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View Full Version : Suggested changes to make casters casters?(3.5)



togapika
2008-07-29, 09:11 AM
What suggestions do ye fellow members of the playground have for houserules/changes I could include in a 3.5 campaign I plan to run to make sure casters are played as casters?
I don't wish to try and balance casters and I know nothing can stop their versatility, but I basically want to keep Wizards/Clerics/Etc. from hefting a greatsword and outdoing the fighters, or casting a spell or two and out trapfinding the rogue.


Some ideas I had include reducing the cleric's armor proficiency down to either light or no armor but giving them an "armor of faith" equal to their wisdom.

Hal
2008-07-29, 09:20 AM
I've never heard of a wizard acting as a frontline melee character, but just require your player to be a Cloistered Cleric rather than the standard mold.

AstralFire
2008-07-29, 09:42 AM
- Remove any Gish PrC that grants more than 3/5 or 7/10 progression ('cept maybe the Eldritch Knight.)
- Cloistered Cleric, remove Divine Power and Divine Strength
- Make Natural Spell a +1 Metamagic

JMobius
2008-07-29, 09:58 AM
- Cloistered Cleric, remove Divine Power and Divine Strength

Out of curosity, I've never heard of Divine Strength IIRC, which book is it from? If its anything like Divine Agility, I'm quite interested. :smallcool:

Aquillion
2008-07-29, 09:58 AM
- Remove any Gish PrC that grants more than 3/5 or 7/10 progression ('cept maybe the Eldritch Knight.)I don't think this one is what they want (if someone wants to play a Gish, just let them. There is no sane -- as in, one you could actually get past a DM -- Gish build that doesn't involve a massively disadvantagous trade-off of power for melee when compared to a straight wizard. Proper Gish builds shouldn't be a problem in terms of overshadowing people unless they use insane and obvious optimization. In general, melee arcanists aren't a problem no matter how they're done.)

Don't worry too much about casters overshadowing rogues and skill-monkeys, either. People like to wring their hands about knock, but the fact is, casters have better things to do with their precious spell slots than to replicate things the rogue can do for free -- knock and scrying don't threaten rogues any more than they're threatened by, say, Barbarians who bash down doors and wade through traps. It's possible for a caster to accomplish rogue-type stuff (just like a rogue can accomplish caster things with UMD if they really want to), but they have to go out of their way to do it, and not many casters are going to unless there's no rogue or skill-monkey around. Knock and the various methods of magically dealing with traps are insurance for when your rogue is incapacitated or otherwise can't handle something for whatever reason, not a substitute.

If the wizard really goes insane with throwing around spells to deal with traps, though, just throw a lot of weak traps at them -- dungeons where every door has a minor trap on it, and so on, spread out enough to keep summons from lasting long enough to be helpful (not hard with the 1 round/level duration). But it doesn't usually happen anyway; that's one of those theoretical things you don't see in games much. Or at least, I haven't.

Use the cleric/druid fixes listed, though.

AstralFire
2008-07-29, 10:06 AM
Oh, I agree Gishes aren't as powerful, I was just suggesting that since he wanted to actually limit casters to the back lines more than outright limit their power. Though your suggestion is probably more useful.


Out of curosity, I've never heard of Divine Strength IIRC, which book is it from? If its anything like Divine Agility, I'm quite interested. :smallcool:

I meant Divine Power and Divine Favor (though, unless my memory is faulty it looks like Favor got a +3 cap nerf. Don't remember a cap before.) Divine Strength is a WoW Paladin talent.

brant167
2008-07-29, 10:20 AM
Could always chance the casting time of spells. One of my old dm's changed the casting time of most spells from a standard action to 3 full round actions. Another idea is to change all the "personal spells" to "touch spells that can not effect the caster."

Frosty
2008-07-29, 10:23 AM
Don't worry too much about casters overshadowing rogues and skill-monkeys, either.

Unless the caster IS also a skill-monkey!

AstralFire
2008-07-29, 10:23 AM
Could always chance the casting time of spells. One of my old dm's changed the casting time of most spells from a standard action to 3 full round actions. Another idea is to change all the "personal spells" to "touch spells that can not effect the caster."

Given that even a tough fight may not last more than six rounds, that seems excessive.

Decoy Lockbox
2008-07-29, 11:01 AM
Could always chance the casting time of spells. One of my old dm's changed the casting time of most spells from a standard action to 3 full round actions. Another idea is to change all the "personal spells" to "touch spells that can not effect the caster."

That sounds like the Earthdawn system. I remember our earthdawn party was fighting a giant spider, and while my warrior and the other melee people were bringing the hurt, our elementalist was weaving one of his spells (multi-round cast time). After the two rounds or so of spellcasting, he finally cast it....and it missed. Thing is, even if he had not missed, it would of done the same damage as one our our attacks, and we were attacking every round.

Arbitrarity
2008-07-29, 11:04 AM
1 Round casting time, now, seems decent. Can be interrupted for melee, ranged, etc, and requires either awesome concentration, or extreme caution/defense.

Aquillion
2008-07-29, 11:21 AM
Full-round casting time also means that the situation when the spell goes off may not be the same as what it was when you started. This makes melee and skill-monkey types more useful for 'immediate' responses to things.

tiercel
2008-07-29, 02:55 PM
Not sure which casters you are most worried about.... but I'll go at them by major types.

Wiz/sor: Honestly I don't think that a pure wiz/sor is going to be able to easily go pure melee, in part because of puny hit dice, AC without multiple rounds to prepare, and especially lousy BAB. Generally the concern here is over "gish," e.g. Eldritch Knight and other fighter/mage PrCs -- although, as mentioned, for the most part there is an associated cost.

To the extent that a pure wiz/sor has any chance of plunging into melee (and certainly, just about the most powerful spell for a self-buffing gish who wants to be up on the front lines) is polymorph. Nerf/restrict/ban this spell and you have eliminated a lot of your problems.

Personally, I find the twilight armor enhancement (BoED, PHB II) annoying -- lower the ASF of armor for a mere +1 cost. The practical upshot of this is that any mage or gish can have a 0% ASF +1 twilight mithral shirt for 5100gp instead of bracers of armor +4 for 16000 gp -- plus the cheese-shirt is cheaper to upgrade in the future, or can be targeted by magic vestment. (And of course, there's the mithral buckler -- 0% ASF, -0 ACP, so it doesn't matter if you never take proficiency.)

It's not that I think no mage or especially gish should be able to wear armor -- I just think that mithral/twilight makes it too cheap to do so, and as a practical matter every average wizard above a certain level is effectively an "armored caster" when it would appear, on the surface, that it is an ability reserved to bards, specialty casting classes (e.g. warmages, beguilers), and gish PrCs (e.g. spellsword).

As for mages out-skilling the skillmonkey -- well... Climb and Jump are eventually doomed in any campaign; by time flying spells have a low opportunity cost for your wizard, items that allow flight will be in the reasonable price range for non-casting classes. Hide and Move Silently aren't undone by invisibility since the latter doesn't make you silent and is defeated by see invisibility, not to mention faerie fire, glitterdust, and the old standby of a bag of flour.

Knock can replace Open Locks, but do you really want to burn a spell for every single lock you want to open? How many knocks are you memorizing or burning gold upon scrolls, instead of preparing or learning glitterdust, mirror image, web and other more generally useful spells? (And if you want to replace the Open Locks skill, an adamantine weapon is relatively cheap and doesn't take up a spell slot or run out of charges -- assuming you don't mind the noise, though unmetamagicked spellcasting isn't silent either.)

You can try to use charm person/monster in lieu of social skills, but that's dangerous -- not least of all if your intended victim or his buddies can realize you are spellcasting and/or he makes the saving throw. You are better off, in general, with the skill (especially with the broken Diplomacy mechanic by RAW).

Disguse self is a pretty rubbish replacement for the Disguise skill, since it gives a Will save to anyone interacting with it, as well as the usual Spot check. Alter self/polymorph aside from being generally broken, are better for this -- but are of relatively short duration, and at higher levels a +10 Disguise bonus often just isn't enough without actual skill ranks.

In short, while a wizard's utility spells can help in the realm of skillmonkeying, they aren't really a replacement for a good skillmonkey (and even if the wizard tried, it would eat up a lot of his spells known, leaving him as not much of a wizard).

Druid: Remember that druids lose access to pretty much all equipment while wildshaped. This is actually a pretty steep price to pay, especially at higher levels as equipment becomes more and more important. Don't let a druid cheese his way around this by using 3.0 wilding clasps (certainly not multiple ones) and you've put a significant price tag on his Hulking up and smashing.

Still, even with this it's probably not a bad idea to at least nerf Natural Spell, as has been mentioned, or better yet (also mentioned) use the PHB II shapeshifting variant just to avoid the hassle of having to figure out new stats every time the druid wants to turn into a Dire Blue Mountain Taiga Boar.

A druid actually can be a relatively good skillmonkey, in part because of actual skills, in part because wildshaping makes him a difficult-to-detect scout, and in part because at higher levels, summoned earth elementals make excellent (if quite short-duration) indoor/underground scouts and even trapfinders due to their earth glide ability.

I don't see this as a complete problem, especially to the extent a druid is actually investing in skills. As for the "wildshaping disguise" I'd still allow Spot checks against the circumstance-bonused-but-no-ranks-in-Disguise druid to detect that "that wolf is acting funny." And as for summon nature's ally -- well it's short duration, requires some effort to direct your summons to do anything other than just attack your enemies, and if your druid decides to just use summons/his animal companion as tripwires, well, remind your player about the "A druid who ceases to revere nature.... loses all spells and druid abilities" clause.

Cleric: Your major problem here is if you allow the Divine Metamagic feat, in particular, in conjunction with Persistent Spell -- now all those amazing self-buffing spells last all day. Just say NO.

If you are overly concerned about clerics outfighting the fighter, nerf or limit the most egregious self buffing spells (e.g. divine power, righteous might) and keep an eye on those Divine Feats, which turn a limited-utility resource (Turn Undead) into something you can use in any fight. On the other hand, note that for a cleric to go all Truly Uber, he will need some prep time in general -- that's fine some of the time, but you shouldn't be letting PCs have all the fights at a time of their own choosing.

Not to mention the opportunity cost -- every spell a cleric prepares to make himself Uber is a spell he's not using to buff/protect/heal his buddies....

You generally don't have to worry about clerics threatening skillmonkeys at all -- sure, there's find traps (pfffffffffffffffffft), and... yeah.

Waspinator
2008-07-29, 10:01 PM
Force all Druids to be the Player's Handbook II variant
Have the melee people take the Tome of Battle classes
Ban Divine Metamagic Persistent Spell


And you're set.

Aquillion
2008-07-29, 10:35 PM
Also, I forgot, the much simpler reason why arcane melee types are rarely a serious threat to balance:

Divine magic is filled with powerful buffs (e.g. Divine Power, Righteous Might, etc.) With all those buffs up, especially with persistant divine metamagic using nightsticks (if you don't know what it is, good; just don't allow anything that combines more than a few of those words), a divine character can fight as good as a melee type, and still cast spells in a pinch.

While there are some nice arcane buffs, they tend to be better for casting on other people -- and the best arcane spells are not buffs, but things that change the battlefield, disable/slay opponents directly, etc. With spells like that, going melee is a waste -- you only have so many actions, after all, and every action you spend attacking with a sword is one less you could spend, say, reducing your opponents to quivering masses of fear with a wave of your hand, or turning the dragon to dust with one spell, or making everyone die by speaking a word of power. (The Duskblade gets around this, but has massive trade-offs in exchange; their actual spell curve is the same as a Bard's, even if they get a somewhat better spell list.)

Of course, this doesn't mean that wizards are balanced. But they're broken in their own unique way, not in a way that lets them easily replace melee characters completely. Most wizards still benefit from having a guy with a sword to follow them around and finish off the encounters that the wizard's spells have rendered easy, if only to save unnecessary spells.

Tempest Fennac
2008-07-30, 12:56 AM
I agree with tiercel and Waspinator. I don't like the idea of making people use Cloistered Clerics due to how they are useless on the frontline without cheese (which is where they need to be unless they can use ranged Cure spells*, but this requires the a build which may not fit every character's flavour), and I tend to think Archivists are bettter then CCs as far as fluff and abilities go.

*See page 32 of http://www.crystalkeep.com/d20/rules/DnD3.5Index-Classes-Base.pdf .

ghost_warlock
2008-07-30, 01:06 AM
That sounds like the Earthdawn system. I remember our earthdawn party was fighting a giant spider, and while my warrior and the other melee people were bringing the hurt, our elementalist was weaving one of his spells (multi-round cast time). After the two rounds or so of spellcasting, he finally cast it....and it missed. Thing is, even if he had not missed, it would of done the same damage as one our our attacks, and we were attacking every round.

Using a magic system like that, I'd be forced to bash my head into the table repeatedly until I lost consciousness and the game had to be cancelled so my gaming buddies could rush me to the hospital to have my cracked and bleeding skull repaired.

Covered In Bees
2008-07-30, 01:08 AM
What levels are you gonna be playing at?