Early access to high level spells

[ewoods]

Some friends of mine and I are working on creating our own game system and we have a hypothetical that we wanted to get some opinions on.

A 14th level character has access to 9th-level spells (and all spell levels below 9th), and this is the first level she has access to these. Your choice of SRD wizard or cleric spell list. If choosing the wizard list, she learned spells as a Wizard would (all 0-level spells, three 1st-level spells, and two new spells up to the highest level she could cast at each character level). If cleric, she knows all of the 9th level cleric spells. She has no other class abilities and no feats. She has 30 total skill ranks. She has ten hit points. Her AC is 10. Her base saving throws are all 0. All of her non-casting ability scores are 10. If wizard, her intelligence is 20, and if cleric, her wisdom is 20. Her Int/Wis acts as a mana pool, allowing her to cast a number of spells per day whose level total is less than or equal to 20. For example, she could cast two 9th-level spells and a 2nd-level spell, or two 8th-level spells and a 4th-level spell, etc.

Assume she is encountering enemies that a typical 14th level D&D/Pathfinder character would encounter. Also assume that material component costs and average character wealth levels remain unchanged.

Would you consider her access to high level spells at early levels overpowered considering the rest of her stats?

[Mr.Moron]

Nowhere near enough information to say. From the looks of things you're doing a pathfinder-esque 3.X d20-variation? It's impossible to give balance analysis without understanding the system as a whole, and what your ideal "balanced" should look like.

[nikkoli]

I agree with Mr.Moron in that we need quite a bit more information, but from what I can tell and my own ideas of casters, this won't make playing them all that fun. It brings their spells per day down to such a limited suply that the 5 minuet adventuring day will turn into a 1 minuet adventuring day.
Also the way it sounds is that they get spells and literaly nothing else. Not even a base save or a BAB. So the wizard will have nothing except a natural 20 to protect him from any kind of attack by a monsters SLA or SU abilities or a monster rolling a natural 1 on an attsck. The cleric would atlas get a chance on will saves but that won't hold up much compared to CR 14 monsters.