Caster Castrating

[Dark_Juggernaut]

So I was interested by a previous thread about the class tier system (of which there are many I assume).

I had a couple of ideas of how to bring casters down a notch or two, and wanted to know what everyone thought.

First off, what if your casters could only choose 1 or 2 schools they could cast from, of which they are considered specialized in. Generalists get 2-3. How high can a caster with only 1-3 schools be on the tier system then?

My second Idea was to simply remove all spells with material components. What effect would that have on on the game exactly?

Similar to my second idea, maybe have your casters choose between being a Voice Caster or a Hand Caster, barring all spells that use Somatic or Verbal components respectively. If that seems to harsh, Still/Silent Spell feats might unlock the spells with both Verbal and Somatic (obviously costing a higher slot), but not spells without the casters main component.

If any one of these wouldn't be enough, does any combination of them seem more suitable?

They each seem like they would really limit the vast versatility that makes casters so much better than everyone else, without completely ruining them. I could be wrong though, and maybe any sort of such blanketing would ruin them?

[Urpriest]

Eunuch Warlock is the best prestige class for castrating casters.

...What?

[Flickerdart]

Easy - pick the schools of Transmutation and Conjuration. You now have something like 50% of all spells. Continue winning the game.

However, making people choose between Vocal and Somatic...makes most spells unavailable. There's only two spells I know that's Somatic but not Vocal and that's Gaseous Form and Rainbow Pattern.

[oxybe]

honestly, the only way to properly nerf 3.5 casters is to parse down the spell list.

print out the spell list in black & white, grab a big red marker and start scratching off spells that break the game until you get a list you're comfortable with.

simply adding extra hoops to jump through just means the casters need to click off the safety before they shoot their laser-guided uranium-powered sharkzooka.

you're over-complicating your life & your player's life.

find the list, parse it down. anything else is akin to telling the casters: "Keep your guns, you can only fire them on the 4th thursday of the month and if Sten Stenson is nearby"

so wizard kidnaps Sten, sovereign glues him to a dolly and hides out until the 4th thursday arrives and goes nova.

[Nich_Critic]

The first is no good. The schools of conjuration, transmutation and abjuration are good enough that the wizard would simply pick any two.

Do you mean material components, or expensive material components? If the former then you won't have many spells left. Almost everything takes some kind of component. If the latter, you've eliminated a couple of broken spells, but not nearly all of them.

For the verbal/somatic components, again, you wouldn't be left with much. It at least would be interesting, but there aren't very many spells a wizard can cast that has one but not the other. If you allow the feat to open the ones with both up, you've basically just created a feat tax, because every wizard will take it at 1 to get most of their spells back.

Your ideas are nice thoughts, but you need to look at the proportions of these things when considering if it would be a balancing fix. Personally, there are enough tier 3 casters that I would simply say "no classes above tier 3" and be done with it. Have the melee types play ToB Characters and the mages play tier 3 casters, and everyone will be happy.

[Nohwl]

how would eschew materials work?

i guess noone would be coming back from the dead because raise dead is banned.

edit-- cure light wounds and vigor have both components, so healing is banned too.

[Dark_Juggernaut]

That's why I posted the ideas, to see what all was wrong with basic blanketing, and I knew you guys would have some great immediate answers.

Though so far, it sounds like forcing all casters to pick a single school to cast from might be a simple fix.

Picking from an ENTIRE list of spells what's ok and what's not...well it sounds like it'd be more fun to have a persistent force in the game that bans spells as they break the game, haha!

[Kurald Galain]

The first is no good. The schools of conjuration, transmutation and abjuration are good enough that the wizard would simply pick any two.

Why abjuration, though? I wouldn't miss any spell from there except for Dispel Magic.

[Flickerdart]

That's why I posted the ideas, to see what all was wrong with basic blanketing, and I knew you guys would have some great immediate answers.

Though so far, it sounds like forcing all casters to pick a single school to cast from might be a simple fix.

Picking from an ENTIRE list of spells what's ok and what's not...well it sounds like it'd be more fun to have a persistent force in the game that bans spells as they break the game, haha!

A Focused Specialist Conjurer or Transmuter can still ruin your day. There is no quick and easy fix for spellcasters that leaves them fun and effective without being campaign breaking. Just play T3 casters...

[Glimbur]

I'm going to take a random sample of spells from the SRD. Let's go... 10. Also, it's not really random because true randomness is hard.

Find Traps: V and S. Cleric 2. Divination.

Shatter: V,S,M/DF. Bard, Cleric, Wizard, Domains all level 2. Evocation[Sonic]

Acid Fog: V,S,M/DF. Sorc/Wiz 6, Domain 7. Conjuration (Creation)[Acid]

Stinking Cloud:V,S,M. Conjuration(Creation). Wizard 3

Comprehend Languages:V,S,M/DF. Bunch of people, level 1. Divination

Raise Dead:V,S,M,DF. Cleric 5. Conjuration(Healing)

Guidance: V,S. Cleric and Druid 0. Divination

Sleet Storm:V,S,M/DF. Conjuration(Creation) [Cold]. Druid or Sorc/Wiz 3.

Delayed Blast Fireball:V,S,M. Sorc/Wiz 7. Evocation[Fire]

Water Breathing:V,S,M/DF. Druid/Sorc/Wiz/Cleric/Domain 3. Transmutation.

Removing spells with material components, by this random sampling, means that arcane casters can no longer cast spells. This is a possible fix, but requires further thought and should be phrased as "no arcane casters" instead of "arcane casters have no spells". Divine casters, by contrast, will be mostly unaffected except they cannot raise the dead.

Every spell selected has both verbal and somatic components. Therefore, requiring casters to only be able to do one or the other is very similar to banning casters.

Schools are actually easy to compare on the SRD using this list. For a wizard, if I had to take only three schools I could get by with Conjuration, Transmutation, and ... Abjuration, Illusion, or Divination.

The best way to fix casters is to fix the spells. This is a large undertaking, which is why I don't know of anyone who has successfully done it. An easier method is to use casters like the beguiler, warmage, and dread necro who have a much smaller list.

[Dark_Juggernaut]

A Focused Specialist Conjurer or Transmuter can still ruin your day. There is no quick and easy fix for spellcasters that leaves them fun and effective without being campaign breaking. Just play T3 casters...

How much more could they ruin my day than the T3s though? They're STILL so versatile and SO powerful that they stay at T2+?

[Kurald Galain]

The two easiest ways of fixing casters are,

(1) play at relatively low level; whatever problems exist are far more noticeable at level 15 than at level 5.

(2) invoke the "don't be a jerk" rule: a caster PC can try to upstage everybody, or try to support everybody; nudge them towards the latter.

Also, it makes a lot of difference whether the non-caster party members are bottom tier (e.g. fighter or monk) or average tier (e.g. rogue or swordsage).

[SurlySeraph]

The problem with any simple and systematic idea like that is that there are so many exceptions and weird cases in all the spells available that there's a way to be powerful despite almost any restriction.

A good way to do DMing-wise is just putting in hassles for casters that work fluff-wise. Make them actually keep track of material components, have people attempt to steal their spellbook (or individual pages of their spellbook so they don't lose all power but still have a hassle; a thief stealing an obscure spell from the wizard for some mysterious patron would be both a good way to deny the wizard a problematic spell and a good plot hook), superstitious peasantry who mistrust them, enough encounters per day/ encounters with hordes of weak enemies coming in waves so that they actually run out of spells, lots of enemies with spell resistance, golems, enemy casters so they can mage-duel equivalent opponents while the melee types sword-duel, enemies and situations that they do not have useful spells prepared for, and so on.

RAW-wise, there are plenty of ways. You can require them to make skill checks or caster level checks to cast their spells at full CL and full DCs (having them make skill checks to cast at all gets incredibly frustrating after a series of bad rolls, but "OK, your Glitterdust does not disable everyone" is fine). Ban metamagic reducers. Ban the big problem spells like Celerity, Polymorph, etc. Switch around what schools certain spells are in so that giving up Evocation actually does make it hard to do direct damage, giving up Enchantment does make you lose most of your Will-save-or-screwed effects, etc. At higher levels, reduce their spells per day and don't let them have Pearls of Power or Rings of Wizardry.

Really, there's any number of ways to restrain casters, but doing it by making simple changes to their spell lists isn't a very effective way. The best is probably to tell the player to be restrained.

[Dark_Juggernaut]

Hmm, thanks for all the advice

[Glimbur]

A good way to do DMing-wise is just putting in hassles for casters that work fluff-wise. Make them actually keep track of material components

This is a bad idea. Do you really want to audit the wizard's inventory to see if he has thirty pork rinds or only twenty nine? How much mass of bat guano do I need to cast a fireball? How big of a lodestone and how many iron fillings do I need to reverse gravity?

On the other hand, the rest of that paragraph is pretty reasonable.

Making checks to cast spells well is not like making attack rolls, it is more like rolling to see how many hit points you have every time you are hit. Melee takes and deals damage, casters cast spells. Again, the rest of your paragraph is pretty reasonable.

I agree that the best approach is self-restraint on the hand of players.

[prufock]

First off, what if your casters could only choose 1 or 2 schools they could cast from, of which they are considered specialized in. Generalists get 2-3. How high can a caster with only 1-3 schools be on the tier system then?

Prediction: everybody chooses illusion, but not conjuration or evocation. You effectively get 3 schools for the price of 1. However, still not a terrible idea, if you're looking to nerf-bat them. I have no idea how this would play out balance-wise; I'd have to play-test it first.

My second Idea was to simply remove all spells with material components. What effect would that have on on the game exactly?

You mean ANY material components or just material components over 1gp in value? I don't like this option because SO many good spells are lost, and there's no choice on the part of the player. Go filter them and see what you'd be missing.

Similar to my second idea, maybe have your casters choose between being a Voice Caster or a Hand Caster, barring all spells that use Somatic or Verbal components respectively. If that seems to harsh, Still/Silent Spell feats might unlock the spells with both Verbal and Somatic (obviously costing a higher slot), but not spells without the casters main component.

This is a bit more reasonable, but again, I'd have to see it in action. EVERYONE is going to take those feats, though, so all you really end up with is costing all casters one feat. Though it does cost higher slots. Maybe give them the feats for free, in that case?

Alternatives:
Decrease the available spell options. Heck, a simple rule like "core spells only" cuts down on a lot of issues (though, granted, there are still powerful core spells).
Make it much more costly to scribe spells into a spellbook.

[The Glyphstone]

If you want to tackle it from the 'problematic spells' angle, start by eliminating the Polymorph/Shapechange line and the Shadow Conjuration/Evocation lines.

[Dark_Juggernaut]

So how about pathfinder? Does the list of spells provided by the Core Rulebook and AVG solve any of this madness? Would a caster limited to these spells suddenly be a great deal more balanced?

[Urpriest]

So how about pathfinder? Does the list of spells provided by the Core Rulebook and AVG solve any of this madness? Would a caster limited to these spells suddenly be a great deal more balanced?

Some things get solved (Polymorph for example is mostly dealt with), but there are still enough encounter-winning spells to ruin your day.

[Flickerdart]

How much more could they ruin my day than the T3s though? They're STILL so versatile and SO powerful that they stay at T2+?

Honestly? Yes. T2 isn't about versatility, though. A transmuter has access to Shapechange and Time Stop. A conjurer enjoys the benefits of Gate and Planar Binding. Just because each one can't access the other's broken toys doesn't mean he can't use his own.

[Tyndmyr]

Easy - pick the schools of Transmutation and Conjuration. You now have something like 50% of all spells. Continue winning the game.

However, making people choose between Vocal and Somatic...makes most spells unavailable. There's only two spells I know that's Somatic but not Vocal and that's Gaseous Form and Rainbow Pattern.

Conjuration?

Illusion. Look up shadow spells. Continue winning the game with effectively a couple more schools.

Oh, and spell components are indeed terrible. If you track em, that just results in the caster stockpiling lots of essentially free items in a very smelly handy haversack. Lots of math. Having to discuss how he readies his spell components. No real change in power.

[Lans]

step 1 Just get rid of/fix all of the broken spells you can find to knock them down a peg.
Step 2 Give a boost to the lower pegged classes and expand the range on what they can do.
Step 3 fix/ban the broken spells that come up during game play.
That should do it. Casters will still be on the tier 2/3 boundry and the noncasters will be on the tier 3/4 boundry.

[ericgrau]

Eh, limiting schools just makes it more annoying to play and more effort to find splat-book substitutes that let you do the same thing within the schools you keep.

I'm in favor of the opposite approach: Let them have all their spells and versatility but drop the spell levels. Casters and non-casters are like apples and oranges since their roles are so far apart, so you can't make a direct comparison. That works against you b/c casters will always be useful no matter how much you nerf them, but it also works for you b/c casters will always be useful no matter how much you nerf them. Basically they'll end up as a utility role in that they'll be the only ones that can do certain things, so they're still more versatile than others, but they'll need to rely on the beat-sticks to actually kill things.

Actually the well built caster is already like this. As said merely fixing the broken stuff is a lot already. Plenty IMO. By also lowering the caster's level you're giving him less limelight. I've done an effective level 12 batman sorcerer in a party with 2 level 16-17 damage dealers, one blaster wizard and one ranger/barbarian. So I think this would work out just fine. The two level 16-17 guys were the main stars as always, but they were amazed how well I supported them. So basically the non-casters get more time to shine at the expense of the caster. For something similar you could maybe do 3/4 casting with the dead level every 4th level (so there's no nerf on levels 1-3). Though that assumes the caster picks the right spells.

[Awnetu]

Use my DMs current method its fun fun fun.

Spells text is negotiable, but only for his stuff. True Sight? Doesn't actually work for seeing ethereal creatures. Choker of Undying Fortitude? Doesn't actually make you immune to things requiring fortitude saves. Why? Because he is the DM, how dare you question his ruling.

Save dcs? through the roof, the creatures are running around with +40 fort saves, +28 Reflex Saves +30 Will saves against Level 17 parties. (Those saves were on the same creature)

Piercing Cold and the like? His creatures ignore the entire text of that feat, if I wanna bypass the resistance, tough.

DR also works against spells.

His creatures are allowed access to rules he denies his players (Bypassing AMF, had to complain about it before he relented, never mind he didn't let us know such house rules would be there to begin with).

His creatures SR is through the roof, when a player brought up the fact that he rolled an 18 on a caster level check to bypass SR and failed, the dm said you were only 2 off from making it. (I HOPE SO, THAT'S A 20. Also, it was a full caster that failed.)

But yeah, if you use rules like that, wizards that aren't trying to blast don't break games at all :)


Sorry had to vent.

Edit, have you tried a 2e version of Wizard spells etc? The casters have to find the spells, they dont just get to pick them at will.

[Arbane]

Play something besides standard D&D3.5, like Iron Gauntlets or d20 Conan?

(Nerfing D&D magic will probably require rewriting the game from the spell-lists on up, so might as well let someone else do it for you...)

[Mystic Muse]

Save dcs? through the roof, the creatures are running around with +40 fort saves, +28 Reflex Saves +30 Will saves against Level 17 parties. (Those saves were on the same creature)

Don't use spells that allow saves. Still really unfair though.

Piercing Cold and the like? His creatures ignore the entire text of that feat, if I wanna bypass the resistance, tough.

Don't take the feat or change it. If he argues, tell him that if you had known the feat wasn't going to do anything, you wouldn't have taken it.

DR also works against spells.

This can work in your favor I bet.

His creatures are allowed access to rules he denies his players (Bypassing AMF, had to complain about it before he relented, never mind he didn't let us know such house rules would be there to begin with).
His creatures SR is through the roof, when a player brought up the fact that he rolled an 18 on a caster level check to bypass SR and failed, the dm said you were only 2 off from making it. (I HOPE SO, THAT'S A 20. Also, it was a full caster that failed.)

Yeah, this is just mean

Sorry had to vent.

Have you tried just talking to him and telling him these rules aren't fun?

Personally, if I ban something, I don't use it against my players either.

[ericgrau]

Sorry had to vent.

Wall of force. For that matter my battlefield control sorc had 1 or 2 spells that had saves or SR and I hated using them. Of course it's only a matter of time before your DM nerfs the no save/SR spells into unusability too and all anyone can do is blast. Like the other poster I don't think "You can't do anything you normally like to do" is a solution.

[Animefunkmaster]

Well Casters win because they have versatility and adaptability built into the spell casting mechanics (not to mention debuffs, and control). Instead of nerfing the casters give the martial class versatility. I recommend a tome of battle approach.

[Kurald Galain]

Prediction: everybody chooses illusion, but not conjuration or evocation. You effectively get 3 schools for the price of 1.

Prediction: that's not such a great idea considering it eats your highest-level slots for the ability to mimic lower-level spells.

Bottom line, though, is that a one-school wizard is very much playable (albeit not for every single school) and does noticeably reduce a wizard's power level by reducing the amount of tricks he can pull off.

[Mastikator]

How about a different approach, the caster has to choose between buffs, debuffs, blasts and utility (and heal if applicable). Pick one.

Now the casters are no longer versatile.