The Wizard Problem (3.5)

[Night Monkey]

It seems as though a lot of roleplaying/homebrew discussion about 3.5 is centred around this particular issue. The Wizard Problem is a hobby-wide obsession, and I don't like the way it must bring down the reputation of 3.5 in the eyes of players of other systems (such as 4E, where class balance gets taken more seriously). I love 3.5 ed, I love what you can do with it, and I love the kind of challenges and monsters you get to face at higher levels. But in swoops The Wizard Problem, and everything gets dragged down into the mire of the simple fact that a well-built wizard can just about do anything.

There are many homebrew responses to The Wizard Problem. Classes, variant classes, prestige classes, feats, magic items, they're all over the boards. But it strikes me that the main problem here is that the other classes, especially full-martial types, are having to build themselves towards dealing with wizards, turning every non-wizard character's build into the measure of how well they can deal with wizards. This does not help our obsession with The Wizard Problem.

It also strikes me that the crux of The Wizard Problem is a certain core of "repeat offenders"; arcane spells that give the wizard this mad advantage. The most elegant method, it seems to me, to deal with The Wizard Problem, is to look at these spells and see whether they should be nerfed, or house-ruled out.

I do not, by this, mean to deny the wizard any strengths. All classes should have things they are good at, as well as flaws. The wizard's pityful physical abilities should be made up for by powerful spells, but not overpowering ones. Also, because the wizard lags behind martial classes at lower levels, they should increase in relative strength at higher levels, TO AN EXTENT. High-damage spells, nasty status effects, nifty utility spells, these are all important parts of the wizard's strengths, and the wizard's style. The real problems, it seems to me, are spells that replicate the abilities of other classes so the wizard can do them as well as, or better than, said classes, as well as spells that just shut down the abilities of other classes, making them unable to beat the wizard.

I invite everyone, therefore, to suggest what they think are the repeat offenders of the wizard spell list, and how they could be dealt with. I'd like to focus on spells from core, at least to start with, as splatbook and homebrew material is DM's perogative anyway. I'd also prefer to look at non-epic spells for now, as I have no frakking idea how to make epic casting balanced. I'd like to open here with a few reccomendations of my own.

Polymorph spells: Increase level by one. Eradicate Shapechange. Specify that, for Polymorph Any Object, every extra hit die in the new form compared to the old form (objects are considered to have a single hit die) reduces 1 from the duration factor. No more week-long periods as the Tarrasque, or Great Wyrm Gold Dragons for Kobold wizards.
Solid Fog: Dead and gone.
Fly: Does not give you good maneuverability, so you cannot hover. Maybe a greater fly spell (at higher level) could let you hover.
High level spells (in general): Should maybe have longer casting times, to reflect the great amount of power being used, and to give foes a bit of a chance to kill/disable the wizard before the spell goes off.

Please, bring forth your suggestions, and feel free to rubbish my own.

[Realms of Chaos]

I hate to tell you this but now that 3.5 is officially over (as far as WotC is concerned), the wizard problem is eternal. It will not leave. Not now and not ever.

What you are attempting to do here is noble, making a set of homebrewed rules that balance spellcasters (like wizards) with everyone else. The problem, however, is that people have been doing this for years.

I have seen dozens of solutions to the "wizard problem" floating on the boards for years, some of which sound like they'd actually work. The problem is, no matter how good your homebrew is, it is just homebrew.

By RAW, the wizards are probably the most versatile thing in 3.5. Period. They may have some competition with Artificers and CoDzilla but that's pretty much it. No amount of homebrewing will stop new gamers from opening up a 3.5 handbook and seeing that the wizards are dreadfully overpowered compared to everything else in existance.

The 3.5 world is no longer officially expanding. Therefore, there is absolutely 0 chance that something will come along to knock the wizard off of it's pedestal. This is the frustrating reality.

That said, this thread isn't without hope. In the end, the usefulness of this thread really comes down to how dedicated you are to finding the solution for this "wizard problem". Several unofficial class designs have been recommended for underpowered classes by their creators (hexblade and shadowcaster come to mind) that have all but become canon.

If you are willing to come up with a set of guidelines that everyone agrees with (quite a task in and of itself, as many wizard players enjoy their sense of superiority and play the class specifically to be a batman wizard), post it on about 20 different message boards, put them on Youtube, Myspace, and Facebook, and so on, your solution may have what it takes to join this unofficial canon.

Otherwise, you are just forming homebrew spellcasting rules for your own campaign (and maybe five other readers).

[AstralFire]

Start with core only. Do not blanket allow non-core spells unless they're centered around dealing HP damage to someone.

Disallow spells with an XP cost, except for Wish. Double the cost of Wish.
Make everything subject to spell resistance and spell immunity, except stuff like Fireball and Meteor Swarm - AoE HP damage on reflex saves.

Disallow every single magic item in the game that solely or primarily benefits a caster. When that caster has spell DCs of 29 if he really pumps it, AND all of his spells are subject to SR, his save or sucks aren't so sexy. That reminds me - remove all spells that allow you to overcome spell resistance. (There are only 3, anyway.)

Require UMD to use any spell-trigger items. Remove Scribe Scroll. Disallow Wizard Specialization.

Do not give Clerics domain powers. Require them to pick only one domain.

Force Druids to use one of the Wild Shape Variants in PHB II or UA. Ban Natural Spell.

Remove Shapechange. Remove Summoning spells (Astral Construct is okay, though; if you want to rebuild the summon spells like that, be my guest).

Remove Share Spell aspect of animal companions. Remove Divine Power, swap for Tenser's Transformation. Remove Contingency. Ban Persistent Spell. Ban all spells and powers that target a stat - leave ability damage to special class abilities. Temporal acceleration and Time Stop both require 5k XP to use. Ban all spells and powers that grant you answers about the future - leave scrying, though.

Remove Miracle. Replace with Wish. Remove Shadow Conjuration/Evocation line.

Increase Forcecage's casting time to 10 minutes. Increase duration to 1 day/level.

If a Sorcerer wants to take some of these (now very hammered) spells, consider letting him take a feat for that spell to get it in its unnerfed form.

Alternatively, can keep all spells with an XP cost (such as Gate), and multiply the XP cost by 3. Or hell, force a level loss for every such usage - and set their new experience total to a fresh level, rather than mid. People won't mind using a little bit of XP constantly, but if they lose a level every time they cast Wish or Gate, they're going to use it a lot less - imagine being almost 20 and dropping to a fresh 18. Make this level loss irreparable by any means.

There. Wizards no longer pack an absurd amount of versatility, nor do Clerics or Druids. :3 No more auguries about the day ahead, no more prescient initiative boosts, no more saveless kills, no more 'summoning 4 monsters, each of which are 80% as good as or better than a standard Fighter', no more incredibly long spell lists, no more contingent spell combos.

[Night Monkey]

My thanks to RoC for your response, and for your very thoughtful sensitivity. Of course, 3.5 will have no new official releases. I perhaps was unclear about my ambitions, what I primarily want is the benefit of experience greater than my own. I am also, to an extent, making a statement of opinion regarding the method of changing wizard spells to bring them to the same level as other classes, rather than the method of bring every damn thing else up to the level of the wizard, which seems like a clunky way to go about things. If as many as 5 other people use the same system in their games I'd consider myself to have performed quite an acheivement.

[Clementx]

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=4543.msg150088#msg150088
My changes to core spells, knocking down the worst offenders. Part of a longer work to equalize the game's extremes. Posts above and below deal with other aspects of 3.5 to finish the job.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Start with core only. Do not blanket allow non-core spells unless they're centered around dealing HP damage to someone.

Disallow spells with an XP cost, except for Wish. Double the cost of Wish.
Make everything subject to spell resistance and spell immunity.

Disallow every single magic item in the game that solely or primarily benefits a caster. When that caster has spell DCs of 29 if he really pumps it, AND all of his spells are subject to SR, his save or sucks aren't so sexy. That reminds me - remove all spells that allow you to overcome spell resistance. (There are only 3, anyway.)

Require UMD to use any spell-trigger items. Remove Scribe Scroll. Disallow Wizard Specialization.

Do not give Clerics domain powers. Require them to pick only one domain.

Force Druids to use one of the Wild Shape Variants in PHB II or UA. Ban Natural Spell.

Remove Shapechange. Remove Summoning spells (Astral Construct is okay, though; if you want to rebuild the summon spells like that, be my guest).

Remove Share Spell aspect of animal companions. Remove Divine Power, swap for Tenser's Transformation. Remove Contingency. Ban Persistent Spell. Ban all spells and powers that target a stat - leave ability damage to special class abilities. Temporal acceleration and Time Stop both require 5k XP to use. Ban all spells and powers that grant you answers about the future - leave scrying, though.

Remove Miracle. Replace with Wish. Remove Shadow Conjuration/Evocation line.

Increase Forcecage's casting time to 10 minutes. Increase duration to 1 day/level.

If a Sorcerer wants to take some of these (now very hammered) spells, consider letting him take a feat for that spell to get it in its unnerfed form.

Alternatively, can keep all spells with an XP cost (such as Gate), and multiply the XP cost by 3. Or hell, force a level loss for every such usage - and set their new experience total to a fresh level, rather than mid. People won't mind using a little bit of XP constantly, but if they lose a level every time they cast Wish or Gate, they're going to use it a lot less - imagine being almost 20 and dropping to a fresh 18. Make this level loss irreparable by any means.

I don't really think the spells are the problem, honestly. The vast majority of spells are copied directly from 2e--sometimes without even a change in wording!--yet 2e didn't have The Wizard Problem.

The issues with the wizard are that all of the mechanics of spellcasting were changed from 2e to 3e. Now a wizard can avoid having his spells disrupted when he's hit; now spells usually take a single standard action; now it's trivial to overcome SR; now it's hard for enemies to save against save-or-dies; now a wizard can know an unlimited number of spells; now metamagic requires higher slots instead of more time; now some spells aren't subject to SR.

It used to be that a wizard lost a spell when hit, no failed Concentration check required (or existing in the first place); spells took longer to cast based on level; SR was a flat percentage chance that you couldn't affect at all; fighters saved on a 2 vs. most spells; you couldn't learn more than a dozen or so spells of each level unless you had a nigh-unattainable Int score; metamagic spells required an extra round or two to cast; SR affected absolutely everything.

Fix the problems surrounding spellcasting, and you'll be back to the point where wizards are powerful but not overwhelmingly so. That's what is required. My personal suggestions:

1) Concentration checks to cast defensively are gone. If you're hit while casting, you lose the spell.

2) Cantrips take a swift action to cast, spells of level 1-3 take a standard action, spells of level 4-6 take a full-round action, spells of level 7-9 take two full-round actions. (If the spell originally had a longer casting time than 1 full round, keep that.)

3) SR becomes a percentage chance: existing SR X translates into SR (X+10)%, so SR 30 which almost any 20th level wizard can breeze through becomes a 40% chance for any spell at all to fail, with no way for the wizard to mitigate it.

4) Save DCs become 5 + spell level + Int.

5) A wizard can learn a maximum of 6 + Int mod - spell level spells for each spell level above 0th (so a wizard with Int 20 could learn 10 1st-level, 9 2nd-level, ..., 1 9th-level spell).

6) Reduce metamagic adjustment by +2 and require an extra round of casting time per feat applied (so you can have your silent dimension door with its normal slot, but it takes 2 rounds to cast--not much use in a grapple now).

7) Spell preparation requires 15 minutes per spell level, per spell. You can prepare all your cantrips pretty much instantaneously, but preparing even 1 9th-level spell takes 2.25 hours.

8) Spells requiring XP instead age you 5 years per 1000XP cost. Not such a good idea being Venerable now, Mr. Just-Aged-25-Years-From-Casting-Wish, is it?

9) Wands hold spells up to 3rd level, staffs hold spells up to 6th level, and they possess only 20 charges.

And now we can get into the problem spells. Wholesale banning of all the interesting spells isn't the way to go; that's what 4e did, and most remaining 3e players think that's a stupid idea (meaning no offense to AstralFire).

10) Polymorph spells turn you into an exact carbon copy of the desired creature, with two exceptions: (A) you keep your own Int score, so you can polymorph into animals or nonsentient creatures and still be you; (B) you don't get any limited-use abilities (i.e., ones that can't be used at will every round, like a dragon's every-1d4-rounds breath weapon or a solar's cleric casting). No buffs transfer, no equipment transfers, no spellcasting, nothing; you are exactly what the MM says and no more except for a different Int. You keep proportional HP, so if you have 100 total HP and have taken 75 damage and then turn into a cat with 10 total HP, you have 2 HP, and vice versa when returning to normal.

11) Summoned creatures cannot use limited-use abilities or other summoning abilities.

12) Scrying cannot penetrate solid materials 30 feet thick. Scrying allows the scry-ee a chance to foil the scrying or view the scryer.

13) Teleportation cannot penetrate solid materials 20 feet thick. Teleportation requires 1 round per mile traversed (or portion thereof) to get from point A to point B; the origin and destination radiate magic, and a dispel on either end dumps the teleporter out wherever he is.

14) Spells that ignore skills (knock, detect lies, etc.) instead give high bonuses to the skills in question (like jump does). Allow high Spot checks to let you ignore concealment (DC 15 for concealment, 40 for total concealment or thereabouts) or penetrate illusions (DC = 2*save DC), and then make true seeing simply give the same kind of skill bonus.

15) Personal-range buffs are now touch spells. Most of the existing caster-only buffs are now better served by putting them on your fighter buddy.


That should restrict wizards plenty without disallowing divination, shapechanging, divination, and other iconic spells; you can still play a wizard with interesting abilities (more than "I blow stuff up") yet have significant limits on your power.

[AstralFire]

I take no offense, but I hardly think I banned most of the interesting spells, either - most of divination is still intact, and I have fewer limits on scrying. What I killed were summons, reality revisions, contingency power combos and several of the 9th levels. I also smacked class features a lot, probably as much as I did spells, so don't oversimplify what I did. I like a lot of your ideas (though they'd be too much combined with mine) but I think the preparation time per spell level gets a bit unwieldy.

You can still astral project. You can still scry. You can still rope trick. You can still dominate. The biggest hole I left was Polymorph Any Object, which I'd probably take the same approach to as you did. The goal of my method of madness is to affect the average Wizard player the least, while putting fast shackles on God types.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I take no offense, but I hardly think I banned most of the interesting spells, either

That was mostly aimed toward your opening line, actually--not allowing any spells from out of core except the damaging ones. If you just flat-out ban non-core, that's one thing, but leaving in all of the damaging spells gives casters a dozen ways to deal damage in every area, damage type, and other conceivable way, but leaves out the more interesting spells. Yes, it's approval on a case-by-case basis, but in my playing experience (when I'm not DMing, which isn't often, so I may be off the mark) when a DM says "Core only, plus other stuff with approval" he really means "Core only, and there's a tiny chance I might let something else in, but don't plan on it."

The specific changes you mentioned weren't a problem as much, though removing any spells that see the future does pretty much kill divination; I was in a bit of a hurry (needed to get to a meeting) so in trying to say that I believe system changes are needed before individual spells are addressed I oversimplified, and for that I apologize.


I like a lot of your ideas (though they'd be too much combined with mine) but I think the preparation time per spell level gets a bit unwieldy.

That's taken directly out of the 2e PHB. If it worked for those wizards....:smallwink:

[AstralFire]

As a DM, when I say I'm allowing something with approval, there's a 80% chance I'll let it in when asked, since my players are usually good about asking only for reasonable things. I just don't want to autoapprove some killer combo, is all. My rejections are majority flavor-based - disallowing elves into my homebrew setting, for example, because there are no elves. This is sometimes a hard concept to grasp for newer players I pick up. :P

[Night Monkey]

That's taken directly out of the 2e PHB. If it worked for those wizards....:smallwink:

I can only think that, with this method, the party would just end up taking more downtime to ensure the wizard had his armageddon spells prepared. Instead of placing limits on the wizard's power, you may end up making the game a bit clunky. Perhaps this didn't happen in 2e, I've never played, but I'd think 3e players would have different expectations, and thus different behaviour, to the players from 2e.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

As a DM, when I say I'm allowing something with approval, there's a 80% chance I'll let it in when asked, since my players are usually good about asking only for reasonable things. I just don't want to autoapprove some killer combo, is all. My rejections are majority flavor-based - disallowing elves into my homebrew setting, for example, because there are no elves. This is sometimes a hard concept to grasp for newer players I pick up. :P

If that's the case, it should work out fine; I just hate to see DMs use "approval only" as a code for "I hate anything but Core."


I can only think that, with this method, the party would just end up taking more downtime to ensure the wizard had his armageddon spells prepared. Instead of placing limits on the wizard's power, you may end up making the game a bit clunky. Perhaps this didn't happen in 2e, I've never played, but I'd think 3e players would have different expectations, and thus different behaviour, to the players from 2e.

It doesn't encourage the "5-minute workday" any more than 3e does--if your group intends to rest to full power after every fight, they'll do that, and if your group intends to tough it out until they're down to single-digit spells and HP, they'll do that instead. The main difference this makes is that you can't be assured of having all of your highest-level spells prepared, so you save them; high-level wizards don't really need 9th level spells, and can get by with 5th-7th level spells just fine, but if they're there they're going to be used. If using your meteor swarm now means 2.25 hours before you can use it again, you're not going to go nova at the drop of a hat.

[Roderick_BR]

I agree that most of the of the problems are the spellcasting in itself. Magic, in 3.5, is the easiest thing to learn AND use. Ever. Magic is not hard to learn, to use, to control. It's so easy that any moron with a "Learn spellcasting in 10 steps" will soon be bending the fabric of reality in less than 6 seconds by snapping his fingers.

I like most of PairO'Dice Lost's suggestions. It gets the feel of 2nd edition, where you actually had to put effort into being a wizard, and it payed off when well played, not this "wizard 3/whatever 2/PrC1 4/PrC2 8/PrC3 with dozens of contingency spells that no one can do anything about, not even epic monsters if they don't have specific spellcasting powers".

AstralFire did point out some trouble spells, that worked fine in AD&D, but with the new number crunching in 3.5 can give problems.

I'll be nabing some of these ideas for my homebrew.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I like most of PairO'Dice Lost's suggestions. It gets the feel of 2nd edition, where you actually had to put effort into being a wizard, and it payed off when well played, not this "wizard 3/whatever 2/PrC1 4/PrC2 8/PrC3 with dozens of contingency spells that no one can do anything about, not even epic monsters if they don't have specific spellcasting powers".

I hope it does; they're a quick summary of some of the changes I'm making for a back-to-2e-feel 3e revamp project of mine. I've been reading through my old 2e books again recently to get the feel right, and I'm glad to hear it's working.

[J.Gellert]

I'm all for 2e-like changes, but I have a suggestion for handling defensive casting a bit differently; have the DC scale with the skill of the opponent.

So Concentration check DC = 10 + level of the spell + the BAB of the opponent with the highest BAB that threatens you.

So a 15th level wizard (Concentration ~ +20 without feats) fighting 2 orcs would only need to succeed on a DC 18 check to cast a level 8 spell, succeeding every time, but against a fighter his level he would have to succeed on a DC 33 check, succeeding less than half of the time.

Then you can add a feat that is the opposite of Defensive Casting, call it Mage-slayer, and have it add +3 to the casting devensively DC for mages that you threaten.

[ZeroNumerous]

Force Druids to use one of the Wild Shape Variants in PHB II or UA. Ban Natural Spell.

Personally, I think this is an "either/or" situation. I like Wild Shape. Make it so I can't cast in Wild Shape or take away my Wild Shape, but don't do both.


Require UMD to use any spell-trigger items.

This just flat-out does not make sense. You can cast a spell, but once you put it in a stick you.. forget how to cast that spell? What? Besides, wands are primarily party benefits rather than caster benefits. If the cleric has to roll a UMD check everytime he wants to poke you with a Lesser Vigor wand then downtime will get really annoying, really quickly. Scribe Scroll/Wizard Specialization is fine though.


Disallow every single magic item in the game that solely or primarily benefits a caster.

Including the ones like Pearls of Power which many fighters buy for casters to get that nice buff [X] without the wizard needing to prepare more than one of it? Some caster-beneficial items benefit fighters too.


Ban Persistent Spell.

I think Persistent Spell should be re-written rather than just banned. Change it to allow a maximum of innate [CON Mod] spells on a single target and to work on spells that are touch range rather than personal. That lets melee-types benefit from Persisted buffs as well. On top of that, all personal-range spells are touch-range instead.


Make everything subject to spell resistance and spell immunity.

I'm fine with this, except for a few things. For example, if everything is subject to spell resistance/immunity then what would an blaster do against, say.. A half-fiend? Or drow? Not everyone plays Batman because sometimes you just want to blow something up. I'd still allow a few HP-damage spells that didn't have spell resistance.


1) Concentration checks to cast defensively are gone. If you're hit while casting, you lose the spell.

This I really, utterly hate with every fibre of my being. I propose instead bumping concentration DCs or simply getting rid of casting defensively but allowing concentration checks to retain your spell. Otherwise, you've completely and utterly done away with the concept of a gish and I may have to hate you for that. :smallfrown:


3) SR becomes a percentage chance: existing SR X translates into SR (X+10)%, so SR 30 which almost any 20th level wizard can breeze through becomes a 40% chance for any spell at all to fail, with no way for the wizard to mitigate it.

I don't like this either for the blaster reason given in AstralFire's SR change. Personally, I think SR would be fine if you use innate caster levels. Simply your CL from levels vs it's SR with neither items nor class abilities modifying it. Halve the bonus from Spell Penetration/Greater and you're golden.


13) Teleportation cannot penetrate solid materials 20 feet thick. Teleportation requires 1 round per mile traversed (or portion thereof) to get from point A to point B; the origin and destination radiate magic, and a dispel on either end dumps the teleporter out wherever he is.

I feel this is needless, as most teleportation is used for party mobility. Plus, the spell does say it "instantly transports" you. Personally, I'd rather just get rid of the Greater version and use only regular Teleport. That limits teleporting into the BBEG's base unless you're familiar with it and in that case you may as well kill him now.


6) Reduce metamagic adjustment by +2 and require an extra round of casting time per feat applied (so you can have your silent dimension door with its normal slot, but it takes 2 rounds to cast--not much use in a grapple now).

So now Empowered Spell is useless, Maximize is useless, Quicken is super useless, Energy Sub even more useless and Extend is still great. Persist is still viable. No. Just, no. Instead, I propose to remove metamagic reducers and drop the 1 full round action cast time on metamagic'ing sorcerers. This way you can still have your Empowered Maximized Fireballs, but have to cast it as an 8th level spell.

[Roc Ness]

I got an idea! :smallbiggrin:

Use Recharge Magic, but instead you seriously lengthen the time (like, say to 1d12 or something) and you don't let them cast anything from any level for that period (unlike the original recharge magic). That way, many combos (like Time Stop) become really unfeasible, and the wizard is also becomes nigh useless most other times anyway. In fact, this benefits melee classes, cos the most useful stuff a spellcaster can do is heal them in between encounters when they have the time.

[J.Gellert]

I got an idea! :smallbiggrin:

Use Recharge Magic, but instead you seriously lengthen the time (like, say to 1d12 or something) and you don't let them cast anything from any level for that period (unlike the original recharge magic). That way, many combos (like Time Stop) become really unfeasible, and the wizard is also becomes nigh useless most other times anyway. In fact, this benefits melee classes, cos the most useful stuff a spellcaster can do is heal them in between encounters when they have the time.

Because all we ever want to do when playing D&D is heal the heroes between fights :smalltongue:

[AstralFire]

This just flat-out does not make sense. You can cast a spell, but once you put it in a stick you.. forget how to cast that spell? What? Besides, wands are primarily party benefits rather than caster benefits. If the cleric has to roll a UMD check everytime he wants to poke you with a Lesser Vigor wand then downtime will get really annoying, really quickly. Scribe Scroll/Wizard Specialization is fine though.

This isn't hard to flavor one of a number of ways; the first that comes to mind is simply that the act of 'freezing' the spell in a simple item means that you need a certain amount of skill with magic items specifically to unfreeze it at a proper time and place to get the spell back in sync properly with a local ley.

Clerics can spontaneously convert healing if they really really need to, or a party can try actually not going around at full health all the time. :P And being able to carry wands of all the spells you don't know while also having tons of 'em prepared? No, that just leads to the earlier issue.


Including the ones like Pearls of Power which many fighters buy for casters to get that nice buff [X] without the wizard needing to prepare more than one of it? Some caster-beneficial items benefit fighters too.

With so much of their power cut down, those types of wizards might get used to the idea of preparing such to begin with.


I'm fine with this, except for a few things. For example, if everything is subject to spell resistance/immunity then what would an blaster do against, say.. A half-fiend? Or drow? Not everyone plays Batman because sometimes you just want to blow something up. I'd still allow a few HP-damage spells that didn't have spell resistance.

Blasters are great against groups since not everything should have SR, and can buff their party or do a number of illusions and defensive tricks. Sounds fine to me.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

This I really, utterly hate with every fibre of my being. I propose instead bumping concentration DCs or simply getting rid of casting defensively but allowing concentration checks to retain your spell. Otherwise, you've completely and utterly done away with the concept of a gish and I may have to hate you for that. :smallfrown:

Ah. I should probably mention that I've removed AoOs as well; there are a few abilities that let you attack as an immediate action, but spellcasting no longer draws an attack from everyone in reach. Without that change, I can see why you'd hate me.


I don't like this either for the blaster reason given in AstralFire's SR change. Personally, I think SR would be fine if you use innate caster levels. Simply your CL from levels vs it's SR with neither items nor class abilities modifying it. Halve the bonus from Spell Penetration/Greater and you're golden.

Blasters and crowd-control folks are affected the same way; if you can't fireball a drow, you can't web a drow either, so both are on the same footing.


I feel this is needless, as most teleportation is used for party mobility.

Yes, party mobility to instantly escape danger, party mobility to bypass the BBEG's traps....


Plus, the spell does say it "instantly transports" you.

Well, of course it does now. :smallwink:


Personally, I'd rather just get rid of the Greater version and use only regular Teleport. That limits teleporting into the BBEG's base unless you're familiar with it and in that case you may as well kill him now.

Think of it this way: How many BBEGs don't have anticipate teleportation up? Exactly. This basically builds that in, so not only can you not surprise the BBEG, you can't surprise anyone else who can detect magic.


So now Empowered Spell is useless, Maximize is useless, Quicken is super useless, Energy Sub even more useless and Extend is still great. Persist is still viable. No. Just, no. Instead, I propose to remove metamagic reducers and drop the 1 full round action cast time on metamagic'ing sorcerers. This way you can still have your Empowered Maximized Fireballs, but have to cast it as an 8th level spell.

Empowered fireball is a 3rd level spell that takes 2 rounds to cast. Maximized empowered fireball is a 4th level spell that takes 3 rounds to cast. Compare them to the channeled pyroburst, channeled sound burst, and other channeled spells from PHB2 and later that are better the longer you cast them. Channeled sound blast is a 5th level spell dealing up to 10d8 (avg 45) for 2 rounds of casting in a 60-foot radius. This version of an empowered fireball is a 3rd level spell dealing up to 15d6 (avg 52) for 2 rounds of casting in a 20-foot radius. I wouldn't call that "useless" by any means; blasting is good again, which is a point in its favor.

Energy Sub taking an extra round means casters can't just be ready with whatever energy their enemies are vulnerable to. Quicken obviously wouldn't be affected, and I probably should have directly stated that; I'm not going to screw everyone like the sorcerer is now. Persist is gone; Extend is stackable (and has a +1 adjustment after reductions). I thought I noted metamagic changes and reasons therefor in the last post, but I guess I missed them.

As another metamagic note, I'm not actually using the increased-casting-time-by-level rule myself, it was thrown in as a suggestion, so without that rule the first metamagic would increase standard to full-round and then start adding; empowered fireballs under this system would just be a full round and maximized empowered fireball would be 2 rounds. Slightly more bearable, I think.

[ZeroNumerous]

Ah. I should probably mention that I've removed AoOs as well; there are a few abilities that let you attack as an immediate action, but spellcasting no longer draws an attack from everyone in reach. Without that change, I can see why you'd hate me.

Eh.. I like AoOs.


Blasters and crowd-control folks are affected the same way; if you can't fireball a drow, you can't web a drow either, so both are on the same footing.

Close, but the guy who prepared nothing but fireballs is gonna be sitting around looking stupid while Batman buffs his allies.


Yes, party mobility to instantly escape danger, party mobility to bypass the BBEG's traps....

Or just, you know, teleport from place to place. I personally have never seen teleport used to escape danger as usually it's Plane Shift instead. Primarily because of anticipate teleport and other methods of tracing teleportation.


Think of it this way: How many BBEGs don't have anticipate teleportation up?

All the ones I've made. Because they hide in bases that the party isn't familiar with and protect the place from scrying. I still say it's needlessly complicated.


I wouldn't call that "useless" by any means; blasting is good again, which is a point in its favor.

I would, because five rounds is the normal length of combat. If I spend 2/5ths of my combat time casting one spell and the enemy has already moved out of it's range then I've wasted two whole actions for nothing. Increasing the time to cast the spell is not a good idea. If anything, it harms the blaster more than Batman because Batman doesn't need to metamagic things aside from Quicken.


Slightly more bearable, I think.

A little.


Blasters are great against groups since not everything should have SR, and can buff their party or do a number of illusions and defensive tricks. Sounds fine to me.

'Cept drow. Because, you know, they all have SR. Even the babies. Or devils/demons/yugoloths/fiendish/half-fiends/angels/archons/other outsiders I probably missed.


Clerics can spontaneously convert healing if they really really need to, or a party can try actually not going around at full health all the time.

So the cleric has to go back to doing nothing but healing? That's not terribly fun nor conductive to playing a cleric. Plus, having full health at all times during the adventure benefits the fighters over the casters since they'll be losing HP faster than casters will. I'm just not seeing a valid reason behind the change. On top of that, by requiring UMD you're also giving whomever wants to use wands no reason not to use both divine and arcane wands.


With so much of their power cut down, those types of wizards might get used to the idea of preparing such to begin with.

Sometimes it's infeasible to have, say Greater Magic Weapon, prepared more than once because of how long it lasts. But then it gets dispelled. Should the party fighter be penalized for that? No. I agree that many +CL items should be gone, but there are items that benefit the party over the caster but require a caster to utilize.

[AstralFire]

Just using passive Spell Resistance, a level 20 Wizard with Spell Penetration and Greater in a situation where his party is fighting several planetars is overcoming their SR 75% of the time. To be fair, I don't throw out monsters with SR as readily as others to begin with, since most of my encounters are built from PHB races. So I can see your point there, to a degree, and it's not like even post-nerf Meteor Swarm is very good. But I don't believe it renders them helpless or useless.


So the cleric has to go back to doing nothing but healing? That's not terribly fun nor conductive to playing a cleric. Plus, having full health at all times during the adventure benefits the fighters over the casters since they'll be losing HP faster than casters will. I'm just not seeing a valid reason behind the change. On top of that, by requiring UMD you're also giving whomever wants to use wands no reason not to use both divine and arcane wands.

There was already no reason not to use both arcane and divine... And no, the cleric doesn't have to go back to doing nothing but healing. You can support the party in more ways than one; now you have to actually make a choice (and it's not even a hard choice, since by high levels you will have several low level slots that aren't terribly useful on the whole.) All I've done is make UMD actually -wanted- for non-Artificers and Warlocks. Boohoo, the Cleric has to actually weigh her options. Tough it out.


Sometimes it's infeasible to have, say Greater Magic Weapon, prepared more than once because of how long it lasts. But then it gets dispelled. Should the party fighter be penalized for that? No. I agree that many +CL items should be gone, but there are items that benefit the party over the caster but require a caster to utilize.

I'm having a hard time buying that it's more pivotal to have back-up spell slots for buffs than it is for your combat casting. That's a convenience allowed for by the system because they have so many spell slots at the moment. If you're down severely on your number of slots from the game as it stands - lower bonus Int, no specialization, no wands - you're going to be using those pearls just as much for your personal power as party buffs, I'd say. Not to mention, I've never had much use for the Greater Magic Weapon spell anyway; I generally houserule that a sword still can't get above a +10 total effective bonus since that's always seemed RAI to me, and quite a few like to prioritize having their accuracy boosted.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Eh.. I like AoOs.

I'm trying to avoid a grid as much as possible, so there's that. Also, a systems of "X provokes an AoO, Y doesn't, you can take Z per round" is much more complicated than "You can make 1 attack against someone as an immediate action." No provokes/doesn't provoke problems, no need to track exact position.


Close, but the guy who prepared nothing but fireballs is gonna be sitting around looking stupid while Batman buffs his allies.

The 40% chance that your spell fails is the same probability as the 40% chance that a rogue with Evasion and a +10 Ref modifier makes the save against your DC 22 fireball. Anything that allows an attack roll or save is already a risk compared to buffing. Granted, I'd tone down the SR to (SR-10)% rather than (SR+10)% on further reflection, but having SR be out of the caster's control is not a bad thing.


Or just, you know, teleport from place to place. I personally have never seen teleport used to escape danger as usually it's Plane Shift instead. Primarily because of anticipate teleport and other methods of tracing teleportation.

Just because a group doesn't teleport out of danger or to the BBEG doesn't mean they can't...and since it's a matter of rounds, if they only use it for transportation, why does it matter that it takes an extra few rounds?


All the ones I've made. Because they hide in bases that the party isn't familiar with and protect the place from scrying. I still say it's needlessly complicated.

And you never have lackeys from the base get interrogated, or have any divinations performed? Your BBEG never ever leaves his base? If that works for you, I suppose....And it's not all that complex. "We're teleporting about 50 miles. It takes 5 minutes to get there." If they're being chased, dispelling will happen within a round or two or not at all; if they're not, who cares?


I would, because five rounds is the normal length of combat. If I spend 2/5ths of my combat time casting one spell and the enemy has already moved out of it's range then I've wasted two whole actions for nothing. Increasing the time to cast the spell is not a good idea. If anything, it harms the blaster more than Batman because Batman doesn't need to metamagic things aside from Quicken.

So it takes you 2 rounds to deal 90 damage to everyone in a 20-foot radius. You're still doing better than noncasters in the total damage department...unless there's only one bad guy, in which case you shouldn't be wasting your area spells.

It helps blasting more than it appears; would you rather spend an 8th-level slot and a standard action on that 90-damage fireball, or a 4th level slot and 2 rounds? Or how about a 7th level slot for a maximized empowered delayed-blast fireball for 192 damage instead of an 11th level slot? As it is, blasting is useless unless you have tons of metamagic reducers; with the change, you need metamagic feats to be a good blaster and that's it.


'Cept drow. Because, you know, they all have SR. Even the babies. Or devils/demons/yugoloths/fiendish/half-fiends/angels/archons/other outsiders I probably missed.

So your caster will do worse against drow and the dozens of monsters with SR in the same way martial types do worse against flying monsters, monsters with DR, monsters with concealment....

Doesn't look like a problem to me.

--------------------------------

Look, the whole point of these fixes is to tone down the wizard. If he's having problems killing things, great! If he can't churn out spells round after round after round, fine! If he's having problems against lots of monsters such that the martial types have to step up and help, it's working.

[Zeful]

This just flat-out does not make sense.

I feel that should be the point. It's magic, the more sense it makes the easier it is to learn, meaning less non-casters.

But then I'm of the opinion that magic, should not, under any circumstances, be intuitive. Casters being able to use wands normally as long as the spell is on their list? Intuitive, can it.