D&D 3E/3.5 3.5e Magical Offenders - Most Overpowered Spells & Fixes

[Ridley's Cohort]

I agree with Empirate; I do find perfect balance dull--but perfectly balancing casting vs. non-casting classes isn't my personal goal. I think trying to do that in the context of any of the legacy editions would probably take more time than building a very balanced system from scratch. The games I've found to be the "most balanced" typically give every class the same abilities and then reskin them for flavor. It is dull play, mechanically; it's hard to balance classes while giving them divergent roles--that's just my opinion, having tried by hand at system design previously. I can't offer any 4e opinions, as I haven't had an opportunity to play it.

Right. I generally agree that being truly balanced is not necessary, even if it were easily accomplished. Of course, it is not easy at all, unless you allow things to become dull.

But the next best thing is to have clear areas of expertise. Decide that spellcasters are going be best at certain things and non-spellcasters are going to be best at certain other things. An effective adventuring party will see that learning to rely on each other is the more efficient way to go.

That is why I think it is worth really focusing in on skill and mobility emulation spells. At least it is a reasonable start.

D&D is the oddball among RPGs in that it stresses Wizards (and to a lesser degree Clerics) as the Super Generalist. If Illusionists were really great at illusions and so-so at other things, and Enchanters were really great at enchanting, etc., etc., there would not be much of a problem because the spellbooks would always have large gaps. Other than the 1e Illusionist, D&D has avoided genuinely meaningful specialization IMO.

That is really the problem. While I am of the opinion that the superiority of the Tier 1 classes is vastly exaggerated, nonetheless, the fact every Wizard is potentially good at everything at little cost is always going to the problematic.

We should decided what a Wizard should be outright bad at.

 

[xigbar]

Say, [MENTION=85158]Dandu[/MENTION], I thought Legend's spell system was quite balanced. Maybe you should share the design theory behind that?

 

[Dandu]

"Chuck out the Polymorph line of spells" was a very helpful mindset.

Aside from that, we had "themed" casters sort of like how D&D has the Beguiler, Warmage, and Dread Neccromancer. This allows us to keep an eye on what spells each casting class gets.

Also, we playtested extensively. That was probably the most important thing as in D&D, spells such as Solid Fog do not seem like they were playtested. Which is probably why it's so powerful...

 

[kitcik]

I think WotC quite honestly accidentally made things as powerful - and as weak - as they were. I've said it before, I'll say it again: WotC designed 3e to reward system mastery, while being very poor at system mastery themselves.

This seems HIGHLY probable.

Any other MTG fans out there? This is true of the entire history of MTG and you can be sure it was the same playtesting methodology that transferred to D&D when they wrote their version after acquiring it.

Polymorph = Black Lotus = whoops!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Any other MTG fans out there? This is true of the entire history of MTG and you can be sure it was the same playtesting methodology that transferred to D&D when they wrote their version after acquiring it.

As someone who played MTG from Alpha to 6th and then pretty much stopped because of asinine card designs, stupid rules revisions, cards deemed too powerful before the set was released and tournament bans that didn't address the actual problem cards, I'm with you 100% on that.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/3562_Death_Of_A_Rogue.html

 

[Dandu]

I would be very happy if additional people wanted to join our test--so if anyone else here is interested, pipe in. A party of four sounds a-okay.

I'll post a link to a "Playing the Game" topic here later.

Here are my submissions:

Evard the Sorcerer

Mook the Monk

Cohen the Barbarian

Angel Summoner

As for a time and place... I believe high noon is appropriate? (Pacific Standard Time, that is.)

 

[Empirate]

"Chuck out the Polymorph line of spells" was a very helpful mindset.

Aside from that, we had "themed" casters sort of like how D&D has the Beguiler, Warmage, and Dread Neccromancer. This allows us to keep an eye on what spells each casting class gets.

Also, we playtested extensively. That was probably the most important thing as in D&D, spells such as Solid Fog do not seem like they were playtested. Which is probably why it's so powerful...

I always felt Beguiler, Warmage and Dread Necromancer were the way to go. If casters in 3.5 were all like these, it wouldn't only be a little more on the balanced side - it would also be more flavorful than the generalist spellbook-optimized-to-never-run-out-of-options wizards of 3.5. I even like Focused Specialists, although there's quite a few issues with how spells are assigned to schools (coughConjurationcough). FSs usually have to give up at least one school that hurts, and that's as it should be.

 

[kitcik]

Setting aside the definitional issue for a minute, how about the following: 1% - 3% XP penalty for every level of a full casting class or PrC you take. Once you take 5-10 levels, this would get significant.

 

[RedTonic]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/playing-game/308595-testing-caster-interrupt-variant.html

We got Terraria last night and I've been, er, a bit distracted. :halo: I'll try to get that map up in short order.

ETA
A very simple grid map up with coordinates.

 

[Empirate]

Setting aside the definitional issue for a minute, how about the following: 1% - 3% XP penalty for every level of a full casting class or PrC you take. Once you take 5-10 levels, this would get significant.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't. "Experience is a river" and all that. I.e., once you're a level behind, you start earning XP faster than your colleagues, so you will eventually catch up again. On occasion, you may even overtake them by a significant margin: if you're close to leveling up and a major fight provides lots of XP, you'll get many more than your teammates and may end up higher in XP than them. Happened in my group just recently...