How would you houserule (nerf) magic at high levels.

[Dice4Hire]

'I use climb skill'
'I use spider climb'

I dont see the effective difference.

Read what the spider climb spell can do and then figure out how many rank of the climb skill you need to duplicate it with the same unerring accuracy. This is a perfect example of the opposite point you are arguing.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Like standing upside down on the roof of a cave and firing your bow at targets below...

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I have sometimes wondered what a D&D game would be like if you stole a DragonQuest idea and adapted it to D&D. In DQ, every spell is a separate skill. You learn the equivalent of "fireball", then you start out fairly lousy at it, but get better as you apply "experience" to it. It eventually becomes fairly reliable, but not everything can.

In D&D, you could do this for spells and items. This means that fighters have to do it as well, but they presumably have fewer items to pay attention to, and thus can develop those few to a more reliable degree. Plus, when the magic of your sword fails to function, it still works as a plain sword.

There are several mechanical ways this could be addressed, depending upon the amount of extra handling you are willing to tolerate. An easy way would be to simply apply the XP gained in leveling towards the spells or items of the players' choice, on a sliding scale based on the power of the spell or item. (That is, it takes more to develop a fireball than a magic missile. It takes more to unlock a +3 flaming sword than a +1 sword.)

You want the scale to be generous enough to allow some old things to hang around without cheesing the players off. That is, the fighter can hang onto that +1 sword ability in case it matters, and not feel unduly ripped off. But you don't want it so generous that the wizard can run up every spell to reliable, immediately.

Another option is to use a Rune Quest-style mechanic where the spells and items are made reliable via play. A utility wizard can be a utility wizard if he plays one all the time, but not reliably unless he works at it.

Whatever the means, if I'm going to nerf flexibility in high level magic, I want to put more decision in the hands of the players as to exactly how they deal with it.

 

[Puggins]

It's not only that, but you sacrifice, usually feats, to do that.

This prevents a whole slew of other options, like crafting magic items, say, from being open.

That's certainly the intent, but not the reality.

Designers basically threw what looked to be a fair trade-off out the window when they designed a slew of spells that had no vulnerability to SR in the original PHB and were just as good as other spells that WERE affected by SR. Evard's Black Tentacles is a perfect example of this- it's easily one of the best spells of its level even before you take its immunity to SR into account. Ditto Gate and Shapeshift. A cleric or druid that designs his or her load-out to ignore SR is (IMO, opinion) just as effective against creatures with no SR as a cleric/druid that didn't do so.

Later designers seemed to think that trading low-level spell slots for a guarantee to bypass SR (see Assay Spell Resistance) was a fair trade, making SR a complete joke once you hit the teens.

I totally get your argument in spirit, but the system doesn't live up to the original intent.

This is one thing that 1e got right- Magic Resistance mattered a whole lot more than SR does.

 

[korjik]

Read what the spider climb spell can do and then figure out how many rank of the climb skill you need to duplicate it with the same unerring accuracy. This is a perfect example of the opposite point you are arguing.

No, just an example of you missing the point. The discussion is spider climb taking over for climb skill, not climb skill taking over for spider climb.

This isnt about standing on the ceiling shooting a bow, but using spells to replace skill checks.

In which case, for a skill check that is not just wandering damage, the spell is not any better than the skill. I did not say the climb skill is the same as the spider climb spell in all cases, I was talking about the situation at hand.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In which case, for a skill check that is not just wandering damage, the spell is not any better than the skill.

Sure it is- Climb gives you a speed of 1/4 movement, has an an armor check penalty PLUS a loss of Dex bonus to AC, and if you fail a roll by 5 you fall

Spider Climb gives you a rate of 20', has no armor check penalty, lets you keep your Dex bonus, and negates the need for most climb checks.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Was this inspired by Roger Musson's article in White Dwarf?

Y'know, I believe it may well have been. Well done for remembering that!

 

[Plane Sailing]

'I use climb skill'
'I use spider climb'

I dont see the effective difference.

If I recall correctly, in the old days one of the effective differences was that a wizard using spider climb had to take off his boots and wasn't able to cast spells with material components because it made his hands and feet sticky!

 

[ProfessorCirno]

It has not been my experience that SR is hilariously and easily bypassed.

It has also not been my experience that "when wizards don't blast" as most wizards, well at least in the games I've been in or run, have had the 'blasting' wizard.

Our experiences must have worlds of differences where you see the 30 hit point 10th level wizard being some godly entity that isn't bluffing himself most of the combat in order to survive.

Then, and I don't mean this rudely, you have not seen a well played wizard.

System mastery was an intentional part of 3e's design focus. I think, however, that the developers themselves weren't very good at it. I think 4e is closer to their goal - system mastery makes better characters but not godly ones, and the lack thereof makes not as good characters but not worthless ones.

But in 3e, system mastery makes wizards who all but completely ignore SR, and never blast (because blasting is a terrible idea), but instead control the battlefield or throw out don't-get-to-save-just-die spells. They can easily - without spending any feats - skyrocket their DCs to the stratosphere, and they have far more spell slots then they know what to do with. It can become easy to never spend all your spell slots even as early as level 4.

It's true that if you haven't seen a wizard who really knows what they're doing, you may not have seen these problems. But in those cases that simply means you haven't seen it, not that it doesn't exist - it means you haven't yet seen someone with the system mastery. And again I stress - this was a desired function of 3e.

The bigger problem is how easy it is to accidentally trip and fall into one of the godly characters. See, 3e's balance problems don't lie with Pun Pun or CharOps. Those are strawmen. 3e's balance problems lie with a new player who says "I think I'll make a druid, and natural spell looks cool." or a new player who makes a wizard and says "Well, I want my intelligence to be as high as it can be, and this color spray spell looks really cool."

 

[Mort]

In any case, in the games I run by the time the adventurers reach high level, often their opponents have access to the same magic, so much of the time buffs get canceled out by the same spells cast on their enemies, or they are actively removed by dispel magic and such.

This was actually one of the things I hated most as levels got higher in 3e/3.5e - the simple fact that the first spell often cast by both the party and their oponents was a version of dispel magic (or multiple versions).

First it essentialy shows just how much a factor magic is in high level play - if you can negate more of the other sides magic than they can of yours you have a significant advantage - too significant.

Second, and as importantly - it started combat with a massive drag as the mage started cranking out dispel checks (with a 4-6 person buffed to the gills party this was just a pain) - Pathfinder's 3 buff maximum might mitigate it, but I bet it's still annoying.