Broken Wizard solutions

[Ever Phasm]

Almost everyone who plays a wizard from low levels to high experiences the following:

1st level: BAM! magic missle! Okay, now what? I'm out of spells.
5th level: Stinking Cloud! Scorching Ray! Magic Missle! WHAT? There are like 8 encounters left?
10th: Feel my wrath! ENERVATION!
15th: You, dragon! don't bother trying anything. My intellect is vastly superior to yours, you should just give up before I incinerate you.
20th: Even the Gods fear me! Mwa ha ha ha ha!

However, in my experience, very few people are willing to play a character from first to 20th level (my group sure ain't). So if you are playing an adventure with high level characters, the wizard shines out. With many powerful spells he/she dominates in every situation.

To fix this problem of wizards being (in a nut shell) overpowered, I have thought of a solution that needs reviewing before use (it could make wizards at low levels the most undesirable class choice ever).

It is based around ASF (arcane spell failure) and also depends on how you imagine working in your campaign.

If you imagine magic as a set of perfect formulas and mathematical equations that always perform specific effects then my idea will require slight tweaking.

If, on the other hand, you envision arcane magic as a wild untouchable energy and wizards cast spells by tapping into that magic then my idea fits in perfectly.

The bases for my idea is that one can never completely understand arcane magic. Wizards develop hypothesis and theories but doubt is always there. Arcane material components may be needed for a purpose that we do not understand and waving your hands in a different way may cause a fireball to become a blast of negative energy. Magic Missles might rip a hole in the fabric of time and space and wizards could never be sure why it happened.

In short, because of this unpredictability of magic. Increase the ASF of a wizard when he casts a spell by the level of the spell (treat cantrips as 1 for this case).

This means that when the 20th level wizard with 0%ASF casts celerity in order to cast time stop (etc.) celerity has a 4% ASF chance of failure while time stop has a 9% chance of failure.

If our wizard was (for some strange and idiotic reason) in studded leather and casts invisibility (a 2nd level spell) he has a 17% ASF, as opposed to a 15% chance.

The problem with this is that the venerable gray elf with 38 intelligence stills fails to cast some of his spells about 5% of the time. Even though he has studied magic for 200 years.

If you guys can think of any other flaws with this idea then please speak up! I need to know if it works for my next session in which I am a 16th level gnome illusionist Nightmare Spinner (PrCl from complete mage).

[Bears With Lasers]

Here's the flaw with this idea: random failure makes for a crappy mechanic. If the wizard is useless 10% of the time and wins the other 90% of the time, that's not balance, and it's really poor design to boot.

[Sir Giacomo]

In the old Lankhmar ADD setting, the casting times were increased by one step to make magic rarer/more obscure/more indirect and subtle; so put to DD3.5 that would mean:
immediate action casting remains (otherwise feather fall would make no more sense)
swift action casting becomes standard action casting (it could be quickened, again with feat and metamagic rod)
standard action casting becomes full round action casting (so can no longer be quickened!)
full round action casting becomes 1 minute casting (summoning takes even longer)
etc.

This would limit at least the combat strength of casters somewhat; you may wish to equalise this by more skill points (say 4/level instead of 2) so that, say, wizards and sorcerers can do more stuff at low levels, or grant more metamagic feats.

Another method to prevent the exponential power curve for arcane casters is to limit their ability to choose 2 spells for themselves per level (say, to 1/level, or only up to 5th level spells). So their spell expansion is more vitally dependent on finding, buying, exchanging scrolls and spellbooks for wizards and in finding tutors for sorcerers (entirely in the hands of the DM).

- Giacomo

[Koga]

The Top Three Ways To Nerf an Overconfident Wizard...

Number one:
Show him magic glowing armor. Make it attractive like a green, then, if he touches it, it magicaly teleports on his body and becomes stuck to him. Resulting in arcane spell-failure.

Number two:
Have one of his hands chopped off. Somatic compoents now are inconcenceivable.

Number three:
Have someone burn, eat, or otherwise dismantle his spellbook. Villains aren't retarded, they know that if there's a wizard, there's bound to be a library.

[Amphimir Míriel]

[QUOTE=Koga;2467835]The Top Three Ways To Nerf an Overconfident Wizard...[QUOTE]

Your 3 tips sound more like: Top three ways to make your players mad with you without good reason.

Except maybe for number 3... it is reasonable to think about destroying a wizards library before attacking him... Of course, a high level's wizard library would be protected with all sorts of traps and spells

[Emperor Tippy]

The Top Three Ways To Nerf an Overconfident Wizard...

Number one:
Show him magic glowing armor. Make it attractive like a green, then, if he touches it, it magicaly teleports on his body and becomes stuck to him. Resulting in arcane spell-failure.

Wizard: "I cast teleport and choose to not bring along the armor"

Number two:
Have one of his hands chopped off. Somatic compoents now are inconcenceivable.

Wizard to cleric: "Hey buddy, can you prepare a Regenerate spell tomorrow so I can get my hand back?"

Number three:
Have someone burn, eat, or otherwise dismantle his spellbook. Villains aren't retarded, they know that if there's a wizard, there's bound to be a library.

Wizard: "Time to pull out the spare blessed book, the best 12.5K I ever spent. Oh I'm running low on gold for these things, time to solo an adult black dragon and get another dozen."


If you want to nerf the wizard at least try to come up with half way decent ways. And the wizards power level is an out of game concern and should not be dealt with ingame.

[Innis Cabal]

anti-magic field? Wild magic field....oh thats a great teleport spell.....to bad your 2,000 miles from where you wanted to be...and perhaps in a very bad situation to boot. Though in my opinon wizards are only as powerful as the DM lets them

[Bears With Lasers]

...how much of the gameworld is covered in AMFs and wild magic areas?

Yes. The wizard isn't powerful, if the DM keeps his class features from working they way they're supposed to.

[Dausuul]

Here's the flaw with this idea: random failure makes for a crappy mechanic. If the wizard is useless 10% of the time and wins the other 90% of the time, that's not balance, and it's really poor design to boot.

Huh? Fighters have random failure. It's called "if you don't hit the monster's AC, or get a natural 1, you miss." Why is it so unreasonable to have a similar limiting factor on the wizard? Hell, that's what spell resistance does, except it's way too easy to jack up your caster level and/or reduce SR and/or use spells that bypass it entirely. If all spells had to worry about SR, and there were no way to reduce it or raise your caster level to overcome it, wizards would be a lot less broken. (Still broken, thanks to time stop and the like, but less so.)

Nor would this necessarily mean "wizards are useless 10% and win 90%." Combat is not decided on a single die roll; if this spell fails, the next spell might succeed, and vice versa. What this would do is throw the occasional wrench in the Super Duper Spell Combos that make 20th-level wizards so obscene. The more spells are involved in the combo, the more likely it is that one of them goes pffft.

Not saying it would necessarily fix the problem, but I see no reason to dismiss it out of hand. Most RPGs require some sort of roll when you use magic. D&D is actually unusual in allowing wizards to succeed automatically.

[Person_Man]

You know, I never have any trouble balancing casters and non-casters in the campaigns I DM. I just throw other magic users against them in encounters, and make sure that there are enough encounters each game day that the caster PC's feel as if they have to ration their spells. It's only a problem if other players are playing completely nerfed builds. But that issue is solved during character creation.

[kamikasei]

Huh? Fighters have random failure. It's called "if you don't hit the monster's AC, or get a natural 1, you miss." Why is it so unreasonable to have a similar limiting factor on the wizard?

The fighter's random failures don't consume a finite resource, except for rounds. He is free to attack again. A wizard's ASF will consume a spell slot.

[Kioran]

Almost everyone who plays a wizard from low levels to high experiences the following:

1st level: BAM! magic missle! Okay, now what? I'm out of spells.
5th level: Stinking Cloud! Scorching Ray! Magic Missle! WHAT? There are like 8 encounters left?
10th: Feel my wrath! ENERVATION!
15th: You, dragon! don't bother trying anything. My intellect is vastly superior to yours, you should just give up before I incinerate you.
20th: Even the Gods fear me! Mwa ha ha ha ha!

However, in my experience, very few people are willing to play a character from first to 20th level (my group sure ain't). So if you are playing an adventure with high level characters, the wizard shines out. With many powerful spells he/she dominates in every situation.

To fix this problem of wizards being (in a nut shell) overpowered, I have thought of a solution that needs reviewing before use (it could make wizards at low levels the most undesirable class choice ever).

It is based around ASF (arcane spell failure) and also depends on how you imagine working in your campaign.

If you imagine magic as a set of perfect formulas and mathematical equations that always perform specific effects then my idea will require slight tweaking.

If, on the other hand, you envision arcane magic as a wild untouchable energy and wizards cast spells by tapping into that magic then my idea fits in perfectly.

The bases for my idea is that one can never completely understand arcane magic. Wizards develop hypothesis and theories but doubt is always there. Arcane material components may be needed for a purpose that we do not understand and waving your hands in a different way may cause a fireball to become a blast of negative energy. Magic Missles might rip a hole in the fabric of time and space and wizards could never be sure why it happened.

In short, because of this unpredictability of magic. Increase the ASF of a wizard when he casts a spell by the level of the spell (treat cantrips as 1 for this case).

This means that when the 20th level wizard with 0%ASF casts celerity in order to cast time stop (etc.) celerity has a 4% ASF chance of failure while time stop has a 9% chance of failure.

If our wizard was (for some strange and idiotic reason) in studded leather and casts invisibility (a 2nd level spell) he has a 17% ASF, as opposed to a 15% chance.

The problem with this is that the venerable gray elf with 38 intelligence stills fails to cast some of his spells about 5% of the time. Even though he has studied magic for 200 years.

If you guys can think of any other flaws with this idea then please speak up! I need to know if it works for my next session in which I am a 16th level gnome illusionist Nightmare Spinner (PrCl from complete mage).

I see two problems with this, one minor and one major problem:

- single percents make using a d100 necessesary, and allthough it´s not that big a deal, it complicates things. There´s a reason normal ASF comes in 5% increments.....though this is a minor issue

-even the full 9% won´t hurt your venerable grey elf that much. A little more penalty would do more towars balancing - but then I´d simply restructure the gained spell-slots to a pyramid shape:

say 10 lvl 1, 9 lvl 2, 8 lvl 3 and so on. This will be less complicated, still allow planning on player side and force the wizard to tone it down a bit since a timestop or similiar would now waste precious spell slots which are hard to replace.

The best way to nerf caster ingame is to force them to act continually, not allowing them to much rest - most of Tippy´s impunity/immortality tactis assume the ready avilabilty of time to refresh your spells, which is a valid assumption in times of peace but maybe not so during crisis.....

[Emperor Tippy]

Oh you want time? Look at Arcane Genesis in the SRD. You can create a demiplane where 1 material plane round equals 10 hours.

Leave and come back next round fully spelled up.

[Kioran]

Oh you want time? Look at Arcane Genesis in the SRD. You can create a demiplane where 1 material plane round equals 10 hours.

Leave and come back next round fully spelled up.

Well, as someone(I think it was you, actually) said before: Casters win, but even the most stupid casters automatically win when you enter Epic Magic into the equation. That´s why I, even as a player, would avoid Epic level like the plague (amongst other reasons).

[kamikasei]

Genesis isn't an Epic spell.

[Ulzgoroth]

Assuming you mean this, I'm not sure I'm convinced that it supports changing the timeflow property, though I can see how you might suppose it did.

Not epic, incidentally. Level 9 spell... Agh, ninja!

[Kioran]

Genesis isn't an Epic spell.

I think there was an Epic Variant of the spell which let you create something much more powerful, and i thought that one was refferd to - my bad. But even if you can cast that demiplane and alter the timeflow, it would, at least initially, be to small for you to comfortably stay, let alone rest there....
Of course you could just prepare one for later use, but then, others could enter it just as well as you could......

[EvilJames]

Wizard: "I cast teleport and choose to not bring along the armor"



Wizard to cleric: "Hey buddy, can you prepare a Regenerate spell tomorrow so I can get my hand back?"



Wizard: "Time to pull out the spare blessed book, the best 12.5K I ever spent. Oh I'm running low on gold for these things, time to solo an adult black dragon and get another dozen."


If you want to nerf the wizard at least try to come up with half way decent ways. And the wizards power level is an out of game concern and should not be dealt with ingame.

actually If the armor is cursed then he can't just teleport out of it also since he is in it the spell failure would prevent that anyway.

also if your ina game where some one is soloing dragons well then thats the problem not the wizard, monty hauls are the enemy

[Emperor Tippy]

actually If the armor is cursed then he can't just teleport out of it also since he is in it the spell failure would prevent that anyway.

Unless its 100% ASF then you will eventually get a teleport off, and as a wizard I wouldn't stop using the TP slots until I was out of that armor.

Or someone else in the party could just use a scroll of TP and you can choose to not bring along the armor that way. Or the cleric uses Break Enchantment to get rid of it.

also if your ina game where some one is soloing dragons well then thats the problem not the wizard, monty hauls are the enemy

If your in a game where the DM is adding in cursed armor to power down a wizard, or destroying your spell book every day, or maiming your character to power you down then your game is already so messed up that as a player you can go to town.

Remember, the DM was an ass first in all of the previously stated situations.

[Jade_Tarem]

Tippy's solution to the armor problem was just the straight-up basic one. The wizard can do way better. If there's a cleric in the party, remove curse. Or the wizard can do it.

Also, with a strange armor in the room why would it not be checked out by someone with an actual interest in it, like the fighter? I'd love to see that one explained by the DM:

Figher: "Ooo! Glowing green armor. I try it on!"
DM: "Uhhh... ok. As you touch it, it... teleports onto the wizard."
Wizard: "What?"

Later...

Wizard: "Let me get this straight. You homebrewed a set of full plate mail - the only special qualities of which are that it has a high arcane failure chance and you can't get it off no matter what, which teleports onto a "random" person as soon as someone touches it, and it just happened to land on me."
DM:"Pretty much, yeah."
Wizard: "Funny about the random thing though... I didn't see you roll any dice."

It's pretty darn hard to hide a wizard nerf like that. The best thing to do is set whole new limits at the beginning or level with the wizard out-of-game rather than pull some stupid stunt like that. Most wizard players really aren't that dense.

The best way to tone down a wizard, really, is to make magic less accessable rather than arbitrarily unreliable. The whole idea behind wizarding is "victory through preparation" - not "whip out some magic and maybe it will work." If your players had wanted a failure chance attached to their magic, they would have gone wild mage.

Nothing stinks worse than being a PC, and halfway through a campaign your DM decides that he doesn't like how powerful you've become, and instead of talking it over with you like a rational person he decides that he's going to abuse his DM powers to come up with a whole bunch of ******** reasons why nothing you ever do works. Believe it or not, most wizard players worth their spellbooks are not out to trash your campaign and will agree to forego cheese combos, as well as other reasonable restrictions, if you're up front with them about it. I, for one, would agree that certain unbalancing spells could have rarer material components that I can't start with (Which makes for great in-game odd loot for the wizard, too: "Why are you so eager to have the onyx ring, Jade?" "It's not the ring - it's what I can do with it!"). This is a great wizard-nerf, actually, and puts a little bit of the mystery back in magic. It's actually a little exciting to, say, compare notes with another wizard ("You're saying that the key to sustained flight is a feather from an arrowhawk? Interesting.") or rifle through an enemy wizard's notes after you've defeated him. ("So that's how he was able to turn into a lightning bolt and jump across the room. Hey guys? I call dibs on his necklace!")

Trying to take them down in-game and getting caught at it, however, will start the song "Anything you can do, I can do better" playing in the background, and the wizard will continue to find ways around your security measures until there's nothing left of the game but you, red-faced and spittle flying out of your mouth, banning entire schools of magic and shrieking "Rocks fall, you die!"

Besides, there are builds that will let you cast perfectly even with 100%+ ASFC. You start randomly attaching unwanted failure chances to them and you're going to see more and more of those.

[Da Beast]

The Top Three Ways To Nerf an Overconfident Wizard...

Number one:
Show him magic glowing armor. Make it attractive like a green, then, if he touches it, it magicaly teleports on his body and becomes stuck to him. Resulting in arcane spell-failure.

Number two:
Have one of his hands chopped off. Somatic compoents now are inconcenceivable.

Number three:
Have someone burn, eat, or otherwise dismantle his spellbook. Villains aren't retarded, they know that if there's a wizard, there's bound to be a library.

So your solution is to turn the wizard into a commoner. I'm sure your players will love that.

[CASTLEMIKE]

Lots of Options available.

Maybe there are No Clerics, Druids or Wizards in your Campaign (No NPC, BBEGs or PCs) Favored Souls and Sorcerers are it (Psions if you use Psionics maybe a handful of Ur-Adepts the PCs will probably Never Meet).

Another simple mechanical fix is throwing in a few Casting Level Delaying Progression Levels like the Magewright NPC does say every 4 or five levels depending on your campaign and granting the Wizard or Other Primary Spellcaster an Open Bonus Feat at that level.

That delays the use of some of the Uber Overpowering High level spells and tactics in High Level campaigns and lets everyone have a little more Fun including the DM (Who normally isn't Really trying to Destroy the Party Rarely do the Uber NPCs use the Standard Tactics of PCs (which they normally would in Reality since their purpose isn't to be Defeated or Die just to let some enemies level up and get their treasure)). Now the wizard or other primary spellcaster will still shine but but will now need to be just a little more creative.

Taking that First Level Delay at Wiz-2 and the Second Level Wizard would have the same number of Spells to Cast a Day as a Wiz-1 but with an Extra Bonus Feat. It would also delay taking some of the more powerful PRCs by a few levels. It would be at the DMs Choice to grant the Open Bonus feat to a PC taking a PRC at the dead casting level like a Magewright taking a PRC would normally lose the Bonus Spell Mastery Feat leveling up. This option would provided quite a few extra feats so a PC might not pursue a PRC because of the feat loss cost

That Bonus Feat could be used for taking "Something" like the Fiery Burst Reserve Feat which could make playing the Wizard in this example more enjoyable in lower level games Leveling Up Campaigns since he or she could be useful taking part in almost every combat having an almost always on "Useful" (Not the Best) magical attack power with a Reserve Spell without overshadowing the rest of the party.

This could be a lot of "Fun" if implemented accross the board for All Primary Casters (NPC, BBEGs and PCs) kind of like the sorcerer is generally rated as one of the most Fun characters to play despite the problems with the base class. Any Players who think this is to Nerfed in your game either won't play or they will choose other PCs to play.

[Saph]

I don't think including ASF on everything is a good idea. If you want something similar that's better supported by the game mechanics, give every monster in the game Spell Resistance and boost all existing SR scores by 5-10 points or so.

Simpler approach:

Ban the more overpowered spells like Ray of Stupidity, Celerity, Polymorph line, etc. Limit downtime and preparation time. Assume that all intelligent creatures treat magic as the most serious threat (since it is) and set up adventures and encounters accordingly. Even with this, wizards will still be very powerful at high levels, but not game-breaking.

Simplest approach:

Don't do overpowered stuff, and play with people who don't do overpowered stuff. Requires no houseruling at all, but does require a nice group of players.

- Saph

[Dausuul]

The fighter's random failures don't consume a finite resource, except for rounds. He is free to attack again. A wizard's ASF will consume a spell slot.

Rounds are an extremely finite resource, worth far more than spell slots at high levels. That's why time stop is so utterly broken. Even with all the limitations on what you can do while it's active, and even with costing you a 9th-level slot, those extra 1-4 rounds are insanely useful.

[Jade_Tarem]

And yet, it's still not a good idea to slap a bunch of ASF on a wizard out of the blue.

[Ulzgoroth]

Making even relatively weak SR common...really, really common, as in everyone has some...might be better. It's not just an arbitrary barrier, and the wizard can counteract it, overwhelm it, or go around it. Of course, this only makes the no-SR spells already on the Batman's list even better, and any kind of blaster even worse.

[PaladinBoy]

Oh you want time? Look at Arcane Genesis in the SRD. You can create a demiplane where 1 material plane round equals 10 hours.

Leave and come back next round fully spelled up.

Frankly, since the spell doesn't say anything either way about messing with the time trait of your demiplane, I generally interpret it to be that WotC would want the same limit on the arcane version that exists on the psionic version. Namely, normal time, and no messing with that.

I agree that it's interpreting the rules against the wizard, but since the wizard is already rather deadly, I think that putting limits on the most unbalanced stuff isn't unreasonable.

As for the OP, I do like the idea a little. I think I would set the baseline failure chance higher, but allow wizard levels, INT score, and perhaps a feat to lower it. That way, it can be lowered or perhaps removed completely (for lower-level spells) but is still something to consider. Not sure that it fits the flavor of any of my campaigns, though.

The only problem I have with the universal SR idea is that it makes blaster mages even more useless then they already are, since most magic that does damage permits a saving throw and SR.

I certainly think that any of these ideas should definitely be shared with your players at character creation. And I still think that lack of time and intelligent enemies that will use an 8 hour break to prepare are the best ways to hamper an out of control wizard.

[Caelestion]

One of the options in Unearthed Arcana was that all blasting (not save or die) spells are SR: No. A simple extension to that is that all other spells are SR: Yes.

[Saph]

The only problem I have with the universal SR idea is that it makes blaster mages even more useless then they already are, since most magic that does damage permits a saving throw and SR.

All they have to do is use the Orb spells instead. Those are already good enough to deserve a place in the spellbook, even for non-blaster mages.

Nearly all save-or-die or save-or-lose spells allow SR, so increasing SRs would weaken those spells proportionally.

- Saph

[Yahzi]

you, red-faced and spittle flying out of your mouth, banning entire schools of magic and shrieking "Rocks fall, you die!"

I wanna play in Jade's game.