Encumbrance with a 10 pound maximum lift tends to be an issue. Your 5 lb Handy Haversack alone is a medium load. Tack on clothes, that Wizard's Staff and those magic items you don't wish to spend a move action to retrieve, and I suspect you're down to "A character can lift as much as double his or her maximum load off the ground, but he or she can only stagger around with it. While overloaded in this way, the character loses any Dexterity bonus to AC and can move only 5 feet per round (as a
full-round action)." But, of course, we conveniently ignore any issue of encumbrance, because that would actually create a problem for wizards who dump STR.
He researches and masters the formulas/gestures etc in his downtime at the tavern (or his pocket dimension or his own study), while on watch duty, between adventures etc. He creates the magic items with Scribe Scroll and the various Craft feats. That was the narrative crux of what my Wizards did. I thought that was the conventional justification/M.O. for Wizard progression through levels?
First off, I agree that there can be a variety of setting assumptions. That also includes a variety of justifications/MO's for wizards. Craft feats, especially, seem really divided, used extensively by some groups and ignored entirely by others.
You frequently use the term "research". What is he researching from? Those research materials/sources need to come from somewhere. Someone had to train that new wizard, too.
I never assumed there is a "ready market". That is an implicit setting assumption you're making that I'm again disputing.
It is an implicit 3e assumption with specified sale and purchase prices for magic items. It can certainly be removed, but we're now reducing access of the non-spellcasters to their custom items unless the wizard/cleric chooses to take feats to beef up their non-spellcaster colleagues. That requires revisiting the math assumptions of the CR system which has enough issues already).
Similarly, the fact there are standard prices for spellcasters to cast a spell in town presumes a lot of spellcasters, not just an occasional, rare individual who is generally either a PC or a dungeon dwelling adversary. Again, an assumption easily adjusted, but one that, when adjusted, provides the spellcaster's "unknown" status, which provides a considerable advantage. It should be offset by some drawback. One that comes to mind, which I agree is a pain to manage in game, is
a bit of a granular resource tracking and process simulation issue that never comes up in my games.
With wizards frequent enough to make gathering well known spell components for ready sale to replace or stock up those spell component pouches, we can ignore the issue - spell components are easily obtained in town, just like arrows and rations, so the PC's access to them can simply be assumed.
I'm not really sure what you're talking about here rules-wise. If you're talking about players at the table (not characters) using metagame information to make decisions then the answer is quite simple; the players are using metagame information to make decisions for their character.
Ignoring any metagame issues, the PC group tends to have a lot of skills providing insights to various mighty, magical creatures. They are sometimes (with poor rolls) less than fully informed. They NEVER have a misconception. If magic is rare and mysterious, why aren't magical creatures less well known? Why aren't spells more difficult to fathom by those who have never run across them before?
In general, if you're referring to adventurers having arcana or spellcraft etc, then I would just say:
1 - That is the hybridized narrative/metagame construct of classes.
2 - That metagame portion provides what is needed for functional play. That narrative portion presupposes a career of adventuring requires an entry-level understanding/exposure to magic and perpetuates a post-graduate (from not having a class to having a class) education with respect to the requirements of the job...which entail dealing with and handling magic.
Emphasis added. We need a metagame which provides functional play. That means we need that understanding of magic being reasonably trainable, so there must be people out there who can provide that training. Now, if we assume no one knows anything about magic (outside the PC's and rare NPC's), thus no one has clue one what powers a wizard might possess, much less how to deal with them, with the result being hat wizards (or other spellcasters) are omnipotent juggernauts, do we have functional play?
Layfolk don't have classes and aren't adventurers/Big Damn Heroes who brave crypts full of Wights et al for Flaming Swords and Invisibility Cloaks. They till their land, cobble shoes, barter for daily/seasonal supplies and hope their wife/child survives birth. Or they attend balls, drink the finest wine, cavort with the opposite sex, learn the newest dances, and partake of the newest fads. If they're stupidly filthy rich they might be able to hire a low-level Wizard for parlor tricks etc. But all of these are setting issues. It can be whatever you want it to be.
In 3e, they do have NPC classes, which raise their BAB's, saves, hp, etc. What made that necessary? I suppose the tendency of some gamers to decide to slaughter the townsfolk rather than interact with them. Perhaps a desire for some verisimilitude in that these settlements have not been overrun long since by the creatures living not too far from them. If you have to be stupidly filthy rich to hire a wizard to cast parlor tricks, then we should be repricing other aspects of magic accordingly, shouldn't we?
If anything, the RAW cost of casting a spell is excessive. It costs 50 gp to persuade a L5 character to cast a first level spell? He'll spend 375 gp in materials and cast it 50 times into a wand and sell it for 750, earning 7.5 gp per spell. Nice volume discount. He'll make a scroll and sell it to you for 25 gp after paying 12.5 for the materials - 75% off for putting it in writing? And let's not forget the xp cost of items - maybe wizards LIKE losing xp?
In any case, the point of this long rambling is that the 3.0/3.5 rules moved magic into the realm of a craft and commodity, routinely available provided you have the gold. The economy, of course, is still pretty messed up, but that's always been the case.
Again, setting issue. This will vary by group. However, if FR is anything near the bog standard implied setting then it is fair to say that elves and liches are "in charge". That is to say if "in charge" means they are in charge of the most powerful empires in the world (Netheril, Thay, Evereska, etc).
So why are those Wizards of Thay stopped at the border? If wizards elsewhere are rare in the extreme, what prevents the Omnipotent Wizards of Thay taking over their neighbours?
I don't think that is fair. I've always considered one of my most important roles as GM is to maintain an empathic link with my various players. Be considerate of what they want out of this game. I don't think its unfair at all for a Wizard player to create a rules-legitimate build (even a bog standard one) and expect me to impartially adjudicate play...not use metagame concerns to consistently, adversarially strategize the entirety of my world, my conflicts, and the scenes I frame around what he can conceptually deploy to solve those conflicts, to re-frame those scenes. I can easily, easily, easily destroy any Wizard by doing this. I can do the same thing with any aspect of my game. So I beat him to the punch (or I cheat on the fly when he has pressed the win button), Wizard-proof much of my world/conflicts through fiat, and render inert his archetype/build...what exactly have I gained besides an unhappy player?
So it's a good game if the wizard can run roughshod over the campaign, and none of the other PC's are remotely relevant? That's what seems to be argued is the standard, and any hint that opponents might actually have the smarts and knowledge to challenge the wizard is just completely unfair. Let's put the shoe on the other foot - would you expect a group of PC's, and lets say they lack a wizard, faced with opposition which seems to attack then vanish, only to return for another attack, to feign unawareness of spells capable of accomplishing this, or would you expect them to consider how to deal with the possible use of Rope Trick, Teleport, etc.?
There's a definite spot in the continuum to be located between "Wizards are Gods - the rest of you are here to carry my loot" and "Spells are never allowed to succeed". Neither extreme makes for a good game.
As far as the rest of it goes, I addressed it above. Magic doesn't hae to be dripping from trees for Wizards to have their spell gain per level, their scrolls and their wands. They research them, they spend default features to create them and they invest in feats to create the rest. There is no double standard here. You can have few mages and a lot of magic items if there is enough time to accrue. There are lots of castles in Europe and no one is in the business of creating castles these days. There is an enormous, vast, unbelievable swath of TSR products out there and nary a TSRian producing them in the last generation.
20? 30? years for TSR -
http://www.ebay.com/itm/I6-Ravenlof...RPG-TSR9075-Played-RPG-Dungeons-/331021995193 shows me that I6 (Ravenloft) can be purchased now for $30. How rare will it be in 2086? Castles in Europe - a lot of money is being spent maintaining them, and many are still pretty crumbly. In many cases, we speculate on what, exactly, specific areas were originally built for, as they were built over before we started working to preserve them for historical value. And they're what, 500 years old? How many legible scrolls do we have that are 500 years old? And they're not destroyed by being read, like spell scrolls and wands.
Again, we could certainly adopt a model where these items are much more rare, and not available for purchase. That was, I think, the standard for most 1e and 2e games, although we occasionally saw potions or scrolls available for purchase. But that definitely changes the model. It's not what I see implied for 3e. And, if wizards and items are so rare, implies that adversaries won't be all that well equipped. Those magical weapons and armor should be much more common in older weapons and armor. In our world, Roman artifacts would include a lot of magical short swords, but longer blades weren't around. To the point that there are 300,000 years worth of artifacts, how common are intact tools and weapons from the Roman Empire? Those aren't even 1% as old!
SHIFT GEARS TO THE DRAGON
I still don't know why Blindsense is coming up.
The assumption that Invisibility = "It can't possibly detect me".
60 ft isn't in the same universe as the range of Spectral Hand. Its useless versus Spectral Hand. Can we turn the page on that one?
Can we turn the page on Stupid Dragon Syndrome? Dragons all become Sorcerers, and have high mental stats. That suggests they have at least "low level PC" knowledge of magic. The Spectral Hand range is 100' + 10' per level, so well beyond 60'. But this assumes the Dragon chooses to engage on a flat plain, or in a cavern far more vast than his perceptions allow him to easily manage. Why would the Dragon's lair allow a line of sight/effect with a range beyond his ability to easily perceive?
Regardless of everything else, assume the Wizard doesn't do all the Divination and infiltration tricks to get in Spectral Hand range of the Dragon. Lets assume the group does it. Now we have this epic fight with the dragon right? This climactic fight to end this tier of play! The Fighter and Cleric charge forward to engage for a titanic clash of elemental forces that is sure to ring out in song and legend for ages to come...except Spectral Hand buffed before fight, Assay Spell Resistance as Swift Action and Shivering Touch the dragon to 0 Dex with an SR check that is impossible to fail and no Saving Throw. Fight over.
That Spectral Hand holds up poorly to breath weapons, having 1-4 hp. Leaving that aside, however, what is the actual problem? Wizards in general, or Shivering Touch specifically? Does any other spell inflict a 3d6 penalty to a stat, or 3d6 damage to a stat? With no save? How does it compare to other single target L3 spells? When the same spell keeps cropping up as the "I Win" button, I question whether that spell needs to be reconsidered.
Looking at CR 14 or so chromatic dragons, spell resistance falls between 21 and 23. As an epic, tier ending/campaign ending battle, that sounds like L11 characters. Assuming no enhancing feats (which means less crafting feats which, if I read your comments correctly, means less access to magic items), that means our L11 wizard needs a roll of 10 - 12 to get past spell resistance. Seems reasonable. Its a bit easier if he takes relevant feats, but he's still got a decent failure chance. I see AC's of 27 - 29, so that typical Fighter with a +11 BAB, +4 (or better) STR modifier and +3 weapon needs a 9 - 11 roll to hit. I'm guessing it's actually considerably easier for the Fighter to land at least one hit in a round than for the Wizard to get a spell past that SR.
Now, we can add Assay Spell Resistance, but it can't be cast until you can see the dragon. How far in advance do you want to cast Spectral Hand? How many rounds will you spend before that Shivering Touch can be cast, and why does the Blindsensing Dragon (with the sense not to lair in a space allowing creatures to hide outside its senses) not take action before then? Does the Dragon not understand it's the soft, squishy wizard who hides in the back, invisible?
And one final note on high magic implied settings with Wizards everywhere. If Wizards were everywhere the world wouldn't resemble anything that the current implied setting does. There would be fresh water and food till the end of time, no one would have to work with undead and construct minions, teleportation circles would make flight and rail of our current era look archaic, and an economy based on Fabricate would never want for materials. It just doesn't fit.
Depends what the spellcasters charge for their services. Starvation seems a lot rarer in the typical D&D world than it was in the middle ages of our own. I definitely agree that magic would be a gamechanger, if it really existed. But it would also be a resource we would work to harness, not something kept secret by a small cabal for 300 (much less 300,000) years. The assumption that magic would be held to a tiny group knowledgeable of it is no more realistic than that it could be widespread without effecting huge changes on the world. We've accepted that since the Early Days. In a world where all these flying beasts exist, what use are castle walls?
SHIFT GEARS TO
no valid description would pass the filters, would it?
So? "Unreasonable" is not defined. Plus, taking a few centuries out of a low-ranking immortal's life to try to net a super-powerful soul does seem good investment.
If we want to overpower the wizard, sure. This is, again, a very generous interpretation of the rules in favour of the wizard. I'd ask that any GM that would consider the Planar Binding spell to entice its victim into lifelong (for the caster) servitude in exchange for getting the caster's soul when he dies, resulting in an obedient minion for the rest of the campaign, to be a deal that would be accepted in their game (not dismissed as "unreasonable") to post their agreement in this thread. I could certainly be proven wrong. Feel free to also comment if , like me, you would consider it unreasonable.
It's certainly far from the most unreasonable interpretation I've seen from CJ, though. He's accomplished a lot in a very short period of time, at least in that regard.
To your very detailed and thorough analysis, I'll comment on your insightful notes as follows:
- the dragon has to be stupid to lair in a place where Spectral Hand can be effectively used from outside its Blindsense radius - yes, if we assume all PC Wizards are tactical geniuses (and intelligence is no guarantee of wisdom or tactical skill), and everyone else is dumb as a post, Wizards are much more effective;
- different opponents use different tactics - those capable of locating the wizard's bolt hole will operate differently from those overwhelmed by these mysterious attackers appearing from nowhere only to vanish tracking, flight and reinforcing defenses are three different possible reactions;
- I always love all the many things wizards can do in theory, never backed up by an actual spell load that accomplishes it.
Overall - what we do need is non-combat abilities for non-spellcasters that scale appropriately by level. The non-combat wizard abilities grow a lot faster. Some of those abilities are enablers. For example, if I want a world-spanning campaign, I can simply ensure the wizard can Teleport the party - then I don't need to toss in a magic item to do that. In pretty much every game I've played, whether the PC's arrive in an area by instant teleport across thousands of miles or even planar boundaries, fly there on mystical steeds whose stride can cover seven leagues, or walk there at a leisurely pace, bringing a wagon train, they never seem to arrive so early that they can nip the adventure in the bud, nor so late that the adventure is already over. Funny how they can so easily manage to discern, and travel at, the precise Speed of Plot.
Despite repeated claims of the inevitability of omnipotent spellcasters running roughshod over every campaign, it seems like most games include characters of a wide variety of classes and run just fine. How can we get the word out that they're all DOING IT WRONG?
