Concerning 3rd editions Wizard's being over powered.

[Bedrockgames]

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).

NC, i think you have a valid point about spellcasters being powerful in 3E. They are. Like a lot of people I wanted to see things like druids nerfed a good deal and was very eager for 4e's release. For me 4e just went too far in the direction of balance and in retooling the core system.

But I also think the parity issue is a real turn off for many players and that it is pretty clear at this stage that 4E lost a large number of D&D customers. 3e may not have hit the fifty million mark, but it lasted longer than 4E and didn't have the split customer base 4e does. Just as 4e was a reaction to 3e's balance issues, 5e is a reaction to 4e's performance over time.

 

[Li Shenron]

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? .

I've never had this problem as a DM, and I only had this problem once as a player... and the problematic character was my own!

I think this problem happens when the players are playing for themselves instead of having a team spirit, at least I realized that it was the problem for me: I was using all my spells to buff myself instead of spreading them to the whole team. Then of course I was very hard to kill, and my damage output in combat was the highest.

But is this the "correct" way to play D&D?

The answer is: if the result is not fun, then it means it is not the correct way to play!

The game became more balanced and more fun when I started to use more spells to benefit the other PCs depending on their needs.

Think about these two basic questions for instance:

1- Are you absolutely sure it is the best for everyone that a Cleric (who starts off as an inferior melee warrior that the fighter classes) buffs himself and become the best melee warrior of the party? Or does this mean you end up with the Cleric stepping on the Fighter's melee role, and having 2 good melee instead of having one decent (non-buffed Cleric) and one excellent (buffed Fighter)? Couldn't it be instead better to buff the best guy (Fighter) to excellent damage output and AC so that he can really be the 1st line of defense, and the Cleric is free to do more things?

2- Are you absolute sure it is the best for everyone that the Wizard becomes nearly-untouchable after self-buffing with protections from everything, when anyway she's still going to stay as far as possible from melee, when everybody else is dying on the front line due to low defenses?

In other words: does the Cleric or Wizard player "win the game" if she survives and everybody else dies (or suck) because she didn't share her buffs? Isn't she a loser instead?

Check out also the examples posted by other DMs above, and tell me if their players weren't playing mostly for themselves... Also note how many of those examples gravitate around the idea of turning their caster PCs into damage-dealers or melee tanks, which is not what their classes are meant to be. I don't think it's a "bug" that the game allows a spellcaster to become a better fighter than the Fighter. I think the "bug" is people playing D&D like a computer game, i.e. like a solo game, which D&D is not! It is a game of damn teamwork! Wouldn't it spoil the game if the Cleric would only heal himself? If the Rogue would only disarm traps for himself? So why should it be different for buffing?

Eventually a real problem instead lies in the versatility of spellcasters, particularly Wizards, because the higher the level, the wider the versatility gap with simpler classes who have less to do outside combat. At low/mid levels it's not an issue, but clearly if the Wizard can solve too many plot/adventuring issues with one of her spells, then there is certainly a problem...

 

[Ahnehnois]

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.

On one hand, I totally agree that any reasonable player optimizes his character to a significant extent. What I'm referring to is things like the high-level polymorph and summoning spells that can clearly break the game if you play by the rules and exploit them to the max. A good player does not take shapechange and comb through every monster manual looking for the best abilities he can find. Taking wizard spells that are good but not ridiculously broken creates a good experience for all.

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.

I would think it would be the default assumption of any fantasy rpg that magic is inherently overpowered. It is in fantasy fiction. You don't here Aragorn complaining that he can't compete with Gandalf, or Lancelot expecting to do anything that Merlin can do (or did I miss the line in the Harry Potter books where he said that "muggles" should be perfectly balanced with wizards?). I don't understand where is idea comes from that a roleplaying game should have perfect competitive balance, or that magic should be balanced with everything else. Where is that assumption in the rules?

For the record, I would be quite happy to see magic as a "dangerous and double-edged sword", but that isn't likely to happen because that isn't the heritage of the game. I would also like to see the sheer number of options cut down, and that may happen. There are definitely problems with D&D casters, but not ones that require a page 1 rewrite of the concept.

The 3.X wizard and druid are not some kind of bizarre exceptions. The 2e casters, I would argue, had even greater potential before limits were placed on some spells in the name of "balance". The question is how many characters reach the ceiling, how many should, and whether it's a problem when they do.

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.

Still, you're selling the fighters short. In high-level D&D, when casters are often countermanded by opposing casters or magic-resistant foes, fighters are still quite important. This was more true when magic resistance was a percentage, but still holds true in 3e.

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).

Note that I said "tried", not "succeeded".

And, of course, there are a number of business factors, including unrealistic corporate expectations, that play into where we are now, but I think it's fair to say that creative decisions made in the design process are probably relevant to the state of the D&D brand, which I think it's fair to say is not good or even as good as it could be, which is why we're here trying to provide input so the same thing doesn't happen again. This is a pro-D&D post.

 

[Knight Templar]

Simple, play E6. Problem solved.

 

[ExploderWizard]

3E did away with so many of the limitations and balance for spell users that caster superiority was pretty much a guarantee.


Trash the magic item creation system. Allowing the creation of some items is fine but cheap easy access to spells in a stick kind of makes the spells per day limitation meaningless.

Use an initiative system that actually puts casters at risk of spell disruption if they cast in combat.

Use common sense and put limitations on spells. For example teleporting someplace the caster has not actually been before could result in painful mishaps.

Fixed.

 

[Fanaelialae]

IME, this wasn't uncommon in 3e. Casters simply had access to too many options, and had too many ways to circumvent the limitations that were supposed to make them balanced (such as scribe scroll and other item crafting feats).

We did nerf a few of the more broken combinations, but from our perspective there's a limit on how much you can do that. Even though it isn't all that much fun to play with a game breaking wizard, it also isn't much fun for the wizard to have to wonder every time he gains a new spell, "How's the DM going to nerf this spell".

It didn't require much in the way of system mastery either. In the first 3e campaign I ever played, we had a few players who rotated in and out, but it was mostly me and a friend. We started out playing a pair of halfling rogues, but after a TPK we rolled up new characters. He created a cleric. I created a monk whose race was, in retrospect, overpowered. It was a homebrewed humanoid phase spider, complete with poisonous bite, extra arms (which gave him an extra attack), and the ability to use dimension door once per day.

When waiting for other players to show up, my friend and I would duel each other to see who would win. Despite having an overpowered race, and dueling dozens of times, I failed to beat him even once. Our duels would go something like this:

-He'd cast defensively and summon fiendish girrallons.
-I'd engage and attack him, attempting to use stunning fist. After my attacks largely failed against his great armor class (magical plate armor and magical shield), he'd beat my stunning fist DC with his great Fortitude save, and make his concentration checks (which he pretty much couldn't fail).
-If, by some unlikely chance I did manage to disrupt his spell, he'd simply cast it again. Most of the time, however, round two meant that I'd lose half my hp to fiendish girallons.
-I'd continue focus firing on him, trying to burn him down, and failing.
-By round 3, odds were that the girallons had finished me off.

Admittedly, D&D isn't a pvp game, but this was just as obvious in play. We once faced off against a roper. I was grappled and eaten in one or two rounds. The cleric retreated, buffed himself, came back, and soloed the roper. He then dragged my corpse off to be raised. And that was hardly the only time that sort of thing happened.

Based on my experiences, I'd say that caster domination is not a myth.

 

[Bluenose]

But I also think the parity issue is a real turn off for many players and that it is pretty clear at this stage that 4E lost a large number of D&D customers. 3e may not have hit the fifty million mark, but it lasted longer than 4E and didn't have the split customer base 4e does. Just as 4e was a reaction to 3e's balance issues, 5e is a reaction to 4e's performance over time.

You don't think the OSR is a sign that 3e also split the consumer base? It's not a straight divide between 4e fans, and all other D&D editions.

 

[Umbran]

This thread, being about 3e, has been moved to the Legacy forum

 

[Doug McCrae]

I don't understand where is idea comes from that a roleplaying game should have perfect competitive balance, or that magic should be balanced with everything else. Where is that assumption in the rules?

Not the rules admittedly, but from TSR's magazine Strategic Review, that later became Dragon -

Magic-use was thereby to be powerful enough to enable its followers to compete with any other type of player-character, and yet the use of magic would not be so great as to make those using it overshadow all others. This was the conception, but in practice it did not work out as planned. Primarily at fault is the game itself which does not carefully explain the reasoning behind the magic system. Also, the various magic items for employment by magic-users tend to make them too powerful in relation to other classes (although the GREYHAWK supplement took steps to correct this somewhat).

...

The logic behind it all was drawn from game balance as much as from anything else. Fighters have their strength, weapons, and armor to aid them in their competition. Magic-users must rely upon their spells, as they have virtually no weaponry or armor to protect them. Clerics combine some of the advantages of the other two classes. The new class, thieves, have the basic advantage of stealthful actions with some additions in order for them to successfully operate on a plane with other character types. If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D & D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly, or the referee is forced to change the game into a new framework which will accommodate what he has created by way of player-characters. It is the opinion of this writer that the most desirable game is one in which the various character types are able to compete with each other as relative equals​

Gary Gygax, Strategic Review 2.2 1976

 

[Bedrockgames]

You don't think the OSR is a sign that 3e also split the consumer base? It's not a straight divide between 4e fans, and all other D&D editions.

No, i dont.