On the wizards

[Cade Shadow]

How do you keep a wizard balanced while allowing it spontaneous casting. (removing the sorcerer class)

Or keep the sorcerer balanced while allowing it to learn spells from other sorcerers (getting rid of the wizard)

Would getting rid of the familiar work? I'm planning on getting rid of it anyway, but leaving the obtain familiar feat.

Please help.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

To tell you the truth, familiar isn't all that great. You get alertness and a scout, and an animal that costs you XP every time he dies.

[Korias]

Keep in midn you also gain a "Mild" Bonus. Bu the place to start would be spell levels.

Reduce the spells per day by X, keeping the spellbooks, or reduce the spells per day by X+1.

[Innis Cabal]

there really isnt anything you can do to make it more balanced if you give them spontanious casting...there is a reason they dont have it.

[GryffonDurime]

Hmm...I'd say if you're absolutely set on making the Wizard a spontaneous, you need to create drawbacks.

Have him keep a Spellbook to which his magical power is inexorably bound, like a Lich's phyllactery. If the book is destroyed, the wizard looses ALL spellcasting abilities until they attune themselves to a new book. Once a spell is written in his book, he can cast it by looking it up so he'd have to carry his spellbook into combat. Maybe even force him to take a swift action to look up the spell, which at least precludes taking another free action. Even still, he'd be able to cast any spell in his book without preparations.

I'd say the Sorcerer's rules on metamagic would have to apply too. So you've got a powerful spontaneous caster who can never Quicken a spell except through a rod or the like...powerful, but might be workable if your campaign enhances everyone else too.

[Icewalker]

I like the idea of having to cast out of the book.

Maybe they would just make pages which are like scrolls but with multiple uses, or scrolls and you rescribe each morning without xp cost.

[adanedhel9]

How do you keep a wizard balanced while allowing it spontaneous casting. (removing the sorcerer class)

Or keep the sorcerer balanced while allowing it to learn spells from other sorcerers (getting rid of the wizard)

I've done the second; though I can't claim that it is balanced (I'm not a balance guru, and I haven't had the opportunity to see it in action). Basically, I created a prestige class which grants Wizard-style preperation one level at a time (to prepare a 0-level spell, you have to have 1 level, to prepare a 3rd-level, you have to have 4 levels, etc), but it only has 8/10 spellcasting (so if you want to prepare 9th level spells, you lose two levels of sorcerer spellcasting). You also have to sacrifice one spell per day per level in order to prepare spells of that level.

Another thought that I've played with is to allow either preperation from a spellbook or spontaneous casting from spells known for each spell slot. So if such a caster has 4 1st level spells per day, he could prepare 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 spells from his spellbook and leave his other two slots open for sponteaneous casting of spells from his Spells Known (which does not include his spellbook). I'm really unsure on the balance of this, though.

[Whamme]

Well, if they had the Bard spell progression, they'd be underpowered...

I'd say trial it at giving them the Sorceror's "Spells Known" as the number of spells they can memorize each day, and the Wizard's "Spells Per Day" as the number of spells they can cast per day.

So they'd cast less spells than a sorceror, but be able to change them every day, and they'd be able to prepare less different spells each day than Wizard would, but be able to cast them more often.

[sigurd]

The greater balance is to give spontaneous casting to the wizards. It represents fewer spells per day. In game play, I don't think this makes that much of a difference honestly.

You might give them spontaneous spellcasting if they give up metamagic, or a selection of metamagic spell improvements. (Personally I think that's your greatest balance - but many casters will not enjoy that deal.)

Sigurd

[Matthew]

Less Spell Slots (or Magic Points), carefully monitered access to Spells, some sort of Fatigue System. That's how I do it.

[sigurd]

The problem is that its not the class thats unbalanced its the power of the spells. The class is pretty dreadful in some ways (Skill Points!) HP!.


I think the only way you can balance them is to re-arrange their spells so they reflect power levels you approve (ugh) and then look at how quickly they get them and how often.

If you combine that with more skill points, and perhaps move some spells into ritual magic that has more requirements you might come up with something.


Personally I don't think its as broken as people say it is. I think Power Attack is about as broken too.