Pathfinder 1E Reigning in casters

[Kinak]

While there would be less pushback in buffing non-casters up to tier 2 or tier 1, in practice that creates more problems than it solves. You then have to buff the monsters to catch up, and at some point math breaks down and creates a more deginerate game rather than less. High level 3.X is already more than deginerate enough without pushing it to greater problems.

By commonly accepted measurements, such as the 'Brilliant Gameologist' tier system Wizards, Clerics, and Druids are 'Tier 1'. By contrast the fighter is like tier 5. What would be ideal IMO is if the all the classes were about tier 3 and we could back off some of the CR creep where the monsters of a given CR are inflating in power that is seen in 3.5. To do that we have to both buff the non-casters so that the they move up a tier and tone down the casters so that they back off at least a tier. You can see that in my design. The changes to cleric back them down from tier 1 to tier 2. Replacing Druid with Shaman replaces a tier 1 with a tier 2 class.

Bringing them all towards the middle is a much better solution if you can use it. I just know my players well enough to know bringing some classes down isn't on the table and I suspect that other GMs would run into the same pushback.

Ironically, I could probably buff the non-casters and just eliminate wizard, cleric, druid, and summoner. But nerfing an existing class wouldn't fly. Psychology is an interesting beast.

High level that also means changes in how you treat monsters with more than 20 HD, and in general how you scale up monsters at all. You are aiming to restore the 1e pattern that the higher level you are the more likely you are to pass a save, because the expected consequences of failure are higher instead of the 3e pattern of the higher level you are the more likely you are to fail a save and the greater the consequences of failure.

I agree this is a total mess, but both the 1e/2e and 3e progression are pretty weird in practice. Getting spells that hardly ever work isn't much better than getting spells that hardly ever fail.

You could probably salvage the 1e/2e progression by ramping the number of saves, like low-level spells allow multiple saves before the worst happens, mid-level have one save, and high-level do something bad if you fail any of them. Like phantasmal killer and its kin.

For my group, because we avoid save or suck stuff in general, many of those effects have been converted to ability damage with an extra effect on hitting 0. Lesser restoration has gotten a lot of mileage Other have been coded with "outs" like you can take some damage to ignore the effect for a round.

Any of those, of course, require rewriting a ton of spells. Which comes back to player buy-in. I'm lucky on that front, because my players hate getting hit with save or suck spells way more than I hate my villains getting hit.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[steeldragons]

I'm a big advocate of different XP tables for different classes.

If the spellcasters are OP'd [or begin to become at higher levels] then simply level them up slower. They can still get skills/knowledge/lore, magic items, heck, maybe even throw in a weapon prof. or two...but the added spell power that comes from leveling up comes slower.

In my current homebrew system non-magic-using level up the quickest. The "partial" casters and/or classes that are front loaded with abilities/skills/special doo-dads level up the next fastest. "Full" casters and classes with lots of added abilities/skills/powers [that aren't necessarily spells or magic, like Paladins and Psychics] level up the slowest.

You want to be the guy with all of the bells and whistles. That's fine. You will have to work for it.

This also has the added "in world" benefit of giving the premise and appearance that the more "special" classes are a noticeably smaller number of the population. i.e. There are tons more Fighters and Thieves than there are Clerics or Rangers, tons more Clerics and Rangers than there are Mages and Bards, tons more everybody than Psychics or Paladins...I can't quite recall at the moment whether Illusionists get a "by" and are in the medium category...not all specialist mages would be. I don't think they are. I think any "full magic-[dependent]-user" is in the slowest/most difficult advancement track.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I probably could have been a lot more concise and clear in my post but it was very stream of consciousness. I would say my main takeaways are:
1. There's too many spells to deal with them individually unless you are coo-coo for cocoa puffs crazy.

Only if you allow splats, in any edition. Stick to just what's in the core PH and the review task becomes quite manageable, if admittedly tedious at times.

Particularly from 2e onwards, allowing splats is the direct path to madness.

That said, there's many a time I've taken spells from splats (mainly from 2e) and chucked them into the game after reviewing them...the trick is to only skim the cream, rather than allow the whole splat.

2. Dealing with them by groups isn't effective because there is so much variance in power and utility within any subgroup, and effects vary so wildly that many broken spells will go untouched by any particular nerf.

Agreed.

3. The game requires spells to function so nerfing spells will wreck the game's internal "balance", broken though it already is.

In a magic-based game such as D&D (any version) spells or similar are indeed somewhat essential. And in general most spells aren't much of a headache at all; it's just a few key offenders and a few perhaps-unforeseen interactions between some others that cause problems, and these are (usually) easy to fix.

4. There is a line which nerfing something to fairness becomes nerfing something to oblivion. Care must be taken not to cross this line.

Agreed, absolutely.

Lan-"as a last resort, a longsword +2 wizardslayer can solve any arcanist problem"-efan

 

[ForeverSlayer]

The main things I used to do was actually enforce the spell component costs that come with a lot of the higher level spells, and I cut out magic item shops where you can just go in an buy spells.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I play a lot of mages and I have dealt with the make spells take longer than the RAW and for the most part it made me and the rest of the party crazy. Take fireball a lot can happen in three rounds the combat can end, situations change making casting fireball not a good idea. Do you have any idea how frustrating for the player that becomes? I eventually refused to take any combat spells and only took utility spells and in combat I hid until the battle was over. Eventually the rest of the party was like can we have our wizard back.

I have seen so many fixes and lot of them sound good until you get into play and then you find they make playing the wizard a chore. Take going back to if a wizard gets hit even for one point they lose the spell. basically you are saying that a master of spells can't cast if he gets hit with a small stone. If this is an issue raise the DC to save. Though I have lost a lot of spells even with high ranks in concentration.

Another fix is to cap damage spells one problem is wizards not only get higher level spells their low level spells level up as well. I had one DM require using a metamagic feat to make a spell do more damage. Another made new versions like greater magic missile or greater fireball.

Also as someone else said ban wizards completely that maybe less frustrating for everyone.

I got rid of Concentration checks and just had the players roll a d20 1 - 10 lose the spell and 11-20 keep the spell if they were hit.

I've been fooling around with more rules for Concentration checks.

 

[Elf Witch]

I got rid of Concentration checks and just had the players roll a d20 1 - 10 lose the spell and 11-20 keep the spell if they were hit.

I've been fooling around with more rules for Concentration checks.

That is a simple fair rule 50/50 chance. I would have no issue with this.

One of my issues with all skills is how they get easily maxed out. We house ruled that a 1 is a -10 and 20 is a +10.

 

[Hussar]

But, that also gets into another issue- how often are your casters actually getting hit? IME, the casters are so rarely being directly attacked, that concentration checks aren't really even needed most of the time.

In the groups I've seen, the wizard hangs pretty far back, far enough that it makes it very difficult to target him.

I suppose if you use a heavily humanoid campaign where ranged weapons are very common, that might solve the problem. But, most non-humanoid monsters lack a ranged attack, making it pretty easy for the casters to simply stay back and cast with impunity.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

But, that also gets into another issue- how often are your casters actually getting hit? IME, the casters are so rarely being directly attacked, that concentration checks aren't really even needed most of the time.

In the groups I've seen, the wizard hangs pretty far back, far enough that it makes it very difficult to target him.

I suppose if you use a heavily humanoid campaign where ranged weapons are very common, that might solve the problem. But, most non-humanoid monsters lack a ranged attack, making it pretty easy for the casters to simply stay back and cast with impunity.

It takes effort in a dungeon, but attack from all directions. Unless you have a very large party, the wizard may be exposed. Far easier in a forest, but this requires the enemy to split ahead of time and use strategic pincer attacks.

 

[n00bdragon]

It takes effort in a dungeon, but attack from all directions. Unless you have a very large party, the wizard may be exposed. Far easier in a forest, but this requires the enemy to split ahead of time and use strategic pincer attacks.

Ideally it would be great to get the class to a point where the DM doesn't have to apply special above and beyond effort just to threaten certain members of the party. You can sit here and rattle off special cases where the wizard is vulnerable all day but unless each and every encounter is specifically molded just to make his life miserable...

I think the overall goal should be to get to a point where the DM can just design and encounter and it should generally work for everyone. Everyone gets a relatively equal share of the danger and the excitement and that should just be how most things work by default, without bringing in special cases.

 

[Elf Witch]

Ideally it would be great to get the class to a point where the DM doesn't have to apply special above and beyond effort just to threaten certain members of the party. You can sit here and rattle off special cases where the wizard is vulnerable all day but unless each and every encounter is specifically molded just to make his life miserable...

I think the overall goal should be to get to a point where the DM can just design and encounter and it should generally work for everyone. Everyone gets a relatively equal share of the danger and the excitement and that should just be how most things work by default, without bringing in special cases.

I have played every edition and I have yet to see a DM not have to apply special effort in designing encounters for the party he is DMing. Unless you have a by the book party of four no power gamers ,no prestige classes ,no multiclassing munchkins and you have the four bases of arcane, divine, meat shield and skill monkey covered you have to tweak the game.

I have had more issues with tweaked out rogues played by a power gamer than I ever had with a wizard.