Cleric and Druid : better than wizard?

[Sylrae]

OK.

Druid, and Cleric, and Wizard.

The druid is a wizard with a much bigger selection of spells, full armor casting, armor proficiencies, weapon proficiencies, a combat animal companion, and wildshape, they don't rely on a spellbook, have a better HD, better saves, better bab, and better skillpoints. They lose the bonus feats. explain how that is balanced against the wizard please? also, how would you recommend altering the class to fix it?

now the cleric: full armor casting,better bab, better saves, bigger hd than the druid, better proficiencies, combat effective class features depending on domain, no spellbook, same skillpoints, and once again, they just lose the bonus feats.explain how that is balanced against the wizard please? also, how would you recommend altering the class to fix it?

The reason im saying against the wizard, is that people complain about the wizard vs the fighter, where the fighter has linear progression, and the wizard has exponential. these also have exponential via spell power, so can you guys explain how this is supposed to work? or how to rework it?

 

[Kerrick]

Here's what I've done/am doing (it's still a work in progress):

Cleric: Dropped to medium armor and working on splitting the spells into a semi-sphere system (see the thread in this forum).

Druids: Wild shape got cut down, hard. They have a limited number of forms that they can know (like prepped spells) and the limit for each form is based on CR. To balance, they get favored terrain and a couple other minor abilities.

I'm toying with the idea of having ALL spellcasters make Concentration checks while wearing armor (they can take feats to reduce the penalty), since it never made sense that only mages suffer from it.

BTW, wizards have a larger selection of spells than the cleric and druid put together. As for them, I gave them abilities based on their specialization (or generic abilities for Generalists). Each gets only 4, so it's not a huge power boost, but it gives wizard players a reason to stay in the class for awhile.

 

[Sylrae]

mages have more spells, but divine casters have more diversity. they dont have to pick their spells, they have all of them.

your cleric rework may be an option. and yeah, the druid needs a weaker wildshape, but it needs to lose more than that. adding new things to the druid is not helpful, it needs the removal of like 25% of its class features.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Wizards are just as good as Clerics and Druids, the spell list is just plain better, and ultimately, that matters more than HD or armor. Wildshape is only good because of Natural Spell. All it does is let the Druid do melee combat or stealth better, possibly use for movement modes. Spells can cover all of these areas already. And the wildshape druid's either paying lots of money (wilding clasps), multicalssing out 2 levels (for wis to AC from Monk, Ninja, Swordsage, or Moon-warded Ranger), taking VoP (and thus losing a lot of item use flexibility), or has an overly generous DM (who thinks Monk's Belt gives you not only +1 AC but also wis bonus if you have no monk levels), or has a VERY poor AC. Maybe they can take a high nat armor form, but then their touch AC is still crap, and in a spell duel, that's what's important. What's more, Druid gets a lot of mage-on-mage staples like Greater Dispel Magic at a higher level.

In terms of a straight on duel, I actually think Clerics are harder for Wizards to deal with at any given level, and even then it's a fairly equal match.

If you just mean for versatility, and not some fantasized arena-style death match, sure. Druid and Cleric have more built in, automatic versatility, but the wizard spell list is far more wide-ranging, allowing a prepared wizard to equal or exceed them in this department, too.

Just IME, but i think you're over-reacting.

 

[Sylrae]

I think the druid is closer to balanced. they do have a less versatile spell list. they might be ok with just a HD reduction. ad as for AC, they can get an AC as good as a fighter. no metal armor? there are lots of other things to make armor from. dragonscale, ironwood, stone, and a variety of other nonconventional armor types.

and if thye have decent dex, then their touch ac is fine too.

the cleric is the main issue. their spell casting is as good as a wizards in my opinion, but they are almost as good at melee as a fighter, except they can buff and heal themselves. and wizards lack the healing magic.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I think the main issue for all three (and I'd add Sorc -- splats have seriously boosted them) is to reduce casting power. If you reduce the inherent class features, including HD and proficiencies too much, you'll just make prestige classing out look even tastier. For me, a primary goal in houseruling is to make every base class worthwhile to stay in through level 20. As of now, of these three classes, Druid's the only one where you have a decent justification to stay in all the way, so I kind of like the class. Now, in my houserules, I had cleric/druid swap HD with bard/rogue (d6 <--> d8), but other than that didn't particularly nerf the base class packages. it's just hard to balance casters with non-casters without severely retooling the spell system and list and hardly nerfing or outright banning caster prestige classes, and I'm not sure if it's worth bothering, as long as the DM makes sure to keep all the players feeling useful throughout the game (and severely punishing players who gleefully use their abilities to purposesly make another character feel useless).

That said, I have considered rules to limit the spell level that can be tossed around on round one, the limit raising as rounds progress, to both keep the awesome spell dumps in check and make combats last longer, but...I got lazy and stopped. ^_^

 

[Kerrick]

Clerics vs. wizards: they're about on par, power-wise. Clerics have the higher HD, armor, and better AB as you've noted; their spell selection isn't as versatile as a wizard's, but with the other goodies, they don't need it - they can self-buff and wade into melee. Wizards can toss out the largest damage spells in the game; if you pit a wizard vs. a cleric in a spell duel, the wizard will most likely win 80% of the time, all things being equal.

Druids: Natural Spell is a HUGE benefit to most druids, and a horribly broken feat. Here's what I've done for druids...

First: Got rid of Natural Spell.

Second: Wiped the ability list clean and started over. They keep the companion, wild empathy, one with nature (combined trackless step and woodland stride, but the latter only works in favored terrain), resist nature's lure, and venom immunity (poisons from Animals, Plants, or Vermin only).

They gain: favored terrain (just bonuses to Knowledge/Survival checks, and a minor bonus that's always active), and mastery abilities. There are four masteries: Animals, Plants, Elements, and Weather; each gains four different abilities. Wild shape (animal) is strictly for Beastlords; likewise, wild shape (plant) and (elemental) have been split off into different masteries. This, in conjunction with the changes to wildshape I noted above, serve to make the druid much more balanced while still keeping it interesting and versatile.

Their class ability list has holes in it, but it's still got enough goodies that a player will want to keep going to 20th level (that's also a goal of mine in redoing the classes).

High-level druids have some really nasty spells, BTW - fire storm, elemental swarm, earthquake, storm of vengeance... a 20th-level druid could easily give a wizard or cleric of equal level a run for his money in a duel.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

High-level druids have some really nasty spells, BTW - fire storm, elemental swarm, earthquake, storm of vengeance... a 20th-level druid could easily give a wizard or cleric of equal level a run for his money in a duel.

None of those are particularly nasty, especially Earthquake and Storm of Vengeance. Nasty to me is Shapechange (which they get). I suppose everyone just bans it anyway, though.

Really though, most of those spells you listed are better at taking out an army than a PC party, and Druids get better spells for that purpose much earlier.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/spikeGrowth.htm
A single casting of this will automatically eliminate an entire batallion, or at the least freeze them in place if they notice in time somehow.

Really, they all have their niches. Druids I've noticed get the best spells with which to bully noncasters, including the best anti-army spells and class features in general to make noncasting classes cry (lke Wildshape + companion (buffed) making the fighter obsolete).

Clerics get the best ability to problem solve, because even if Wizards get more and better spells on their list, a Cleric can have whatever he needs in 24 hours, while a Wizard can only learn so many spells (unless they get amazing down time). They get the spells to counter all kinds of bad conditions, good access to plane shifting, dimensional transport halting, AMF, dispelling... and when all else fails, winning by attrition with spontaneous cure spells until the other guy falls first is surprisingly effective (though boring). My Cleric liked to put up stuff like Spiritual Weapon when using such methods to win against more powerful foes.

Wizards (and Sorcs) get the most "wide open" spells...stuff only limited by your imagination or at least with options too many to count. They also obviously are the best at being the mobile artillery unit, if that's your thing. Even a Cleric who picks the rigt domains and takes variants to spontaneously cast them can never match firepower with the arcanists (though self healing neutralizes that edge in a shootout). Also, as a side effect of having the largest spell list, the arcanists also get the widest range of magic items to play with.

I still think the primary casters are balanced enough against each other.

 

[Sylrae]

I think youre misunderstanding one thing though. I'm not saying that the cleric is a better caster than a wizard, they're about even. what I'm saying is that the wizard ONLY has the good caster. the cleric is also a good fighter.

and AOE spells don't really balance it out, because not all wizards take all the same spells. Not all wizards are focused on direct damage.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

And I'm saying:

a) While they're both good casters, Wizard is at least slightly better
b) Ultimately, casting matters above all else; if HD and such were anywhere near as important, Fighter wouldn't be considered so underpowered by comparison, now would he?
c) As long as you allow the existing casting PrC's to exist, nerfing one of the primary casting class's base features only will drive players to the prestige classes even more.

The main problem really is the prestige classes...