Making casters mad

[Deophaun]

This doesn't do jack. All you did is make SoDs unusuable.

They aren't unusuable, you just basically choose whether you want to use SoDs or if you want more bonus spells.

Int you just need to be able to hit 19 at level 17.
Wisdom could no longer be a dump stat for arcane casters.
Charisma can still be a dump stat for divines. (Persisted divine power doesn't care how ugly you are)

Of course, now you are free to maybe make a physical stat your primary. Now the Wizard can be stronger than the Fighter without polymorph.

[magicalmagicman]

You do realize every single person in this thread is repeating what RoboEmperor is saying right? That this house rule won't do anything except make a certain arsenal/playstyle of spellcasters less usable including ericgau who repeated that casual gamers will suffer while veterans will shrug them off. Your continual denial of what everyone is saying here by repeating the same incorrect assumptions or facts is frustrating but oh well. At least we tried.

You need the +6 int at level 15 not level 20. So it's not 46000gp out of 760000 but 200000. That's almost the quarter of your wealth you need to invest to combat your house rule. Since you can't cherry pick your gear and have to sell it at half price it actually ends up being 50% of your wealth by level to deal with your house rule. Why you keep claiming false facts as the basis of your argument against RoboEmperor puzzles me.

You have failed to properly describe your goals as Mike Miller pointed out and I got nothing from your argument with RoboEmperor. It seems your main goal is to nerf glitterdust and sleep? You keep claiming your house rule is a minor nerf on spellcasters which is incorrect. There is no effect on spellcasters who knows how to use their class to their fullest and 50% wealth reduction for casual players. What is the point of doing this?

You keep claiming fighters can contribute at high levels at which point i wonder, what is the point of all these house rules?

So without a goal, we just end up going in circles where you deny what everyone is saying in this thread to uphold your agenda to do... something...

So why don't you start being productive and answer Mike Miller's post by telling us what exactly is your problem with spellcasters and what you're trying to achieve with these house rules?

[blackwindbears]

Sure, but even the level 18 warrior can contribute in the same situations as the fighter. After all, they can both swing sticks around and do nothing else, right? Notice that I didn't say contribute, I said "meaningfully contribute". Compare & contrast the situations wherein the fighter contributed with where a statistically better class (that also fills the fighter's role) could've contributed, in addition to any situations where the other class could contribute where the fighter couldn't. Oh, and how well did the fighter do?

I don't know what other DM's are doing, but the high level fighters in my campaigns haven't been incapable of contributing meaningfully. They haven't contributed the most. That designation, weirdly, was at first to a high level ranger who always seemed to win initiative and had very well chosen favored enemies (belt of battle played a big role there too). Well, until it went to a rogue with staggering strike.

Naturally some combats favored the fighter for various reasons, but that's typical for just about any game.

Not necessarily. My Focused Transmuter or Focused Conjurer won't need the save DCs when they're buffing and summoning, respectively.

That's a good point. How might you have built them differently if this house rule were in place?

This implies that clerics dropping wisdom is a bad thing?

Well, I guess I don't know. How important are wise clerics in your view of generic fantasy?

[Cosi]

I certainly suspect this would succeed in making spellcasters angry. Jokes aside, there are obvious problems with this.

Most notably, nerfing casters is just going about things wrong. The overwhelming majority of abilities casters have are fair, and the largest imbalance occurs because there are parts of the game where casters have relevant abilities and martials don't. Consider the case of a mage using teleport to allow the party to rapidly travel a long distance. Sure, that's better than anything a Fighter could have done in the same situation. But that's because a Fighter couldn't do anything in that situation. He has no relevant class abilities. So the first step in any attempted balance patch or set of houserules should be dramatic and sweeping buffs to martials. They need to get better in combat, and they need to do anything at all out of it. Once that happens we can consider what nerfs casters need to catch.

But the specifics of this fix (like most quick caster nerfs actually) don't fix the problem spells. 90% or more of the balance problems are caused by a tiny subset of the spells, and this fix does nothing to help with them. In fact, in an environment where you get less spells per day at lower DCs, options like simulacrum which don't require a save and don't need to be cast on the day you use them look even better. You're basically setting up incentives that point casters directly at the most broken spells available to them.

Finally, and most specifically to this fix, you've removed a lot of the distinctiveness casters might have. Previously, Wizards, Sorcerers, and Clerics all wanted different stats and therefore would all be good at different things. Wizards were good at Knowledge, Clerics had good scouting abilities and mental defenses, Sorcerers were more proficient at social interaction. Plus all the other stuff that could key off those stats. Now everyone wants pretty much the same stats in pretty much the same amounts. That's dumb and makes the game shallower.

rather than relying on party casters, non-casters are expected to have full suites of items to make them self-sufficient, and the same cheap items written to enable this mean casters don't need to buff their allies or themselves and have far more wealth and spell slots

Yes, characters are expected to pull their own weight. The idea that it is acceptable for the Wizard and Cleric to provide the Fighter with buffs, healing, transportation, information, resurrection, and in-combat support while the Fighter provides nothing in exchange is farcical (before you respond make sure you understand what the phrases "marginal cost" and "value above replacement" mean). You're asking to be allowed to show up with a partial character and demand the rest of the group help you finish it. That's not remotely okay, and it warps the entire game around you.

[blackwindbears]

They aren't unusuable, you just basically choose whether you want to use SoDs or if you want more bonus spells.

Int you just need to be able to hit 19 at level 17.
Wisdom could no longer be a dump stat for arcane casters.
Charisma can still be a dump stat for divines. (Persisted divine power doesn't care how ugly you are)

Of course, now you are free to maybe make a physical stat your primary. Now the Wizard can be stronger than the Fighter without polymorph.

That's more or less the conclusion I came to as well.

But, if you could make a physical stat your primary with this house rule, what was keeping you from doing it before? If you don't need bonus spells or a high save DC, then you just need the minimum for getting the spell levels, correct?

You do realize every single person in this thread is repeating what RoboEmperor is saying right? That this house rule won't do anything except make a certain arsenal/playstyle of spellcasters less usable including ericgau who repeated that casual gamers will suffer while veterans will shrug them off. Your continual denial of what everyone is saying here by repeating the same incorrect assumptions or facts is frustrating but oh well. At least we tried.

Frankly I'd be more impressed if you or robo could quantify the change, looks like either no change and 46K gold, or something like -2 to save DCs. I'm not convinced it makes it completely unplayable. I'd also be somewhat more convinced if you didn't screw up the math in this next section here.

You need the +6 int at level 15 not level 20. So it's not 46000gp out of 760000 but 200000. That's almost the quarter of your wealth you need to invest to combat your house rule. Since you can't cherry pick your gear and have to sell it at half price it actually ends up being 50% of your wealth by level to deal with your house rule. Why you keep claiming false facts as the basis of your argument against RoboEmperor puzzles me.

If you buy and sell the +int items it ends up costing a total of 46K. Not at all sure how you got to 50% of wealth by level. (A +6 item costs 36K, and you've lost 10K from selling the previous items). Worst case scenario it looks to me like they might delay a spell level, and be on par with spontaneous characters. This, in my view, is not a crisis. Maybe you put your 15 in int and your 13 in cha. Then it's cost you a grand total of a -1 to your save DC.

Did you follow that? You and Robo are claiming that it makes an entire set of options for a caster completely untenable over a -1 to save DC. At least the other folks are claiming that it makes them slightly worse, rather than claiming

All you did is make SoDs unusuable.

For a -1 to save DC. Can you imagine if I suggested adding 8 to save DC's rather than 10? He'd probably claim that all of the spells allowing a save might as well be removed from the game.

You have failed to properly describe your goals as Mike Miller pointed out and I got nothing from your argument with RoboEmperor. It seems your main goal is to nerf glitterdust and sleep? You keep claiming your house rule is a minor nerf on spellcasters which is incorrect. There is no effect on spellcasters who knows how to use their class to their fullest and 50% wealth reduction for casual players. What is the point of doing this?

Glitterdust and sleep were brought up because it didn't take me going very far down the wizard spell list to find non-suboptimal options for wizards that required save DCs.

You keep claiming fighters can contribute at high levels at which point i wonder, what is the point of all these house rules?

So without a goal, we just end up going in circles where you deny what everyone is saying in this thread to uphold your agenda to do... something...

So why don't you start being productive and answer Mike Miller's post by telling us what exactly is your problem with spellcasters and what you're trying to achieve with these house rules?

If you'd like to contribute to the thread please reread OP and answer any of the questions I actually asked. If you have no interest please refrain from commenting. Thank you.

[JNAProductions]

You don't own the thread, you know. People are allowed to say what they want, even if it disagrees with what you want to hear.

[Mike Miller]

If you'd like to contribute to the thread please reread OP and answer any of the questions I actually asked. If you have no interest please refrain from commenting. Thank you.

You are making it difficult for people to contribute by not answering questions regarding the premise behind your changes. Other than it being interesting, what problems are you having and what goals did you have in mind?

[blackwindbears]

Finally, and most specifically to this fix, you've removed a lot of the distinctiveness casters might have. Previously, Wizards, Sorcerers, and Clerics all wanted different stats and therefore would all be good at different things. Wizards were good at Knowledge, Clerics had good scouting abilities and mental defenses, Sorcerers were more proficient at social interaction. Plus all the other stuff that could key off those stats. Now everyone wants pretty much the same stats in pretty much the same amounts. That's dumb and makes the game shallower.

Do you have any suggestions about how to make them more differentiated in the context of this house rule?

---

For future posters, I've read plenty of "the problem with spellcasters is they can cast good spells." I appreciate the input, but it's not particularly novel, nor have I found it to be true in actual games.

---

I suppose a question related to the OP here, is why are some classes MAD and some classes SAD? Is it better design for all of the classes to be SAD (and for the love of god, the question isn't would characters be more powerful if they were all SAD)? Equivalently why not let all characters have one ability score, called goodness (or hell, level) or something, and let all of the bonuses key off of the one ability? Why have ability scores at all? Simulationism? Die rolling minigame at the beginning of the campaign? Tradition?

[Nifft]

I'm considering a houserule (for 3.5) in which primary casting stats are done away with and split up over mental stats:

Int: Determines highest level spell you can cast
Wis: Determines bonus spells
Cha: Determines save DC

I made a class with similar mechanics, but I used Int differently: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthr...stic-of-Selene

Int - prepare bonus spells
Wis - gain bonus daily slots
Cha - spell DC

In my class, you needed any one mental ability score to be (10 + level) to cast spells of that level, so I wanted to see what happened if people used the same framework for all 7 combinations of spellcasting:
- High Int, dump others
- High Wis, dump others
- High Cha, dump others
- High Int + Wis, dump Cha
- High Int + Cha, dump Wis
- High Wis + Cha, dump Int
- High All Three

This wasn't exactly like your proposal, but you may be interested in hearing the upshot from my (limited) testing. Basically, Wisdom and Charisma were less valuable than Int. Many of the best spells don't permit any saving throw, and temporary Charisma-boosting effects are useful when you do need to force a saving throw.

Charisma was viable as a mono-stat build. A solid blaster / BFC / dominator / Planar Binding build would center around Charisma, and those things include several awesome things.

Wisdom wasn't worth it.

If I were to re-do this class, I'd probably do something like...

Int - prep more spells
Wis - duration
Cha - saving throws

NOTHING would give you more slots per day except levels and items -- kinda like 5e, except different.

Anyway, that's my experience.

[blackwindbears]

But the specifics of this fix (like most quick caster nerfs actually) don't fix the problem spells. 90% or more of the balance problems are caused by a tiny subset of the spells, and this fix does nothing to help with them. In fact, in an environment where you get less spells per day at lower DCs, options like simulacrum which don't require a save and don't need to be cast on the day you use them look even better. You're basically setting up incentives that point casters directly at the most broken spells available to them.

Can you point me to a list of problem spells by the way? I know the wizard-op handbooks have a few candidates. The notorious PaO for example.

[blackwindbears]

I made a class with similar mechanics, but I used Int differently: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthr...stic-of-Selene

Int - prepare bonus spells
Wis - gain bonus daily slots
Cha - spell DC

In my class, you needed any one mental ability score to be (10 + level) to cast spells of that level, so I wanted to see what happened if people used the same framework for all 7 combinations of spellcasting:
- High Int, dump others
- High Wis, dump others
- High Cha, dump others
- High Int + Wis, dump Cha
- High Int + Cha, dump Wis
- High Wis + Cha, dump Int
- High All Three

This wasn't exactly like your proposal, but you may be interested in hearing the upshot from my (limited) testing. Basically, Wisdom and Charisma were less valuable than Int. Many of the best spells don't permit any saving throw, and temporary Charisma-boosting effects are useful when you do need to force a saving throw.

Charisma was viable as a mono-stat build. A solid blaster / BFC / dominator / Planar Binding build would center around Charisma, and those things include several awesome things.

Wisdom wasn't worth it.

If I were to re-do this class, I'd probably do something like...

Int - prep more spells
Wis - duration
Cha - saving throws

NOTHING would give you more slots per day except levels and items -- kinda like 5e, except different.

Anyway, that's my experience.

Very cool, thanks for pointing me to it.

[magicalmagicman]

You are making it difficult for people to contribute by not answering questions regarding the premise behind your changes. Other than it being interesting, what problems are you having and what goals did you have in mind?

It seems you're on his ignore list. Might as well, I'm gonna take his suggestion and refrain from posting.

[Deophaun]

But, if you could make a physical stat your primary with this house rule, what was keeping you from doing it before? If you don't need bonus spells or a high save DC, then you just need the minimum for getting the spell levels, correct?

The package deal of getting all that stuff is what was "preventing" you. You've always ever only needed to max at a 19 in your primary mental stat for a caster. The bonus spells and scaling DCs is what made further investment in the stat worthwhile, plus certain spells pegged their strength to your primary casting stat (kelpstrand, for instance, likes high-Wis druids).

[EldritchWeaver]

For a -1 to save DC. Can you imagine if I suggested adding 8 to save DC's rather than 10? He'd probably claim that all of the spells allowing a save might as well be removed from the game.

Robo provided info on how the DC is going to be different by 5-6, not just 1, since you can't afford to boost all stats at once compared to a SAD caster:

I don't but I'm not gonna waste resources into boosting my spell's save DCs when it is 5-6 less than what it should be when I need to use it against monsters who usually has +15-19 to their save. 30 casting stat? That's a +10, so a 9th level spell will have a save DC of 29 against agaisnt a Balor's +19 will save. Meaning 45% success chance ignoring spell resistance. If we add spell resistance to the mix the success rate plumets even further. Drop it to 19 because of your house rule? That's a +4 which makes it a 15% success chance without spell resistance. Am I gonna waste an action on a 15% success chance spell that also needs to overcome spell resistance? The answer is hell no. So I'm not gonna bother pumping my save DC. At all.

No, instead I'll get my INT to 19 and spend my wealth on other things and never anything that boosts my CHA because there is no point. There are many, many, MANY things that let me ignore save DCs so why would I choose to do a build that relies on save DCs when you gimped it so hard? The answer is I wouldn't. So you made it unviable.

[blackwindbears]

You are making it difficult for people to contribute by not answering questions regarding the premise behind your changes. Other than it being interesting, what problems are you having and what goals did you have in mind?

I'm not having any particular problems. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to create new, unforseen, serious problems, by making this change. It's a hypothesis. What are the probable effects? So far folk have pointed out more than a few.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Specialist wizards compared

	Vanilla	Houserule: max slots	Houserule: max DC
28 point-buy	10/12/14/18/8/8	8/12/14/15/16/8	8/12/14/14/14/14
Racial	8/12/14/20/8/8 (dragonborn grey elf, -2 str, +2 int)	8/12/14/15/18/10 (lesser aasimar, +2 wis/+2 cha)	8/12/14/14/16/16 (lesser aasimar, +2 wis/+2 cha)
Level 20 stats	8/12/14/36/8/8 (increases on int, +6 headband, +5 int tome, 72 000 gp)	8/12/14/19/32/8 (increases on wis, +6 periapt, +4 headband, +5 wis tome, 56 000 gp)	8/12/14/20/22/32 (increases on cha, +6 cloak, +6 periapt, +6 headband, +5 cha tome)
Spell slots	4/9/8/8/8/8/7/7/7/7	4/8/8/8/7/7/7/7/6/6	4/7/7/6/6/6/6/5/5/5
Spell slot delta (levels)	+0/+0/+0/+0/+0/+0/+0/+0/+0/+0 (0)	+0/-1/+0/+0/-1/-1/+0/+0/-1/-1 (-27)	+0/-2/-1/-2/-2/-2/-1/-2/-2/-2 (-82)
Save DC	23 + spell level	10 + spell level	21 + spell level

Focussing on spells per day: Your save DC is terrible, and you lose ~7% of your spell slots (including an 8th and a 9th) and ~2% of your WBL.
Focussing on save DC: Your save DC is slightly lower, and you lose ~22% of your spell slots (including two 8ths and two 9ths) and ~9% of your WBL.


Focussing on spells per day: You'll be nearly as effective as the vanilla wizard, but somewhat less versatile, since you can't effectively save-or-die a vulnerable target. Pick summons and buffs to avoid save DCs.
Focussing on save DC: You'll run out of spells noticably faster than the vanilla wizard, and you'll still be somewhat worse at your primary trick than a vanilla wizard doing the same thing. Pick spells that are more than single-shot effects like blackfire and avascular mass to conserve spell slots*. Ironically, some of the best ways to conserve spell slots involve no-save spells, including buffing and many forms of minionmancy.


Overall, I'd say the wizard looking for save DCs is worse off than the wizard only looking for spell slots, and the number of viable spells for each given wizard is reduced.


P.S. Wisdom is much easier to boost than Intelligence and Charisma, thanks to owl''s insight (Charisma is slightly easier to boost than Intelligence, too). All of the above wizards could easily have a +12 enhancement bonus to wisdom (replacing the periapt's +6, where applicable), if they managed to get the spell from a druid. Since that requires one to go off-list and employ some persistomancy, I haven't included it as baseline. Persistomancy typically favoures Intelligence (due to the Incantatrix' tricks being so powerful) and opens up a ton of buff spells to evaluate at each level. At very high levels of optimization, this houserule would work out to be a straight buff, because you get more slots for free, and you can get enough Metamagic Effect uses with body outside body. In TO, it doesn't matter at all, as any stat can be arbitrarily high.

Of course, the same owl's insight effect works quite heavily against any wisdom-based caster, as they would lose the advantage of easily-buffed spell DCs.

*I'm not up-to-date on top spells-with-save picks, but those two are pretty cool.

[blackwindbears]

The package deal of getting all that stuff is what was "preventing" you. You've always ever only needed to max at a 19 in your primary mental stat for a caster. The bonus spells and scaling DCs is what made further investment in the stat worthwhile, plus certain spells pegged their strength to your primary casting stat (kelpstrand, for instance, likes high-Wis druids).

Good point!

Robo provided info on how the DC is going to be different by 5-6, not just 1, since you can't afford to boost all stats at once compared to a SAD caster:

He never *actually* provided the info that this was the case. He simply announces it is, then points out that having save DC's 5 or 6 worse makes it too hard to do. Well that might be the case. Here's what I see.

SAD (SoD) Wizard Level 5
str: 8
dex: 13
con: 14
int: 16
wis: 10
cha: 12
Equipment: 9000 gold
Save DC: 16

MAD (SoD) Wizard Level 5
str: 8
dex: 12
con: 14
int: 13
wis: 10
cha: 16
Equipment: 9000 gold
Save DC: 16

SAD Wizard Level 10
str: 8
dex: 13
con: 14
int: 19
wis: 10
cha: 12
Equipment: +2 int crown (4K), 45K gold
Save DC: 20

MAD Wizard level 10
str: 8
dex: 12
con: 14
int: 15
wis: 10
cha: 19
Equipment: +2 int crown (4K), +2 cha cape (4K), 41K gold
Save DC: 19

SAD Wizard level 15
str: 8
dex: 13
con: 14
int: 24
wis: 10
cha: 12
Equipment: +6 int crown (36k), 164K gold
Save DC: 25

MAD Wizard level 15
str: 8
dex: 12
con: 14
int: 19
wis: 10
cha: 20
Equipment: +6 int crown (36k), +4 cloak (16k), 148 K gold (Probably could afford the +6 cloak, but hell, I can be conservative)
Save DC: 24

(For brevities sake this continues. At level 20 the MAD wizard's save DC catches back up.)

Do you know where the heck he's getting a 10-12 ability score difference from? Hell if I know.


Edit: Ninja'd ExLibrisMortis did this more completely with far nicer formatting, and again, I don't at all see how a Save or Die wizard is rendered unplayable. Though it nicely summarizes what it will cost to go with SoD.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Edit: Ninja'd ExLibrisMortis did this more completely with far nicer formatting, and again, I don't at all see how a Save or Die wizard is rendered unplayable. Though it nicely summarizes what it will cost to go with SoD.

It's not unplayable. It's significantly worse than vanilla.

Any nerf to a wizard's spells per day or save DCs encourages the use of Persistent shapechange, planar binding, animate dead, and so on. It's not a hit to the class' power per sé, it's more of a narrowing of the focus required to acquire world-shattering power. All of the funky "I cast a spell and you will suffer!" builds are slowly weeded out with each successive sweeping nerf.

[blackwindbears]

It's not unplayable. It's significantly worse than vanilla.

Any nerf to a wizard's spells per day or save DCs encourages the use of Persistent shapechange, planar binding, animate dead, and so on. It's not a hit to the class' power per sé, it's more of a narrowing of the focus required to acquire world-shattering power. All of the funky "I cast a spell and you will suffer!" builds are slowly weeded out with each successive sweeping nerf.

I don't think that my wizards would stop memorizing disintegrate in view of this. Hell, they aren't going to stop memorizing fireball on account of this.

People are still playing fighters and rangers in my games so I don't see why, if they wanted an SoD wizard, they'd stop doing that. Unless the argument is that a SoD wizard is substantially worse than a fighter given this houserule?

If I understand correctly, before the rule change the vanilla wizard could just change his spells in the morning to play a plausible save or die wizard, now it would require a conscious build choice. Right?

[JNAProductions]

If casters aren't a problem, why nerf them in your game?

[blackwindbears]

If casters aren't a problem, why nerf them in your game?

I'm interested in the rule. Frankly the fluff of it appeals to me.

I think I must have miscommunicated in the original post. It seems to have been taken as, "should I have this houserule?"

What I meant to ask was, "if I have this houserule what are the probable effects?"

This wasn't helped when I spent two pages arguing with a hyperbolic statement about save or dies. (That the DCs would be reduced by 5 or something).

[magicalmagicman]

I'm interested in the rule. Frankly the fluff of it appeals to me.

I think I must have miscommunicated in the original post. It seems to have been taken as, "should I have this houserule?"

What I meant to ask was, "if I have this houserule what are the probable effects?"

This wasn't helped when I spent two pages arguing with a hyperbolic statement about save or dies. (That the DCs would be reduced by 5 or something).

It is not a hyperbole. It is reduced by 5-6.

You're assuming players are going to minmax and waste 46000gp and all 5 level up ability score on your stupid house rule. If they don't because they spend their money on something else like they should then their DC will in fact be reduced by 5-6. If I was in your game I would start with 15 INT and put 4 ability points from level up into INT and not waste my precious money on a stupid headband of intellect and get significantly better magic items especially since if I sell my loot my WBL is reduced. You seem to fail to understand WBL is found loot, not amount of gp after selling loot.

Seriously, who is gonna spend 82000gp to boost their save DC by 3? No one which is why it is unviable and not a hyperbole. I'm serious, who is gonna waste 46000gp combating your house rule and 36000gp for a +3 DC boost? 82000gp buys really good magic items so why would anyone spend it for +3 DC? How is it even remotely fathomable that requiring 82000gp to boost your save DC by +3 isn't completely destroying SoDs?

If your wizards don't stop preparing disintegrate then that's because they're casual gamers who don't know any better and you're hurting them for absolutely no reason.

Stop arguing basic facts. Every single person in this thread disagrees with you. It's so hard to refrain from posting when seeing such incorrect theorycrafting and then that person pointing fingers and blaming others. Your house rule is terrible and accomplishes absolutely nothing.

[AvatarVecna]

"This hasn't happened in my games" and "this doesn't happen in modules that can be designed to try and work around these problems" doesn't mean that these problems don't exist. Normally, full caster vs anything else (and when I say "vs", that could be "they're fighting" or "they're competing for the same roles at the table to see who does better") tends to be like playing a game of chess where one side is only allowed king and queen, and the other side has all the normal pieces; this change, to continue the metaphor, takes away the queen from the side that has all their pieces; if you squint at the board, and have the barest understanding of chess, you might be inclined to think that losing your queen makes this a much more even game, and in a sense you're right, but versatility and options are more important in a tactical game than pure power, and that's what we're looking at here: even if you build a caster who doesn't need save DCs at all (giving up most of their ways to deal direct damage, or impose the most awful debuffs), you haven't effected buffs or utility at all, and you've only touched on the nastier BFC spells. Blasting was already the worst way to spend your time as a caster, and debuffing tends to vary depending on the enemies you face, but buffing/BFC/utility is still enough versatility that it lets casters access the stupid broken tricks that apparently never come up in your game.

Tier 1 classes aren't T1 because they have high save DCs. In fact, most of the common T1 tactics involve things that don't allow saves at all, or try to minimize how much a good save bonus can actually matter. What makes a class Tier 1 is being able to always answer "yes" to the questions "does your class have a way to deal with {situation}?" and "could you personally be capable of that solution in a short period of time?", regardless of how circumstantial the situation in question is. A well-built fighter can solve any problem involving hitting it really hard with a stick, but when violence isn't a solution, the fighter is kinda boned. A well-built rogue can solve most any problem relating to combat or a skill check, but when something is beyond the ability of skills to contribute, they're equally boned. But magic is always relevant somehow.

The fact that you have removed a small portion of the combat-only toys out of the toybox doesn't change that the T1 casters get an extradimensional toybox instead of just a foam sword and a nerf gun.

Spoiler: No Save, Just Lose

Show

Venerable Fire Elf/Necropolitan/Wizard 20. Elf Wizard racial ACF levels 1 and 3. Spontaneous Divination at lvl 5.

Stats (lvl 1, 32 point-buy): 14/15/8/15/16/8
Stats (lvl 1, adjusted): 8/11/1/20/19/9
Stats (lvl 11, no items, wishes via Planar Binding): 13/16/-/25/26/14
Stats (lvl 20, no items): 13/16/-/26/28/14
Stats (lvl 20, items): 13/22/-/32/34/14
Familiar: Hummingbird (+8 to Init)

(Note: originally, I was gonna roll stats and just work with whatever the dice gave me for this build, but then I rolled 18/18/16/14/11/11. Since I didn't want people able to say "this build only works cuz you rolled boss stats".)

Skills:

• Concentration: 23 (+33)
  Knowledge (Arcana): 23 (+48)
  Knowledge (A&E): 1 (+12)
  Knowledge (Dungeoneering): 23 (+44)
  Knowledge (Geography): 1 (+12)
  Knowledge (History): 1 (+12)
  Knowledge (Local): 23 (+44)
  Knowledge (Nature): 23 (+44)
  Knowledge (Religion): 23 (+44)
  Knowledge (The Planes): 23 (+44)
  Spellcraft: 23 (+46)

Feats:

• HD 1: Collegiate Wizard
• Flaw (Feeble): Aerenal Arcanist
• Flaw (Frail): Improved Initiative
• Wizard 1: Scribe Scroll
• HD 3: Knowledge Devotion
• HD 6: Spell Mastery
• HD 9: Uncanny Forethought
• Wizard 10: Miser With Magic
• HD 12: Extraordinary Spell Aim
• HD 15: Extend Spell
• Wizard 15: Quicken Spell
• HD 18: Sanctum Spell
• Wizard 20: Spell Mastery

Items (44600 gp left):

• Arms (2000): Bracers of the Entangling Blast
• Body (5000): Ghost Shroud
• Face (36000): Headband Of Intellect +6
• Head (15000): Circlet of Rapid Casting
• Hands (36000): Gloves of Dexterity +6
• Neck (36000): Periapt Of Wisdom
• Neck/Slotless (16000): Hand Of Glory
• Ring (20000): Ring of Arcane Might
• Ring (40000): Ring of Freedom Of Movement
• Ring (80000): Ring of Skilled Casting
  • Concentration +10 (competence)
  • K (Arcana) +10 (competence)
  • K (Dungeoneering) +10 (competence)
  • K (Local) +10 (competence)
  • K (Nature) +10 (competence)
  • K (Religion) +10 (competence)
  • K (The Planes) +10 (competence)
  • Spellcraft +10 (competence)
• Shoulders (16000): War Wizard Cloak
• Torso (200000): Vest of the Archmagi
• Waist (12000): Belt of Battle
• Weapon (36600): Quarterstaff (+1 Eager Spellstrike/+1 Warning Defending)
• Other (2000): Handy Haversack
• Other (30000): Orange Ioun Stone
• Other (1800): Efficient Quiver
• Other (10000): Graft (Feathered Wings)
• Other (35000): Lesser Metamagic Rod of Quicken
• Other (12500): Blessed Book
• Other (6000): (16) lvl 0 Wand (dealer's choice)
• Other (6000): (8) lvl 1 Wand (dealer's choice)
• Other (18000): (4) lvl 2 Wand (dealer's choice)
• Other (22500): (2) lvl 3 Wand (dealer's choice)
• Other (21000): (1) lvl 4 Wand (dealer's choice)

Spoiler: Spellbook Spells

Show

0th lvl Spells (all 41)
1st lvl Spells (17):

• Alarm
• Endure Elements
• Enlarge Person
• Expeditious Retreat
• Feather Fall
• Grease
• Hail of Stone
• Identify
• Lesser Acid Orb
• Lesser Cold Orb
• Lesser Elecricity Orb
• Lesser Fire Orb
• Locate City
• Mount
• Power Word Pain
• Protection From Evil
• Scholar's Touch

2nd lvl Spells (12):

• Detect Thoughts
• Glitterdust
• Gust Of Wind
• Knock
• Lesser Celerity
• Locate Object
• Protection from Arrows
• Resist Energy
• Rope Trick
• Spider Climb
• Web
• Wings of Cover

3rd lvl Spells (12):

• Clairaudience/Clairvoyance
• Dispel Magic
• Fly
• Greater Magic Weapon
• Haste
• Heart of Water
• Nondetection
• Sleet Storm
• Stinking Cloud
• Tongues
• Water Breathing
• Wind Wall

4th lvl Spells (11):

• Arcane Eye
• Assay Spell Resistance
• Celerity
• Dimensional Anchor
• Dimension Door
• Locate Creature
• Polymorph
• Resilient Sphere
• Scrying
• Secure Shelter
• Stone Shape

5th lvl Spells (11):

• Cloudkill
• Contact Other Plane
• Lesser Planar Binding
• Major Creation
• Overland Flight
• Permanency
• Telekinesis
• Telepathic Bond
• Teleport
• Wall Of Force
• Wall Of Stone

6th lvl Spells (11):

• Antimagic Field
• Contingency
• Greater Anticipate Teleporation
• Greater Dispel Magic
• Greater Heroism
• Kyristan's Malevolent Tentacles
• Move Earth
• Planar Binding
• Starmantle
• Tactical Teleportation
• True Seeing

7th lvl Spells (11):

• Ability Rip
• Avasculate
• Control Weather
• Energy Immunity
• Forcecage
• Greater Scrying
• Greater Teleport
• Limited Wish
• Magnificent Mansion
• Planar Bubble
• Plane Shift

8th lvl Spells (11):

• Dimensional Lock
• Discern Location
• Embrace The Dark Chaos
• Greater Celerity
• Greater Planar Binding
• Greater Plane Shift
• Greater Prying Eyes
• Mind Blank
• Polymorph Any Object
• Shun The Dark Chaos
• Spell Engine

9th lvl Spells (11):

• Astral Projection
• Disjunction
• Foresight
• Gate
• Hindsight
• Magic Miasma
• Shapechange
• Summon Monster IX
• Towering Thunderhead
• Time Stop
• Wish

There's a lot going on in that build, but you can honestly ignore most of it. FMI basically takes away our need for Con (although if we're really worried about our Fort save, we can exchange the hummingbird for a rat and get +2/+4 Fort), we don't need to worry about Will at all, and if we're worried about Ref we can exchange Improved Initiative for Insightful Reflexes. The skills are mostly fluff, but are useful for Knowledge Devotion (which will boost accuracy for our ranged touch attacks while those still matter), and most of the other feats and items are useful to have, but aren't the crux of why this build is T1:

Grease, Hail of Stone, Lesser Orbs, Power Word Pain. Glitterdust, Knock, Web, Wings Of Cover. Fly, Haste, Sleet Storm, Stinking Cloud. Assay Spell Resistance, Celerity, Polymorph, Scrying. Cloudkill, Overland Flight, Teleport, Wall Of Force. Contingency, Greater Dispel Magic, Planar Binding, True Seeing. Ability Rip, Forcecage, Limited Wish, Magnificent Mansion, Plane Shift. Discern Location, Dark Chaos Shuffle, Greater Celerity, Greater Planar Binding, Mind Blank, Spell Engine. Astral Projection, Disjunction, Gate, Shapechange, Time Stop, Wish. This small sampling of the spellbook, with examples at every level, fundamentally changes how this wizard approaches combat in ways that either don't care about saving throws (for the vast majority of this sampling) or barely care about them (for a few duration'd BFCs that are really good for their level even without high Save DCs). It really comes to a head at lvl 9, when you have Polymorph/Scrying/Teleport, spells that combined give you a massive information advantage, let you choose the time and (more or less) the place where the fight will occur, and let you research spells/polymorph forms that can serve as specific counters to your enemies; I'm on record as saying that these three spells are the bare minimum for being T1 because of just how fundamentally they change your approach to combat, but the fact that you have so many more spell options every level is sweet sweet icing on top.

Countering an overpowered non-full-caster tends to involve just changing numbers in their stat block - if the ubercharger barbarian and the Swift Hunter are dealing too much damage, increase AC/HP/DR for a bunch of your monsters and suddenly things are much more even. But with a lot of caster tricks, "bigger numbers" isn't the answer, at least not on its own, because the caster isn't playing fair; tactics and strategy have to improve, and oftentimes, the only way to deal with a cheap magic trick is to counter with a cheap magic trick of your own to make the game play fair, but the fact that you have to counter cheaty magic with cheaty magic (and that you can't counter cheaty magic with skills and elbow grease alone) is just more proof of the disparity this houserule is trying to fix.

[Mike Miller]

I'm interested in the rule. Frankly the fluff of it appeals to me.

I think I must have miscommunicated in the original post. It seems to have been taken as, "should I have this houserule?"

What I meant to ask was, "if I have this houserule what are the probable effects?"

This wasn't helped when I spent two pages arguing with a hyperbolic statement about save or dies. (That the DCs would be reduced by 5 or something).

I think describing your players' characters would go a long way in describing what probable effects this would have on your campaign. Perhaps even explaining how casters have been used in the past if they aren't currently in use. Do you regularly use casters as enemy NPCs? Keep your houserules in mind when making them, too.

[Ignimortis]

I don't think that my wizards would stop memorizing disintegrate in view of this. Hell, they aren't going to stop memorizing fireball on account of this.

People are still playing fighters and rangers in my games so I don't see why, if they wanted an SoD wizard, they'd stop doing that. Unless the argument is that a SoD wizard is substantially worse than a fighter given this houserule?

If I understand correctly, before the rule change the vanilla wizard could just change his spells in the morning to play a plausible save or die wizard, now it would require a conscious build choice. Right?

If your wizards are happy to play blasters and buffers AD&D style, then you don't need to change anything. A wizard who primarily blasts stuff or casts Haste on Fighters is a perfectly balanced character at low-to-mid levels, and these kind of changes would hurt them a lot where they don't even need to be hurt.

Just as a general rule, if your input is that the problem with casters is that they cast spells, that's simply not very helpful.

The problem with casters isn't exactly that they cast spells. The problem with casters is how much access to various effects they get (and how much other characters don't get anything of the sort).

I'm perfectly fine with focused casters, especially if the martials in the same party are ToB/PoW based, because they have blind spots they can't just get rid of the next morning (disregarding Rainbow Servant-style shenanigans). This encourages teamplay and covering for each other in various situations, while preserving the general function of an arcane specialist as in "this guy has Knowledge (Arcane), Spellcraft, Identify and Detect Magic, plus a specific arsenal of useful magic that won't be useful each and every time").

The very basic point to demonstrate this is such. Two parties of 4 people are to adventure from level 1 to level 20. One party is full of 9ths casters (so a Wiizard, a Druid, a Cleric and someone else, let's say, a Beguiler for that useful low-level Trapfinding), and the other is completely martial-mundane (so a Fighter, a Barbarian, a Marshal and a Rogue). Their progress is usually this: first party struggles at levels 1-5 and then it's mostly smooth sailing unless they get really unlucky dice. Second party breezes through 1-5, and then rapidly falls off, ending up pretty useless after level 10, unless their Rogue had been investing into UMD the whole time and spent half their WBL to become a pseudo-caster.

[Fizban]

I suppose a question related to the OP here, is why are some classes MAD and some classes SAD?

I'd guess that the Favored Soul and Spirit Shaman are MAD because, like the Sorcerer, their spontaneous casting was seen as more powerful than the original prepared casting, so they needed some sort of huge nerf to compensate. They're also from one of the earlier 3.5 splatbooks- compare all the other added casters from later books, Beguiler, Dread Necro, Duskblade, Archivist, all higher powered sourcebooks (just 2 books actually, 3 if we add the Artificer), all SAD. Basically they were still in cautious 3.0 mindset when they made the MAD casters, then people didn't like those so they stopped.

The Shadowcaster is from a whole book of lower power magickyness, so naturally it has the MAD in spite of being later on.

[VladtheLad]

You could try splitting the difference in two attributes and then see how it goes.
Umm maybe int wis for wizards, cha int for sorcerers, wis cha for clerics and druids.
Then you could also try making all spell dc's equal to 1/2 caster levels+casting modifier. That way maybe the your highest spells will have lower dc's but your lower won't have totally inconsequential dc's? Plus its faster for all your spells to have one dc.

I don't know really just a thought.

[gogogome]

Seriously, who is gonna spend 82000gp to boost their save DC by 3? No one which is why it is unviable and not a hyperbole. I'm serious, who is gonna waste 46000gp combating your house rule and 36000gp for a +3 DC boost? 82000gp buys really good magic items so why would anyone spend it for +3 DC? How is it even remotely fathomable that requiring 82000gp to boost your save DC by +3 isn't completely destroying SoDs?

I think this is worth repeating.

It costs 36,000gp to boost a spellcaster's spell DC by +3. With the house rule it now takes 82,000gp for a minmaxer and it might not even be possible for a casual gamer. The OP seems to be using 20th level WBL exclusively but wealth does not matter at 20th level. Your wealth increases exponentially in the last few levels. If we use 15th level WBL since that is when the +6 headband of intellect is mandatory, 82,000gp investment out of 200,000gp just to get a boost to your save DC.

If the intention of the OP was to nerf spells that require saves to the point you need to dedicate your entire character for it then this house rule will work. But it seems really silly to nerf save or die spells since any opponent worth their salt will have immunities to most of them, and as others have mentioned, higher level monsters have high spell resistance and high saves.

[Cosi]

Do you have any suggestions about how to make them more differentiated in the context of this house rule?

You could have the attribute associations not be fixed for all casters. Use whatever the caster's default stat is for DCs, then have them pick the stats they want for the other two things. Actually, I'd probably drop it to two stats, because that's closer to what martials do and you can do one stat for DCs and the other one for Spell Slots and Max Spell Level. That alleviates some of imbalances in terms of how much people want different stats.

Can you point me to a list of problem spells by the way? I know the wizard-op handbooks have a few candidates. The notorious PaO for example.

I think it's less about a list of individual spells and more about attributes. Some things to consider (roughly in order of importance):

1. Does the spell allow you to open the MM to a random page and say "I want that"? If it does, it's likely to be a problem.
2. Does casting the spell yesterday provide a combat advantage today? If it does, it's likely to be a problem.
3. Does the spell allow you to act multiple times in a single initiative pass? If it does, it's likely to be a problem.

If you consider the most broken spells in the game -- planar binding, simulacrum, and the like -- they hit not just one, but all three of these issues. Of course, these aren't a perfect guideline. Some things that meet one of the criteria in question aren't problematic (e.g. summon monster giving you action advantage) and some things that don't meet any of the criteria are problematic (e.g. shivering touch is stupidly deadly). Even the spells that are problematic have uses that don't cause issues (using planar binding for utility, non-stacked extra action spells). But that's a good set of guidelines for identifying spells that cause issues.

[Deophaun]

What I meant to ask was, "if I have this houserule what are the probable effects?"

The problem with this rule is that it hits the floor hard, while doing precious little about the ceiling. High-op T1 casters are still going to break the game. Low-op T1s are going to have a tough time as their spells stop working. Mid-op T1s are going to be sorely tempted to go to high-op to maintain their baseline performance level. T3 casters are going to stay T3, but they will still suffer.

This is the problem with using general mechanics changes to nerf casters rather than dealing with individual classes and spells: by the time you have pounded the high-op T1s into line, you've done terrible, terrible damage to the surrounding, innocent playstyles.