Bend, dont break.

[Neonchameleon]

The costs that I was referring to (and that did exist in older editions) were opportunity costs and consequences. Spell selection matters more when there is no access to wands & scrolls of whatever you want.

Loading up on firepower meant less utility magic was available.

Also, casting some spells did have an actual price associated. Would you spam polymorph if you had to risk that system shock roll? Casting haste every fight doesn't seem so great as it slowly whittles years off your life.

Scry,buff,teleport? You might end up dead encased in solid rock unless you know the area well. You probably won't die so go for it.

It seems there was a cost for magic after all.

Let me rephrase your post. A very few spells had a cost. Even fewer in 3.X - Wish still did.

As for "opportunity costs", sure the trust fund only gave the wizard one free suitcase full of magic per day. It was still a suitcase full of magic for free per day. You seem to be complaining that because the suitcase isn't completely unlimited that getting a suitcase full of money doens't make things dirt cheap.

If you want to see magic with a cost, 4e Rituals do things one way. DCC or WHFRP (2e and 3e) do things the other. It's not just the polymorphs that might blow up in your face. It's the fireballs. Or the illusions. Whatever you cast has a risk. In any edition of D&D, they simply don't. And that you can point to a very few spells that do simply underlines how cheap the rest are.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The most basic issue is that certain spells bypass game systems. Charm Person just walks right around the need for diplomacy. Knock doesn't even notice the need to unlock a door. Wild Shape ignores any need for healing.

This isn't as big a problem as many may think it is.

We can balance combat spells by ensuring that a blast of fire and a swing of the sword deal about the same amount of damage under similar circumstances.

We can balance Charm Person be ensuring that the spell and a Diplomacy check can do about the same thing under similar circumstances.

We can do a little trick with the combat spell, to add variety to play: we can up its power in exchange for making it happen less often. A spell can do DOUBLE the damage of a sword, as long as the spell only happens half as often. Now the two things have a very distinct mechanical difference, though they remain broadly balanced.

We can balance Charm Person in a similar way: the spell can do TWICE what a Diplomacy check can do, but it can only happen half as often.

Stereotypically, a wizard gets one of their highest-level spells per "adventuring day." If we take 4e as a base, an "adventuring day" is, lets say, 3 encounters. Each encounter, each player is expected to make n dice rolls, and deal y average "damage." If all your encounters are combat, and the wizard can only use one spell in a day, the wizard can deal y damage all at once. In a typical 4e "adventuring day," with 10-round combats, you might have 30 die rolls, of which 15 hit, and deal an average of, say, 4 damage at level one, meaning your daily damage output is around the 60 hp range. So a wizard who can only make one attack per day can deal 60 damage with that attack and be "balanced."

If the encounters are NOT just combat, you get a situation where spells can accomplish the same thing as n dice rolls in one of the three pillars, all at once.

So this brings us back to Charm Person. It's not the same thing as a Diplomacy check, but the same thing as, say, 15 successful Diplomacy checks. That should be more powerful -- it's a more limited resource.

Now, in actual play, you probably don't want a wizard who can only do one action per day (it's not a great play experience, really), but this gives you a framework that you can adjust to meet the play experience you want. Maybe the wizard gets 3 spells per day that each do the same thing as 5 attack rolls/Diplomacy checks/Thievery checks (roughly the equivalent of encounter powers). That remains balanced.

So then you wind up with a Charm Person that has power in the league of 5 successful Diplomacy checks.

A rogue can convince a king to be his trusted friend with 5 successful Diplomacy checks, and a wizard can do it with one Charm Person?

Yeah, I'm cool with that.

Similarly, a high level fighter can gain a kingdom with 5 successful attack rolls, and a wizard can do it with one Demiplane Creation?

Yeah, that's awesome, too.

A wizard can do the same thing a rogue can do with a diplomacy check with Charm Person, but he gets infinite Charms per day? Pfft. There's nothing different, unique, or varied in that. That's no fun.

The problem isn't that the wizard can ignore subsystems. The problem is when the wizard gets to ignore subsystems, and gets to do it ad infinitum. A rogue is still useful when Knock does the work of 5 skill checks, because there's more than one locked door between you and your destination -- there's 20 more dice rolls between here and the end of the adventure, and the wizard is all out of knocks for the day.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Ok, let's run with this for the moment and see where it goes.

So, the wizard/MU is the fount of knowledge (stepping on the bard's toes pretty hard here, but, fair enough). Ok. The party finds a chamber with a pool and some bones lying around. The wizard uses his knowledge to tell the party that it's quite possible that some sort of ooze creature might be lurking in the pool and, if there is one there, depending on its type, the following tactics are best used.

Ok, great, wizard is useful.

Party investigates the pool, seeing shiny stuff in there that they want to collect, being the jackdaws that they are. Surprise, surprise, there is, in fact, an ooze in the water that swishes out to attack the party. Initiative is rolled.

The other characters make their attacks, being pretty effective because of the wizard's advice. Great. Wizard's turn comes, he says, "pass" because he doesn't have enough spells to actually use one here, and his attack is pretty much inneffective.

Round two, the other characters fight with the ooze, the wizard passes again. The fight is going pretty well, no one is dangerously hurt, the wizard doesn't want to waste a spell.

Round three repeat.

Round four repeat.

Round five, the fighter gets mauled by the ooze (can you actually get mauled by an ooze? Slimed?) and the wizard finally contributes to the combat and drops a spell. The ooze is hurt some, but not killed.

Round six, wizard watches.

Round seven, the ooze if finally dispatched and everyone rejoices.

As a round number, we'll say that this fight took twenty minutes to resolve. Not a bad amount of time. In that twenty minutes, the wizard actively participated for maybe a minute and a half. Everyone else actively participated 100% of the time, since we've actually got rules for allowing people to act out of turn and things like AOO's and the like.

So, did the wizard have fun or not? Was his thirty seconds of contribution before the combat worth sitting around and warming the pines for most of twenty minutes?

I certainly don't think so. There's a very, very good reason why the whole "1 spell per day" thing died twenty-five years ago.

Of course the wizard has to "do nothing" rather than attack non-magically because if you aren't #1 at something its best to just tune out and play angry birds rather than participate.

Perhaps if you are three years old.

When did Ricky Bobby take over the gaming hobby?

Whats that? Not all classes are 100% at the top of their game in all pillars. Stop the presses. If my fighter can't be as good as the thief during exploration I'll just go get a snack. What do you mean my thief can't match the fighter in melee combat? Let me know how the battle goes I'm gonna check my e-mail.

With attitudes such as this tabletop gaming for adults is doomed.

Mod Note: See my post below, please. ~Umbran

 

[Neonchameleon]

The problem isn't that the wizard can ignore subsystems. The problem is when the wizard gets to ignore subsystems, and gets to do it ad infinitum. A rogue is still useful when Knock does the work of 5 skill checks, because there's more than one locked door between you and your destination -- there's 20 more dice rolls between here and the end of the adventure, and the wizard is all out of knocks for the day.

It's more than that. A rogue is more useful than a wizard if you have reason to expect 20 locked doors. If we aren't trying to rob Locks-r-us and there are only a small handful of locked doors because we know where to go then the wizard can prepare three knock spells in his second level slots. And then three charm spells in his first level slots. That's the rogue's lockpicking and diplomacy handled with most of the wizard's first and second level spells. But in his third level spells he has two entire fights worth of combat magic. And in his fourth level spells he has something like paswall - which no one else in the party can do (and renders half the locks the rogue would have needed to pick irrelevant).

Spell slots to skill rolls doesn't work when the number and power of spells escalates rapidly. Keep the wizard down to Jack Vance's half a dozen spells total before you need to go back to the library and spend days researching and preparing and the limit is meaningful. It becomes an investment not a trust fund.

Historical D&D has started the wizard out with one first level slot (two in 2e, three in 3.X) - and seriously escalated.

 

[Savage Wombat]

You know, the real reason for the #spells escalation was to give low-level wizards more to do. Maybe if you fix that problem without additional spells, the problem goes away easily.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

You know, the real reason for the #spells escalation was to give low-level wizards more to do. Maybe if you fix that problem without additional spells, the problem goes away easily.

Yes. This is where I see an unholy mix of early D&D, 3E, and 4E filling a void.

One of the reasons that an early D&D wizard got to be pretty fun around 5th level was the 3rd level spells, and the options, but it was also because by that level the wizard often had some interesting things to do with items. The drawback to this was that it was so dependent on the DM to hand out some fun charged items, when the game's advice discouraged such (though the random treasure tables did not). And of course given the wizard's XP chart, that could be quite a wait.

Let the wizard (and similar casters where appropriate) build a limited number of charged items--and only charged items by default. Have the costs/limits escalate moderately per charge, but sharply per spell level. For anything but single charge items, you might even effectively limit the wizard to some basic recharging and/or recrafting. The wizard then typically starts his career with a single charged wand, staff, etc. from his mentor, with maybe a capacity of holding 5 charges of a handful of effects--not necessarily the same ones as on his spell list.

These items only work for their creator, and thus were crafted by the wizard as part of his apprenticeship, under the guidance of said mentor. They aren't like the more powerful, useful scrolls, potions, wands, etc. made by dedicated crafters, but tools that atune to the wizard's own power.

Unlike the normal spells slots, as the wizard levels, these attuned item abilities generally provide a bit of breadth instead of depth. (The spell slots are handling depth, now, and can be appropriately sparse to handle that.) The wizard gains the ability to make more such items, with more charges, and more varied abilities, but they fall behind in power compared to the upper spells, and even the expansion of breadth is slow. Will need to be careful to not let low-level spells scale in effect (either by level or more indirectly) to avoid the "use shield all the time for +4 AC" effect. The point here is that the wizard leans on these abilities heavily in his early career, but gradually finds them less and less important.

You could produce a similar effect with any number of systems, for example: an expanded ritual system, with a lot of low-powered, cheap rituals; limited scroll production similar to above; a parallel "mana point" system that was much more limited due to drawing on the wizard's personal power. I like the "attuned item" bit because it approximates something common in the genre that D&D has traditionally not done well, while filling a need.

 

[Arlough]

We can balance Charm Person in a similar way: the spell can do TWICE what a Diplomacy check can do, but it can only happen half as often.

/snip/

So then you wind up with a Charm Person that has power in the league of 5 successful Diplomacy checks.

A rogue can convince a king to be his trusted friend with 5 successful Diplomacy checks, and a wizard can do it with one Charm Person?

Yeah, I'm cool with that.

Similarly, a high level fighter can gain a kingdom with 5 successful attack rolls, and a wizard can do it with one Demiplane Creation?

Yeah, that's awesome, too.

A wizard can do the same thing a rogue can do with a diplomacy check with Charm Person, but he gets infinite Charms per day? Pfft. There's nothing different, unique, or varied in that. That's no fun.

The problem isn't that the wizard can ignore subsystems. The problem is when the wizard gets to ignore subsystems, and gets to do it ad infinitum. A rogue is still useful when Knock does the work of 5 skill checks, because there's more than one locked door between you and your destination -- there's 20 more dice rolls between here and the end of the adventure, and the wizard is all out of knocks for the day.

The problem is that you will not often have more than 5 diplomacy checks in one day, or even really 2 important diplomacy checks in one day. Having a spell that is able to eliminate an entire skill event be on a daily recharge is insufficient in cost. Similarly, an attack that does 5 times the damage of a regular attack (in 4th, Daily Powers exist that do just that) can eliminate an entire combat event or at least drop it significantly, and then the party rests to regrow their ICBM.

Daily refresh is not costly enough for event eliminating effects.

But your reasoning is sound, and you could have a cost:benefit high enough that a magic user could be balanced and do big things.
The problem then becomes, why is the magic user paying all the cost?

I, personally, like the ritual system. Where lots of cool stuff happens out of event situations, and the cost can be shared amongst the group. I just feel that 4e design fell short highly erratic in that area, and then continued to do so.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's more than that. A rogue is more useful than a wizard if you have reason to expect 20 locked doors. If we aren't trying to rob Locks-r-us and there are only a small handful of locked doors because we know where to go then the wizard can prepare three knock spells in his second level slots. And then three charm spells in his first level slots....

The problem is that you will not often have more than 5 diplomacy checks in one day, or even really 2 important diplomacy checks in one day. Having a spell that is able to eliminate an entire skill event be on a daily recharge is insufficient in cost. Similarly, an attack that does 5 times the damage of a regular attack (in 4th, Daily Powers exist that do just that) can eliminate an entire combat event or at least drop it significantly, and then the party rests to regrow their ICBM.

Two things at work here.

The first is the issue of escalation, which, yes, is part of what I think is the core cause of "wizard imbalance." If you give the wizard more stuff to do, the limitation of "not as often" doesn't apply, and if you don't change the base power level of the spells he can learn, he just gets to do more all the time anyway, which isn't what we want.

The wizard needs hard limits put on their access to their spells, or they need their spells designed with more frequent use in mind. Totally agree.

The second issue is the more subtle issue of what challenges we can expect in an adventure. This is where the Three Pillars come in.

Speaking purely hypothetically for illustrative purposes:

If a 4e character makes 30 rolls for combat in a given adventuring day, a 5e character might make 30 rolls, 10 each of Exploration, Interaction, and Combat. And, like in 4e where each combat is worth about 10 rolls per character, in 5e, each "challenge" might be worth the same. So it takes about 10 rolls (5 successes) per character to get through a trapped section of the dungeon, and that meets your "exploration" challenge for the day.

A locked door is only part of that exploration challenge, just as a goblin is only one part of a combat challenge. The exploration may also have traps, or may also involve gathering resources, or may also involve climbing a wall or fording a river. Just as a goblin doesn't normally die in one hit, so a locked door normally isn't removed in one skill check.

In this scenario, a wizard's Knock spell is equal to 5 successful Open Lock checks, which means that one spell might take care of the wizard's contribution to the Exploration portion of the adventure. If the wizard uses it on a simple locked door (the equivalent of a minion, requiring one success to overcome), he's wasted a lot of power. If the wizard uses it on a more complex locked door (say one that requires 5 successes to overcome?), he's used it to its full extent and done well to prepare it, and if he uses it on an advanced door (say one that requires 10 successes to overcome?), he's wasted it (assuming Knock doesn't have any "partial" effect).

This hits the "smart tactics" part of the Wizard's playstyle. You need to select the right tool for the job and apply it at the right moment, or you're not being very effective.

Of course, like how in 4e there's one monster per PC, in 5e there might be 1 Exploration Challenge per PC, so that knock spell can at most solve the wizard's problems -- the rest of the party still has to get from point A to point B, and the cleric isn't likely to be able to do it alone.

And if the party encounters a wall that needs to be climbed, or a river that needs to be swam, or a trap that needs to be deactivated...well, the wizard prepared Knock, so he's useless for those challenges.

It's very comparable to an Assassin's instant death attack. That might be equal to 5 successful attack rolls, which means that one attack might take care of the Assassin's contribution to the Combat portion of the adventure. But there's more than one monster in a dungeon, and the party still needs to slay the dragon, and the Assassin has sort of blown their load for the day.

Effects like Charm Person work similarly. If they're worth 5 Diplomacy checks, that might take care of the Wizard's portion of the Interaction part of the adventure, but there's still three other party members and two other pillars that the party needs to get through before they succeed.

So if the Wizard can prepare three spells per day (one for each pillar!), period, that means that the wizard mostly takes care of their share of the burden of each pillar with a spell -- assuming they've prepared the right spell, of course. And if they don't have the right spell, or they memorized nothing but combat spells, or whatever, they're ALWAYS relying on the rogue to bail them out.

For this, I think 4e getting the maths right is invaluable. It allows a parity like this to exist, where before, it was vague spitballing at best. It also lets you scale to party size VERY efficiently (one monster per PC in 4e = 1 "challenge" per PC in 5e = ~ 5 successes per PC): a single player game might just have one locked door, but an eight-player game might have eight locked doors, or four locked doors, three traps, and a rust monster. It also lets you stipulate a baseline ability. "Okay. Every PC should be able to handle a typical Combat challenge of their level, so each PC should be able to get 5 successes in combat. They might do that in different ways, and some might do it better than others, but this is our baseline: 5 successes = competent."

I, personally, like the ritual system. Where lots of cool stuff happens out of event situations, and the cost can be shared amongst the group. I just feel that 4e design fell short highly erratic in that area, and then continued to do so.

I like the ritual system, but I'd like to reserve them for more long-term magic. A wizard should be able to charm someone or create an illusion or open a door or turn invisible or blast a fireball with a wave of the hand.

Stuff like divination, raising the dead, teleportation, wish, and planar biding? I think a framework like the ritual is much better then slotting them into the wizard's spells-per-day assortment.

 

[hanez]

A lot of people have been commenting on the limits of magic and what unlimited magic would mean for the world at large. Oddly enough I have not been able to find anyone factoring in the rarity of magic users? I agree that unlimited magic might have negative effects on a campaign world (e.g why would anyone use candles if continual light exists), but this can also be tempted by the relative rarity of magic users. Maybe only 1 in a hundred magic apprentices ever achieve level one, whereas for fighters in might be 1 in 20. This would have little to no effect on the game but would certainly help inform the game world. Sure the king has a few magic users, but are they too busy doing other things besides using spells to clean the streets?

Just a thought.

 

[BobTheNob]

3e did point out the wisdom of the vancian system to me, not that is proved it worked in 3e, but that with worked in 2e. 3e did break it with bonza bonus spells and wands of more castings that you will ever need.

To me the mage is the wildcard, the guys that occasionally, spectacularly trumps the situation. Room full of kobolds? Jeeze, I memorised fireball this morning...I only have 1 but thank god I have it, room cleared. Lock the rogue cant pick leading to the room of loot? Good thing I gave up an acid arrow for a knock (thats ONE knock, not 50, ONE). Big cliff face to get down? Featherfall, let everyone else risk the long climb down.

Im not saying that vancian is the best we can come up with in this day and age, but (to me) the effect it had needs to be preserved. They dont consistently contribute a little, they occasionally single-handidly re-write the terms of the encounter.