Casters vs Mundanes in your experience
- Thread starter MacMathan
- Start date
Lwaxy
Cute but dangerous
If they are going to screw with the wizard that way, it makes me a lot less inclined to play 5e. To me, the magic system has always been too restrictive and restricting it even more takes the fun out of it.
If the players are resourceful enough to pull a cool spell combo, that's fine for me. There are enough ways to make sure magic does not become too powerful, including spell chance failures in specific areas (like close to a powerful artifact, in a temple, a protected palace... heck even an enchanted wood will do.
In my experience, the magic users become differently powerful, not more so. If the non-magic types are very ineffectively build, then yes, , the magic PCs are better. Otherwise, not so much.
If the players are resourceful enough to pull a cool spell combo, that's fine for me. There are enough ways to make sure magic does not become too powerful, including spell chance failures in specific areas (like close to a powerful artifact, in a temple, a protected palace... heck even an enchanted wood will do.
In my experience, the magic users become differently powerful, not more so. If the non-magic types are very ineffectively build, then yes, , the magic PCs are better. Otherwise, not so much.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Really, in the early days of the game, it seemed like the eventual dominance of casters was not only obvious, expected and inevitable, but was actually a design feature.
'Balance,' was considered across a character's adventuring career. If you were comically weak at 1st level, that balanced you being wildly powerful at 18th. The same with races: non/demi-human races had many advantages and could multi-class, but had severe level limits - they had great advantages at low level but were constrained at higher levels. Similarly, classes and other options seemed to be balanced across all character-creation experiences. That is, if a class was hard to get stats to qualify for, that was deemed to 'balance' it, by making it 'rare.' No, really.
Those old balancing mechanisms only worked as intended (leaving aside whether working as intended was really balanced or not), if you played long campaigns which featured random character generation and disallowed changing characters, starting at 1st level and progressing well into higher levels.
Obviously, a lot of campaigns were short or used generous character generation variants or started above 1st level, or allowed characters to be swapped out at a given level.
There are any number of reasons you might not see caster dominance at higher levels. Campaigns not progressing to higher levels was a big one. Players changing characters, so at low level, casters are unusual and probably multi-classes, while at high level, everyone is a human caster of one sort or another. Variants to beef up non-casters at high level and casters at low levels. Wildly powerful magic items given to non-casters at higher levels. Player restraint and/or arbitrary DM 'swatting' of casters (whether subtle through time pressure and the like, or overt, like ubiquitous anti-magic fields).
'Balance,' was considered across a character's adventuring career. If you were comically weak at 1st level, that balanced you being wildly powerful at 18th. The same with races: non/demi-human races had many advantages and could multi-class, but had severe level limits - they had great advantages at low level but were constrained at higher levels. Similarly, classes and other options seemed to be balanced across all character-creation experiences. That is, if a class was hard to get stats to qualify for, that was deemed to 'balance' it, by making it 'rare.' No, really.
Those old balancing mechanisms only worked as intended (leaving aside whether working as intended was really balanced or not), if you played long campaigns which featured random character generation and disallowed changing characters, starting at 1st level and progressing well into higher levels.
Obviously, a lot of campaigns were short or used generous character generation variants or started above 1st level, or allowed characters to be swapped out at a given level.
There are any number of reasons you might not see caster dominance at higher levels. Campaigns not progressing to higher levels was a big one. Players changing characters, so at low level, casters are unusual and probably multi-classes, while at high level, everyone is a human caster of one sort or another. Variants to beef up non-casters at high level and casters at low levels. Wildly powerful magic items given to non-casters at higher levels. Player restraint and/or arbitrary DM 'swatting' of casters (whether subtle through time pressure and the like, or overt, like ubiquitous anti-magic fields).
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
30 years of 1e experience tells me to disagree here.
What I've seen time and again is the PC casters who become powerful in the late game are the ones who started early. It's rare for a caster to come in later and become powerful. Perhaps the fact that we tend to bring in characters a bit below the party level plays in to this.
We use a generous character creation method - the same for all characters - and allow characters to enter and leave pretty much at the players' whim. We've also removed just about all the race-class restrictions.
We've beefed up wizards basically to help them get through 1st level.
And even with all that, we haven't seen upper-level casters become as dominant as one might think. Of the four basic class groups, Wizard (i.e. MU-Ill-Nec) is the least played in our crew; in part I think because players see them as too fragile.
An odd side effect of this is that there's often only one decent-level MU in the game at a given time, and if she leaves the party has no MU at all; so they try to keep her around - and so back into the field she goes to gain another level while the rest of the party swaps in and out around her...
Lanefan
My experience is that once caster get enough resources (spells, spells per day, gold, magic items, scrolls, wands, and HP) they have a choice
1) Dominate
or
2) Willingly nerf themselves
The game shouldn't have as features of willingly self-nerfing and "I can't do jack" periods (AKA low level casters).
It's like a game of Monopoly where you start with 1/4 money but can purchase property without actually spending money.
1) Dominate
or
2) Willingly nerf themselves
The game shouldn't have as features of willingly self-nerfing and "I can't do jack" periods (AKA low level casters).
It's like a game of Monopoly where you start with 1/4 money but can purchase property without actually spending money.
Doug McCrae
Legend
It's not Monopoly if the boat and the shoe play the same.
Ahnehnois
First Post
My experience is generally that fighters and their ilk are more popular and more powerful at all levels, and that casters provide specialized expertise, plot device opportunities, and support the fighters.
At high levels, magic is not as effective as it reads. Anything that a character does is subject to massive scrutiny. Sure they can rain death and destruction on a few kobolds or human commoners if they want, but if they try anything stupid, someone more powerful than them is bound to notice. Almost every significant enemy has SR or some defense against magic, and at high levels, everyone has a ton of save-boostng items and rarely fails a save. Some common-sense DMing eliminates a few overpowered spells and combos, but for the post part, casters focus on something like healing or area damage, and chip in with a lot of out-of-combat divinations and the like.
Fighters, conversely, get all the powerful items, and have ridiculously powerful weapons. They can reliably ovecome any DR, and are likely to hit any enemy, and thus, where casters are often dumbfounded, fighters can deal damage reliably every turn of combat. A typical battle is decided by who supports their tank the best. Martial characters also tend to accumulate respect and political power, where casters tend to be separated from society.
I've been playing for over ten years now, with quite a few different people, several times at high levels and even in epic a few times, and I'm convinced this "god wizard" business is a myth. Well, not that it doesn't happen, but that it isn't a natural consequence of the rules. If anything, casters hit a sweet spot a little after 10th level (Heal, Disintegrate, Teleport, etc.), but fighters tend to reassert themselves later. There's room for improvement in limiting the sheer complexity of high-level casters and improving the breadth of options for fighters and rogues, but there's no need to reinvent the wheel.
At high levels, magic is not as effective as it reads. Anything that a character does is subject to massive scrutiny. Sure they can rain death and destruction on a few kobolds or human commoners if they want, but if they try anything stupid, someone more powerful than them is bound to notice. Almost every significant enemy has SR or some defense against magic, and at high levels, everyone has a ton of save-boostng items and rarely fails a save. Some common-sense DMing eliminates a few overpowered spells and combos, but for the post part, casters focus on something like healing or area damage, and chip in with a lot of out-of-combat divinations and the like.
Fighters, conversely, get all the powerful items, and have ridiculously powerful weapons. They can reliably ovecome any DR, and are likely to hit any enemy, and thus, where casters are often dumbfounded, fighters can deal damage reliably every turn of combat. A typical battle is decided by who supports their tank the best. Martial characters also tend to accumulate respect and political power, where casters tend to be separated from society.
I've been playing for over ten years now, with quite a few different people, several times at high levels and even in epic a few times, and I'm convinced this "god wizard" business is a myth. Well, not that it doesn't happen, but that it isn't a natural consequence of the rules. If anything, casters hit a sweet spot a little after 10th level (Heal, Disintegrate, Teleport, etc.), but fighters tend to reassert themselves later. There's room for improvement in limiting the sheer complexity of high-level casters and improving the breadth of options for fighters and rogues, but there's no need to reinvent the wheel.
Dice4Hire
First Post
Well, I voted a resounding yes, and not just for combat casting as a few other posters have focused on.
In my experience, too often the high level casters can dictate the flow of adventuring though spells and their use or non-use. Thy can cast fly, or spider climb, or use powerful divinations etc etc etc, and that really puts them the ones in the saddle when it comes to deciding what to do.
And that can be not a lot of fun for the other players.
In my experience, too often the high level casters can dictate the flow of adventuring though spells and their use or non-use. Thy can cast fly, or spider climb, or use powerful divinations etc etc etc, and that really puts them the ones in the saddle when it comes to deciding what to do.
And that can be not a lot of fun for the other players.
UngeheuerLich
Legend
Actually casters in ADnD were not as quadratic as you think. Saving throws got better. And anyone could resist spells better and better. So effectively, while spells were growing better and better, they became more unreliable. Also a wizard that was some level lower who had only spells two level lower were not handicapped by especially easily resisted spells.
Also in older editions than 3rd, wizards were balanced by the fact, that they could lose spells when in melee, and a vide variety of monsters, that just resisted magic.
(late 2nd edition had spells to reduce resistance though)
Also in older editions than 3rd, wizards were balanced by the fact, that they could lose spells when in melee, and a vide variety of monsters, that just resisted magic.
(late 2nd edition had spells to reduce resistance though)
Similar Threads
Recent & Upcoming Releases
-
June 16 2026 -
June 16 2026 -
September 16 2026 
Arcana Unleashed(Dungeons & Dragons)
Rulebook featuring "high magic" options, including a host of new spells.
Replies (181) -
September 16 2026 -
October 1 2026 -
October 6 2026 -
January 1 2027
