Concerning 3rd editions Wizard's being over powered.

[Evenglare]

I hear a lot of talk about how a wizard at high levels can pretty much demolish anything. While in theory , sure they can, but how many of you have actually DM'ed or played with someone like that? Me personally ? I have never had a problem with wizards breaking the game, I dont know if it's just my players that dont know how to munchkin or min max or whatever, I just have never experience this problem.

That being said as a DM if you experienced this and it happened, did you keep letting it happen? If so why ? Personally, I would find the ability that has broken the game and either remove it for future games, or make it extremely hard to come by and or cast.

But the main point is when reading about the wizards on the internet they seem like some unholy statistical and mathematical abomination that wipes out everything, but does theory transfer directly in practice? In my case, no it has not. I am well aware that that one anecdote hardly counts for evidence, so im not going to extrapolate data from one test... which is why this post exists.

 

[pemerton]

I have experienced the phenomenon more in Rolemaster than in D&D, simply due to a greater amount of high level play in one system than the other, but the systems are similar enough that I believe those who say it is an issue in D&D.

The high-level spell user in either game has two basic techniques. One is to bombard enemies with save-or-suck/die, taking advantage of abilities (feats in D&D, utility spells in RM) that boost the attack roll/save DC. The other is to dominate the broader fictional situation, via spells like teleport, passwall, phasing/etherealness, divination, etc.

Abilities of the first sort tend to dominate over the combat abilities of non-spell-users. Abilities of the second sort tend to give the players of the spell users much greater influence over the pacing of the game - compounding the pre-existing tendency for spell-users to exert greater influence over pacing because of their reliance on daily resources.

I have never had a problem with wizards breaking the game

<snip>

if you experienced this and it happened, did you keep letting it happen? If so why ? Personally, I would find the ability that has broken the game and either remove it for future games, or make it extremely hard to come by and or cast.

In one high level RM game, the solution was that everyone played some form of spellcaster. But the game still broke down eventually - play ground to a halt, as the players used their abilities in a way that was rational from the point of view of their PCs, but led to the game itself utterly bogging down - nothing could be done without using divination first to see if it would work well or poorly, every combat was scry/buff/teleport, they developed ever-more obscure strategies for maximising their ability to deploy all their spells in the first round or two, and then retreat and rest up before they could be caught without spells, etc.

In the subsequent game, we agreed to take out a lot of the problematic spells - especially teleport and divination. We also took some steps to tone down - both through adjustments and through gentlemen's agreements about what classes to play - the scope of attack magic, and of attack-magic-enhancing utility magic. (This is probably easier to do in RM than D&D, because RM has much more narrowly defined spell using classes, and makes it much harder to learn a wide range of spells, than does D&D. So once players have chosen their classes, you don't have to keep thinking about and vetting new spell/feat after new spell/feat.)

These changes, plus some changes by me in the way I set up the ingame situation (an Oriental Adventures/samurai campaign in which the fighter were the default leaders of the party, while the spell-users were in social status more like advisors or guids), led to a game that was more balanced even at high levels.

 

[Mattachine]

I found this to be true in any game I DMed in 3e that hit about level 13+. My players weren't using a pile of supplements or splatbooks, either.

If a cleric was in the party, that character typically made cure wands or scrolls, and then focused spells on combat buffs, especially self-buffs. The cleric typically outshone the fighter in this way.

If the party had a high level wizard or sorcerer, that character rapidly became the flying, invisible scout/artillery/utility/save-or-suck character. Just using the spells in the 3.5 PHB lets that happen. Once the caster can make items, then it can truly optimize itself, such as getting the +6 ability items much sooner.

If the party had a high level druid, the druid would generally be in some very nasty wild shape while casting away. This made the character a frontline melee tank with artillery thrown in to boot.


As far as "letting" this happen: we were playing RAW, and my players generally played casters. Non-casters were either casual/part-time players or secondary characters like henchmen. If I made house rules to change casters, my players wouldn't be interested.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I ran a 3.5 Age of Worms campaign where eventually the wizard was too damn powerful. I have also played a very high level Alienist (23rd) who likewise could easily dominate if I played him that way (and occasionally did).

At high level, there are 3 things you can do to dominate a campaign.

1) Defensively you can make yourself untouchable. I think the most annoying spell was actually a 4th level one called greater mirror image which could be cast reactively and instantly. Greater Dispel could not touch it, and it was typically a get out of jail free card and obviously high level wizards can cast an annoying amount of these. Although it becomes a little like poker where the DM has to go all in to force the mage to use it. Games within games are not really that much fun. Anyway, there are several other get out of jail free card spells such as moment of prescience, rings of spell turning, greater invisibility and so forth which make targeting a wizard very difficult. Killing a wizard in fact has to be something that a DM sets out to do at that level.

2) The wizard determines when and where encounters take place. There are simply too many ways to escape the clutches of the bad guys at this level - Gate/Plane Shift/Greater Teleport etc. Again, you can metagame as a DM to attempt to curb this or apply time pressure but that gets tired and unrealistic real quick. Unfortunately this means that the wizard can Nova every encounter with almost no repercussions and this means that casters can easily dominate over their non-casting "Cohorts".

3) Spell Power! It depends upon what spells you use but in the 3.5 compendium there are too many save/die/sucks and the are too easy to deploy. Time Stop and teleport ambushing are great for shapechange/summoning/buff shenanigans and allow complete control of a battlefield. Flexibility to attack the glass jaw of enemies (whatever that happens to be) with an effectively unlimited number of spells and overpowered rods combined with a "nova"-ing wizard who is almost impossible to non-deliberately kill and there you go: a wizard that completely dominates a campaign.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Minigiant]

The problem is not letting it happen, it is how you deal with it.

If a wizard player makes his wizard prepare a bunch of wall/fog/AOEsuck spells and corrals dumbfounded enemies and nerkstricken foes into a killing field every fight, what am I supposed to do?

Ban the spells? Modify the treasure so these spells never appear in captured spellbooks?
Spellbooks as treasure? The enemies are all sorcerers and clerics.
Modify every problem spell as they learn them?
You can't teleport there. Or there. Or there.
Phaseproof. Strong winds.
Roll a caster level check. Yeah he knows nondetection.
Yeah he is still dead. Its always happy hour in CM afterlife and he is too drunk to return to his body.

Or let the casters go free with whatever you allow them to get and struggle to keep the game sane as you attempt to deal with whatever wackiness they pull out.

It is a lot of extra work.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Does it transfer into practice? Not really. Most caster players are interested in pursuing some specific theme, not cherry-picking overpowered spells. The vast majority of people have enjoyed the breadth of character options in all editions of D&D.

If anything, I'd say there's a bit more of a concern of fighters and their nonmagical brethren becoming boring or running out of options, but this is easily addressed (and has been with some success in PF & TB).

But as to when wizards do accomplish earth-shattering things at high levels, that isn't really a problem. There's one type of "balance" that implies that all characters are meaningful and enjoyable, and that type of balance holds even in epic levels. Most players understand that magic is an inherently "unbalanced" concept, and that powerful magic should be dominant when it can be employed. There's another type of "balance" that implies that all characters should be mechanically equal in all ways, which is an unreasonable expectation, but unfortunately one that has had some sway. This is what 4e tried to do, which is why we have a 5e forum.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I hear a lot of talk about how a wizard at high levels can pretty much demolish anything. While in theory , sure they can, but how many of you have actually DM'ed or played with someone like that? Me personally ? I have never had a problem with wizards breaking the game, I dont know if it's just my players that dont know how to munchkin or min max or whatever, I just have never experience this problem.

This rpg.net thread might be useful.

For the record the wizard is the poster child for casters. But runs rampant if and only if he keeps a mantra in mind. "The key to strategy isn't to defeat the enemy. It's to make the enemy irrelevant." Once they start doing that the game's gone.

The class that easily cracks 3.X isn't the wizard, but the druid. The wolf pack*, or worse yet the synergistic ursine swarm** making the fighter redundant. Summoned unicorns giving the cleric a lesson in healing. AoE damage to rival the wizard. Plus good spells, decent skills, little reliance on stats, and some utility magic.

* I have a pet wolf with as many hit points as the fighter. When he attacks he gets a free trip. I can also join him on the front lines (at higher level as a wolf myself) and between us we get damage output to match the fighter in addition to trips. And skills. And spells.

** I'll wild shape into a brown bear with a brown bear (54hp, Improved Grab, 3 attacks on a full attack of which the 2 at +11 can start grapples) as my animal companion. Oh, and summon brown bears. I'll save my prepared spells for utility.

 

[CM]

I have found that this is highly player-dependent.

Some players invest the time to choose the most combat-effective options for their character. This has no bearing on whether they are a "good role-player" or not. Others don't. They just build a character and have fun with it. This also has no bearing on their roleplaying skills.

High-level combat in my 3.5 Age of Worms campaign usually began with both sides spending the first 30 minutes of game time casting targeted greater dispel magic on each other. That is, when the players weren't able to scry on their opponents, do 10 rounds of buff casting, then teleport in and destroy the enemies in 2-3 rounds.

Sorry but f&#* that. Never going back.

I have found that high-level 3e combat was all about researching, preparing your strategy ahead of time, entering combat and deploying that strategy. Casters would confer on what spells they had remaining, determine an optimal casting order to get the best use out of each spell, and then start casting. Meanwhile the non-casters lobbied for their favorite buffs from the casters. Sometimes I wonder if 4e really has longer combats, if you include all this prep time in 3e combat length.

High-level 4e combat so far has been all about adaptation--quickly finding out what the enemy's or environment's schtick is and developing tactics to counter it while in combat. To myself and my players it is much more satisfying.

 

[Raith5]

Wizards and clerics in 3rd ed have more power, flexibility and the capacity to project damage (to multiple targets) at range than Melee types. Even though the spell haste was a much desired spell for the melee guys. So it was a issue at my table after about 7th (which got worse) even though the Barbarian did a good job (thanks partly to haste).

But for me (and my players) the even bigger issue was the time it took for casters to resolve their actions. I had a wizard and Druid who both liked to summon monsters and animals. It was not unusal in the end for them to have 2 or 3 summoned creatures each and their turns took forever. We gave up at 12th level.

So I liked the way that 4th lifted the power of melee types up a notch and dialed down summoning and buffing.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Does it transfer into practice? Not really. Most caster players are interested in pursuing some specific theme, not cherry-picking overpowered spells. The vast majority of people have enjoyed the breadth of character options in all editions of D&D.

Part of that depends on the campaign. When I play a wizard I am playing someone with a genius level intelligence (assuming something weird isn't going on). I am also going into life threatening situations and trying to save my life and that of those I care about. Under the rules of 3.X I have pretty much free choice of spells - and a genius level brain and good training in arcana to evaluate them. I'm afraid I simply would have to see it as bad roleplaying for my character to pick tools he knows are second rate simply on the grounds of theme unless he's either confident about the outcome or an who doesn't care about his friends.

That said, my favourite two types of wizard (the trickster/illusionist and the loremaster) are IMO better represented by the bard than the wizard in 3.X.

But as to when wizards do accomplish earth-shattering things at high levels, that isn't really a problem. There's one type of "balance" that implies that all characters are meaningful and enjoyable, and that type of balance holds even in epic levels.

If and only if the casters aren't trying.

Most players understand that magic is an inherently "unbalanced" concept, and that powerful magic should be dominant when it can be employed.

To me this attitude appears to be common only among D&D players trying to justify bad decisions in their chosen game. Feng Shui is a good game - and class based. The classes include Old Master, Sorceror, and Normal Guy. Who are all approximately balanced. In most supers games there are super-normals (like Batman) who can hang with the big guys. In WHFRP (2e and 3e) sure magic's powerful. But the wizard doesn't want to cast spells unless the threat being faced is worse than the significant risk of a backfire. Magic is dangerous and a double edged sword.

In fact the only two games that spring to mind where magic is inherently anything like as unbalanced as in classic D&D are D&D and Ars Magica. And if it's Magic Uber Alles, such an assumption should be explicit in the rules.

There's another type of "balance" that implies that all characters should be mechanically equal in all ways, which is an unreasonable expectation, but unfortunately one that has had some sway. This is what 4e tried to do, which is why we have a 5e forum.

Both those are simply false assertions. Not all characters are equal in all ways in 4e. They simply are closer than in previous editions. And as for why we have a 5e forum, that's from Hasbro's unrealistic targets to keep a brand supported. D&D even at the height of 3.X wasn't a $50 million game. And that's what (according to Ryan Dancy) Hasbro wants or it will let the brand lapse. (And no, WoTC can't offset them with their Magic profits - Hasbro is in control).