The Reasons Magic is Overpowered in 3.5E

[MeeposFire]

I'm surprised that nobody's talked about AD&D yet.

In 2e, Wizards (and other spellcasters) had to declare what spells they were casting at the beginning of every round. If they got hit (which was a definite possibility, seeing as how initiative was rolled every round), the spell fizzled. If they decided they were casting Hold Person, and their target died, they spent their turn casting Hold Person on a corpse. When casting, hey couldn't move, they couldn't attack, all they could do was stand there and cast.

When the changeover happened from 2e to 3e, the text for most spells was literally copy and pasted. Some of the terminology changed, but the spells were by and large identical. Trouble is, the Wizards weren't: not only could they both move AND cast, not only could they decide what spell they were casting during their turn rather than at the top of the round, but they could get hit and still cast. Or, if they had a high enough Concentration check, they could avoid getting hit entirely.

This.
Was.
A.
Big.
Deal.

So, in my humble opinion, the problem is the spells. The spells were written to be balanced for a completely different system, one that had certain checks in place. With those removed, the spells became more powerful than they were ever intended to be.

Don't forget easy metamagic, alternate action spells (swift actions, etc), buffs being improved (especially in polymorph and the like), bonus spells, and even faster memorization times. That and more were added to wizards and other spell casters.

Warrior classes were weakened just look at the fighter it lost

1) hp bonus from very high con.

2) its extra attacks relative to other classes

3) saving throws are not as good as warriors were overall the best at saving throws in general (at very high levels they often succeeded on a 2+).

4) Moving and attacking was still effective

5) fighters used to be among the best in skills. Fighters received one less non-weapon prof. total than the highest skilled class in the game. How things have changed.

[umbrapolaris]

Warrior classes were weakened just look at the fighter it lost

1) hp bonus from very high con.

2) its extra attacks relative to other classes

3) saving throws are not as good as warriors were overall the best at saving throws in general (at very high levels they often succeeded on a 2+).

4) Moving and attacking was still effective

5) fighters used to be among the best in skills. Fighters received one less non-weapon prof. total than the highest skilled class in the game. How things have changed.

give him back those and add iterative attack at +3, give him one feat for each level, and one free magic item every 4 levels ^^

[MeeposFire]

give him back those and add iterative attack at +3, give him one feat for each level, and one free magic item every 4 levels ^^

Still won't make it compete with full casters. Sad face.

[umbrapolaris]

Still won't make it compete with full casters. Sad face.

yes sure, i have the final solution:

give him magic

[MeeposFire]

yes sure, i have the final solution:

give him magic

I have heard people actually say that. I found it disappointing to say the least.

[umbrapolaris]

u had ther divine ranger, why not the arcane fighter ^^ or spellsword as a base class.

the magic adventurer party:

1- spellsword
2- wizard
3- spellthief
4- factotum
4- cleric
5- erudite
6- AMF berserker (coz he want to be different ^^)

[stainboy]

How did you pre scout an inaccessible location? By definition you couldn't have done that. The location isn't able to be accessed, so you coudn't have scouted it. Congratulations, you just made a random teleport. And no, that's not railroading. It's using a dictionary and applying the concept of "In character actions have in character consequences" to the decision to Teleport.

Inaccessible as in far enough away that any casters looking for us with See Invisibility won't stumble onto the Rope Trick portal. I'm not talking about teleporting halfway across the world to a sealed cave a mile underground, although in a few levels there wouldn't be much to stop me.

Anyway, you're assuming that all D&D games are dungeon crawls. Try forcing a wizard to do four encounters a day in a more intrigue-oriented urban game.

[Lans]

In regards to the fifteen-minute day, Rope Trick, and Magnificent Mansion (both Core spells, by the way) make it almost impossible for the GM to prevent this from happening, barring time limits on goals.

He can make it more difficult due to the monsters having a heightened sense of security and planning due to the previous assault.

Unless he focuses entirely in ranged attacks he is boned. Even if he is focused in ranged attacks he is inferior to the archer cleric next door in every way.

He could put 3 feats into hitting people with boomerangs.
The focused archery fighter is better than the cleric at archery for the majority of the levels. I think level 12 is the breaking point with stacking turning rods, and Planar Ally and no Targeteer. Pathfinder fighter would probably push that back a bit, but I don't know the details of all the stealth nerfs they did to really make that call.

I would nerf both of those, but I don't think my nerf would hit the clerics planar ally.

Example Scenario: Confronted with a huge chasm

Fighter can: Maybe throw a rope across, and then climb over. Maybe even jump, and grab the opposing cliffside, and then climb up.

Wizard can: Fly across. Dimension door across.

I can't help think of a party with a Truenamer all chanting together to help the him make his truenaming check.
Party:Red rover red rover send send the monk over!
Truenamer: *rolls dice gets 14* Got it.
Monk: *Moves forward* "AIIII!!!"
Truenamer: "Why was he a level higher than the rest of us?"

[Yahzi]

Cool, right? Except the power of magic still runs on "limited resources should be stronger" though the resources are no longer limited. The system is designed with a bunch of preconceptions which do not hold true.

Brilliant analysis. Consider scrolls and wands. In 2E they were insanely difficult to acquire, and very limited. In 3E wizards make them from the very first day of their career.

Scrolls and wands destroy the concept of "limited resources." Yet every single published module has a wizard with only 1 fireball spell memorized.

Here's the solution I am going to try next game: Lots and lots and lots of mooks, arriving in waves 10 rounds apart. The idea being that the fighter can fight all day against mooks, but the wizard has to save his spells for the BBEG.

[MeeposFire]

Brilliant analysis. Consider scrolls and wands. In 2E they were insanely difficult to acquire, and very limited. In 3E wizards make them from the very first day of their career.

Scrolls and wands destroy the concept of "limited resources." Yet every single published module has a wizard with only 1 fireball spell memorized.

Here's the solution I am going to try next game: Lots and lots and lots of mooks, arriving in waves 10 rounds apart. The idea being that the fighter can fight all day against mooks, but the wizard has to save his spells for the BBEG.

Your idea will just change the way the casters will play. Instead of using short term attacks like blasting they will switch to longer lasting stuff like buffs.

[Jothki]

Looking at it largely from the outside as someone who doesn't play D&D, the thing that strikes me about casters in 3.5e and earlier is the extent to which their powers scale in breadth as they gain levels.

Fighters and the like mostly scale linearly with levels. They can occasionally pick up a new trick or two through feats and the like, but for the most part they're just seeing +1s or +1d6s or whatever on the things that they can already do.

Casters scale somewhat in the same way, getting access to increasingly powerful spells as they level up. However, they also get to keep their lower-level spells, and in many cases those spells will even scale up along with the caster. The result is that high-level casters end up having an absurd degree of flexability in comparison to low-level casters. This would be fine if every class scaled this way, but non-casters don't.

I honestly don't see how such a system could ever wind up balanced. Spells could always be weakened, but there would remain the issue of increasing flexability unless higher-level spells ended up not being much stronger than lower-level ones, meaning that flexability is the power scaling for casters. Which is sort of how the Warlock works, actually.

[JaronK]

Here's the solution I am going to try next game: Lots and lots and lots of mooks, arriving in waves 10 rounds apart. The idea being that the fighter can fight all day against mooks, but the wizard has to save his spells for the BBEG.

The obvious response is Animate Dead for a bunch of minions, including a few Necrosis Carnexes. Now the Wizard can go all day. The Fighter can't... his HP will just run out eventually. He's not a Crusader. In fact, the only way a Fighter could stay up all day like that is if he had a DMM Persistent Lesser Mass Vigor Cleric behind him... but that same Cleric could just get the job done himself.

JaronK

[MeeposFire]

Indeed casters like the warlock and the dragonfire adept are much closer to warrior classes than the wizards and such. That is a big reason why I talk them up when I DM (that and the spontaneous themed casters like warmage and dread necromancer).

[dsmiles]

I can't help think of a party with a Truenamer all chanting together to help the him make his truenaming check.
Party:Red rover red rover send send the monk over!
Truenamer: *rolls dice gets 14* Got it.
Monk: *Moves forward* "AIIII!!!"
Truenamer: "Why was he a level higher than the rest of us?"

I so want to play a Trunamer that uses that as his shtick, now.

[The Glyphstone]

I so want to play a Trunamer that uses that as his shtick, now.

Well, Leadership might actually be balanced for such a character, if you use the followers as his backup dancers/singers to make those Truenaming checks.

[The Big Dice]

Reading over this thread, a very easy soution for people who complain about casters appeared in my brain cell. Increase the DC of the Concentration checks for preventing spells from fizzling. Or better yet, remove them completely.

IF a spell can be lost to someone throwing a knife or pegging the caster with an arrow, then the balance of power shifts quite considerably. Yes, the castes are still powerful. But they can also be brought down by non casters, and that's a great equaliser.

[shadow_archmagi]

Reading over this thread, a very easy soution for people who complain about casters appeared in my brain cell. Increase the DC of the Concentration checks for preventing spells from fizzling. Or better yet, remove them completely.

IF a spell can be lost to someone throwing a knife or pegging the caster with an arrow, then the balance of power shifts quite considerably. Yes, the castes are still powerful. But they can also be brought down by non casters, and that's a great equaliser.

Personally, if I were running such a game, I'd be tempted to use the initiative system from the old edition, where instead of having compact "turns" where once it was the wizard's turn he could do whatever without worrying, it'd be like

"Okay so you rolled a 20 for init, and casting a spell takes 10 init. That means anyone rolled higher than 10 will act before your spell finishes."

Fortunately, this never actually comes up in my games.

[Kami2awa]

In regards to the fifteen-minute day, Rope Trick, and Magnificent Mansion (both Core spells, by the way) make it almost impossible for the GM to prevent this from happening, barring time limits on goals.

Has anyone ever considered having Mordenkainen turn up to evict the PCs from his mansion?

[LansXero]

Try forcing a wizard to do four encounters a day in a more intrigue-oriented urban game.

Arent those even more time-sensitive than dungeon crawls anyways?

[DeltaEmil]

Mordenkainen was drunk and made his spell open source. Now everybody's running around with a "Mage's Magnificent Mansion" to avoid paying royalty.

[nightwyrm]

Arent those even more time-sensitive than dungeon crawls anyways?

But you're also unlikely to force the wizard into enough combat encounters that he would need resting just to replenish his spells.

[Roderick_BR]

I'll tell why magic is overpowered. It's because it's EASY. Yeah, spend 30 minutes reading a book, and you now have power to tear reality a new one. Fighters can... swing a sword a bit harder.
You give the same ammount of experience to both players, and one gains a bulet proof vest, and a handgun, and the other gains only shorts and a shirt, but he gains machineguns, rocket launchers, grenades... and a portable force field generator.
Magic in 3.5 got too easy to do, and thanks to the multiclass and PrC rules, you can easily multiclass into something else to gain many more abilities without slowing down your spellcasting.
In older versions, a wizard had to work hard for his magic, but when he did, he was the guy with the "big guns" in the group. In 3.5, he starts with all the good stuff at very early levels and gets stronger and stronger.
Seriously, the devs got excited in giving casters more power and lost track of what they were doing.

About the high magic thing, I agree. The problem is that the game's rules for non casters leave them behind, while the casters are playing high level, high fantasy, high magic campaigns.
At higher levels, wizards should be able to reshape reality as they see fit, true, but non-casters should be able to do epic stuff too, not be able to do the same mundane things they were doing 15 levels ago.

[LansXero]

But you're also unlikely to force the wizard into enough combat encounters that he would need resting just to replenish his spells.

'combat' encounters, sure. But he could deplete his spells trying to avoid RP by spamming suggestion / charm / etc.

[nyarlathotep]

'combat' encounters, sure. But he could deplete his spells trying to avoid RP by spamming suggestion / charm / etc.

Indeed he can, but that is only if he wants to contribute more that the fighter. He could instead just roleplay and roll diplomacy checks if he's afraid of running low. Besides the party bard has glibness, which lasts over an hour.

[druid91]

I would like to say something...


Magic is not over-powered!

It is exactly as it should be, They run out of spells, now I know what you'll say, "What about the fifteen minute workday?!"

Rope trick to rest anywhere/ 15 minute work-day. Counter: a) The villain is still doing things as you rest. b) if they do not care about that, the villain is still doing things as they rest, one of these things is rigging the room their rope-trick exits on to explode sky high. Or using a custom spell to simply transport the whole room, rope-trick included 500 miles away.

Anything the players can do? The DM can do better. It may take work, but there are advantages the DM has that the players can't reproduce. Endless resources, Eldritch machines/Rule 0, And finally access to the players character sheets. You have before-hand knowledge of the enemy.

They... Do not.

[dsmiles]

I'm still not grasping this whole 15-minute workday thing. Why are the characters only working for 15 minutes a day?

[Waker]

I'm still not grasping this whole 15-minute workday thing. Why are the characters only working for 15 minutes a day?

Union rules.

[DeltaEmil]

Because the wizards/clerics/druids/sorcerers/spellcasters have exhausted their relevant spells, and the mundane characters are irrelevant and need the spellcasting of the spellcasters too to survive.

[nyarlathotep]

Honestly I as a caster have not ever had a problem with running out of spells even though I optimize for absurdly unintuitive builds (as in a wizard who is a scarecrow and all of this spells fit within that theme).Two or three spells are all that is needed for most encounters and after level 10 you have over a dozen spells more if you have equipment.

[Doug Lampert]

Don't forget easy metamagic, alternate action spells (swift actions, etc), buffs being improved (especially in polymorph and the like), bonus spells, and even faster memorization times. That and more were added to wizards and other spell casters.

Warrior classes were weakened just look at the fighter it lost

1) hp bonus from very high con.

2) its extra attacks relative to other classes

3) saving throws are not as good as warriors were overall the best at saving throws in general (at very high levels they often succeeded on a 2+).

4) Moving and attacking was still effective

5) fighters used to be among the best in skills. Fighters received one less non-weapon prof. total than the highest skilled class in the game. How things have changed.

Saves were one of the BIG changes.

In previous editions, a high level fighter saved against a high level wizard on a 2+, and almost everything allowed a save.

Now?

Level 11 wizard, no cheeze, starting Int 16, two increases and a +4 item or spell, no feats to boost DC. His best spells have a save DC of 22 (and I'd have to WORK HARD to get it worse).

Level 11 fighter, 18, Con, Dex, and Wis (yep, all three), Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will (again all three), +5 item of resistance (don't ask where he got that, just live with it the good fighter fairy brought it with the ability scores).

The fighter's saves are +18, +14, +14.
He misses a Will save on a roll of 7. And that's with all the abilities at 18 and all three save boosting feats and a substantial percentage of his WBL on saves.

A straight out of the book Erinyes or Succubus (both allegedly MUCH weaker) can fly overhead and charm monster or suggestion him with a fairly good chance of it working.

Now try it with a more realistic fighter build.

And it only gets worse as level goes up! By level 20 your fighter's GOOD save is only succeeding on a 20 vs. a mildly optimized caster. You need to massively multiclass to stack those +2 bonuses for the first level to have any chance at all.