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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5904470" data-attributes="member: 2067">This isn't as big a problem as many may think it is. We can balance combat spells by ensuring that a blast of fire and a swing of the sword deal about the same amount of damage under similar circumstances. We can balance Charm Person be ensuring that the spell and a Diplomacy check can do about the same thing under similar circumstances.We can do a little trick with the combat spell, to add variety to play: we can up its power in exchange for making it happen less often. A spell can do DOUBLE the damage of a sword, as long as the spell only happens half as often. Now the two things have a very distinct mechanical difference, though they remain broadly balanced. We can balance Charm Person in a similar way: the spell can do TWICE what a Diplomacy check can do, but it can only happen half as often. Stereotypically, a wizard gets one of their highest-level spells per "adventuring day." If we take 4e as a base, an "adventuring day" is, lets say, 3 encounters. Each encounter, each player is expected to make n dice rolls, and deal y average "damage." If all your encounters are combat, and the wizard can only use one spell in a day, the wizard can deal y damage all at once. In a typical 4e "adventuring day," with 10-round combats, you might have 30 die rolls, of which 15 hit, and deal an average of, say, 4 damage at level one, meaning your daily damage output is around the 60 hp range. So a wizard who can only make one attack per day can deal 60 damage with that attack and be "balanced."If the encounters are NOT just combat, you get a situation where spells can accomplish the same thing as n dice rolls in one of the three pillars, all at once. So this brings us back to Charm Person. It's not the same thing as a Diplomacy check, but the same thing as, say, 15 successful Diplomacy checks. That should be more powerful -- it's a more limited resource. Now, in actual play, you probably don't want a wizard who can only do one action per day (it's not a great play experience, really), but this gives you a framework that  you can adjust to meet the play experience you want. Maybe the wizard gets 3 spells per day that each do the same thing as 5 attack rolls/Diplomacy checks/Thievery checks (roughly the equivalent of encounter powers). That remains balanced. So then you wind up with a Charm Person that has power in the league of 5 successful Diplomacy checks. A rogue can convince a king to be his trusted friend with 5 successful Diplomacy checks, and a wizard can do it with one Charm Person?Yeah, I'm cool with that. Similarly, a high level fighter can gain a kingdom with 5 successful attack rolls, and a wizard can do it with one Demiplane Creation?Yeah, that's awesome, too. A wizard can do the same thing a rogue can do with a diplomacy check with Charm Person, but he gets infinite Charms per day? Pfft. There's nothing different, unique, or varied in that. That's no fun. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />The problem isn't that the wizard can ignore subsystems. The problem is when the wizard gets to ignore subsystems, and gets to do it ad infinitum. A rogue is still useful when Knock does the work of 5 skill checks, because there's more than one locked door between you and your destination -- there's 20 more dice rolls between here and the end of the adventure, and the wizard is all out of knocks for the day.</blockquote>

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