How Important is Magic to Dungeons and Dragons? - Third Edition vs Fourth Edition

Tuft said:

Well, it has to be a very small table and small set of clothes, since the Prestidigitation only can clean within one cubic foot... (Perhaps he walks around in tanga shorts? )

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Well, for whatever it's worth, a wizard can cast Prestidigitation once every six seconds. A six-foot wizard could probably clean his cloths in about a minute. Inn tables would likely take less time. (Unless it's a really big table.)

Calculating Buffs With Cascading Bonuses

I do not understand what the big deal is for spells that give bonuses to stats or other values with cascading effects. i write that i have say +4 strength. If i am attacking, that uses strength so i add my extra ++2 bonus. Now I am climbing, and I am stronger than usual so i better add my strength bonus that i wrote down.

My point is that the cascading bonuses should be intuitive. Strength applies to all activities that involve strength. Dexterity applies to all activities that use dexterity. I don't know, but that is how i see it.

Also, i like how if my spell makes me stronger, it actually gives me all of the bonuses that I should receive. I don't want a divine might spell to give +2 damage; instead it should increase my might-->strength, which means I can jump better, lift weights better, etc

When my group plays D&D games, the GM usually tells us the modified roles of enemies in high level games, and if it is very close the players always pitch in to try to think of some reason that it should fail. This also works for players when attacking. For example, i would say, "i got a modified 19" The bard player would say: "did you include my songs bonus?" "Yep" The cleric says "how about my prayer?" "Oh i forgot, I got a 20". This strategy partially works because it takes us a few rounds to guess the AC or close to it based on misses and hits.

On a completely unrelated note. People always say that in 3e, the caster could overshadow everybody in and out of combat, but i disagree. The caster must balance his spell selection. The caster is the only character that's utility is inversely proportional to its combat capability. if the caster wants to be a master out of combat, solving all of the traps and puzzles through a combination of intellect and arcane power, then in the fight the wicaster will not have many spells to bring to bear.


Just my thoughts.

Brother Richard said:

When my group plays D&D games, the GM usually tells us the modified roles of enemies in high level games, and if it is very close the players always pitch in to try to think of some reason that it should fail. This also works for players when attacking. For example, i would say, "i got a modified 19" The bard player would say: "did you include my songs bonus?" "Yep" The cleric says "how about my prayer?" "Oh i forgot, I got a 20". This strategy partially works because it takes us a few rounds to guess the AC or close to it based on misses and hits.

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See, I hate that. I hate "hunt for the modifier." I hate it so much. I recognize that a certain amount of "hunt for the modifier" is inevitable in a game where lots of things can affect outcomes, which is probably inevitable in a tactically rich game. But I still hate it. Hate, hate, hate. Hate.

Brother Richard said:

On a completely unrelated note. People always say that in 3e, the caster could overshadow everybody in and out of combat, but i disagree.

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Emphasis mine.

The irony is that this is the only part of your post that's on topic.

I don't know about casters overshadowing in 3e. Casters were certainly powerful, but it seemed me, as a DM, that martial characters had lots of powerful options as well. Whatever deficiencies a straight fighter might have were mitigated by 3.x's PrCs, feats, and exotic weapons.

Brother Richard said:

On a completely unrelated note. People always say that in 3e, the caster could overshadow everybody in and out of combat, but i disagree. The caster must balance his spell selection. The caster is the only character that's utility is inversely proportional to its combat capability. if the caster wants to be a master out of combat, solving all of the traps and puzzles through a combination of intellect and arcane power, then in the fight the wicaster will not have many spells to bring to bear.

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IME, this issue is most apparent when you have a memorization based caster (cleric, wizard, etc) who likes scribing scrolls. It applies to any caster, but spontaneous casters are a little more limited in that they have to buy scrolls to give them more options, which slows them down a bit in comparison to those with Scribe Scroll.

In the last 3.5 game I played in we had a wizard who, in addition to his daily complement of spells, wrote scrolls for every occasion. He actually solo'd a golem or two using some spell specifically designed to kill golems (I think it was called Ray of Deanimation, but it's been a while) because the rest of us were getting our butts kicked. IME, magic-immune golem encounters are supposed to be where the party saves the virtually useless mage, not the other way around.

I've heard a lot of people argue that it's balanced because he has to spend xp, but from what I've seen that isn't much of a deterrent. If you're following the RAW, the caster gets extra xp once he starts falling behind anyway. In that last 3.5 game, the DM actually didn't use that rule and it still didn't stop our wizard (until you start scribing high level spells, the cost is really quite negligible).

Admittedly, if the casters in your games don't bother with scrolls for whatever reason, this would not be an issue at all. When casters can't circumvent their daily allowance of magic (via scrolls/ wands/ staves) they can be much more effectively balanced around the concept of utility vs combat. With enough stored spells, however, their endurance becomes virtually that of the fighter with a flexibility and penchant for bending reality that non-casters simply don't possess (short of maybe a scroll-toting UMD guy at high levels, though he may as well be a caster at that point anyway).

YMMV.

If memory serves, 3E made the creation not only of scrolls and potions but of permanent or charged items much easier. There was also the factor that, unlike in 1st ed. AD&D, a spell-caster of any level could replenish his full stock of spells with just a little effort each day.

So, part of the perceived need to boost non-magicians may have come from too much making life easier for the "poor, weak" magic user. "Screw the MU" was rather a rule of thumb previously, precisely because those that made it to Wizard status (rather than perishing in the attempt) possessed exceptional power -- they earned it!

Brother Richard said:

/snip
On a completely unrelated note. People always say that in 3e, the caster could overshadow everybody in and out of combat, but i disagree. The caster must balance his spell selection. The caster is the only character that's utility is inversely proportional to its combat capability. if the caster wants to be a master out of combat, solving all of the traps and puzzles through a combination of intellect and arcane power, then in the fight the wicaster will not have many spells to bring to bear.


Just my thoughts.

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The problem is, this ties into SO many other issues.

Yes, you're right, if I go all utility, then I lose out on combat. But, for the most part, you don't need to memorize utility spells. Scrolls cover that much easier. But, even without scrolls, it's 24 hours and you're good to go again.

That's why the non-caster classes get overshadowed. Because the casters can simply wait a day and do everything a non-caster can do, only better.

The other issue is that at very high levels, say 13th+, the casters have so many spells that they can afford to fill up their 1st-3rd level slots with utility spells and still bring the pain in combat. After all, combats aren't generally going to last more than 4-6 rounds as a rule of thumb. If you have at least 4 spells/encounter, you're doing something every round. By 13th level, a wizard has so many spells (plus bonuses for his Int, plus scrolls and sundry other items like Pearls of Power) that he just simply won't run out.

Ariosto said:

If memory serves, 3E made the creation not only of scrolls and potions but of permanent or charged items much easier. There was also the factor that, unlike in 1st ed. AD&D, a spell-caster of any level could replenish his full stock of spells with just a little effort each day.

So, part of the perceived need to boost non-magicians may have come from too much making life easier for the "poor, weak" magic user. "Screw the MU" was rather a rule of thumb previously, precisely because those that made it to Wizard status (rather than perishing in the attempt) possessed exceptional power -- they earned it!

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The thing is, I believe the 3e designers didn't realize this entirely...

Spells like Knock, Tongues et al (basically the utility spells) were balanced in 1e/2e since magic operated on the rarity concept. If a spellcaster only had 4 2nd level slots even at 20th level yeah it was fair that a 2nd level spell was a game changer...

AllisterH said:

The thing is, I believe the 3e designers didn't realize this entirely...

Spells like Knock, Tongues et al (basically the utility spells) were balanced in 1e/2e since magic operated on the rarity concept. If a spellcaster only had 4 2nd level slots even at 20th level yeah it was fair that a 2nd level spell was a game changer...

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I don't think that's necessarily the case. You might only have 4 second level spell slots, but you'd also have 4 first level spell slots, third level spell slots, etc, etc, etc.

There are only so many "rounds" of action in a given day (I use "rounds" here in a subjective sense to refer to instances where a spell might be useful). As the number of spell slots exceeds the number of rounds (which happens quickly when combat happens only once or twice per day and lasts only a round or two), the only REAL balancing factor is the potential for the wizard's player to guess wrong when he prepares his spells. And as the number of spells increases, the likelihood of guessing wrong goes down because you can cover more bases.

Scrolls and Chargeed Items

it is true that the sue of these items can be abused. However, i feel that the brokeness of item creation cannot be counted as the brokeness of casters as a whole. Also, the main class being overshadowed by the utility scrolls is the rogue, which can UMD anyway. Therefore the use of charged items is not a significant advantage to spellcasters because every single rogue in the universe takes UMD. I understand how a rogue using a scroll of knock seems foolish, but knock becomes useless at high levels anyway if i understand the spell correctly. It doesn't stop traps does it?

Another comment I would like to make is based on the complaint about buffs and other such spells whether it is used for utility (fly) or in combat (....fly or righteous might). When spellcasters in my group ever cast those spells, it is usually on our warrior to make them more powerful. How is it unfun for my character to become superpowerful as I swipe enemies away with my size large greatsword because of many buffs? I have fun and the casters feel they have contributed as well because they can take some credit for my actions.

Finally, i can see that there are at least some issues out of combat due to spells becoming so powerful, but that is fundamental to the power of magic in D&D. It is one thing that 4e does that feels weird. If you don't want a wizard that can build a tower in minutes, then you can't have a wizard that can create a hail of meteors that combined are larger than the tower. The combat powers and out of combat powers need to reflect each other. it is only natural for a wizard to utilize their magical might for utility, and it is only natural for the utility to be as powerful as the combat spells. Therefore, if you don't want a wizard to have flashy utilities, then you must decrease the flashiness of wizard spells in combat. This would be easy to do. A small beam of fire could easily do more damage than a large hammer. A lot of spells seem to do less damage than they should anyway. Instead of meteor swarm, have one meteor. if a flaming rock bigger than you falls on your head, it should be more damaging then the strongest man in the world swinging a large hammer at your face.

Sorry I forgot to look at my title before I posted and I can't edit it.