Curiosity: How much of the Tier 1 classes' power is due to metamagic?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Having read many of the caster vs martial and tier-related threads here, I have to wonder--how much would it change the overall situation if either of the following were true:

1) Metamagic does not exist. All such feats and items are abolished.

OR

2) Metamagic is a PrC feature along with any caster level boosts (practiced spellcaster, etc). These PrCs would be at most 5/10 spellcasting advancement.

My guess (as a semi-informed layman, assuming non-TO scenarios): It would remove the DMM/nightstick cheese. At most, now-tier-1 classes would move down to the bottom of tier 1 or the top of tier 2. Wizards and clerics would be worst hit. Druids would be less affected due to wildshape and animal companions. If option 2 were taken, few if anyone would actually take those hypothetical classes. Players of wizards and high-op games would qq much.

Of course this does not bring up the poor martial classes at all. That's a separate matter.

Thoughts? I'm curious if I'm even close here.

[heavyfuel]

Metamagic does very little to their power.

A lv 7 Wizard can still cast Black tentacles, and a same level Cleric call a Planar Ally with a bunch of spell-like abilities way beyond its HD

These classes are really strong regardless of metamagic.

[ngilop]

to answer your query

1) would not affect anything

2) would not affect anything


The power of tier 1 and tier 2 classes is the spells themselves not any metamagic or metamagic reducers

being able to completely and utterly IGNORE whole parts of an adventure or bypass them in a standard action is what makes them tier 2 or tier 1 NOT getting feats

if something with spells never ever got feats of any sort. they can still completely break the game with hardly trying...if at all.

[Beheld]

Metamagic hardly matters at all.

The occasional Extend trick is nice, and there are a few different TO builds with metamagic. But 95% of the actual power that a Wizard or Druid or Cleric has has nothing to do with metamagic.

If you made metamagic require giving up any caster levels at all, no one would ever take that class.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Metamagic hardly matters at all.

The occasional Extend trick is nice, and there are a few different TO builds with metamagic. But 95% of the actual power that a Wizard or Druid or Cleric has has nothing to do with metamagic.

If you made metamagic require giving up any caster levels at all, no one would ever take that class.

to answer your query

1) would not affect anything

2) would not affect anything


The power of tier 1 and tier 2 classes is the spells themselves not any metamagic or metamagic reducers

being able to completely and utterly IGNORE whole parts of an adventure or bypass them in a standard action is what makes them tier 2 or tier 1 NOT getting feats

if something with spells never ever got feats of any sort. they can still completely break the game with hardly trying...if at all.

Metamagic does very little to their power.

A lv 7 Wizard can still cast Black tentacles, and a same level Cleric call a Planar Ally with a bunch of spell-like abilities way beyond its HD

These classes are really strong regardless of metamagic.

Ah. I see. So the difference in power between a sorcerer (who can cast most of the same spells as a wizard) and that wizard is due to the inability to customize his set of spells for each situation?

If so, then the solution to pulling the T1 classes down to T2 will have to involve removing that versatility.

On that vein, what about this solution? I presume that the schools would have to be rebalanced for this to make any sense.

1. All classes that grant 9-th level spells must specialize in a school of magic.
2. 1st - 3rd level spells act as normal: you can't cast a spell from your opposed school.
3. For 4-6th level spells, define two associated schools for each school. Your spells of these levels can only come from these 3 schools (specialization + 2 others).
4. For 7-9th level spells, you can only cast from your own specialization.

Thanks for the insight.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Correct. Metamagic helps in terms of raw power, to be sure-- removing or sharply limiting it certainly won't HURT game balance-- but the T1/T2 boundary is very much defined by strategic flexibility.

The schools are way too varied in terms of power to be a practical balance tool. Keeping Conjuration, Transmutation, and Divination maintains 95% of your power, and even "Conjuration only" or "Transmutation only" can blow other classes away.

The best way to limit casters is to create custom lists along the lines of the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Warmage, AND limit/remove ways to expand them. That lets you dictate exactly what sort of power a character has, and allows you to include fun things at the same time as blocking abusive things. I think there's a link to my Fixed List Caster Project in my signature where I did just that

[Gildedragon]

You push people to Conjuration or Illusion
As is Evocation and Necromancy are often dropped, and from Enchantment There's precious few spells that are all that reliable.

[eldskald]

Ah. I see. So the difference in power between a sorcerer (who can cast most of the same spells as a wizard) and that wizard is due to the inability to customize his set of spells for each situation?

If so, then the solution to pulling the T1 classes down to T2 will have to involve removing that versatility.

On that vein, what about this solution? I presume that the schools would have to be rebalanced for this to make any sense.

1. All classes that grant 9-th level spells must specialize in a school of magic.
2. 1st - 3rd level spells act as normal: you can't cast a spell from your opposed school.
3. For 4-6th level spells, define two associated schools for each school. Your spells of these levels can only come from these 3 schools (specialization + 2 others).
4. For 7-9th level spells, you can only cast from your own specialization.

Thanks for the insight.

There is also the fact that Charisma sucks while Intelligence and Wisdom don't. You could do that to prepared spellcasters only, leaving the spontaneous casters alone.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Correct. Metamagic helps in terms of raw power, to be sure-- removing or sharply limiting it certainly won't HURT game balance-- but the T1/T2 boundary is very much defined by strategic flexibility.

The schools are way too varied in terms of power to be a practical balance tool. Keeping Conjuration, Transmutation, and Divination maintains 95% of your power, and even "Conjuration only" or "Transmutation only" can blow other classes away.

The best way to limit casters is to create custom lists along the lines of the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Warmage, AND limit/remove ways to expand them. That lets you dictate exactly what sort of power a character has, and allows you to include fun things at the same time as blocking abusive things. I think there's a link to my Fixed List Caster Project in my signature where I did just that

You push people to Conjuration or Illusion
As is Evocation and Necromancy are often dropped, and from Enchantment There's precious few spells that are all that reliable.

I see. I guess I'm coming around to your position @Grod. There are too many interactions to balance it any other way. Would it be possible to make a class that had access to a set of fixed lists? Kind of a metasorcerer (can switch lists once per level rather than at the individual spell level)? I'm trying to preserve as much flexibility as possible without the combinatorial explosion of interactions we have currently.

There is also the fact that Charisma sucks while Intelligence and Wisdom don't. You could do that to prepared spellcasters only, leaving the spontaneous casters alone.

INT is better than CHA because of skill points (mostly), right? I thought of another fix there--every class gets a class feature that grants them automatic max ranks in $N of $LIST skills; martials and skill monkeys get bigger $N and broader $LISTS. Skill points then don't scale by INT as much if at all.

This is an interesting game--I don't play 3.X so I have no personal investment in it. I'm just treating it as a theoretical meta-optimization game--optimizing the system. Thanks everyone for humoring me.

[Gildedragon]

Re: Fixed lists. They're incompatible with flexibility.
For something between the sorcerer and wizard in terms of flexibility there's the Sha'ir where time is the big squeeze.

One could sort of flip the Sha'ir around. Give "Fast" access to a handful of cleric or shaman or arcane domains, and then medium access "learned" spells, ie spells that one has seen and understood, ie spells the DM has approved by exposing the PCs to them, and drop the slow access tier completely.
The Sha'ir becomes then a mostly fixed list caster, that can still access a wider variety of spells... But only with more explicit DM permission

[Godskook]

1.Metamagic is not a problem. Metamagic *REDUCERS* are the problem. Almost universally, look at the builds that actually break metamagic, versus builds that just use it as a neat bonus. They're cheating metamagic onto stuff that the metamagic could not have been cast on normally. Hence, my great metamagic rule:

You must be able to cast a metamagic'ed spell without reducers before you're allowed to apply reducers to it.

So.....if you're a level 6 Wizard, you can only Maximize cantrips, can Empower up to 1st level spells, and Extend up to 2nd level spells. Reducers allow you to Empower/Maximize/Extend for -free-, but they don't let you cast things you'd not normally be able to cast.

2.Tier 1s aren't really affected by nerfs to metamagic overall. Certain builds are, but overall, the classes don't rely on metamagic enough for that to be a sufficient way of fixing them. Its the overall design of spells, notably at high level, compared to the overall design of martial classes. And the worst offenders are often spells that either don't require metamagic or can't utilize it.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I see. I guess I'm coming around to your position @Grod. There are too many interactions to balance it any other way. Would it be possible to make a class that had access to a set of fixed lists? Kind of a metasorcerer (can switch lists once per level rather than at the individual spell level)? I'm trying to preserve as much flexibility as possible without the combinatorial explosion of interactions we have currently.

Depends on the lists. You can absolutely have non game-breaking classes that can switch up their options a lot day-to-day-- look at things like the Binder or Totemist. The trick is making sure that the options being switched around are less powerful than a focused specialist, if that makes sense. A Wizard or Cleric can be problematic because they're very strong at many thing; reducing either one of those terms should help balance considerably.

INT is better than CHA because of skill points (mostly), right? I thought of another fix there--every class gets a class feature that grants them automatic max ranks in $N of $LIST skills; martials and skill monkeys get bigger $N and broader $LISTS. Skill points then don't scale by INT as much if at all.

Int gives you skill points, and Wis adds to useful skills (Spot/Listen) and saves (Will). I don't know if I'd call Cha the weakest, though; leaving aside the (campaign-dependent) power of social skills themselves, Cha is by far the score with the most associated *stuff*. I'd probably say Int > Cha > Wis for spellcasters, simply because of how many things you can do with the stat with a bit of work. (And it's not like you won't already have a good Will save)

[Melcar]

Having read many of the caster vs martial and tier-related threads here, I have to wonder--how much would it change the overall situation if either of the following were true:

1) Metamagic does not exist. All such feats and items are abolished.

OR

2) Metamagic is a PrC feature along with any caster level boosts (practiced spellcaster, etc). These PrCs would be at most 5/10 spellcasting advancement.

My guess (as a semi-informed layman, assuming non-TO scenarios): It would remove the DMM/nightstick cheese. At most, now-tier-1 classes would move down to the bottom of tier 1 or the top of tier 2. Wizards and clerics would be worst hit. Druids would be less affected due to wildshape and animal companions. If option 2 were taken, few if anyone would actually take those hypothetical classes. Players of wizards and high-op games would qq much.

Of course this does not bring up the poor martial classes at all. That's a separate matter.

Thoughts? I'm curious if I'm even close here.

So I want to first say a few things and the ask a question.

Firstly, since I joined this forum I have read many a post about banning or leashing spell casters and they ability to deatroy the gameworld many times over. Its either the class or the spells or the feats... Again and again there is a need to stifle the tier 1's to make sure magical holocaust doesn't ensue. I have always found this utterly weird. Now I want to say that I only play D&Dwit close friends and never at some table, with people I don't care for, nor any gen-con-tables or anything like that. But I has surprised me and does to this day all the talk about stifling the tier 1 classes... The reason for this is, that I have yet to have encountered in my 19 years of playing D&D someone who would 1) destroy the setting and consequently destroy the fun for all to be had, and 2) wanted to become a invisible character.

I 100% respect what ever is done or whatever each gaming table options for when it comes to house-rules and what not, but I must admit, that I have never needed to ban anything. The only thing I have altered was homebrew material, which the designer was not skilled at.

Now to your post. I think it would make some of the optimization harder, but still not impossible. I don't remember all the power-builds out there, but I seem to remember some of them having persist spell. Most likely many a spell could be made permanent, considering the list of official spells possible and the lack of clearly defined theme for these... most spell could probably be made permanent, with the correct research. At least research and home-brew spells are a core concept of the game. Cant remember the page number, but its there. So it would be well within the rules to have much longer list of spells affected by the permanent spells. There are also epic options: Epic spells, and epic feats that does this. Therefore I think that meta-magic in general would not stop most abusive builds. They would however make it less fun to play a spell caster in my opinion. To me those classes are all about options. Taking away options are less fun for me.

Making them PrC abilities and thus not cost a feat would probably be a fine options if that class did not have obscene or random prerequisites (as many do). I don't like that they flat out only have 50% spell casting progression.

Now to my question: Have anyone actually played with someone who actively sought to destroy/destabilize or otherwise abuse to rules in such a way as to eliminate all fun to be had? I assume banning stuff is to ensure the wizard does not go infinity loop on you... Sometimes I get the feeling that a simple: "Don't abuse the rules" has been more than enough to both have shapechange, gate, zodars and supernatural spells present in my epic games without anyone turning into Pun Pun... If its to balance the classes and not to make optimization harder, I suggest giving the mundanes nice stuff. More and better feats or or PrC than increase damage, to hit or abilities like trip, SR, AC, Fast Healing and resistances, so to not make the sword and board fighter feel like a imba noob at every level. Create something unique with the player...


Well that was my 50 cent... bottle full of bub

[Florian]

@PhoenixPhyre:

Remember how the old "spheres" for divine spells worked in AD&D? Spheres came in three tiers: Full access, half access, limited access, setting the cap at 9th, 5th and 3rd (converted to d20).
(Spells were categorized into the "Sphere" they belong, not by classic arcane schools, so they are what Domain spells are what we have now).

If you want to bring T1 down to T2 without forcing them into a spells known/limited list territory, drop the Universalist and replace Specialists with "Colleges" based on the Spheres mechanic.

The "Grand Order of Magical Knowledge" has full: Divination, Evocation, half: Conjuration, Necromancy, limited: Rest. And so on.

[Sam K]

Bunch of totally awesome stuff!

Completely agree! Here is how I see it:

If a player is ruining everyone's fun by throwing rocks at the DM and the other players, would you say the main problem is:

1. Rocks are OP and need to be nerfed so it doesn't hurt when you get hit with them.
2. That guy is a jerk and needs to stop.

It's quite possible to play a T1 class in a T5 party, without over shadowing them. In fact, this seems to be the case in most games. You have blaster wizards and healing clerics in a lot of parties. The problem occurs when a player is using the strategic flexibility of T1 classes to break the game, intentionally or unintentionally.

If someone intentionally breaks your game, nerfing T1 classes won't fix that. Smart people can break the game with anything. You need to deal with that person.

If someone (or everyone) is unintentionally breaking the game using T1 magic, you need to talk about expectations. If the players like playing T1 classes to their full power, and the DM wants to do a traditional "kick the door down" dungeon crawl, they have different expectations. The solution to that is to talk about your expectations. Reasonable conversations can be far more powerful than many T1 tricks.

[PhoenixPhyre]

good stuff

more good stuff

I agree (from a practical point of view). I was taking the imbalance ideas as given for this post, but I've always wondered how much people really play those tricks. Blasters and healers I'm guessing outnumber Batman or God wizards considerably. I'm sure that even at reasonable levels of optimization it's messy at high levels, but most don't get there.

[ngilop]

Most of the abuse from the casters come from a very, very specific source.

The internet.

You see people in the internet just assume that everything is ago and nobody is going to stop them doing anything at all.


Then you get a forum that is dedicated to a specific topic.

So, now you have all these people that are like 'do this and this and this' there is no way a DM would ever allow a character to actually become PUN PUN at a real life table (well, there is Tippy)

Also, if most of you 'this is how game work' comes from this Forum you are going to be waay waay off kilter.

Just take a gander at the advice threads people post.
You have people literally saying 'we are allowed this book, this book, and that book, and I am thinking of taking the PrC from this book #2'

Then most GiTPers hop in and start demeaning said poster for not properly optimizing and that unless you are playing a caster you are worthless as a character.

You can be as specific as you want to be but they honestly will do that. then when called out on being non-helpful they are going to become very angry.

There are a few helpful people on this site for those of us who are non optimizers, But for the most part its the opposite.


in real life at real tables ( possibly even tippy's) I am sure they play with a gentleman's agreement (GA) in play. and by the G.A. I mean they just know not to be complete jerks and Donkey-Holes, and quickly corret said actions if they accidently do such.

of course here in the internet world. There is no such thing as a G.A. so everybody justa ssumes the worse and that everything is good to go.

[eldskald]

There is also the point that T1 classes overshadow other classes. I'm not talking about a player overshadowing the other players or breaking the world and ruining other people's fun, I'm talking about creating character concepts and finding that a class or combination of classes does everything you want to do in a better way than a more suited class for your concept would.

For example, I love the concept of the sorcerer. But if I play a sorcerer, I can't get the fact out of my head that everything I am doing a wizard can also do, like, everytime I end up doing something awesome, I will feel like another class can do exactly the same and thus I am not unique. And then there will be moments where I won't be able to do something good but if I were a wizard I would, like doing knowledge checks or, as you all know, casting the right spell for a certain situation. So why even play the sorcerer at all? Fluffwise I can always say that my magic comes from my blood and one of my ancestors was a dragon/demon/wtv and that I am studying to control my powers.

The same could be said about the paladin, like, do you really need those bad spells to be a hero? Just play a lawful good fighter, buy a horse and if you want to, you can worship some god. Or even better, play a cleric and get proficiencies in heavy armor and in some martial weapon if your race does not do it already. Fluffwise, it's all the same. Mechanically, you will be far more superior and there won't be a moment where you will feel like a paladin could do something you couldn't. Okay, maybe not fail this will save against a fear effect if you are a fighter...

[Psyren]

Lack of metamagic will certainly make casters weaker, but not enough to change their tiers.

There is no quick fix, you have to change the spells.

[Hackulator]

If you removed EVERY feat that buffs casting that might bring them more into line with other classes.

[Psyren]

If you removed EVERY feat that buffs casting that might bring them more into line with other classes.

Not really. A wizard who takes Toughness for every single feat is still T1.

[Gildedragon]

The big thing of T1s is that spells, each spell, is close to a full class feature.
Sure not as long lived in general, but it means that every day the wizard can, effectively, be a different class, one customized to the challenges ahead.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Lack of metamagic will certainly make casters weaker, but not enough to change their tiers.

There is no quick fix, you have to change the spells.

Question about this--is it
a) that there are <finite list> of spells that are inherently broken (as in "completely replaces party members without any non-trivial optimization") that could be axed or un-broken by changing wording
or is it
b) the interactions between spells that is the problem (as in, if you combine spell 1 and spell 2, now no one else contributes)
or is it
c) both a and b?

As I understand it the polymorph line of spells, pieces of the summoning lines (call planar ally, etc) and ???? are inherently broken. Hypothetical--if minionmancy (all summoning/calling spells) were off limits , how much would that change the overall power levels? It certainly(?) wouldn't be enough to bring them down to T2...

Other problems involve things like fly, teleport, knock, etc that replace or make irrelevant more mundane party members.

Edit:

The big thing of T1s is that spells, each spell, is close to a full class feature.
Sure not as long lived in general, but it means that every day the wizard can, effectively, be a different class, one customized to the challenges ahead.

Hypothetical--changing spell lists now takes a week of uninterrupted downtime. You can refresh slots on a long rest, but to change prepared spells takes time. Does this make it worse (more sitting around) or better (less on-the-spot optimization for circumstances)?

[Psyren]

If you tossed out all summoning, calling, shapeshifting, illusory imitations of previous, reanimations, and compulsions/charms/possessions, then yes - that would weaken casters.

I mean, it would also be extremely boring - you'd be turning casters into glorified archers - but I suppose it's an option.

My personal suggestion would be instead to design encounters that more directly exploit the weaknesses of those approaches. Throw in enemy casters that can dispel, or summon creatures of their own, or wrestle for mental control, or debuff/battlefield control the extra muscle your casters are bringing along etc. Have those techniques still matter (since they use up enemy caster actions that would otherwise be spent targeting the party) but not dictate the flow of combat completely in the PCs' favor.

[Zanos]

Int gives you skill points, and Wis adds to useful skills (Spot/Listen) and saves (Will). I don't know if I'd call Cha the weakest, though; leaving aside the (campaign-dependent) power of social skills themselves, Cha is by far the score with the most associated *stuff*. I'd probably say Int > Cha > Wis for spellcasters, simply because of how many things you can do with the stat with a bit of work. (And it's not like you won't already have a good Will save)

Cha is a weak main stat without investment, but you can find a way to add it to pretty much anything. Cha to Saves and AC are both pretty common, which probably takes it a fair bit above Int.

There is no quick fix, you have to change the spells.

This.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If you tossed out all summoning, calling, shapeshifting, illusory imitations of previous, reanimations, and compulsions/charms/possessions, then yes - that would weaken casters.

I mean, it would also be extremely boring - you'd be turning casters into glorified archers - but I suppose it's an option.

My personal suggestion would be instead to design encounters that more directly exploit the weaknesses of those approaches. Throw in enemy casters that can dispel, or summon creatures of their own, or wrestle for mental control, or debuff/battlefield control the extra muscle your casters are bringing along etc. Have those techniques still matter (since they use up enemy caster actions that would otherwise be spent targeting the party) but not dictate the flow of combat completely in the PCs' favor.

But that just feeds the "it takes a wizard to counter a wizard" problem. It's an arms race that those who can't [summon/call/shapeshift/duplicate/reanimate/charm] can't participate in and lose by fiat.

I probably would limit the damage by making so each caster can only do a limited subset of the problematic things. Basically limiting the flexibility of casters. That is, someone who can summon can't also do X, etc. This is in addition to fixing the truly broken spells.

Maybe (and this is just an idea) set fixed lists of creatures that can be summoned/called/polymorphed into that doesn't have any of the really problematic ones. Might want to require some kind of recurring action cost to maintaining control of summoned (called, reanimated, etc) creatures. As a DM I'm not a fan of minionmancy due to the massively-increased play-time cost. One added creature is (mostly) fine, but two is bad and three is horrific. It also leads to unbalanced turns (and thus spotlight issues)--one player takes 30 minutes and the rest take 1.

[ryu]

But that just feeds the "it takes a wizard to counter a wizard" problem. It's an arms race that those who can't [summon/call/shapeshift/duplicate/reanimate/charm] can't participate in and lose by fiat.

I probably would limit the damage by making so each caster can only do a limited subset of the problematic things. Basically limiting the flexibility of casters. That is, someone who can summon can't also do X, etc. This is in addition to fixing the truly broken spells.

Maybe (and this is just an idea) set fixed lists of creatures that can be summoned/called/polymorphed into that doesn't have any of the really problematic ones. Might want to require some kind of recurring action cost to maintaining control of summoned (called, reanimated, etc) creatures. As a DM I'm not a fan of minionmancy due to the massively-increased play-time cost. One added creature is (mostly) fine, but two is bad and three is horrific. It also leads to unbalanced turns (and thus spotlight issues)--one player takes 30 minutes and the rest take 1.

Okay point of language here that's not victory by fiat. Fiat victory would involve a third party not under the direct control of either of the participants directly weakening or buffing one of the participants to decide the outcome. What you're actually describing is a situation where one side is just demonstrably inferior in resources and capabilities and will only ever win by fiat, in this case you nerfing the caster side.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Okay point of language here that's not victory by fiat. Fiat victory would involve a third party not under the direct control of either of the participants directly weakening or buffing one of the participants to decide the outcome. What you're actually describing is a situation where one side is just demonstrably inferior in resources and capabilities and will only ever win by fiat, in this case you nerfing the caster side.

I was responding to someone who proposed that the DM should counter "broken" spells by adding things that target the weaknesses of those spells. The proposals mostly included just ramping up the things--summoning more creatures to deal with the party's menagerie, dispelling the illusions, etc. None of those help the people who can't use the broken spells contribute. Since those are spell-vs-spell situations, you need other spells to counter those. Thus you get an arms race which the non-casters can't even participate in. And thus they lose, by DM fiat (the DM got into an arms race against half the party, said arms race doesn't even include the other half who just stand around and are useless).

The situation isn't Casters VS Non-Casters, it's (group of T1 PCs vs challenge) compared to (mixed tier group vs same challenge). If the challenge is tuned for the T1, the mixed tier group is in serious trouble. If the challenge is tuned for the mixed group, the T1 group rofl-stomps the challenge. The same applies within a group--groups would be substantially more powerful regardless of the circumstance by replacing (or even removing and not replacing) a lower-tier party member. The solution I was responding to would make this incentive even worse by tuning the challenges for the T1 members and ignoring the lower ones. There'd be less slack in the encounters and thus the deadweight would have to be pruned.

True, you could "fix" the problem by buffing the non-casters to T1 instead, but I'm focusing (in this thread) on bringing T1 casters down to T2. I don't accept that T1 (can do all the things expertly all the time) is a good thing for a game (outside of very specific circumstances that involve everyone playing T1). T2 can play well with T3, T1 can't play nice with anything but T1 (and maybe the very top of T2).

The only thing that can take on a T1 caster is another T1 caster. Thus, the idea is to cut T1 off and stop the curve at T2. Same goes (for PC classes anyway) for chopping off T5 (and most of T4) and bringing those up to T3.5/T3 at the worst.

Exact balance is a pipe dream, but at least you can make everyone relevant most of the time. You can't if you insist that the defining characteristic of a wizard is that he can do anything better than anyone else can (beating the specialists in their specialty). Presuming rough balance is a goal, T1 has to go.

[ngilop]

You premise on the above post is 100% wrong.

the tier 1 character ONLY makes the other lower tier classes moot IF the player in charge of said character intentionally is being a jerk about it.

CASE IN POINT: look up treantmonk's guide for wizards. It is all about how you can 'break the game' but not outshine any of your other party members



I have no idea why you feel that somehow banning, nerfing or what not certain classes when it is never the lcasses themselves' fault.

Its the player, if player A is going to break the game as class 1. But you ban class 1, he will still break the game as class 2.


What you need to do is stop it at the source and just tell your players to not be jerks, to work as a team and don't purposely do anything to render another player invalid.

Just tell them to be nice, not a bunch of French word for showers and then you will no thave to cut the game up 8 ways to sunday to 'make it work' when that will not really do anything at all to solve the issue.

[Telonius]

I don't think that metamagic does nothing, exactly. At the very least removing metamagics would prevent casters from breaking action economy with Quicken spells. It also removes some of the higher-op direct damage tricks, like from the Mailman (and other related builds). It also takes away several of their "No!" buttons, like still and silent spell. You'd still have to get to the caster, but being grappled or Silenced would be a more dangerous proposition.