Concerning 3rd editions Wizard's being over powered.

[pemerton]

Wait, what? Balance is between all characters (P and NP). Why would there be any distinction here?

Because balance is about the participants at the table. If the GM is worried that his/her NPCs are being overshadowed, s/he can just upgrade them (higher level, elite or solo, etc).

Ah, polymorph. Short answer: changing into a wyvern is not overpowered, but things quickly get out of control when you choose regenerating forms or those with powerful natural attacks and so on. Polymorph spells are ridiculously imbalaced because you can cherry-pick the best abilities out of an entire edition's worth of monsters.

<snip>

The point is that this is one of a few truly game-breaking spells. There are hundreds if not thousands of 3.X spells, so it's a given that some are game-breaking. When I consider the power of wizards, I do not consider the top 5% or so of spells, on the expectation that most DM's and/or players know that they are overpowered and do not use them.

But unlike most of those hundreds of spells, shapechanging really is an archetypal ability. The game should be able to handle it without breaking.

Also, if you think a wyvern is not overpowered, your players aren't taking enoug advantage of adopting wyvern form!

 

[Evenglare]

Good discussion. The reason I bring this up as well, is that many if not all RPGs with a skill based system has game breaking powers that you can get right from the get go, I personally am speaking from GURPS or HERO experience. It seems to me that these analysis of 3rd edition rules seem to be very closed minded when it comes to addressing any other system.

The newsflash is that most system break the ability to break the game way earlier, and way more often. The solution is that these books give out warning signs saying " Clear this with your game master before you take this". Or something similar. The books also tell you simply how to GM much better and what to take into account when you run battles or whatever. It also seems to me that D&D players feel as if they were entitled to every rule that comes out, and the GM has no say in what goes and what doesnt. This has gotten way out of control to the point where players whine about how they should be able to use some kind of rule that makes them overpowered.

The people who claim 3.x to be over powered would simply explode at some options and rule sets that other games give you . In fact other games allow you to build characters that have absolutely nothing to do with combat. There is no real "balance" in the traditional sense of the word (being equal in combat) except for how much a particular skill costs.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Wait, what? Balance is between all characters (P and NP). Why would there be any distinction here?

There speaks a simulationist. It is absolutely not necessary that NPCs and PCs use the same rules - their functions are different. And there certainly isn't balance between the King's Champion and an apprentice wizard. Balance matters at precisely two points. Firstly intra-PC balance so you don't get Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit. And secondly for measuring the strength of PCs relative to the world to allow a pacing mechanism.

I don't care how you set your gameworld up. I care that the system does not lie. If the system claims that two characters are equal level then they should be equally powerful. If there are no fighters in your world above level 10 with the exception of PCs then you get exactly the result you want without the suystem being deceptive about it.

The only thing PC-NPC balance provides is information. The DM can set NPC levels to whatever he or she wants.

Yes, D&D wizards have too many spells and cast them too easily. That's not a fundamental flaw in game design, though. Wizards with fewer spells or more restrictions (but with all the classic spells that let you do things that fighters can't) would be the best solution.

And fighters should be able to do things wizards can't - and simply can't in (pre-4e) D&D. What they should be able to do is have killed three enemies by the time the wizard is two syllables into his spell. They should be an order of magnitude better at killing stuff than a caster. Fighters fight. Stack all the cleric's possible self-buffs and they should still barely stand up to a fighter. The fighter should be that good.

In a slight tangent, what's with the Gygax references?

That D&D was his game at core.

Okay, yes. Again, there is a problem with unrestrained magic, but the fact that wizards and fighters operate off of a different platform and have different capabilities is not a problem. I'm all for reigning in characters in sensible ways. Again, there's two types of balance, one of which I think is reasonable, the other of which I think has caused problems.

Three types. You're just confusing two. If you want magic in the world to be stronger than mundane in the world that's fine. All the kings are wizards? Doesn't change gameplay. But within the party, characters of the same level should be equally strong. That being a level 12 thief makes you The World's Greatest Thief, and being a level 12 wizard wouldn't make you strongest mage in a kingdom is absolutely fine. But a wizard 12 being an order of magnitude more useful to the party than a thief 12 is simply bad design.

There were a fair amount of silly SR-ignoring spells, mostly in supplements, but I think that with a sensible banning or reruling of those (noncore) elements, SR is a huge factor in high-level play.

I named SR ignoring spells from core.

Ah, polymorph. Short answer: changing into a wyvern is not overpowered,

Anything that allows a wizard to outfight a fighter of the same level is overpowered. I'm not sure how the wyvern stacks up.

Polymorph spells are ridiculously imbalaced because you can cherry-pick the best abilities out of an entire edition's worth of monsters.

Even picking only out of the SRD, 3.5 Polymorph is overpowered. You don't have to overpower polymorph spells - it's just that it's easy and 3.X gave little thought to it.

The thing is, achieving that imbalance consistently does require a lot of bookkeeping (transforming your stats), research, and thus conscious intent by a player to really break things.

No it doesn't. It just requires one monster that someone considers cool that happens to be broken when someone polymorphs into it.

For the record, I once played a shifter, and found a ridiculously optimized (giant squid) form, which completely dominated the game.

I've friends who like squid. One of them's a biologist - and I can picture him playing a character that will turn into a giant squid no matter how strong it is. But will still dominate 3.X even without intent.

Afterwards, everyone just steered clear of polymorph because they knew it was cheese. I've used it as a DM on occasion for plot-specific reasons.

Yup. Polymorph is cheese. Stinky stupidly broken cheese - and it shouldn't be. If ever there was an iconic wizard spell outside D&D I'd call either Polymorph or Baleful Polymorph (croak!).

The point is that this is one of a few truly game-breaking spells. There are hundreds if not thousands of 3.X spells, so it's a given that some are game-breaking. When I consider the power of wizards, I do not consider the top 5% or so of spells, on the expectation that most DM's and/or players know that they are overpowered and do not use them.

The big problem with casters is that the most broken options are almost all in the PHB. Three of the six top tier classes are PHB. Six of the ten spells LogicNinja identifies as broken in his wizard guide are PHB (and a further two are PHB2). Restricting by source doesn't help. (Banning anything that involves shapechanging does - and that further restricts wizards from having anything to do with mythological wizards, when shapeshifting was the main flashy spell in mythology).

This issue happens mostly with casters, because casters get such a variety of spells compared to the limited number of class abilities and feats other characters get. But it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with a wizard using the other 95% of spells that are not broken.

You miss a huge point. First as a new player my instinct was to reach for the polymorph. Because that was a type of wizard that looked fun, interesting, and mythological. Second, spells don't need to be broken. They just need to be good. And that as you're learning what to ban you're also learning what works well.

 

[xigbar]

 

[billd91]

Just thought I'd chime in that the problem with 3.X saving throw spells is that the ability score that affects spell DCs is the same as the one casters use for learning spells and accumulating spell slots (and is usually tied into other benefits as well). This was a perfect opportunity to make casters use multiple ability scores and give them some MAD to think about. Once you do this (as I have) the picture does change for the better.

I'm generally in favor of more MAD. I could see funneling save DCs through Charisma for most casters.

Ultimately, though, I think I'm more in favor of pairing off stats. Half do defense only, the other half offense only. I think that would have been another potential increase for MAD.

 

[Dandu]

To OP, I've had more problems with psionics, Warlock and Book of 9 Swords classes honestly. More characters of those types have broken my games than wizards or casters of any stripe.

Oddly enough, all those are considered weaker the full spellcasters in core.

 

[Drowbane]

Psionics can (to my experience) outshine the Big 5 in limited ways, but are inferior in all other ways and Warlocks are pretty gimp. Tome of Battle gives nice things to meleers, but some DMs just can't wrap their heads around non-casters getting nice things.

A level 15th level Fighter (a creature I am assured exists some where - my experience shows such a beast to more likely be a Fighter 4 / Barbarian 1 / PrC Y...) can do just as much (if not more) damage as a 15th level Warblade. Warblades just do it with more style.

Pre-4e D&D makes no claims to "balance". I have known that Wizards rule (A)D&D for over 20 years, and yet I have played my share of "non-casters". Why? Because Thieves and Fighters (and fighter/thieves) are fun to play in their own way, not because I had any delusional expectation that at high level I would be as potent (relevant?) as the guy who can B-slap reality whenever reality gets out of line.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Wait, what? Balance is between all characters (P and NP). Why would there be any distinction here?

Because there's no need for an NPC stableboy to be balanced with the PC Knight whose horse he's tending to, and no need for the NPC Knight to be personally balanced against the NPC Evil High Priest that's going to be taking on the whole party by himself. Each has a very different place in the game. There's a need to balance whole-party-taking-on BBEGs against eachother, so that the DM knows what kind of challenge the represent and when he can 'safely' use them against his players. There's a need for PCs to be balanced against eachother, so that none dominate play or languish in relative uselessness.

I don't think there's much need to keep stableboys and serving wenches and galley slaves balanced with eachother, though...

Yes, D&D wizards have too many spells and cast them too easily. That's not a fundamental flaw in game design, though. Wizards with fewer spells or more restrictions (but with all the classic spells that let you do things that fighters can't) would be the best solution.

4e already gave them fewer spells, and it worked quite well. More restrictions is dicier. If those restrictions come up, any extra power given in compensation for them may be justified, but if they are easily worked around or ignored, it can be a major source of imbalance. Also, being heavily restricted isn't always that much fun...

 

[Tony Vargas]

Good discussion. The reason I bring this up as well, is that many if not all RPGs with a skill based system has game breaking powers that you can get right from the get go, I personally am speaking from GURPS or HERO experience.

Hero can be an exercise in powergaming that make CharOp look elementary. But it tended to work out reasonably well most of the time. Ultimately, all powers and skills were comparable on the scale provided by points, and 'broken' things could be identified and dealt with. GURPS is funny, it's not balanced at all, especially if you go nuts and just let /everything/ in, but if you just play using one world-book, it can give you some very nice, /very/ well-researched simulations of a given setting or sub-genre. I haven't bought GURPS core rules, ever, but I have bought the occasional GURPS sourcebook for those reasons.

BTW, Hero went and 'innovated' with its last ed, rather like 4e did, doing in some sacred cows and trying some new approaches. It did it in a very different way, though, with ongoing discussion of the changes from the moment it entered development, and with Steve Long on-line, posting and chatting with everyone else. Hero serves a smaller audience, though, so perhaps that sort of thing is more practical.

 

[Thyrdegn]

High level Wizards have always been a threat to any DM's well thought out campaign. Players are always going to come up with innovative uses for various spells that the DM did not anticipate. But I have also almost unraveled a campaign as a fighter before. A couple of well timed 20's and the main villain that was supposed to be around another 10 levels before we could take him down, fell before sword. There are a lot of things that can derail a campaign well before the Wizards cast their first Wish spells.

The last campaign in which I was playing a Wizard we got well into the Epic Levels. My Wizard/Incantatar was 36th level and throwing out some spells as high as 14th level, but we were also facing monsters that were a challenge for us as a party. I ruled a small but growing kingdom dedicated to magical advancement. Yes, I went and wiped out an army of goblins and hobgoblins that were threatening my border. I rained death upon them as they had never seen before. But the DM knew that would happen. The DM just needs to anticipate that the players are going to do things that are surprising and give them opportunities to flaunt their powers in ways that are not going to derail the campaign. That way everybody is happy. That is the real point of the game, having fun.