feels punishing,

I would argue that the issue is that it doesn't really feel punishing. Or at least not nearly as punishing as someone like OP probably wants. A Wizard with Illusion, Conjuration, and Transmutation (or even Illusion, Necromancy, and Abjuration) is not as powerful as one who has only banned Evocation and Enchantment, or one who has opted to be a generalist, but they're still quite powerful. The issue that you have to get at when doing something like this is that there are some schools (Conjuration, Transmutation, Necromancy) that can easily support an entire character or more (e.g. Transmutation plausibly gives you an Elementalist, some sort of buff-bot, and a shapechanger), while others (looking at you, Divination) don't have enough to carry a character without giving them some sort of secondary schtick. You need to do the work of designing (or finding someone else who designed) fixed-list casters, because the schools themselves aren't balanced in the first place. There's a reason a lot more people specialize in Transmutation or Conjuration than Evocation or Abjuration.

the cleric probably needs to be chopped up into 2-3 different classes as well, but the archetypes that compose itare much less intuitive to me than they are for arcane magic

The easy way to do the Cleric is to give them the core Cleric utility (healing, maybe some sort of smiting), and then have them pick up more Domains, but no regular spells. That does sort of leave the Healer holding the bag, but I rather suspect most people don't remember the Healer exists.

the druid is borderline (it has a tighter theme than clerics and wizards, but "nature" is still awfully broad and there are so many spells printed)

The Druid absolutely needs to be split up if your desire is to have narrow and thematic classes. Guy who commands beasts, guy who commands the elements, guy who controls plants, and guy who turns into animals are all plausibly different classes.

D&D's Generic Wizard, whose powers could theoretically include almost anything, is a really hard concept to balance.

If we're talking about game design in general, rather than OP's specific desire to make casters worse, I don't think that's really true. People can have whatever grab-bag of powers they want, the issue is that people want to have thematic classes, and that's easier to do if you're not dealing with "class that does whatever" as a core concept.

Rynjin

2023-01-11, 11:07 AM

Probably easier is to make spells have prerequisites. Mostly other spells, but also potentially feats, attributes, etc. You want Overland Flight? Take Fly, Levitate, Gust of Wind and Feather Fall. Then just limit Cleric/wizard spells known from All to Some appropriate number. The more OP the spell for its level, the more prereqs it needs. The theming will follow from the prereqs.

This, to me, is another case of "balance by annoyance". You'd honestly be better off at that point bringing back Opposition Schools being banned Schools, because it has the same effect of limiting spell selection without introducing the "feelsbad" mechanic of needing to take garbage spells just to get access to the good ones.

This is how martials are "balanced" too, and it suuuuuucks. Why replicate a design flaw?

RandomPeasant

2023-01-11, 12:15 PM

It also does not remotely sound easier to me. Do you know how many damn spells there are? You want to go through all of those and give them prerequisites? There are also issues where high level spells don't really have plausible low-level prerequisites (what's the 1st level spell that grows up to be time stop), or low levels spells don't really have plausible high-level versions (what 9th level spell am I setting myself up for with comprehend languages). I think it is much easier to churn out a couple of Warmage-alikes for the schools that didn't get one if you want to encourage people to play specialized casters. That model works, and it scales reasonably well.

pabelfly

2023-01-11, 01:41 PM

King of Nowhere

2023-01-11, 01:43 PM

every one of us has a different idea of how to balance casters, and every one of us uses some form of it at their tables.
but if every one of us tell the OP to do something different, it's no good. just because it works for our table, it would not work for others. caster balance is extremely specific, because the problem is different at different tables.

regarding the OP idea, yes, it does run the risk of running into grod's law. rolling fumbles once is fun, rolling fumbles all the time is annoying.
that said, that solution can work very well if one goes for the feeling of "magic is dangerous". because yes, it does justify how the wizard blows up his tower every once in a while, and how the people may distrust magic as a result. so I'd say yes, for the purpose of worldbuilding it works wonderfully.
for the purpose of limiting casters, it probably works much more poorly. failures are rare, true fumbles are even rarer, and there's almost no downside to using magic in downtime to advance the plot.
if you and your players want to adventure in such a world.

in any case, rpg is too complicated to predict in advance. i say that the only way to test and refine an idea is to play it. so by all means, go ahead and playtest. and be ready to make adjustments on the fly. this is how I always achieved balance... damn, I said stop trying to force our own solutions on the OP, and I've done it myself!

RandomPeasant

2023-01-11, 02:00 PM

The Bard has a good skill-based casting system in that its special abilities solely based on skill ranks, and they are really tightly-controlled. If we're talking about skill-based casting systems, I'd be using Bard as a starting point.

What the Bard is doing is exactly "the skill is just a layer of obfuscation in front of a level-based system". Your level caps the maximum number of skill ranks you can have in Perform, and no Bard is going to take less than that, so functionally what you have is the same as Bards getting Perform for free, less skill points, and music at different levels. Encouraging Bards to have a specific skill is compelling flavor, and if you wanted to do things like "Evokers are good at Intimidate, Diviners are good at Gather Information" that would be fine, but it's not "skill-based" in any real sense.

that said, that solution can work very well if one goes for the feeling of "magic is dangerous". because yes, it does justify how the wizard blows up his tower every once in a while, and how the people may distrust magic as a result. so I'd say yes, for the purpose of worldbuilding it works wonderfully.

If you want magic to feel dangerous, I think you want something more like Shadowrun's Drain mechanics. Randomly getting hosed by iterative probability does not produce a satisfying feeling of "danger". But if there is a predictable level of injury you take from using powerful magic, I think that works well.

I also disagree that you need "magic sometimes blows up on you" to explain Wizarding research accidents. It's not surprising that a demon-based research project blows up, it's surprising when it doesn't.

pabelfly

2023-01-11, 02:22 PM

What the Bard is doing is exactly "the skill is just a layer of obfuscation in front of a level-based system". Your level caps the maximum number of skill ranks you can have in Perform, and no Bard is going to take less than that, so functionally what you have is the same as Bards getting Perform for free, less skill points, and music at different levels. Encouraging Bards to have a specific skill is compelling flavor, and if you wanted to do things like "Evokers are good at Intimidate, Diviners are good at Gather Information" that would be fine, but it's not "skill-based" in any real sense.

Sure, but the alternative with a skill check system like Truenamer's is that it's completely dependent on allowed sources, allowed resources, and player optimization ability, which makes it impossible to get the skill check DCs right.

Gnaeus

2023-01-11, 03:29 PM

Sure, but the alternative with a skill check system like Truenamer's is that it's completely dependent on allowed sources, allowed resources, and player optimization ability, which makes it impossible to get the skill check DCs right.

Thats a good point. I'm reasonably certain I can make a Truenamer that hits the DCs to use his abilities. But if I want to discuss Quicken on a Truenamer (a +20 check DC), I can't reliably show that in a campaign neutral way without having discussions about custom skill items and item familiars and organizations and what is the relative optimization level of each of those things. I think that in most games, or at least most games that are inhabited by people who read things on forums, it's still pretty doable. But the route to get there would vary by what individual DMs thought was cheesy.

pabelfly

2023-01-11, 04:05 PM

Thats a good point. I'm reasonably certain I can make a Truenamer that hits the DCs to use his abilities. But if I want to discuss Quicken on a Truenamer (a +20 check DC), I can't reliably show that in a campaign neutral way without having discussions about custom skill items and item familiars and organizations and what is the relative optimization level of each of those things. I think that in most games, or at least most games that are inhabited by people who read things on forums, it's still pretty doable. But the route to get there would vary by what individual DMs thought was cheesy.

Actually meeting the checks is worse than you think. Let's assume you start with an 18 from rolls/point buy, get regular wealth by level, and get access to Amulet of Truespeak and Headband of Intelligence, which is the level of optimization expected of Truenamer without going outside of core and Tome of Magic.

Level 1
Ranks – 4
Skill Focus (Truespeak) – 3
Intelligence – 5 (assumes 18 from stats with a +2 INT race)

Total – 12 (DC is 17 for a level 1 opponent)

Level 5
Ranks – 8
Skill Focus (Truespeak) – 3
Lesser Amulet of Truespeak – 5
Intelligence – 5

Total – 21 (DC is 25 for a level 5 opponent)

Level 10
Ranks – 13
Skill Focus (Truespeak) – 3
Amulet of Truespeak – 10
Intelligence – 8 (+2 from levels, +4 from an Intelligence item)

Total – 32 (DC is 35 for a level 10 opponent)

Level 15
Ranks – 18
Skill Focus (Truespeak) – 3
Amulet of Truespeak – 10
Intelligence – 8 (+3 from levels, +6 from an Intelligence item)

Total – 39 (DC is 45 for a level 15 opponent)

Level 20
Ranks – 23
Skill Focus (Truespeak) – 3
Amulet of Truespeak – 10
Intelligence – 10 (+4 from levels, +6 from an Intelligence item)

Total – 46 (DC is 55 for a level 20 opponent)

The DCs are obviously worse against higher-level opponents, which is ironic since you'll want to use your utterances against harder enemies the most.

The obvious response to this is to adjust the DC of the skill check, but given that the difference between the expected DC and the achievable skill check can vary quite a bit by level, it's hard to come up with a reasonable formula to counter this. Unless you want a class whose difficulty in casting varies quite a bit throughout his lifespan.

Bard does it better - ranks is a much better system and it's much easier to work with one expected skill check number at each level that is extremely difficult to change.

RandomPeasant

2023-01-11, 05:07 PM

Sure, but the alternative with a skill check system like Truenamer's is that it's completely dependent on allowed sources, allowed resources, and player optimization ability, which makes it impossible to get the skill check DCs right.

But that's exactly my point. There are two failure modes. One is that the "skill-based" part of your system is just a formality. That's what happens with the Bard. It's true that the Bard "needs" skill ranks to unlock his abilities, but that's not functionally any different from just getting the abilities on level-up, because "do I want to have all the abilities I am supposed to have at this level" is not a real choice. The other is that (because skill checks in D&D can vary so widely with optimization) you end up with a class that varies unrecognizably in performance between tables. That's what happens with the Truenamer. If your 20th level Truenamer makes the bare minimum investment in Truespeak, the can find themselves virtually (or actually, depending on just how bare your minimum is) unable to effect a CR 20 monster. Conversely, if you pull out all the stops, you can have a character that can Quicken a given Utterance a double-digit number of times each day. There's no way to get to game balance when that's the kind of variation you're looking at before even asking what abilities actually do. Which is why I think it is structurally impossible to have skill based magic where A) the skill is a meaningful part of how the character works and B) the magic is remotely balanced in a level-based system.

Quertus

2023-01-11, 05:15 PM

Which is why I think it is structurally impossible to have skill based magic where A) the skill is a meaningful part of how the character works and B) the magic is remotely balanced in a level-based system.

How about if you’re playing 2e D&D, where it’s a level-based game, but your skills don’t improve as you level?

Darg

2023-01-11, 05:30 PM

A skill based casting system could work if it were tied directly to the skill instead of a class. The class could instead be based around improving/mitigating/benefiting from the skill.

pabelfly

2023-01-11, 05:59 PM

A skill based casting system could work if it were tied directly to the skill instead of a class. The class could instead be based around improving/mitigating/benefiting from the skill.

But Truenaming is already fairly dysfunctional as a skill-based casting system, we've seen the multiple ways in which it's flawed as a concept. Moving it away from a class wouldn't change the inherent problems it has.

King of Nowhere

2023-01-11, 06:17 PM

If you want magic to feel dangerous, I think you want something more like Shadowrun's Drain mechanics. Randomly getting hosed by iterative probability does not produce a satisfying feeling of "danger". But if there is a predictable level of injury you take from using powerful magic, I think that works well.

actually, it's the reverse. if the level of injury is predictable, then magic is not dangerous. it is simply something that you have to account for. predictability kills danger. mixing liquid oxygen and hydrogen and throwing sparks in the mix is terribly dangerous, and yet because it is also predictable we use the reaction to propel rockets into space. especially if you get damage that can magically healed, adventurers become desensitized to that (both the player and the character).

that said, such unpredictability may not be desirable for a game. also, i have no idea what shadowrun is, so I may be getting some wrong vibe. but if you want your players to feel danger, you have to throw in some unpredictability. otherwise they'll just find some way to overcome the danger.

I also disagree that you need "magic sometimes blows up on you" to explain Wizarding research accidents. It's not surprising that a demon-based research project blows up, it's surprising when it doesn't.
that may work for the world at large. however, if the magic is reliable, then the players will know all about optimizing stuff so that their own demon-based research project works smoothly. so when you narrate that the wizard blew himself up or got his soul eaten, they will not think "magic is dangerous and unreliable". no, they will think "this guy was a total noob. he should have done x y and z and he'd be fine"

all those are perfectly fine options, but they are not quite the same thing as establishing "magic is dangerous for you too". it all comes down to the tone you want to have.

RandomPeasant

2023-01-11, 06:56 PM

How about if you’re playing 2e D&D, where it’s a level-based game, but your skills don’t improve as you level?

Well then your skill bonus would not be correlated with your level, and you would be left with a reality where there was some level at which the mechanical effect the skill produced was not appropriate in one direction or another.

A skill based casting system could work if it were tied directly to the skill instead of a class. The class could instead be based around improving/mitigating/benefiting from the skill.

I don't understand how you think changing where abilities come from changes whether the resultant total combination of abilities is balanced or not. We don't have to get into all this complicated "what if we did it this way" stuff, the basic question is this: can you design a system where you can have either a +15 bonus or a +50 bonus where having either of those bonuses is balanced? Because it seems to me that the only real way to do that is something like "you are rolling against DC 10", which is right back to "skill-based" not mattering as a descriptor.

actually, it's the reverse. if the level of injury is predictable, then magic is not dangerous.

I suppose it depends what you mean by "dangerous", but "this physically harms you when you use it" does a very good job of indicating that something is dangerous to use. It may be possible to travel safely in the Elemental Plane of Fire by taking appropriate precautions, but I don't think anyone would claim that the fire world where everything is on fire all the time is not dangerous.

that may work for the world at large. however, if the magic is reliable, then the players will know all about optimizing stuff so that their own demon-based research project works smoothly.

Adding a random component doesn't mean you can't optimize things to a point of safety, it just means you have to optimize more to reach a point of safety. If magic circle + dimensional anchor will let you safely bind any demon, you just do that and are safe. But if those spells will sometimes fail and require you to have security on-site, it doesn't mean you can't do research safely. It just means you have to have security on site.

enderlord99

2023-01-11, 07:08 PM

Nerfing casters is fine, as long as you make it clear ahead of time exactly how you're doing so. Knowing the rules (including your houserules) is not cheating, and you need to keep that in mind.

Quertus

2023-01-11, 09:40 PM

a) Well then your skill bonus would not be correlated with your level, b) and you would be left with a reality where there was some level at which c) the mechanical effect the skill produced was not appropriate in one direction or another.

A) with you so far

C) ah, what if the list of effects you were allowed to attempt in the first place was bound to level?

B) at that point, why would there be levels where the effects the skill produced were inappropriate?

Now, I can maybe answer “B”, especially in the context of this thread: b1) a chance to fail at casting Magic Missile *may* be possible to balance at 1st level, but will that still be balanced at 20th level; b2) it just “feels wrong” for the 20th level Wizard to not be better at Magic Missile than the 1st level character.

But here’s the thing: it’s not like vanilla Magic Missile is exactly a “balanced” contribution from a 20th level Wizard already - at least, not at any table I’ve played at.

Also, 20th level Wizards *aren’t* better than 1st level casters at most spells in most editions of D&D already. The level of the guy casting Sleep doesn’t change how potent the spell is - it doesn’t suddenly start affecting whole armies, or dragons, or undead.

So, if there’s already so many vectors in which the Wizard just isn’t getting better with their spells, why, when a new vector is introduced, does it feel necessary for the Wizard to improve in that vector as they level?

And why would “apprentice spells” need to feel balanced from an Archmage?

Ryuken

2023-01-11, 10:18 PM

I never used it, but the vitalizing spell variant from UA always seemed to be a nice mechanical way to replicate a lot of what's written in fiction. Uses spell points and fatigue to put a damper on casting many/high level spells in a short period of time. Maybe some of that can be adapted for your table. May not hold back the full casters as much as you want, but makes the player really consider casting that second cone of cold or spamming magic missile if keeling over from exhaustion changes the encounter dynamic.

paladinn

2023-01-11, 10:30 PM

The best way to "nerf" casters: use the 5e casting system. Spell effects are limited by the level of the spell slot used; no more 15d6 effects. At the same time, casters have more flexibility as all casters are "spontaneous."

IMO it's a win-win

Darg

2023-01-11, 10:43 PM

But Truenaming is already fairly dysfunctional as a skill-based casting system, we've seen the multiple ways in which it's flawed as a concept. Moving it away from a class wouldn't change the inherent problems it has.

Skills inherently can fail based on conditions and chance. That is how skills work in 3.5. Failing a spot/listen check can be just as or even more devastating than failing a truespeak check. That's just how it goes. The reason I mention making the skill its own thing is to simply keep that interaction while one can have the class remove the fumble where pertinent and improve the capability of the skill. The point that I was making is that it's completely possible to have a skill based casting system with a class built around it. As written, truenamer is the car with truespeak being the key that allows it to go anywhere. My thought is that the skill should be the car + key while the truenamer overhauls it to symbolize specialization and expertise around the skill based system. Basically it's ok for the skill to fumble, but it's crap for the class itself to have built in extra fumble.

I don't understand how you think changing where abilities come from changes whether the resultant total combination of abilities is balanced or not. We don't have to get into all this complicated "what if we did it this way" stuff, the basic question is this: can you design a system where you can have either a +15 bonus or a +50 bonus where having either of those bonuses is balanced? Because it seems to me that the only real way to do that is something like "you are rolling against DC 10", which is right back to "skill-based" not mattering as a descriptor.

It's not about where they come from. It's about maintaining the mechanical theme of what a skill is as portrayed in 3.5 while providing a class built to exploit that skill. Skills are designed to be able to fail, whether by chance or by lack of investment it doesn't matter. However, in large part an additional point of failure for the bread and butter of a class just stinks. As has been said it ranges from pointless to unnecessary. At present I do think it's possible to design a system where a wide range in optimization can be balanced on both ends of a wide spectrum and maintain the mechanical reliance established in ToM. It would require a total revamp of the entire truenaming system to implement. Then again, I'm not really motivated to build an entire system I'll likely never see the use of or profit from. My thought is that the class(es) would provide fumble protection at rate of skill rank progression and give extra benefits to expand the usage of the skill. The skill would have a fleshed out augment system reminiscent of how bull rushing works (replaces higher level versions of utterances and with testing a form of diminishing returns could allow optimizers to benefit, but not totally outstrip less optimized players) and increased variety and functionality of utterances.

pabelfly

2023-01-12, 12:18 AM

Skills inherently can fail based on conditions and chance. That is how skills work in 3.5. Failing a spot/listen check can be just as or even more devastating than failing a truespeak check. That's just how it goes. The reason I mention making the skill its own thing is to simply keep that interaction while one can have the class remove the fumble where pertinent and improve the capability of the skill. The point that I was making is that it's completely possible to have a skill based casting system with a class built around it. As written, truenamer is the car with truespeak being the key that allows it to go anywhere. My thought is that the skill should be the car + key while the truenamer overhauls it to symbolize specialization and expertise around the skill based system. Basically it's ok for the skill to fumble, but it's crap for the class itself to have built in extra fumble.

The problems with a skill-based casting system is that the performance of the spells is dependent on system mastery in a way that other casting systems aren't.

A Wizard casts a third-level spell, regardless of the ability of the person playing the Wizard.

Meanwhile, if we start doing skill checks on casting, whether you can cast or not depends on the player ability, allowed resources, and how much they are allowed to optimize. With Truenaming for example, from one extreme you have people that might not even get their spell off, to the opposite end where people just spam their spells all day without worrying about the Law of Sequence.

This doesn't seem like good game design to me.

Quertus

2023-01-12, 08:30 AM

A Wizard casts a third-level spell, regardless of the ability of the person playing the Wizard.

3e Int 12 Wizard bags differ. AFB, but I suspect 2e Int 9 Wizard does, too.

And, even if they *can* cast 3rd level spells, an Int 13 Wizard throwing a DC 14 Fireball isn’t the same as a Tainted Sorcerer throwing a DC 50 Fireball - especially when they’re using Reserves of Strength and caster level boosters to be throwing 20d6 or 30d6 DC 50 Fireballs. Let alone the Wizard who has picked a better spell than Fireball.

So, no, even just “can cast 3rd level spells”, not all Wizards are created equal. Player > Build > Class.

Gnaeus

2023-01-12, 08:45 AM

Actually meeting the checks is worse than you think. Let's assume you start with an 18 from rolls/point buy, get regular wealth by level, and get access to Amulet of Truespeak and Headband of Intelligence, which is the level of optimization expected of Truenamer without going outside of core and Tome of Magic.

Good to know thats the standard, and Barbarians don't get pounce, because it isn't in core + book they are in. Also, you missed 2 points, I have a masterwork item of truespeach. Also, you aren't using any kind of spells or items that can boost skill checks, despite many of them being core. Also, your high level truenamer will use wishes or tomes to boost stat like everyone else.

And if you raise that to a mid op, I get +10 for a custom skill item, +10 for paragnostic assembly. Maybe a bunch more from item familiar if I'm a risk taker or in a game where the culture thinks stealing the wizard spellbook is uncool. Autohitting the DCs isn't hard at mid op. The quicken DCs are more questionable, although obviously the devs thought they were doable, if they thought about truenamer at all.

Darg

2023-01-12, 10:50 AM

The problems with a skill-based casting system is that the performance of the spells is dependent on system mastery in a way that other casting systems aren't.

A Wizard casts a third-level spell, regardless of the ability of the person playing the Wizard.

Meanwhile, if we start doing skill checks on casting, whether you can cast or not depends on the player ability, allowed resources, and how much they are allowed to optimize. With Truenaming for example, from one extreme you have people that might not even get their spell off, to the opposite end where people just spam their spells all day without worrying about the Law of Sequence.

This doesn't seem like good game design to me.

Counterpoint: warlocks, dragonfire adepts, and martial adepts exist so what is the issue in being able to cast all day or at the very least a long time?

A wizard relies heavily on system mastery too, it's just more intuitive. A wizard starting with 10 int isn't going to be able to do much for a while and less effective with saving throw spells compared to a wizard with 14+ int.

It's possible to not have skill failure or make it so you only have a chance to fail after so many uses per day. You're arguing about how it is as if it were the only way to design the system.

pabelfly

2023-01-12, 11:13 AM

Good to know thats the standard, and Barbarians don't get pounce, because it isn't in core + book they are in. Also, you missed 2 points, I have a masterwork item of truespeach. Also, you aren't using any kind of spells or items that can boost skill checks, despite many of them being core. Also, your high level truenamer will use wishes or tomes to boost stat like everyone else.

And if you raise that to a mid op, I get +10 for a custom skill item, +10 for paragnostic assembly. Maybe a bunch more from item familiar if I'm a risk taker or in a game where the culture thinks stealing the wizard spellbook is uncool. Autohitting the DCs isn't hard at mid op. The quicken DCs are more questionable, although obviously the devs thought they were doable, if they thought about truenamer at all.

Have a look at the example Truename builds in Tome of Magic. When the people developing Tome of Magic said, "this is what we're going to publish," this is what they thought their Truenamers would have equipped when making their skill checks. Their exemplar Truenamer has a Truespeak check of 24 at level 9 (and is a... half-elf), so the combat starts with the DM using the default character only has about a 40% chance to hit an opponent at the same level.

Now, there are a bunch of ways to optimize so that the skill checks automatically succeed. You cite the Paragnostic Assembly, but remember that Complete Champion came out in May 2007 and Tome of Magic came out in March 2006. I'll go out on a limb here and say that maybe the original designers of Tome of Magic weren't thinking about the Paragnostic Assembly when working out the class. And you point out that custom competence items can be made, which is true, but it's not a ringing endorsement of the maths of skill checks when you need to custom-create an item to get the maths to work, or the quality of writing of the Tome of Magic section when they could have just included, I don't know, a few Rings of Truespeak and that +2 masterwork item you'd like to have next to the Amulet of Silver Tongue.

So, tl;dr: Truenamer wasn't properly playtested, the original calcs for Truespeak made no sense, and the idea of doing a skill-based casting system is still inherently flawed. Still, if you optimize the **** out of Truespeak, it can be a fun class.

Counterpoint: warlocks, dragonfire adepts, and martial adepts exist so what is the issue in being able to cast all day or at the very least a long time?

When you treat the Truenamer class like this (and I always do), you can have a lot of fun with the class. It's not designed that way, though, until you come up with a huge load of extra skill point bonuses to tack onto the class to trivialize the skill check.

Gnaeus

2023-01-12, 01:23 PM

Have a look at the example Truename builds in Tome of Magic. When the people developing Tome of Magic said, "this is what we're going to publish," this is what they thought their Truenamers would have equipped when making their skill checks. Their exemplar Truenamer has a Truespeak check of 24 at level 9 (and is a... half-elf), so the combat starts with the DM using the default character only has about a 40% chance to hit an opponent at the same level.

Now, there are a bunch of ways to optimize so that the skill checks automatically succeed. You cite the Paragnostic Assembly, but remember that Complete Champion came out in May 2007 and Tome of Magic came out in March 2006. I'll go out on a limb here and say that maybe the original designers of Tome of Magic weren't thinking about the Paragnostic Assembly when working out the class. And you point out that custom competence items can be made, which is true, but it's not a ringing endorsement of the maths of skill checks when you need to custom-create an item to get the maths to work, or the quality of writing of the Tome of Magic section when they could have just included, I don't know, a few Rings of Truespeak and that +2 masterwork item you'd like to have next to the Amulet of Silver Tongue.

So, tl;dr: Truenamer wasn't properly playtested, the original calcs for Truespeak made no sense, and the idea of doing a skill-based casting system is still inherently flawed. Still, if you optimize the **** out of Truespeak, it can be a fun class..

So, 1. If we are going to base anticipated optimization on the example character stat blocks, there are many, many incompetent (or just illegal) classes. I would put quite a bit less weight on that than the fact that they obviously intended pcs to hit DC+20 checks. (Or just had no idea at all, and just made up numbers at random, which is also unfortunately plausible.)

2. I never said it was a well written class. I never said it didn't belong in T5. It is probably the second worst written class I have seen, only exceeded by a Kineticist. Clearly poorly playtested if at all, with way too many abilities that duplicate things a caster would have had many levels prior, often in a worse way.

3. Complete champion came out 4 years after core. So we on the forums therefore assume Spirit Lion totem doesn't exist?

4. I agreed with you that the math for skill based casting is wonky. That was, in fact, my point, was agreeing with you. The only thing I dispute is your math sheet suggesting that a truenamer optimized by a reasonably proficient player can't hit their basic DCs. Honestly, even at the OP levels you suggest, I think they are competitive with other similarly unoptimized low tier PCs. A badly built fighter can't solo most CR=APL encounters either. And your math is basically like a fighter that took Power attack and a level appropriate weapon and did nothing else in the next 19 levels.

RandomPeasant

2023-01-12, 01:36 PM

And why would “apprentice spells” need to feel balanced from an Archmage?

That's just looping back around to "the character is not really skill-based". Yes, you could have a "do magic" skill that produced effects that were on par with the Climb or Bluff skills that currently exist, and if you did so effectively it would be no more or less balanced than those skills currently are. But that's quite a different animal from having a character or a class that has skill-based mechanics.

The best way to "nerf" casters: use the 5e casting system. Spell effects are limited by the level of the spell slot used; no more 15d6 effects. At the same time, casters have more flexibility as all casters are "spontaneous."

IMO it's a win-win

The thing is that's not really that much of a nerf. Very little of the power of spellcasters comes from casting low-level spells. There's some value in, like, dropping black tentacles as a 9th level Wizard, but most of your spell slots are used on things that don't need to scale to be effective (e.g. comprehend languages solves the problems it is supposed to solve even if you are casting it with an effective CL of 1). If you told me I could play a Wizard who cast Spirit Shaman-style, but cast all spells at the minimum CL to cast a spell of that level, I would take that deal in a lot of cases.

It's not about where they come from. It's about maintaining the mechanical theme of what a skill is as portrayed in 3.5 while providing a class built to exploit that skill. Skills are designed to be able to fail, whether by chance or by lack of investment it doesn't matter. However, in large part an additional point of failure for the bread and butter of a class just stinks. As has been said it ranges from pointless to unnecessary. At present I do think it's possible to design a system where a wide range in optimization can be balanced on both ends of a wide spectrum and maintain the mechanical reliance established in ToM. It would require a total revamp of the entire truenaming system to implement. Then again, I'm not really motivated to build an entire system I'll likely never see the use of or profit from. My thought is that the class(es) would provide fumble protection at rate of skill rank progression and give extra benefits to expand the usage of the skill. The skill would have a fleshed out augment system reminiscent of how bull rushing works (replaces higher level versions of utterances and with testing a form of diminishing returns could allow optimizers to benefit, but not totally outstrip less optimized players) and increased variety and functionality of utterances.

What you seem to be describing is a system where in a large skill check produces a higher level effect. This is, in fact, not balanced in a world where "how much you optimize" can change skill checks by more than "are you 1st level or 20th level".

Good to know thats the standard, and Barbarians don't get pounce, because it isn't in core + book they are in.

I think it is fair to say that the "standard" level of optimization is pretty low. Though by that standard I think Barbarians probably would get Pounce, because that's Core + one book. They just wouldn't get the fully jumped-up Ubercharger build, which I think is fair to characterize as something outside standard builds (a term which I would consider to be analogous to "low optimization" in forum terms).

Aharon

2023-01-12, 01:37 PM

ahyangyi

2023-01-12, 02:23 PM

OK, I'm asking the question that nobody had asked so far: how is magic in your setting?

Lorddenorstrus

2023-01-12, 02:29 PM

Wow, you're making some huge assumptions. This, if added to my games, would be the only fumble chart, and could be adapted again later if the players (or for that matter, if I) hated it.

Bad game design is incredibly subjective, as well. I love the concept of fumble tables, but have avoided them in the past because penalties are hard to get right, as well as to apply them at an appropriate frequency (hence asking for constructive criticism). It is, in fact, possible to design satisfying penalties in games, and fumble tables are merely a subset of penalties.

The reason I have this idea at all is because of how easy it is to accidentally become overpowered as a full caster. That's a system issue, not a player issue, same as underpowered fighters. We don't blame new players for struggling to keep up as fighters, because the system is the root of the problem.

Don't forget that the DM is a player too, and shouldn't have to run a game they don't enjoy just because the party got to a level of play that breaks things.

I can talk to my future players and see if they would prefer a "gentleman's agreement" to deliberately avoid becoming one-man armies. But my pre-existing group cannot meet up post-pandemic because life happens. So I don't know who will be in that new group.

Some people would prefer to have a mechanical restriction than have to guess at what will be a problematic build (I prefer that, and players I have previously played with prefer that).

That is why I present this idea. So I'm not coming up with something on the fly later. This is an OPTION to have at the ready.

It's not really an assumption out of no where if you admit I'm right. You do like fumble tables, your table is 'not meeting currently' oh ho ho. Gosh golly that sounds something familiar to me. Anyway.. often the simplest solution is the best one. Convoluting a system as large as 3.5 with modifications you don't know the ramifications of is often what most people trying to modify it have to be told. More than once I've found ways to snap a "balanced homebrew" in half annoying the guy who made it because it wasn't as balanced as he thought. *shrug*

And I disagree, you're over valuing your own enjoyment at the cost of others. Play a video game. Unless every player at the table leaps for joy at the concept of being arbitrarily punished for a 5% probability with a table that will make it seem like every peasant or being in the world should be dead statistically. (Yeah that's right, thats why Fumble tables are just bad design. Every single fumble table ever proposed on this forum that I've seen over the many years fails the peasant test. It murders them)

If you need a Fumble table to enjoy DMing, which is a sadistic punishment roullete. I don't think you should be DMing. I enjoy and mostly permanently DM at this point and I don't need to sadistically punish my players to have fun at the table with my friends. The hard part isn't their RNG. It's their strategy. I throw wildly optimized bosses every now and again to keep them on their toes.

Side note; To each their own i suppose over the many years I have found a random player here and there who thought Fumbles were fun, but they also were incredibly non Crunch mechanics be damned RP type people who thought it helped their RP. If your players ALL happen to like it so be it. But I still don't think a convoluted table in ANY means resolves any if 3.5s balance issues in the slightest. It's an irritation at best.

Quertus

2023-01-12, 02:32 PM

OK, I'm asking the question that nobody had asked so far: how is magic in your setting?

It’s fine, thanks for asking. :smallbiggrin:

ahyangyi

2023-01-12, 02:35 PM

And I disagree, you're over valuing your own enjoyment at the cost of others. Play a video game. Unless every player at the table leaps for joy at the concept of being arbitrarily punished for a 5% probability with a table that will make it seem like every peasant or being in the world should be dead statistically. (Yeah that's right, thats why Fumble tables are just bad design. Every single fumble table ever proposed on this forum that I've seen over the many years fails the peasant test. It murders them)

OK, perhaps "you can only fumble when you cast your highest level spell" will easily pass the peasant test. I don't want to argue for fumble tables though.

ahyangyi

2023-01-12, 02:39 PM

It’s fine, thanks for asking. :smallbiggrin:

Sigh, I should've make it clear that I'm not a native speaker and was just prone to include ambiguities in my words.

I was asking how "low magic" they want their setting to be.

Quertus

2023-01-12, 03:44 PM

Sigh, I should've make it clear that I'm not a native speaker and was just prone to include ambiguities in my words.

I was asking how "low magic" they want their setting to be.

Ah. That makes sense.

Except… gah, different people reference different levers with that phrase. So are we taking power, or ubiquity, or… ?

Personally, I think that the proposed change is so minor, especially compared to most changes I’ve seen people suggest, that I’d scarcely notice a drift towards a “lower magic” world, so much as the dramatic “hatred of all religions” world. And the random efficacy of “terrorist casting”.

mashlagoo1982

2023-01-13, 03:05 PM

Pardon if this has already been suggested.

Would it work to limit the number of schools of magic a caster could select spells from a day?

Something like two or three schools from which they could pull their daily spells.
That may work to limit their versatility.
You would need something else for casters like sorcerers.

RandomPeasant

2023-01-13, 05:28 PM

That does almost nothing. You can fill out your daily spell slots from 1st to 20th as a Wizard with just Conjuration and do fine. If you also get Necromancy and Illusion (or Transmutation and Enchantment, or really whatever combination of Conjuration/Necromancy/Illusion/Transmutation/Enchantment you want), you've got a character that is as effective as an unrestricted Wizard in all but high-op games. And the fact that they still have access to whatever utility they want makes the restriction even less real. The fact that you need magic circle to do planar binding is a real restriction if you get three schools total, since Abjuration will generally be worse than Necromancy for normal adventuring. But if you can have Abjuration when you do planar binding and Necromancy when you adventure, there's no loss at all.

As I and others have said earlier, the way to do it if you want to restrict the types of spells people have access to is to remove the classes like Wizard and Druid that have access to a wide range of spells and require people to play classes like Beguiler or Sorcerer that have access to a narrower list of spells. That works very well at achieving the goal, the issue is just that you need to write (or find existing homebrew of) 4-8 classes to cover things like "divine spellcaster", "transmutation specialist", or "elementalist".

Herbert_W

2023-01-13, 07:03 PM

The issue isn't casters, the issue is spells.

I'd like to second this. We've hit the right answer on the first page, ignored it, and then we go sidetracked with . . . skill-based systems being both under/over powered depending on optimization, and fumble tables being bad? We can do better.

Here's how you can nerf casters: remove all of the spells from your game. All of them. That's easy. You don't need to think about or even look at each fiddly little individual one (importantly, becasue there's a lots). They're all just gone.

Then, you can add some spells back in. Give casters a decent but not overwhelming array of spells - blasting may already fit your game's power level, healing is a basic necessity between combats and very situational during it, and those buff spells which work best when cast on others let a caster contribute without stealing the spotlight. Let casters have enough to fill their spell slots with spells that they'll enjoy using, but not more.

You can let players find spells as treasure - spells that you choose, becasue you've decided that they fit the level of balance that you want for your game. If a spell would provide too easy a solution to a given class of problem then you could just not include it or, for more fun, modify it so that getting it to work is also an adventure. Finding a spell as treasure becomes interesting - becasue it expands the party's capabilities in a meaningful way since they don't already have a library of spells to choose from, and becasue every spell is as much a discovery for the players as for the characters as they previously didn't know that it existed in your setting. Instead of thinking "Oh, dispel. That'll save me from selecting that as one of my two researched spells on my next level up," they'll think "Ooh, dispel. That spell exists. Huh. That's going to have implications going forwards."

If a player wants their character to learn a specific spell, you can handle that in exactly the same way that you might already handle custom spells - that is to say, anyone can ask but the default answer is "no" until you say "yes." In effect, you can treat all published spells as if they were from a big book of somebody else's homebrew that you just found. They're starting points and inspiration, but not something that players can expect to point to and say "this book says I can."

In order for this to work, you'll need to exercise the same care that you probably already need when deciding what magic items to hand out - to want to give players enough to keep them excited but not enough to make them overpowered, and keep everybody happy. That's work, but it's an ongoing process and not something that needs to be done all at once in a big rules overhaul.

If this works well, you'll make magic mysterious again. Players will learn about the magic of your setting as their characters do. Magic will become something to explore, with none of the dull established optimization hacks.

(Of course, there's always the possibility of slip-ups that grant the players a too-powerful spell - but there's already the possibility of slip-ups that grant the players a too-powerful magic item. If you can avoid or resolve the latter, the same techniques can work for the former.)

Metastachydium

2023-01-14, 11:18 AM

As I and others have said earlier, the way to do it if you want to restrict the types of spells people have access to is to remove the classes like Wizard and Druid that have access to a wide range of spells and require people to play classes like Beguiler or Sorcerer that have access to a narrower list of spells. That works very well at achieving the goal, the issue is just that you need to write (or find existing homebrew of) 4-8 classes to cover things like "divine spellcaster", "transmutation specialist", or "elementalist".

I mean, three schools are covered on the arcane side of the issue, spontaneous cleric/druid are already a thing and officially so, and "like Sorcerer, but INT-based, school-locked and without delay in gaining new spell levels" could go a long way if one believes baseline Sorcerer is a workable concept as-is.

ToranIronfinder

2023-01-14, 01:19 PM

InvisibleBison

2023-01-14, 02:00 PM

Quertus

2023-01-14, 07:39 PM

No idea if this would, or would not work. 2e had a mechanism besides the experience tables, thst gave casters a disincentive to use all their spells in a single use, that might fit the bill as well. It took 10 minutes per spell level to prepare a spell after two hours of preparation, though I think this rule wasn't enforced (there were also rules that didn't treat s conponent pouch as a cure all, components had to be foraged or bought between adventures).

As I recall, if applied strictly and a wizard used all spells, it would take a couple of days to rememorize all of his spells.

Not enforced?! No true Scotsman / self-respecting 2e table would fail to enforce such basic rules as memorization time and component tracking! (Color blue to taste, but my tables certainly enforced the former, and “enforced” the latter as needed.)

I see two issues with this approach. Firstly, it only works if there usually isn't enough downtime for the casters to prepare all their spells between adventuring days, which is far from guaranteed. But more importantly, people who play spellcasters do so because they want to use spells to address problems. Discouraging them from using spells is getting in the way of their desired play experience, which I think is a really bad idea.

I mean, kudos for the “people who play spellcasters do so because they want to use spells to address problems” attitude - balance threads (and game design in general) could use more of that!

That said, “the guy who is playing artillery wants to use artillery” may be true, but it has to be balanced with “the guy playing the marine with the assault rifle wants to use the assault rifle”, which they can’t do if the artillery kills everything first.

One “solution” is to give artillery limited ammunition, making them need to use their heads and be smart wrt when it’s time to call in the artillery. Another is to make the artillery Indistinguishable from the assault rifle (*cough* 4e? *cough*). Another is to make the threats varied in such a way that each has their time to shine (urban combat zone, perhaps?). Another is to realize that a marine with such good artillery support that they don’t need to fire is a happy marine. Another is to say that artillery is superior, and everyone should play artillery. Another is to say that the marine in inferior, and everyone should play the marine. Another is…

End of the day, you’ve got to ask yourself, is everyone happy? Are they unhappy from not getting enough time in the spotlight? Are they unhappy from having to fight the system? Are they unhappy from their character not feeling like it should? Are their desires reasonable? What reasonable accommodationss can we make to ensure everyone is happy?

And, in that regard, “finite ammo” is really reasonable for physical objects, like grenades and arrows. And only slightly odd for the grenade/artillery proxy objects that D&D Wizards represent. The “lengthy reload times” are a bit more nonsense… until you consider that D&D Magic is *all* ritual magic, and “memorized spells” are just “completed rituals waiting to be triggered”. Even if it does feel a little like “fighting the system” at times, it’s not the worst thing to ever happen to roleplaying games.

RandomPeasant

2023-01-14, 07:58 PM

I mean, three schools are covered on the arcane side of the issue, spontaneous cleric/druid are already a thing and officially so, and "like Sorcerer, but INT-based, school-locked and without delay in gaining new spell levels" could go a long way if one believes baseline Sorcerer is a workable concept as-is.

A school-locked Sorcerer does not really make a compelling replacement for a proper fixed-list caster if you're looking for a specialized caster. I mean, try to do it in reverse for the Dread Necromancer. Your "Necromancer" is a lot less compelling when you're picking whether you want in-combat undead minions (summon undead IV), long-term undead minions (animate dead), or necromantic offenses (enervate, fear, and a whole lot more). The Sorcerer is a necessary stopgap, because you will never cover every combination of magics someone might want, but saying to more than half the magic out there "this is what you get" is going to be disappointing.

I see two issues with this approach. Firstly, it only works if there usually isn't enough downtime for the casters to prepare all their spells between adventuring days, which is far from guaranteed. But more importantly, people who play spellcasters do so because they want to use spells to address problems. Discouraging them from using spells is getting in the way of their desired play experience, which I think is a really bad idea.

I would also point out that, in addition to the first point, needing to sleep for 8 hours already provides a limit to how much spellcasters can adventure. It seems to me that you do not really free up all that much play space going from "Wizards take 8.25 hours to refresh" to "Wizards take 18 hours to refresh". Nerfing prep time also makes the Warmage suffer, which I would again suggest as a guideline for nerfs that are probably excessive. The Warmage is really entirely unobjectionable as a class.

Fero

2023-01-15, 11:31 AM

Perhaps something like the following would work:

Casting magic in stressful situations is inherently difficult. Therefore, casting in combat and similar stressful situations requires a concentration check. The DC=5+spell level+ the total damage taken by the caster in the last round+ other appropriate modifiers (storms, earthquakes, etc.).

Casting outside of stressful situations does not require a concentration checks. However, maintaining spells takes a small part of your focus. Therefore, the concentration DC increases by 1 for each spell you are currently maintaining.

Failing a concentration check to cast a spell causes you to lose the spell, cast the spell at a lower power, suffer a magical mishap, roll a wild magic surge, and/or lose a maintained spell.

I feel that a system like this would nerf casters in a way similar to what you are going for while maintaining player agency. I would pair this with tight controls on skill boosting items (probably a good idea anyways).

I would also consider limiting spell availability, as versatility is the true source of spellcaster power.

Metastachydium

2023-01-15, 01:38 PM

A school-locked Sorcerer does not really make a compelling replacement for a proper fixed-list caster if you're looking for a specialized caster. I mean, try to do it in reverse for the Dread Necromancer. Your "Necromancer" is a lot less compelling when you're picking whether you want in-combat undead minions (summon undead IV), long-term undead minions (animate dead), or necromantic offenses (enervate, fear, and a whole lot more). The Sorcerer is a necessary stopgap, because you will never cover every combination of magics someone might want, but saying to more than half the magic out there "this is what you get" is going to be disappointing.

Fair enough. Would simply treating the spells of each school (with additions perhaps) from the Sor/Wix list as fixed lists help with that? That's still not a huge effort.

ToranIronfinder

2023-01-15, 02:02 PM

I see two issues with this approach. Firstly, it only works if there usually isn't enough downtime for the casters to prepare all their spells between adventuring days, which is far from guaranteed. But more importantly, people who play spellcasters do so because they want to use spells to address problems. Discouraging them from using spells is getting in the way of their desired play experience, which I think is a really bad idea.

True, the style of play has changed with various systems (although I don't think everyone chooses casters for the same reason). Personally, the first part is no issue, as I would assume someone shouldn't be an archmage after practicing for only a few years. But the system has changed, and the assumptions of players have changed, and because DnD's mechanics dictates the way things work in DnD settings (as opposed to the way things work in toolbox systems), these changes have in introduced something of a magical industrial revolution that is inconsistent. It was the rare wizard that had the ability to cast 9th level spells, and back in the day, it was not assumed that all PC wizards would, could or even should be among those with the capabilities. Great magic was possible, but it was very rare. Magical items weren't regularly mass produced in shops as we see in critical role (as per the 2e books, which explicitly state this shouldn't be done). Intelligence levels limited how many spells one could learn, and what level of spells one could access (and since the assumption was rolled states, often rolling 3D6 rather than 4D6 dropping the lowest die) the only sure way to become a powerful wizard was to grow older, and survive. This, I guess goes back to the type of easy mastery the system assumes. Please note, I'm not arguing which way is "right" or "wrong" (or that one can only enjoy one type of game, I like Chinese food, I also like Italian, I'm not sure either is the "right" way to do a restaurant).

In a sense, to keep up with this power creep, the settings seem to assume a type of magical industrial revolution, but its not ubiquitous through societies or classes, and there is no specialization that such a society would bring. Martials are affected by this, because the assumption is that martials remain mundanes. Afterall, the industrial revolution didn't begin with new products being brought to market, it began with products being produced cheaply enough that the common person could afford them; books cost more than a years labor when scribed by hand, but the printing press made it cheaper. Fighters and martial classes are prevented from using wands (since they don't have a spell list) certainly in such a setting magic devices could be used by those who were otherwise "mundane" and magical training to some degree would be part of everyone's basic education. Because the magical revolution that makes magic shops possible in current DnD is not Ubiquitous, martials aren't being equipped with items that level the playing field (in such a world as DnD has become, items that boost spell resistance and saving throws would be as common for even low level fighters as bulletproof vests are for soldiers in combat zones or in police work), and likely the 3.5 fighter would be replaced on the battle field by half-casters and war wizards, while wizards would be impressed to work in factories and would be primarily found behind the lines, in order to produce lightning wands, flying carpets etc. It actually gives me some ideas for a war setting like world war 1, come to think of it, with a rapid deployment of better gear to frontline troops, and fighters being retrained to semi-magical operation).

To simply an overly wordy post, perhaps the problem is that fighters are constructed and the items available to them are assume a relatively low magic setting while the same casters are designed around a high magic setting. If you want a low magic setting, you might try E6, or toolbox systems (OpenD6, Gurps, etc). Otherwise, maybe the goal instead should be to come up with items that level the playing field more directly. As time as gone on, assume Martials can use wands without a use magic device check, assume even low level armor has items sown in that provide spell resistance and perhaps boosts stats.

RandomPeasant

2023-01-15, 05:37 PM

Casting magic in stressful situations is inherently difficult. Therefore, casting in combat and similar stressful situations requires a concentration check. The DC=5+spell level+ the total damage taken by the caster in the last round+ other appropriate modifiers (storms, earthquakes, etc.).

Sort of a nitpick, but I don't really like the scaling on that. Because spell level scales with half of level, the check gets easier over time, meaning that it is most impactful at low levels. And low level spellcasters aren't really the problem.

Casting outside of stressful situations does not require a concentration checks. However, maintaining spells takes a small part of your focus. Therefore, the concentration DC increases by 1 for each spell you are currently maintaining.

What does "maintaining" spells mean? Am I "maintaining" a buff I have cast on myself? One I have cast on someone else? One I have cast on an item? Am I "maintaining" an AoE spell with a duration in rounds? An Instantaneous one that creates or modifies terrain? A Permanent one that does that?

Failing a concentration check to cast a spell causes you to lose the spell, cast the spell at a lower power, suffer a magical mishap, roll a wild magic surge, and/or lose a maintained spell.

I would also consider limiting spell availability, as versatility is the true source of spellcaster power.

This gets throw around a lot, but I don't think it is really true. The abusive things casters can do come from a pretty small pool of spells. How many spells would a Wizard without planar binding need to be the equal of one with just planar binding, magic circles, and dimensional anchor? Probably quite a lot, and the number only goes up if you assume that they aren't just going down the list of other top-tier spells. Versatility (in one sense of the word) is why the Wizard beat out, like, the Beguiler or the Sorcerer, but there are really a lot of classes the Wizard beats out that those guys beat out too.

Fair enough. Would simply treating the spells of each school (with additions perhaps) from the Sor/Wix list as fixed lists help with that? That's still not a huge effort.

Not really. Consider the four schools that don't have fixed-list casters currently.

Abjuration suffers from a very limited set of spells of in-combat utility. What exactly is a 1st level Abjurer supposed to do in a fight? Cast shield on yourself? Cast protection from evil on a friend? That's certainly worse than what a caster does now, so I suppose it meets the goal, but honestly it's worse than even a Warblade or a Fighter, so it seems rather excessive. It gets better eventually, since you get dispelling and the occasional offensive spell at high levels, but I don't think "just the Sor/Wiz Abjurations" is enough for a character.

Conjuration is probably too broad if your goal is to nerf casters. It has BFC, single-target spells, summons, and (for some reason) direct damage. Plus some of the most powerful utility in the game. And those utility spells themselves pose a problem. Maybe you're comfortable ignoring planar binding for the purposes of this discussion (because it is very powerful, and any "nerf casters" proposal should be targeting it). But it is pretty silly to have a class that gets planar binding, but not magic circle or dimensional anchor. Particularly if that class is supposed to be focusing on doing Conjuration.

Divination is even worse than Abjuration. The closest you get to an offensive spell in the PHB is true strike. If you broaden that, there's unluck, but not a whole lot more. You do get some nice spells for a Rogue like gravestrike and whatnot, but they're of limited utility to a Sorcerer. I do not see any way to make this work without either stapling it onto another class (a Divination + Evocation Warmage would be pretty solid, actually), or blending in some other theme.

Transmutation has the same problem Conjuration does of being pulled in too many directions, though again to an even larger degree. Transmutation has buffs, shapechanging, elemental magic, time magic, and for some reason telekinesis effects. And that's using some pretty broad definitions, like counting weather magic under elementalism or flight as a buff. Transmutation also has a separate weird issue where it has a really long tail of weird spells that do idiosyncratic things and are mostly useless, but would bog the game down massively if you gave all of them at once to a spontaneous caster.