[L&L] Balancing the Wizards in D&D

[billd91]

OH wait no this is suposed to be about inclusion not who is better... This is again BS, my players are not rejecting options becuse they are a little less, in fact the problem is that some choose by flavor and others my mechanics and sit at the same table.

an AC 32 warden who can twice per encounter boost that to a 40 who has an attack bonus that can hit himself, for a boat load of damage, at the same table with a AC 19 shaman with an attack bonus of +14 and almost no damage to speak of...

Yep, they're sitting at the same table. And they won't change anything about how they play to reach a mutual accord? Isn't that a good example of being inflexible about the way they want to play to the detriment of the group as a whole rather than adjusting to their circumstances as players?

 

[Melkor]

With respect, I don't care.

See it looks like this (from my point of view)

in this case I can tell you, Not everyone sees it, and to be honnest I hope you never do, but what does it hurt to fix a problem?
that is like wanting Norton's anti virus not to update until AFTER you get a virus, becuse if you haven't yet you don't think you will.

I'm certainly not trying to make this a personal issue, or be hostile in any way.

Please take a look at my other post on this subject about play experience. I mention in that post that I have probably been fortunate enough to have great DMs that have insulated me from a lot of these problems, so admittedly, I just don't see them, and that probably makes it hard for me to understand the....passion (?) with which some people post about inherent 'balance' issues, or other problems, they have had playing D&D.

 

[Tom Servo]

your party fighter would like to introduce you to a totally overpowered and game-wrecking device called a sledgehammer.

I love that quote, the sledgehammer must be nerfed! I say let's have lock smashing as a sledgehammer daily power.

My problem here is that using magic in this way takes the "magic" away from magic. Magic just becomes another tool in the toolbox. A glowing purple ray of energy is just another sledgehammer after the 20th time you've seen it in a day.

Also, perhaps related to "magic as dangerous", I don't think bending the laws of nature to your will is something to be done frivolously or for free. If a wizard wants to expend their powers smashing locks or felling trees there should be some cost associated to it.

Finally, while there is little mechanical difference between a crossbow and a "ice dagger" cantrip, there is a big difference in my imagination. One is shooting a weapon, the other causes a dagger of ice to appear out of thin air and then fly towards the target. The latter should be rarer in my opinion.

All this said, I totally respect that others have very different tastes and opinions on this. I'm just trying to clarify this point of view a bit more.

 

[Incenjucar]

Having to hold yourself back can get really frustrating really quickly, reducing the fun of the game. Better game design can keep people from having to sit on their hands and play dumb.

 

[SkidAce]

Any "extreme" is detrimental to the game.

However, a different perspective: Holding yourself back can become rewarding very quickly as you see the increased enjoyment of one of your friends come to fruition because he is no longer over shadowed. Eventually as a group your play styles gel and everyone is playing, having fun, and not holding back.

 

[Incenjucar]

Any "extreme" is detrimental to the game.

However, a different perspective: Holding yourself back can become rewarding very quickly as you see the increased enjoyment of one of your friends come to fruition because he is no longer over shadowed. Eventually as a group your play styles gel and everyone is playing, having fun, and not holding back.

That only works if the other players can actually ever catch up instead of suffering from an ever-widening power gap. If the power gap widens as in 2E and 3E, then the casters are going to be holding back more and more and more so that the thief can feel like something other than a speed bump.

Worse, that can actually lead to people developing resentment of their fellow players for putting them in that position.

 

[Fifth Element]

However, a different perspective: Holding yourself back can become rewarding very quickly as you see the increased enjoyment of one of your friends come to fruition because he is no longer over shadowed. Eventually as a group your play styles gel and everyone is playing, having fun, and not holding back.

That's not an onus that should be put on the players, or the DM, by the system. If the systems gives your character abilities that, if used to their fullest extent, hurt the fun of other players, then that's a system problem, not a player problem.

Also, what [MENTION=6182]Incenjucar[/MENTION] said.

 

[Thaumaturge]

As far as wands go, what if instead of limiting the spells that go on wands, the designers alter the number of charges specific spells use?

If, for example, fireball is perfectly fine on a wand, then it can have a 1 to 1 charge to use ratio. If knock is seen as too game-breaking to be on a wand, which it probably is, it could have a 3 to 1 charge to use ratio. Casters could still use wands for everything, but some things would just be more efficient than others. Particularly powerful spells could even use all charges on a wand.

The biggest negative of this would be the necessity to add a line in every spell description stating how many charges it consumes per use in a wand.

I think it makes intuitive sense that some spells are more efficient when stored than others, and is maybe a better story solution than some spells are 'wandable' and some aren't. I could be wrong about this.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Dausuul]

The ability to stick any and every spell (up to 4th level) into a wand was an aberration of 3E. No other edition has had it, and I see no need to bring it back in D&DN. 3E wands embodied everything I hated about 3E's handling of magic items--they were both utterly bland and very powerful.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I've been over this at length in other threads, but suffice it to say that it is entirely possible to balance spellcasters for infrequent spike effects when other characters can't -- it is one of the things that adventure-based design enables much more easily than encounter-based design.

The maths I applied kept wizards balanced with 3 spells/day at first level, and you could conceivably change that number, with tweaks to things like check results and damage maths.

And if one d00d tooling around on a message board can see a way in which it works, I assume the full-time designers can see it even more clearly. Even if that d00d is admittedly stunningly intelligent...and dashingly handsome...

At any rate, it is not the case wizards must meet a micro-level encounter balance in order to not overshadow the non-magical characters over the course of a night's gameplay.