Fixing Overpowered Spell Casters

[ubernoob]

Changing the rules is WORK and obviously that's the hardest one. Take the easy method (ask using the magic word).

I've been designing games for 35 years. Changing the rules, for me at least, is actually a lot easier than putting together a module every week.

My newest group of players have never played 3.x. So it's not like they'll miss the spells I take out. And we've already clearly established that 3.x didn't put any thought into balance at high levels. So it's not like I'll "ruin" the game balance by removing some spells.

Removing things is the easiest way to change rules...

I guarantee you that it took more effort to make this thread than to just ask your players not to be dicks. Fuck, you could just throw down the tomes and be pretty happy as far as balance is concerned. The problem here is not that there aren't balanced rules out there (the tomes are stickied at the top of this forum, E6 is OGL). The problem is that you are not creative in your storytelling. If you were creative, there would not be a problem.

By the way, can I see a list of your writing credits? I'd like to see what kind of designer thinks making a module is hard.

[Josh_Kablack]

I've been designing games for 35 years.

I find that highly implausible in the context of published RPGs, and a meaningless credential in any other context.

[Swordslinger]

TLDR: Tell better stories, get friends that aren't dicks, increase challenge level if needed (I once threw 2 planetars at a four person level 12 party, the party got curbstomped but it was a fun session for everybody).

The problem I have is that high level stories often aren't better stories.

The villain has to constantly keep himself hidden from the party, and thus they never really get to know him. By the time they do meet him, there's little emotional attachment to him, as he's just one more shadowy figure they probably know next to nothing about. The party has to be constantly kept in the dark as to where they're going and get lots of ridiculously OTT contrived adventures to prevent their abilities from auto-winning.

Further, the majority of "skilled" high level play involves doing tactics that aren't even heroic. Teleport ambushing people in their sleep, gating in your enemy and ganked him. All in all, the heroic fantasy aspect seems to be lost with all the powerful abilities, because playing a typical heroic style of play is usually the least optimal thing you can do. High level D&D is the playground of strategic cowardice and to most people, that's just not appealing.

[sabs]

How to Fix OverPowered Spellcasters:

Take bad dm's with no creativity out bank and shoot them.

Seriously, stop complaining that Wizards are powerful in a High Fantasy Game, at High Levels, and ask yourself, why did I make the fighters suck so hard, and why am I still trying to challenge Dimension Hopping Killers with Goblins in a brick dungeon.

[Midnight_v]

How to Fix OverPowered Spellcasters:

Take bad dm's with no creativity out bank and shoot them.

Seriously, stop complaining that Wizards are powerful in a High Fantasy Game, at High Levels, and ask yourself, why did I make the fighters suck so hard, and why am I still trying to challenge Dimension Hopping Killers with Goblins in a brick dungeon.

+1

@ NovemberMike.

Wizards are broken because the spell list was half copy paste from older editions that wasn't play tested. It's perfectly reasonable to get rid of the most egregious and genre breaking stuff (Teleportation, Rope Trick, Save or Dies etc).

Reasonable... genre breaking... hey you know the genre changes at high level? I just thought I'd tell you that before saying this: You're opinions are shit.
They really are, you don't know enough to be explaining things it seems like. Teleportation, Rope trick, save or dies. . . you don't know shit about the game, go read the monster manual, monsters are actually dangerous enough to fucking kill you without that shit.
They also teleport, and they also run save ordies so don't try to blame that shit on the spells not being playtested.
The problem is the game was playtested by PEOPLE LIKE YOU, who looked to see if they could play the game with "TANK,BLASTER,HEALER,SNEAK" and seeing that they could and not being good at math and not trying it at high level failed. Leavling people who like the system to build on and make it better. That making it better, doesnt' include making the wizards not have level apprpros abilities to protect the "Genre" you just make the game suck more.
The genre changes as you level Dungeons and Dragons becomes Dieties and Demigods at a certain level. You don't like that? Thats why they invented E6 with you in mind, but don't pretend like its a reasonable expenditure to rewrite the MM to keep people walking place to place. You're just an asshole then.

[Novembermike]

Seriously, stop complaining that Wizards are powerful in a High Fantasy Game, at High Levels, and ask yourself, why did I make the fighters suck so hard, and why am I still trying to challenge Dimension Hopping Killers with Goblins in a brick dungeon.

Let me put it this way. We have a level based system, which implies that every character of the same level (or experience points if you're using 2E) should be roughly as powerful as one another. In actuality, the spell casters are much more powerful than comparable level non casters once you get past level 3-4. There's no problem with high level wizards being powerful, they're just too powerful.

Quite. In fact, I'd go even further and state that if you send assassins after the party while they are resting they will assume that assassins will come after them while they are resting and become more conservative and take shorter work days. In order to husband resources that they can use in the apparently inevitable camp site battles after they stop actively adventuring.

Camp attacks are not a cure for a five minute workday, they create a four minute workday.

-Username17

Cool, let them take even shorter days. That just gives the enemy more time to prepare traps, gather their forces and hide their loot.

[Kaelik]

The villain has to constantly keep himself hidden from the party, and thus they never really get to know him. By the time they do meet him, there's little emotional attachment to him, as he's just one more shadowy figure they probably know next to nothing about. The party has to be constantly kept in the dark as to where they're going and get lots of ridiculously OTT contrived adventures to prevent their abilities from auto-winning.

Further, the majority of "skilled" high level play involves doing tactics that aren't even heroic. Teleport ambushing people in their sleep, gating in your enemy and ganked him. All in all, the heroic fantasy aspect seems to be lost with all the powerful abilities, because playing a typical heroic style of play is usually the least optimal thing you can do. High level D&D is the playground of strategic cowardice and to most people, that's just not appealing.

Oh goody, another person who doesn't actually understand how high level play works and instead whines constantly about shit he's read about on forums that is also completely wrong.

Like, every single thing you said is objectively wrong.

[sabs]

Seriously, stop complaining that Wizards are powerful in a High Fantasy Game, at High Levels, and ask yourself, why did I make the fighters suck so hard, and why am I still trying to challenge Dimension Hopping Killers with Goblins in a brick dungeon.

Let me put it this way. We have a level based system, which implies that every character of the same level (or experience points if you're using 2E) should be roughly as powerful as one another. In actuality, the spell casters are much more powerful than comparable level non casters once you get past level 3-4. There's no problem with high level wizards being powerful, they're just too powerful.

No the problem is that You don't think Fighters should have nice things, and you're uspet that he sucks compared to the Spellcaster*, because the Spellcaster DOES have nice things.

And your high level fighter? He thinks your Plot is bullshit too, because he's got a Flying Mount, he's got A Rod of Command. Hell, his Rogue friend has scrolls of teleportation. He can swing a sword 3-5 times, for every one of the other guy. He can literally have a dragon breath on him and think, "well that kinda sucked". He and his rogue friend get to flank you, meaning his obnoxious rogue friend gets to do 5d6 worth of damage to you, EVERY ATTACK. That's 3 times a round by level 10. Not to mention he gets another 5d6 on you every time you cast a spell.

A level 10 Fighter has: 50HP + 9d10 so anywhere from 60 to 140 hp, probably around 100. A Fireball from an equivalent Spellcaster does 10d6
That Save or Die Death spell? he has maybe a 15 percent chance of failing it. It only gets worse the higher level he gets. The level 17 fighter thinks that Conan is a pussy. He thinks that stabbing Dragons in the face is easy, unless they're Ancient Dragons. He's seriously considering going up against Orca to get his nice shoes.

Of course, at 10th, He's probably not 10 levels of figher. He's got at least one PRC in him.

Sure, he can't teleport all on his own. But he has ways around that in the game world. And he can probably combat teleport.

I know I know, magic items make you cry. You want to play in a world full of magic, but not have any magic yourself. It's like playing Shadowrun and making a guy with no cyber, no bio, and no magic, and whining that he can't compete.




* Spellcaster = (Wizard/Cleric/Sorceror/Druid)

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Remove almost all extraplanar/extradimensional movement spells. That's where most of the potentially problematic effects lie. For the first game, don't have any planar contact at all, including no outsiders. Then as new players get used to the game, reintroduce such, with their counters. Come up with some in-game workaround for stupid shit like chain binding at that point.

Make spell interruption actually viable, either by upping Concentration DCs or adopting 1e's method of any damage interrupting a spell.

(Only slightly tongue in cheek) Go back to 1e's spell memorization times, and make adventures time sensitive. Somehow a 5 minute workday every other day seems sufficiently ridiculous to cajole players into not trying it. If this isn't the case for you, try belittling your players for suggesting it. No one likes to be called a pussy.

[fectin]

If only there were a workaround for chain binding! Perhaps some sort of economic solution...


Also, what the hell, guy? "Try belittling your players"? That's the worst advice I've ever heard for a game. Literally, the absolute worst.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Thus the qualifer tongue-in-cheek. I'll use some emoticons next time.[/b]

[fectin]

Fair enough. The "only slightly" threw me off.

[PoliteNewb]

Here's a start, if you're serious:

1.) Ban the following: Acid Fog, Awaken, Black Tentacles, Blink, Displacement, Divine Power, Explosive Runes, Fabricate, Forcecage, Glibness, Glitterdust, Greater Teleport, Magic Jar, Mind Fog, Overland Flight, Planar Ally, Planar Binding, Righteous Might, Scry, Secret Page, Shadow Conjuration, Shadow Evocation, Solid Fog, Summon Nature's Ally I-IX, Summon Monster I-IX, Symbol (all), Transmute Rock to Mud, Wall of Force, and pretty much any spell over 7th level. Allow only select spells from splatbooks.

2.) Write your own Polymorph rules that are at least semi-sane.

3.) Limit Plane Shift to willing targets.

4.) Don't let Simulacrums make other Simulacrums.

5.) Make illusions automatically seen through if you touch them.

6.) Limit access to things that boost caster level or save DCs.

Really, it's a pretty serious job. You're arguably better off re-writing casters from the ground up.

But if you really want to do something, I would start with banning Clerics, Fighters, and Wizards.

This is actually a good idea (I think Frank might have suggested something similar once).

Try using only Scouts, Warblades, Warlocks, Spirit Shamans, Duskblades, Binders, Marshals, and Totemists as base classes. Allow whatever PrCs you like.

[Quantumboost]

Also, what the hell, guy? "Try belittling your players"? That's the worst advice I've ever heard for a game. Literally, the absolute worst.

Doesn't Warhammer 40k recommend you actually resolve rules interpretation conflicts through overt violence or something?

[FatR]

Further, the majority of "skilled" high level play involves doing tactics that aren't even heroic. Teleport ambushing people in their sleep, gating in your enemy and ganked him. All in all, the heroic fantasy aspect seems to be lost with all the powerful abilities, because playing a typical heroic style of play is usually the least optimal thing you can do. High level D&D is the playground of strategic cowardice and to most people, that's just not appealing.

What you label "heroic tactics" is just main characters being so overpowered, that they need no tactics and use none. Which is, by the way, uncommon in actual heroic fantasy.

[MGuy]

Its really all about your tastes. If you're going to redesign the game you have to know what you want your players doing and what you don't want them doing. If part of your design is "I don't want them to teleport" then take out all teleportation in the game. If your goal is "I don't want PCs to teleport in and kill the main bad guy there are any number of ways you can do that that don't involve you taking teleportation out of the game.

I started a thread just like this one with the intent on drawing back the power of casting classes with the intent to, in the future, ramp up martial classes. That's how it started but since then I've basically been designing my own game, very very slowly, for the better part of a year. You have to try and figure out what you want the game to look like. On that note, what DO you want your game to look like?

[DSMatticus]

Seriously, stop complaining that Wizards are powerful in a High Fantasy Game, at High Levels, and ask yourself, why did I make the fighters suck so hard, and why am I still trying to challenge Dimension Hopping Killers with Goblins in a brick dungeon.

First, I just want to say, high-level doesn't mean shit. It's a number. It doesn't mean anything until we provide it a context of what abilities high-level characters should have.

Now, you're completely right that, in the context of D&D land and its high-level abilities, fighters and wizards are playing entirely different games and it's super terrible.

But there really are two solutions. You have the Tomes approach, which is to let high-level fighters play the same game high-level wizards are playing. And then you have the 4e approach, which is to imply that plane-travelling demigods on the cusp of ascension spend their time going after goblins (super-powerful outsiders) in a brick (of pure evil) dungeon (by taking away their ability to do anything else).

There's a less offensive version of the 4e approach, which is to take the sweetspot of levels 3-8 and extend not only the ability and power list over 20 levels, but also extend the fluff (this is the part 4e got wrong: it combines high fantasy fluff with low fantasy gameplay. You can be a demigod, but gameplay will never make you feel like one). I believe this thread was about the latter (how to make D&D play like E6), which is a... strange question. But it's certainly possible: 4e managed to make 30 levels play exactly like the same level 30 times, so we know it's in principle possible. It's just such a massive undertaking for D&D as it currently exists, and it would leave wizards either overpowered or underpowered, so it's probably stupid to try and do this unless you're going to just do a massive retooling of the system.

[Kaelik]

1.) Ban the following: Acid Fog, Awaken, Black Tentacles, Blink, Displacement, Divine Power, Explosive Runes, Fabricate, Forcecage, Glibness, Glitterdust, Greater Teleport, Magic Jar, Mind Fog, Overland Flight, Planar Ally, Planar Binding, Righteous Might, Scry, Secret Page, Shadow Conjuration, Shadow Evocation, Solid Fog, Summon Nature's Ally I-IX, Summon Monster I-IX, Symbol (all), Transmute Rock to Mud, Wall of Force, and pretty much any spell over 7th level. Allow only select spells from splatbooks.

Why are you banning Glitterdust, but not Color Spray, Stinking Cloud, Web, Sleet Storm, Deep Slumber, Confusion, Fear, Entangle, and Control Winds?

Why Summon Monsters, and not Animate Dead/Create Undead?

Why Wall of Force and not Wall of Stone, Iron, Ice, Thorns?

Why Mind Fog at all? Has anyone ever used that spell ever? For anything?

[erik]

Kaelik, I imagine because they (usually) win encounters. Except for Mind Fog. That doesn't win anything.

Since I think the OP request was ways for casters not to win encounters that much, so limiting their arsenal of winners I guess helps that end. Though there are still plenty of encounter winners left, it just becomes a less interesting array of choices.

[Midnight_v]

I think that post was a joke really... well kind of a red herring to show how stupid it is to ban half the book.

[Kaelik]

Kaelik, I imagine because they (usually) win encounters. Except for Mind Fog. That doesn't win anything.

My point was precisely that Glitterdust is the same thing as Confusion/Web/Color Spray/ect.

Wall of Force is the same thing as Wall of Stone/Ice/Thorns.

Animate Dead is just more of an encounter winner than Summon Monster, ect.

That was my point. There is no reason to ban Glitterdust for winning encounters, but not ban Stinking Cloud.

[Midnight_v]

There is no reason to ban Glitterdust for winning encounters, but not ban Stinking Cloud.

Exactly, wihich is why I thought that was some sublte troll... I don't think he was serious. For those very reasons. . .
Weakening spellcasters just isn't going to give you lord of the rings, if thats what you want to play you need to find another game.

[Kaelik]

There is no reason to ban Glitterdust for winning encounters, but not ban Stinking Cloud.

Exactly, wihich is why I thought that was some sublte troll... I don't think he was serious. For those very reasons. . .
Weakening spellcasters just isn't going to give you lord of the rings, if thats what you want to play you need to find another game.

You must not know PoliteNewb very well.

[Midnight_v]

There is no reason to ban Glitterdust for winning encounters, but not ban Stinking Cloud.

Exactly, wihich is why I thought that was some sublte troll... I don't think he was serious. For those very reasons. . .
Weakening spellcasters just isn't going to give you lord of the rings, if thats what you want to play you need to find another game.

You must not know PoliteNewb very well.

Nah, I don't run into him much. Assumption is the root of all fuck ups?
Well if he's serious about that then I'm with you, the choices are ridiculous and end up at the same place.
He really wants to ban the wizard, cleric, druid, monk, and fighter.

[Novembermike]

Why are you banning Glitterdust, but not Color Spray, Stinking Cloud, Web, Sleet Storm, Deep Slumber, Confusion, Fear, Entangle, and Control Winds?

If I had to guess, Glitterdust comes in early, has a decent range and the AOE is easy to use. Color Spray is only useful at lower levels and you have to be close to the enemy, Stinking Cloud is vs Fortitude which tends to be easier for most early monsters, etc. The rest of the spells should either go on the list or have legitimate reasons why they don't need to be there.

Why Summon Monsters, and not Animate Dead/Create Undead?

The Undead stuff lets you make a generic creature and you tend to need the parts, Summon Monster is a tool box.

Why Wall of Force and not Wall of Stone, Iron, Ice, Thorns?

The other walls are easier to breach and generally need to be attached to the ground somehow. It's fairly easy to figure out how a wall of stone acts when you build it into a bridge but force is less obvious and more open to interpretation.

Why Mind Fog at all? Has anyone ever used that spell ever? For anything?

Fucking with people's will saves is decent.