Why Spellcasting Is Unbalanced (And It's Not Why You Think)

[Fax Celestis]

A lot of people (myself included) tout the potential and strength of spellcasting and its subdomain, item crafting. We all know spellcasting is potentially broken in and of itself, and item crafting allows one to escape the bounds of the WBL system.

I'm here to say that spellcasting itself breaks the WBL system.

No, no, hear me out. We can extrapolate from the 'spell trigger' item cost. Spell Level * Caster Level * 750gp. We'll be nice and say that a wand is a 'wrong slot', so it has a *1.5 price adjustment. After that, the base cost of a wand in the 'right slot' (the mind slot) is SL*CL*500gp.

Therefore, a ninth level spell slot at 17th level (when a wizard first gets access) is worth 9*17*500=76500gp. Each day. A 17th level wizard has, essentially, free buckets of wealth each day simply from being a wizard. A fighter, on the other hand, has a much smaller pool of free wealth daily. Extrapolating from the dark blue rhomboid ioun stone (which grants Alertness as a bonus feat), we can assume that a bonus feat is 5000gp (since an ioun stone is a slotless item, it automatically doubles the price). At 17th level, a fighter will have 9 free bonus feats, totaling 45000gp.

One ninth level spell slot is worth comparatively more than all of the fighter's bonus feats put together.

So from here I will submit to you: a 20th level wizard with a 36 Intelligence has, essentially, 2,860,000gp free each day EDIT This number is incorrect: read down for why. tl;dr I forgot the 1/5th cost for 1 use per day rather than 50 charges. If you had that much gp for a 20th level fighter on top of your base wealth by level (including consumables that would refresh daily), how much could you trick out your fighter, and how would they compare to a 20th level wizard without that wealth (since they already get it in the form of spellcasting)? Leave out prestige classes, since we're illustrating a point about base classes rather than prestige classes. I'll even be nice to the fighter and not count his (or the wizard's) bonus feats in that wealth total.

[Emperor Tippy]

Haha. Nice.

It all pretty much get's dropped into disposable items after you buy all of the nice stuff.

It wouldn't be remotely balanced but it would be funny as hell.

[Douglas]

Hmm, 20 crafted contingent spells that automatically come back every day, and that's just the start...

I could build a pretty hefty fighter with that much gear. I'm not too sure how much of a difference there'd be between that fighter and a commoner with the same gear, but he would be pretty powerful.

[Fax Celestis]

It occurs to me that instead of using a wand, I could have instead used a stave that mimicked the sorcerer's entire class. I am, of course, lazy, so someone should do this for me.

[Ignition]

It still amazes me that people look at magic and expect it to not break things. I mean, that's what it's there for!

[Douglas]

Heh. It actually wouldn't be too difficult to make a staff that's better than the entire Sorcerer class - for one day. But with this auto-refreshing gear scheme, that's all you need.

Let's see:
9th level spell: 750 * 9 * 20 = 135000
Extra 9th level spell: 750 * 9 * 20 * .75 = 101250
Third 9th level spell: 750 * 9 * 20 * .5 = 67500
3 8th level spells: 750 * 8 * 20 * .5 * 3 = 180000
3 7th level spells: 750 * 7 * 20 * .5 * 3 = 157500
3 6th level spells: 750 * 6 * 20 * .5 * 3 = 135000
4 5th level spells: 750 * 5 * 20 * .5 * 4 = 150000
4 4th level spells: 750 * 4 * 20 * .5 * 4 = 120000
4 3rd level spells: 750 * 3 * 20 * .5 * 4 = 90000
5 2nd level spells: 750 * 2 * 20 * .5 * 5 = 75000
5 1st level spells: 750 * 1 * 20 * .5 * 5 = 37500
9 0th level spells: 750 * .5 * 20 * .5 * 9 = 33750

Total = 1282500

Now, the Sorcerer would have more total spells per day than this staff has charges, but he wouldn't have the flexibility of using his cantrip slots to cast 9th level spells. But what the heck, let's get two of these. No Sorcerer 20 is going to have more than 100 spell slots without some serious cheese.

That's 2565000 gp. We have now more than duplicated the Sorcerer class (minus familiar), and we still have 295000 gp to spare. Spend some of it on boosting UMD so we can properly use our mega-staves, and we're ready to go.

[Zaydos]

I just have to point out that the wand price is for 50 uses. 1/day would be 2/5th that price (charged is 1/2 base price, 1/day is 1/5 base price) so only 30,600 GP per 9th level slot. This values all of a 17th level fighter's bonus feats at approximately 1.5 9th level spells.

[mucat]

No, no, hear me out. We can extrapolate from the 'spell trigger' item cost. Spell Level * Caster Level * 750gp. We'll be nice and say that a wand is a 'wrong slot', so it has a *1.5 price adjustment. After that, the base cost of a wand in the 'right slot' (the mind slot) is SL*CL*500gp.

Therefore, a ninth level spell slot at 17th level (when a wizard first gets access) is worth 9*17*500=76500gp. Each day.

Wait, Fax, either I'm misunderstanding your point or you're miscalculating here. The price you calculate is for a full wand, with 50 charges. He doesn't get that amount each day, because he can't cast his spell 50 times in a day. You would still probably find that casters are obscenely wealthy in this sense.

You've still got a good point here. You could calculate the price of a one-use-per-day permanent item, and say that each spell slot is worth that much (or more, since h gets nice perks like casting stat to DC)...but as a one-time wealth bonus, not as a per-day thing. (Or if you do want to think of it as a continuous income stream, the per-day benefit is 1/50 the wand cost.)


EDIT: Ninja'd.

[tenshiakodo]

On a related (and more conservative) note, the PHB has a table for purchasing a spell from a caster. Ignoring any costly material components, the value of a 20th level Generalist Wizard spell slots is 36, 400 gp per day!

That's just amusing to think about, that by adventuring, casters are potentially losing out on thousands of gold pieces per day they could get by selling their spells to NPC's...

[Fax Celestis]

Oh, true. Uhm... *plugs numbers into a spreadsheet*

Alright, so the actual gp value on the 1/5th uses-per-day adjustment I forgot is 572,000gp. A little more reasonable but still almost equal to a 19th level character's total WBL.

[Dante & Vergil]

These stop looking like magic items and more like artifacts, if you ask me. Pretty ineresting idea though.

[Ignition]

The distinction between crafted magic items and "artifacts" is largely pointless, though, especially since high level wizards are less and less indistinguishable from deities. Especially since many artifacts have a mechanically established way of making them in the system for general magic item creation. Sure, flavor-wise, but flavor isn't what's on trial here.

[Milskidasith]

This is an interesting concept, but I think it's a backwards way of looking at things, at least from my experience in more easily solvable competitive games. You don't look at how much something can buy you if you were to get the gold it would be worth from items, you look at the benefit it gives you and how valuable it is.

To sum it up, it winds up being circular logic; you use the price, which is determined by how powerful something is, to determine how powerful something is... which is what should be defining the price.

[Dante & Vergil]

The distinction between crafted magic items and "artifacts" is largely pointless, though, especially since high level wizards are less and less indistinguishable from deities. Especially since many artifacts have a mechanically established way of making them in the system for general magic item creation. Sure, flavor-wise, but flavor isn't what's on trial here.

I'm just saying that not many items are created like this, but they can be. It's no biggy really.

[Fax Celestis]

To sum it up, it winds up being circular logic; you use the price, which is determined by how powerful something is, to determine how powerful something is... which is what should be defining the price.

Oh, of course. It's just amusing, to me, that replicating a sorcerer comes out to two and a half million gp.

[137beth]

This is an interesting concept, but I think it's a backwards way of looking at things, at least from my experience in more easily solvable competitive games. You don't look at how much something can buy you if you were to get the gold it would be worth from items, you look at the benefit it gives you and how valuable it is.

To sum it up, it winds up being circular logic; you use the price, which is determined by how powerful something is, to determine how powerful something is... which is what should be defining the price.

Correct. Plus, the wizard "gets" the "free gold", but cannot spend it on things such as the uberstaves mentioned above, so its not exactly getting it

[Douglas]

Oh, of course. It's just amusing, to me, that replicating a sorcerer comes out to two and a half million gp.

I think just one of that staff would be sufficient to reasonably approximate a sorcerer for one day. I only added the second one because it was within the stated budget and would change it from "can't match total spell slots but has advantages to compensate" to "strictly superior in every way".

[Lord_Gareth]

Correct. Plus, the wizard "gets" the "free gold", but cannot spend it on things such as the uberstaves mentioned above, so its not exactly getting it

Fabricate would like a word with you. Several words, actually.

[dsmiles]

Wasn't WbL broken to begin with? This just makes it...ummm...shattered (I think that's the word I'm looking for).

[Chambers]

Not all feats cost the same, though.

Improved Critical [Keen] costs 6,000gp, being the difference between a +2 and a +1 weapon.

I can pick up Two Weapon Fighting or Improved Two Weapon Fighting from the same magic item for 8,000gp [Gloves of the Balanced Hand].

Skill Focus: Hide can be had for 900gp [Custom Item: Lesser Cloak of Elvenkind, +3 bonus].

Bracers of Lesser Archery give me Weapon Proficiency and Weapon Focus feats for every single kind of bow (excluding crossbows) for 5,000gp.

---

I suppose what I'm saying is that it's hard to make a value judgement for what all feats are worth based on the cost of a single magic item that grants a feat.

Edit:

If you put Keen on a +5 weapon, all of a sudden that feat [effectively Improved Critical] cost 22,000gp. Put it on a +9 weapon and the feat cost 38,000gp.

Likewise not all spell slots are worth the same. Gate does not have the same value as a Maximized Fireball Heightened to 9th level.

The cost & value of any widget, either a spell slot or a feat, depends on its use. I think it's right to say that spell slots have higher potential value, just by the nature of what spells can do. Some feats are better than spells, like Darkstalker or Mindsight or Power Attack. I'm not trying to start a Fighter vs Wizard argument - just saying that the value is not in the widget itself [feat vs spell slot] - the value is in the use.

[137beth]

Fabricate would like a word with you. Several words, actually.

Fabricate does not allow you to freely craft magic items, nor does it allow you to convert your daily spells into gold.

[Lord_Gareth]

Fabricate does not allow you to freely craft magic items, nor does it allow you to convert your daily spells into gold.

No, it allows you to convert your daily spells into massive quantities of sell-able items, many of which are fluffed as being in high demand, others (like, say, steel) being capable of reworking into something even more valuable, like tools, weapons, construction materials, et cetera, so forth, thus providing all the wealth you need.

[137beth]

True, though the gold provided/day is less than what the OP's calculations came out to be. This also relies on NPCs to purchase these items. If you want to save up the 1282500 for an uberstaff, you will have to find NPCs to buy that much from you. And no, you can't just find an epic level NPC, because mundane tools that can be crafted with fabricate would not be useful to high level NPCs with PC class levels--they would be used more by experts and commoners. In short, fabricate DOES allow a stream of income, but it is limited by the wealth of common NPCs, which is rather small.
Actually, similar results could be obtained with the perform skill--no spellcasting involved.

[Emperor Tippy]

Yep, Wall of Iron + Fabricate and you can produce dozens of suits of masterwork full plate in a day.

[Lord_Gareth]

I dunno, you could make loads selling construction materials for golems, traps, and evil fortresses.

Y'know, kind of a traveling mining concern. "Roll on up, I've got your castle in a box right here!"

[Emperor Tippy]

Just be glad you aren't using the trap rules.

Create a Fabricate trap and you can have it producing non magical goods by the thousands every day at no cost. Store one in a portable hole and activate it when you want the good that that trap makes.

[Marnath]

Yep, Wall of Iron + Fabricate and you can produce dozens of suits of masterwork full plate in a day.

Not quite that easy, mate. Don't forget the wool padding and the leather backing/straps.

[Emperor Tippy]

Not quite that easy, mate. Don't forget the wool padding and the leather backing/straps.

Ok, wall of iron plus a few GP worth of incidentals.

[Marnath]

Ok, wall of iron plus a few GP worth of incidentals.

Yeah, I know it wasn't worth mentioning. I'm an annoying guy. ^.^

[Cerlis]

as Haley said about not believing there is even a 17th lvl cleric in existance. not even a kingdom could afford to pay that wizard. His wealth is in telling reality to sit down and shut up.


a billion gold will not save you from a colossal dragon unless spent. And thats exactly what a wizard does with his "money"