D&D 3E/3.5 [3.5] An experiment to nerf the full casters

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I mean, the RPGA adventures I've played are so totally different from my home games that they can barely be considered the same system.

I absolutely agree. The finite EL budget of any particular LG adventure caused some distortions to the system, aggravating the tendency to nova particularly, players metagaming the difficulty of upcoming encounters because player knowledge of how authors were limited in writing encounters. I was on the Triad for the Shield Lands many many years, I authored mods, edited even more, and ran many more tables than I played.

The distortions caused by having a multiplayer campaign that benefitted character death, it rewarded characters who died the right amount of times with wealth far above Core wealth assumptions. In a normal campaign the character that kept dying would find themselves below the power curve, but LG characters could keep dying and have no difficulty finding characters of equal character levels.

Speaking of another spellcaster abuse I saw in LG as well as standard campaigns, crafting items. I'd limit spellcaster crafting of items to potions, scrolls, and wands.

 

[Dandu]

Based on what others on the net have complained of, mainly. My games tend to be quite low-level so it is not usually an issue.

One minor idea is someday running with the "magic starts as not real and becomes more real as one gets more powerful" so that leads into the "illusions only" idea too, flavour-wise.

Anyhow, this is very much at the "early theorizing" stage. I am not intending to inflict this upon players as of yet.

Tell your players to work together and not be dicks. That solves pretty much every problem you could conceivably encounter with a minimum of effort on your part.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Give 'em the duskblade class chasis, then maybe. Otherwise...you REALLY don't understand what casters can and can't do, huh?

The solution I'm advovcatoing is to force characters to take at least 1/2 their levels in noncaster classes. I understand those can do other things.

Bards are a well balanced, versatile class in core and become better out of core.

I suspect there are decent bard builds out there, but all the bards I've ever seen were mechanically ineffective. When people talk about high-level casters breaking the game, I doubt they mean bards. In any case, YMMV with the bard as with everything.

 

[Dandu]

The solution I'm advovcatoing is to force characters to take at least 1/2 their levels in noncaster classes. I understand those can do other things.

What do Ur Priests and Sublime Chords count as?

I suspect there are decent bard builds out there, but all the bards I've ever seen were mechanically ineffective. When people talk about high-level casters breaking the game, I doubt they mean bards.

Bard8/Virtuoso1/Sublime Chord2/Virtuoso9.

Boost Inspire Courage and use Dragonfire Inspiration. If you choose the right Draconic linage, you can add between +4d6 to +8d6 sonic or force damage per attack.

You can select the feat Snowflake Wardance to add Cha to your attack bonus on top of Dex or Str with slashing melee weapons.

You have a variety of useful musical effects from Virtuoso.

You have 9th level spells from Sublime Chord.

Well, that is a bit cheesy. Here's a core bard I had lying around. It's not broken, but it's a far cry from sucking, assuming we define Monk, Fighter, and Paladin as sucking.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

How about this:
Let's take a look at the martial characters first. No matter the level, they've feared the natural 1 from the day 1 and still do. There are some ways to make natural 1 softer (Luck Domain etc.) but still, natural 1 sucks. It really does suck hard.

So to make things fair, you have to roll caster level check every time you cast a spell, whether you actually need it or not.

If the result is natural 1, following happens:

Divine Casters: Your God or "Divine Philosophy" or whatever has decided to test you. This is perfectly normal in all the stories about true faith. Testing means that your spell has the most horrifying effect possible, barring casters instant death. You also can't use your magic or class abilities for the rest of the encounter. Now are you a true believer or not, huh?

Arcane Casters: You miscast your spell. Treat as Scroll Mishap but with dire concequences.

So there you have it. Since epic Fighter can mishit a grovelling kobold, so too can Raistlin cast his nose off. Fair enough IMO.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

How about this:
Let's take a look at the martial characters first. No matter the level, they've feared the natural 1 from the day 1 and still do. There are some ways to make natural 1 softer (Luck Domain etc.) but still, natural 1 sucks. It really does suck hard.

Then casters must:

1. Not roll a 1
2. Targets fails saving throw
3. Get through potential spell resistance

What martial character needs to get through up to three checks just to deal damage?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

How about this:

How about no?


Critical rules are stupid and random and stupid and annoying and stupid and grossly unrealistic and stupid. Did I mention stupid?

I like the base auto miss/hit mechanic so that a level 1 kobold has a prayer of being missed by the elder dragon and the army of peons have a chance of overwhelming that dragon by sheer weight of nat 20 rolls. But that's it. Critical fumble rules and crit tables...bleh. I want as little of that kind of crap in my games as possible. 5% (or X% if you use 2 rolls, whatever) of warriors drop their swords when they attack you say? X% of spells end in catastrophic failure for the caster you say? BS I say.

 

[Persiflage]

How about this:
Let's take a look at the martial characters first. No matter the level, they've feared the natural 1 from the day 1 and still do. There are some ways to make natural 1 softer (Luck Domain etc.) but still, natural 1 sucks. It really does suck hard.

We've got a much simpler house-rule to deal with this problem. There's just nothing special about 1's and 20's: a 1 doesn't always miss (or fail a save) and a 20 doesn't always hit (or make a save). No more epic warriors missing 1 in 20 of their attacks. No more gangs of 1,000 peasants dual-wielding light crossbows to take out dragons.

Some people won't like this, and I really do get that - in particular when you have high-AC characters wandering with undiplomatic impunity around a battlefield - but as it primarily affects the game in favour of people who make attack rolls for a living, it has worked well for us. Maybe it detracts a little from the excitement, but frankly if you're staying anywhere near the curve then a 1 is going to miss and a 20 succeed anyway until levels where it hardly matters.

I've no problem with the dragon having a small chance to miss the kobold or the peasant having a small chance to find a chink in the dragon's armour, but 1 in 20? Way too big a "small chance" for my tastes and I'd rather see the possibility eliminated altogether than come up that often. That's pure personal taste/opinion and I'm not defending it as anything else.

Various groups I've played with over the years have used variants on this theme. The first time I ran across it, they ran "1 equals -10 to the total, 20 equals +10". The same group moved onto "reroll on a 1 and deduct 10 from the second result, reroll on a 20 and add the result to the first 20".

Another variant I've heard of is "1 doesn't always miss", but only as a free class feature for characters with a BAB of +12 (I think it was +12 anyway) or more; the idea being that Wizards and Sorcerors don't get it unless they multiclass or find a PrC with better-than-usual BAB*. Another guy I know who runs a group across the country has a "reroll all 1's on attack rolls" feat with Weapon Specialization as a prerequisite, essentially limiting it to Fighters or Warblades.

I'm sure there are a zillion approaches I've yet to come across.

Frankly, I've been expecting the Law of Unintended Consequences to come and bite us on our collective behind since the house-ruling away of "special" 1's and 20's, but in four years of playing the rule it never has.

As an aside (well almost), I hate, hate, HATE critical fumbles. Once again, this is purely a matter of personal taste and indeed I enjoy them in games that are genuinely out to get you (e.g. Cthulhu, Paranoia) but I really loathe them in D&D. I know it's always a mistake to bring real life into it, but I and the rest of my current group have been mediaeval re-enactors for 8-15 years apiece and I think that has an influence on how we feel about it.

In all that time, in the tens of thousands of sword-swings we've taken in melee or the (probably) hundreds of thousands of shots we've taken in archer blocs or in competitions, none of us have ever dropped a sword (unless we've actually been disarmed, which is different), stabbed ourselves in the face or stapled our own feet to the floor. The worst I've ever seen happen is a longbow snap mid-draw during a speed-shoot, which notably failed to result in innocent bystanders getting an arrow through the head or any other situational comedy.

I know this isn't the same as a "real" battle situation in terms of pressure (although, hell, I've seen people get really badly hurt) but in my experience, the chance of a critical fumble happening for a trained martial artist of any stripe is so low that it's fundamentally not worth including in a fantasy combat system.

*Yeah, I too could see that making Abjurant Champion more popular

 

[HoboGod]

Tell your players to work together and not be dicks. That solves pretty much every problem you could conceivably encounter with a minimum of effort on your part.

Words to live by.

You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to Dandu again.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

Then casters must:

1. Not roll a 1
2. Targets fails saving throw
3. Get through potential spell resistance

What martial character needs to get through up to three checks just to deal damage?

The caster level check I mentioned also works as the roll to get through potential spell resistance (1 and 3 are the same roll, even if 3 is not required). So only two checks needed.

I think this is a fine house rule, too bad none of you guys share my view