[3.P] We know core is broken, but what breaks it, when, and how?

[nyarlathotep]

*shrug* i've played with people not very adept at the game and don't strive to min-max munchkin and honestly, the game was very simple and didn't seem extremely broken.

When I play with people that know all the ins and outs (as you sir seem to have a grander grasp) they exploit more and make sure wizard and cleric are near unstoppable.

I.E. my opinion is the less competent players tend to not break the game as easily.

Whatever it is you feel i'm not understanding is kosher in my book, I thought this thread was about opinion =)

I think it's more accurate to say that core is unbalanced. There is no single book in D&D that is broken but several that are unbalanced and that lack of balance started with the core books.

If I were to take stab at it though I'd say the unbalancing factors are primarily the power of higher levels spells and the enormous amount of hit points at higher levels. Those are the two largest paradigm shifts from 2nd ed and while 2nd ed wasn't a paragon of balance either it was much closer than 3E.

[Saph]

I never played the game, but I love Fire Emblem so I knew some of the characters at least. Although I don't really see Titania wanting to be Soren's cohort. They'd argue too much...

I made the two of them an NPC pair in the last campaign I ran. The PCs made friends with them, and Soren and Titania ended up running the PCs' castle/mercenary army while the PCs went off on missions. Soren was a Beguiler, Titania a Warblade/Fighter with the Mounted Combat feats, and I turned Ilyana into an Artificer.

[Zore]

I made the two of them an NPC pair in the last campaign I ran. The PCs made friends with them, and Soren and Titania ended up running the PCs' castle/mercenary army while the PCs went off on missions. Soren was a Beguiler, Titania a Warblade/Fighter with the Mounted Combat feats, and I turned Ilyana into an Artificer.

Soren wasn't a Warmage?

[Saph]

Soren wasn't a Warmage?

High Int/low Cha suited his personality better. He always came across to me as more of a strategist/exploiter of enemy weaknesses rather than a blaster.

[Tvtyrant]

Nerd quibble: Gandalf is not underpowered, he has limiters. The Maiar known as "Wizards" are expressly forbidden from using the full extent of their powers, lest they break the world

Also, I'd agree that unbalanced is a sliding scale, and the point at which a game system is broken is very YMMV.

Finally, no the system is not set up to create a viking. Can you do it? sure, at first level even, as people have pointed out. But its not an archtype the game tries to simulate. The barbarian really is besically Movie Conan. But with 'rage' (Adrenaline rush or something would be a better de3scription, but hey...). Not sure that that really proves anything, though

...The wizards were still capable of ridic amounts of power. They weren't allowed to act like the demi-gods/angels they were, but Gandalf kills an angel of the same level as himself in a straight fight when it was using its powers and he wasn't. Gandalf with his Maiar powers would be Sauron level, which would mean they would have a giant show down in the middle of Gondor, and Gandalf would learn Sauron some respect.

[SurlySeraph]

If that's true, why did someone who semi-died to save his companions refuse to use his power, causing countless men of Gondor and Rohan to die in battle and letting the hobbits risk horrible death trying to sneak the ring to Mount Doom? Hell, why didn't they just have a single unrestrained Maiar skip on over, beat up Sauron, and go home? Putting five wizards around the world (one of whom is corrupted, causes numerous deaths and creates abominations, and later is killed by midgets with bows) sounds like a pretty terrible plan compared to that.

[Eldariel]

If that's true, why did someone who semi-died to save his companions refuse to use his power, causing countless men of Gondor and Rohan to die in battle and letting the hobbits risk horrible death trying to sneak the ring to Mount Doom? Hell, why didn't they just have a single unrestrained Maiar skip on over, beat up Sauron, and go home? Putting five wizards around the world (one of whom is corrupted, causes numerous deaths and creates abominations, and later is killed by midgets with bows) sounds like a pretty terrible plan compared to that.

They sorta did that back in the whole Morgoth-deal. It didn't work out that well. The whole point of the third age was teaching the Middle Earth folk to handle such evils themselves. Though it is also stated that Sauron was a maia of a higher order than the Istari; had they fought, Sauron would most likely have kicked Olorin's ass. But yeah, when Mystra tells a Wizard to behave, a Wizard behaves. Sorta same deal here; the Vala forbade the Istari from...y'know, breaking the world (just read Silmarillion; after the whole deal with Angband the scenery changed quite a bit).

Then again, with most of his power tied to the ring, it's unclear if he was even capable of fighting. But it's shown that he dominated Saruman mentally through the Palantír and Gandalf answers "I am Gandalf the White. But Black is still stronger." or something to that effect when someone (may have been Pippin during the long ride) inquires if he can just waltz in and smack Sauron across the countryside.


And of course, Arda is a world where greater beings are suspectible to numerous lesser beings. An innumerable army simply has a greater "might" than an individual.

[Chambers]

Core is not broken.

Mostly just many of the rules interpretations out there are.

And some broken RAW loopholes exist in theory, but could normally never happen in practice (e.g. Gate/inifinite wishes), simply because they would require massive metagaming and/or be prevented by npc behaviour.

- Giacomo

Sir Giacomo

Core is broken.

The reason it is broken is because the class features of different classes are not worth the same. A Fighters feats is not worth the same as the Wizards spells, because spells are better than feats.

That is how the game was designed. There are any number of spells you can use to illustrate this. Gate is more powerful than a feat. Fly is more powerful than a feat. Dominate Person is more powerful than a feat. Summon / Conjure Anything is more powerful than a feat.

The fact that spells are more powerful than feats is undeniable. Therefore, the classes that get the most powerful class feature (spells) will be more powerful than classes that get a far weaker class feature (feats).

The only way that other classes can mechanically compete with the most powerful classes is to get and wear magic items that duplicate spells. Wings of Flying. Cloaks of Resistance. Magic Armor & Weapons. The spellcasting classes get the real things as class features - everyone else buys them as magic items.

---

Another way to explain it.

Core is broken because the most powerful classes are designed to be the most powerful. If a player plays the class as RAW, it will outshine the non-spellcasting classes. For the sake of balance the game system demands that the most powerful classes be played without maximizing their potential.

When it's necessary for a player to tone down his RAW & Core character class in order to not completely overshadow another RAW & Core character class, the system is broken.

[bloodtide]

I'm not sure about the 'spellcasters' are all powerful in Core D&D. 20th level fighters are powerful. It come by how you rate powerful.

I've gamed in thousands of games. It's rare for me to encounter an all powerful spellcaster. And the reason is simple, players are humans. Most players don't take 24/7 of their life to make an uber spellcaster. They just make normal spellcasters. It's not a rule that the spellcaster must be all powerful. So the spellcaster has a couple spells to cast for a couple rounds, but the fighter can fight all day.

No modern day gamer(especially those under 30) who is a advocate of brokenness would make it in a classic dungeon. In Ye Old Days, the adventuring group would be in the dungeon for (game and real) hours. So even if a spellcaster went 'nova' a couple times...the adventure would still continue for several hours before the group rested. So a spellcaster had to save up their spells. Many modern gamers want only a maximum of four encounters that they can nova blast through a day, then they immediately demand to rest. A spellcaster in a classic mindset game had to be able to cast spells all day.


Most so-called broken things in core are just there because of lazy, bored and uninterested DM's. The easy way to 'mend broken' is to up the power of the game. The 'broken tricks' that work so well vs 0 level human guards, don't work so well vs 10th level vrock rogue/warlocks. There is always a bigger fish.

[The Mentalist]

If that's true, why did someone who semi-died to save his companions refuse to use his power, causing countless men of Gondor and Rohan to die in battle and letting the hobbits risk horrible death trying to sneak the ring to Mount Doom? Hell, why didn't they just have a single unrestrained Maiar skip on over, beat up Sauron, and go home? Putting five wizards around the world (one of whom is corrupted, causes numerous deaths and creates abominations, and later is killed by midgets with bows) sounds like a pretty terrible plan compared to that.

The answer to this and all other questions is "It would have sucked!"

If I remember right the Valar didn't let the Maiar interfer directly because they wanted mortals to control their own destinies or something like that.

[Tvtyrant]

They sorta did that back in the whole Morgoth-deal. It didn't work out that well. The whole point of the third age was teaching the Middle Earth folk to handle such evils themselves. Though it is also stated that Sauron was a maia of a higher order than the Istari; had they fought, Sauron would most likely have kicked Olorin's ass. But yeah, when Mystra tells a Wizard to behave, a Wizard behaves. Sorta same deal here; the Vala forbade the Istari from...y'know, breaking the world (just read Silmarillion; after the whole deal with Angband the scenery changed quite a bit).

Then again, with most of his power tied to the ring, it's unclear if he was even capable of fighting. But it's shown that he dominated Saruman mentally through the Palantír and Gandalf answers "I am Gandalf the White. But Black is still stronger." or something to that effect when someone (may have been Pippin during the long ride) inquires if he can just waltz in and smack Sauron across the countryside.


And of course, Arda is a world where greater beings are suspectible to numerous lesser beings. An innumerable army simply has a greater "might" than an individual.

And the whole point of the story is that evil is more powerful individually, and good gets its strength from unity. Morgoth once took on the entire pantheon of gods in a wrestling match by himself, and Sauron was stated to be the strongest servant of Morgoth. There is a scene in the Quenta where Finglofin, the strongest elf lord ever is killed by Morgoth, and Morgoth does it by crushing him under his shield. Evil is crazy strong, it just spends most of its time killing other evil things.

[olentu]

I'm not sure about the 'spellcasters' are all powerful in Core D&D. 20th level fighters are powerful. It come by how you rate powerful.

I've gamed in thousands of games. It's rare for me to encounter an all powerful spellcaster. And the reason is simple, players are humans. Most players don't take 24/7 of their life to make an uber spellcaster. They just make normal spellcasters. It's not a rule that the spellcaster must be all powerful. So the spellcaster has a couple spells to cast for a couple rounds, but the fighter can fight all day.

No modern day gamer(especially those under 30) who is a advocate of brokenness would make it in a classic dungeon. In Ye Old Days, the adventuring group would be in the dungeon for (game and real) hours. So even if a spellcaster went 'nova' a couple times...the adventure would still continue for several hours before the group rested. So a spellcaster had to save up their spells. Many modern gamers want only a maximum of four encounters that they can nova blast through a day, then they immediately demand to rest. A spellcaster in a classic mindset game had to be able to cast spells all day.


Most so-called broken things in core are just there because of lazy, bored and uninterested DM's. The easy way to 'mend broken' is to up the power of the game. The 'broken tricks' that work so well vs 0 level human guards, don't work so well vs 10th level vrock rogue/warlocks. There is always a bigger fish.

I must play much more challenging games then you since generally spellcasters need to cast spells or everyone dies.

[Morithias]

Conclusion I have reached after researching this concept of "broken".

Items truly has no traits of their own besides physical ones. A gun is not evil. A vaccine for a virus is not good. A Dnd book is not broken.

Core is broken, because we use it in a way that makes it broken. It is not flat out broken by itself, but in the way it is used.

A dictatorship if ruled by a moral, just, and wise person resistance to corruption in every way is, in theory better than a democracy.

In short.

A. Core is not broken by itself.
B. The players break it.
C. When we use it for "UNLIMITED POOOOOOWER" instead of playing a fun game.
D. By abusing the game in ways it wasn't meant to be done.

Yes, one can abuse glitches to beat Ocarina of Time only doing 2 of the adult dungeons, but that doesn't mean the game is bad or broken.

It means the player isn't playing it the 'right' way. That's a whole another debate, but with the exception of the most extreme munchkin, I don't think there's really a person who plays games for the enjoyment of playing them that can they think abusing a glitch to skip 80% of the game is 'proper' so to speak.

{Scrubbed}

[Tvtyrant]

I must play much more challenging games then you since generally spellcasters need to cast spells or everyone dies.

I think your using different versions of "hard." Sounds like he is advocating twenty encounter days, while your advocating a few really hard encounters.

[Godless_Paladin]

I think it's important to distinguish "Unbalanced" and "Broken." When I think Broken, I think Campaign Smashers List from the old CharOp boards. Diplomancy kicked it pretty damn early for a core bard, and that was on there next to Pun Pun.

That said, just plain glaringly unbalanced stuff breaks out at level 1, but it gets significantly worse as you go. What point you consider that "broken" depends on your definition of broken.

[olentu]

I think your using different versions of "hard." Sounds like he is advocating twenty encounter days, while your advocating a few really hard encounters.

Oh I got that but I still don't find 20 encounters weak enough to be auto attacked to death by the fighter/barbarian/druid and his animal companion to be difficult.

[Tyndmyr]

I'm not sure about the 'spellcasters' are all powerful in Core D&D. 20th level fighters are powerful. It come by how you rate powerful.

I've gamed in thousands of games. It's rare for me to encounter an all powerful spellcaster. And the reason is simple, players are humans. Most players don't take 24/7 of their life to make an uber spellcaster. They just make normal spellcasters. It's not a rule that the spellcaster must be all powerful. So the spellcaster has a couple spells to cast for a couple rounds, but the fighter can fight all day.

No modern day gamer(especially those under 30) who is a advocate of brokenness would make it in a classic dungeon. In Ye Old Days, the adventuring group would be in the dungeon for (game and real) hours. So even if a spellcaster went 'nova' a couple times...the adventure would still continue for several hours before the group rested. So a spellcaster had to save up their spells. Many modern gamers want only a maximum of four encounters that they can nova blast through a day, then they immediately demand to rest. A spellcaster in a classic mindset game had to be able to cast spells all day.

Most so-called broken things in core are just there because of lazy, bored and uninterested DM's. The easy way to 'mend broken' is to up the power of the game. The 'broken tricks' that work so well vs 0 level human guards, don't work so well vs 10th level vrock rogue/warlocks. There is always a bigger fish.

Has been proven time and again, endurance is not a challenge to a high level wizard.

1. At level 20, he'll have 36 spells(not counting cantrips) per day.
2. Oh dear me, he gets bonus spells for having int. All wizards have int. Tack another 15 or so spells on that.
3. Specialization is awesome. Tack on another 9.
4. Focused specialist is even more awesome. Tack on another 9.
5. Scribe Scroll is a class feature. Tack on as many as he feels like carrying.

So, before we even get to scrolls, or things castable from the many items the wizard has accumulated throughout his career to this point, we're looking at something like 70 spells per day.

That fifth encounter is not gonna make him run dry. Nor is the tenth.

Edit: Since you did say casters, not merely wizards, let look at the endurance of the other primary casters.
Sorc, can compete with a focused specialist wizard on spellpower. Not likely to run dry.
Druid. Also has lots of spells. Will also spend a significant amount of time shifted, ripping faces off. Has an animal companion kicking around for the lulz. Not terribly worried about running dry on spells.
Cleric. Well, a clericzilla tops a fighter via buffs. Thing is, when you're cramming ridiculous amounts of encounters into a day, you end up having buffs last through multiple encounters. Delightful. Nope, not going to worry about running dry either.

Fighter. Oddly enough, hp do run out. Unlike the others mentioned, he lacks access to handy healing magic, and item use is generally limited to potions. So, unless you count on achieving balance by guilting the casters into burning their resources on him so he can keep up, he'll be the first one running on empty.

[Eldariel]

And the whole point of the story is that evil is more powerful individually, and good gets its strength from unity. Morgoth once took on the entire pantheon of gods in a wrestling match by himself, and Sauron was stated to be the strongest servant of Morgoth. There is a scene in the Quenta where Finglofin, the strongest elf lord ever is killed by Morgoth, and Morgoth does it by crushing him under his shield. Evil is crazy strong, it just spends most of its time killing other evil things.

Well, that's more of the few evil beings; the story kinda requires for Morgoth to be insanely strong since he's basically the only evil entity in the beginning in the world, which means he'll have to offset the power of all the other deities to provide a truly worthwhile villain. But still in story, I don't recall Morgoth truly willing or capable to take on Tulkas, for example (certainly not Tulkas and Aulë). Though yeah, his strength was not in combat like Tulkas's which kind of explains that. But still, the whole Silmarillion is a bunch of stories of good (or "good"; hard to use that word on Noldor for example) individuals with similar capabilities to the great evils.

And when we get a bit lower in the creation, Orcs were certainly no match for Elves or Trolls for Ents. And heck, Elves were capable of defeating Balrogs and Dragons. So while the evil deities at the very top (mostly Melkor and Sauron) were insanely strong comparatively, the evil creatures were lesser than whatever they were perversions of and mostly thrived on power of numbers.

[Tvtyrant]

Well, that's more of the few evil beings; the story kinda requires for Morgoth to be insanely strong since he's basically the only evil entity in the beginning in the world, which means he'll have to offset the power of all the other deities to provide a truly worthwhile villain. But still in story, I don't recall Morgoth truly willing or capable to take on Tulkas, for example (certainly not Tulkas and Aulë). Though yeah, his strength was not in combat like Tulkas's which kind of explains that. But still, the whole Silmarillion is a bunch of stories of good (or "good"; hard to use that word on Noldor for example) individuals with similar capabilities to the great evils.

And when we get a bit lower in the creation, Orcs were certainly no match for Elves or Trolls for Ents. And heck, Elves were capable of defeating Balrogs and Dragons. So while the evil deities at the very top (mostly Melkor and Sauron) were insanely strong comparatively, the evil creatures were lesser than whatever they were perversions of and mostly thrived on power of numbers.

But orcs ARE elves :P

And it says straight up after the lamps thing that all of the gods grab him together; Tulkas joined them because Morgoth was to difficult for the rest to beat him combined. I don't have a copy with me at the moment, because mine is at home safe while I'm at the dorms, but there are several passages that refer to Morgoth as being the flat out strongest being in existence after the big one.

However in a general sense I agree with you, the evil army tends to be shown as giant waves of troops ala the hot gates.

[Chambers]

...

In short.

A. Core is not broken by itself.
B. The players break it.
C. When we use it for "UNLIMITED POOOOOOWER" instead of playing a fun game.
D. By abusing the game in ways it wasn't meant to be done.

...

Shut up about balance and broken crap, and learn to restrain yourselves. Just because you have a weapon doesn't mean you have to use it.

So a Wizard shouldn't use the spells that are printed in the Players Handbook because those spells unbalance the game? That is definition of broken. Asking the players to restrict themselves from using the material in Core is an argument for how Core is broken - not an argument against it.

My argument is that the brokenness of Core lies in the discrepancy between the class features. If the Fighter got abilities that were equal in power to the Wizards spells, then the game would be more balanced.

Here is what I mean. Please list the feats that a Fighter can take, from Core, that equals the power of these Core spells.

• Gate. Summon a powerful creature and force it to do your bidding.
• Time Stop. Exactly what it says.
• Wish. Alter reality, with a few restrictions.

These spells are in Core, not some obscure sourcebook that a player bought to have ULTIMATE POWER. These are the Core class features of the Wizard. These spells (as class features) are orders of magnitude more powerful than the class features of the fighter (feats). It is hard for me to imagine how you can deny this.

[Psyren]

You don't even have to get to 9th-level to make casters ridiculous. Polymorph. Forcecage. Blasphemy line. Bigsby's line. Enervation. And that's just combat; the social applications are just as numerous.

*all are core of course

[BeholderSlayer]

You don't even have to get to 9th-level to make casters ridiculous. Polymorph. Forcecage. Blasphemy line. Bigsby's line. Enervation. And that's just combat; the social applications are just as numerous.

*all are core of course

You don't even have to go that far. The game literally completely breaks down at level 7.

[OracleofWuffing]

You don't even have to go that far. The game literally completely breaks down at level 7.

... Given that my 3.5 PHB is still in one piece after playing a post-level 7 campaign (and I would know given the amount of times it has been thrown at me), I think you mean that it figuratively breaks down.

Otherwise, we'd all have to buy new tables each week!

Obligatory.

[Tyndmyr]

You don't even have to go that far. The game literally completely breaks down at level 7.

It can. That's probably the early end of the range. I've seen core only games make it past level 10 before running into the issue, depending on classes involved and such. If nobody actually picks sorc, wizard, or druid, and the cleric hasn't yet figured out the glories of spont healing, it can actually work for a while.

But it's temporary. Eventually the differences will be apparent, as the monk wonders why he can never hit, and other players happen across broken bits. The exact point probably varies a lot depending on group, but it is immensely hard to play to level 20 without accidentally running into a huge power gap.

[Tvtyrant]

A ranger using the wildshape variant rules could probably escape being relegated to the back, but most classes end up sitting on their hands (looking at you bard; shame on you for peaking at level 3!)

[Eldariel]

And it says straight up after the lamps thing that all of the gods grab him together; Tulkas joined them because Morgoth was to difficult for the rest to beat him combined. I don't have a copy with me at the moment, because mine is at home safe while I'm at the dorms, but there are several passages that refer to Morgoth as being the flat out strongest being in existence after the big one.

Yeah, I remember that but after Melkor was first thrown out, it is stated Melkor only dared to re-enter when Tulkas was distracted. And when Melkor fled Valinor after destroying the trees, it was Tulkas alone who was sent to detain him. Of course Melkor eluded capture but stands to reason that if he was able, he'd have beaten up the only reason he couldn't take out the rest of the Valar right then and there. And when the Elves awoke, it was Tulkas (with Aulë) who ultimately wrestled Melkor to submission.

But yeah, I understand combat was Tulkas's only power while Melkor was pretty much the Next After Eru in terms of power, with all of Eru's knowledge (while other Valar only had what belonged to their domain).


Buut, I think this is a big enough aside for now.

[Jolly]

Some of the broken comes only in TO play. Some comes only in poor/generous/favoring Tier X rules interpretation. Some comes from a small handful of items and spells. Some (a lot) comes from people with no idea of or regard for the social contract.

But, really, this discussion misses the point. DnD is and always has been a patently absurd system. Let's just stick to 3.x since that seems to be the basis of this discussion.

It takes just as much time, effort, and resource allocation to become fluent (reading and writing) a totally alien language spoken by creatures with utterly different vocal organs as it does to become slightly better at jumping over things. You gain the resources needed to learn more languages by killing things.

The more things you kill, the better you become at hitting things with a stick, even if you're a caster who has never struck another living being during the leveling experience.

The number of things you kill and how tough they are is the sole determiner of how much "experience" you gain. "Hey guys, I killed a bunch of really mean bad guys this weekend, now I'm ready to learn another 5 languages."

And those aren't the only resources derived from killing things. You spend a couple years killing things with a sword, and suddenly you can get impaled by a whaling harpoon and it's only a fraction of your total health. You get to the point where the fact that you've spent a couple years killing things with a sword means that you can set yourself on fire and it's no big deal.

Heck, it takes special magical enhancement to make it so that when you get hit with that big ole axe, you continue to bleed! If you go into DnD trying to break it, or getting fussy about your "character concept" then yes it sucks. If you play it for what it is, a silly game designed to let people get together and have fun, it works ok.

Are there serious issues in 3.x? Absolutely. Anything that can't be circumvented with a bit of maturity, consideration, cooperation, and of course rule 0? No. Does the fact that it can be rule 0'ed mean it's ok? Not at all, still bad design. However, the imperfections in the system are just a necessary evil for this time of game. No system is perfect or able to resist abuse. All have strengths and weaknesses. DnD certainly has a lot of the latter. But some of the angst in this thread is just.... comical.

Edit: just for me, as a personal preference, I want a world where magic is magical and powerful, more so than being able to hit things hard. Mechanical balance, to me, precludes some of the things I love most about fantasy. And of course for a break I also like low magic world's where spell choice is limited through scarcity of other casters. DnD takes this too far at higher levels imho, but really I don't think perfect mechanical balance is necessarily desirable. More balanced than it is now would be good, but total equality is not something I want, personally.

[Kaldrin]

To me the balance issue is that classes with a lot of power are also given a lot of other abilities. I've thought about it and I would start with unequal progression. Casters might need 3x or 4x more xp to level up. Fighters can be late teens when the spell casters are just entering the teens. Make all skills class skills and give everyone 4 or 6 + int mod.

Stop with the one catch-all to prevent melee types from being more effective. Crit immunity, I'm looking at you. Give fighters a mastery talent that lets them do more damage per round akin to the rogue sneak attack. Last game we played in a one-off the rogue actually did more melee damage than the fighter. WTF? They should at the very least be comparable.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts.

[Morithias]

So a Wizard shouldn't use the spells that are printed in the Players Handbook because those spells unbalance the game? That is definition of broken. Asking the players to restrict themselves from using the material in Core is an argument for how Core is broken - not an argument against it.

My argument is that the brokenness of Core lies in the discrepancy between the class features. If the Fighter got abilities that were equal in power to the Wizards spells, then the game would be more balanced.

Here is what I mean. Please list the feats that a Fighter can take, from Core, that equals the power of these Core spells.

• Gate. Summon a powerful creature and force it to do your bidding.
• Time Stop. Exactly what it says.
• Wish. Alter reality, with a few restrictions.

These spells are in Core, not some obscure sourcebook that a player bought to have ULTIMATE POWER. These are the Core class features of the Wizard. These spells (as class features) are orders of magnitude more powerful than the class features of the fighter (feats). It is hard for me to imagine how you can deny this.

Well for one Gate and Wish cost xp. Plus there's a ton of ways a DM could easily shut that down.

Gate states that a "unique being" cannot be controlled. Well if you want to get technical no two beings are 100% alike and one can easily argue that therefore any creature that doesn't have a non-existence intelligence score is unique, even if the others are only unique on a mental level.

Wish...seriously? Literal Genie much? Jackass Genie more? Face it, if you're using that spell and ruining the other's fun the DM can EASILY screw you over. Not to mention the Xp cost on both spells.

Time Stop is a tad harder to work if you don't know how speed works. Since it does not actually stop time but actually speeds everything up to the point where the others are frozen. Well aging much? One can easily argue that casting the spell ages the mage a fair bit. In hackmaster all 3 of these spells actually do age you 5 years. Gate spam? Well, hope you enjoy dying of old age.

[Mystic Muse]

Well for one Gate and Wish cost xp. Plus there's a ton of ways a DM could easily shut that down.

Gate states that a "unique being" cannot be controlled. Well if you want to get technical no two beings are 100% alike and one can easily argue that therefore any creature that doesn't have a non-existence intelligence score is unique, even if the others are only unique on a mental level.

While the spell needs fixing this is a pretty bad way of doing it. If you're going to do this, you should just ban if before it gets on somebody's spell list.

Wish...seriously? Literal Genie much? Jackass Genie more? Face it, if you're using that spell and ruining the other's fun the DM can EASILY screw you over. Not to mention the Xp cost on both spells.

There are plenty of things on the wish spell that are considered safe and can still break the game. While the player would be a jerk for trying to destroy his DM's campaign, the DM would also be a jerk for not explaining that isn't the way wish works in his campaign before hand.

Time Stop is a tad harder to work if you don't know how speed works. Since it does not actually stop time but actually speeds everything up to the point where the others are frozen. Well aging much? One can easily argue that casting the spell ages the mage a fair bit. In hackmaster all 3 of these spells actually do age you 5 years. Gate spam? Well, hope you enjoy dying of old age.

Then the player should be aware of this. Once again, if the player is trying to abuse this, they're being a jerk. If the DM doesn't tell you that's how the spell functions before you use it, so are they.