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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Victim" data-source="post: 1891255" data-attributes="member: 78">In my group, the person that's most adamant about nerfing spellcasters doesn't play.  He can play secondary casters, but doesn't deal well with confronting the full spell list of a wizard or cleric.  What he does try to play are really good fighters.  In our last campaign, his character would do several hundred points of damage on smite charges.  No save and die.  Amazing suggestions, RangerWickett.  Take away save or die spells AND then nerf the already rather weak damage dealing spells.  I think you might be overestimating damage the effect of additional damage dice.  3d6 damage is 10.5 damage; 5d6 is 17.5.  And there's a save for half - if we give the wizard 18 INT and spell focus, the DC is 18.  Even characters with poor Ref saves should probably have about a 25% of saving.  And many classes have better Ref saves and/or evasion.  Assuming that you do full damage with a spell is like assuming that all of a full attack hits.  While I didn't have Int gear for the mage, thus lowering the save DC, I also didn't have the targets loaded up with cloaks of resistance or similar items.  Now you ask, "Victim, what about area damage?  If that fireball hits 4 guys for 17.5, that's 70 damage!  No fighting guy can do that much in one action."  I'd like to start by saying that you're wrong.  In most cases, dealing X damage to 4 targets is not the same at all as dealing 4X to one target.  Let's take an 8th level party fighting 4 trolls; this should be a pretty close to even fight in terms of CR and trolls are a fairly standard monster.  A level 8 fireball does 8d6, or 28/14 and this time we'll give the wizard 20 INT from his level ups and Spell Focus for DC 19 attacks.  Trolls have 63 HP and +4 ref.  So the wizard casts fireball and hits four trolls, dealing (28*.7 +14*.3=) 23.8 damage to each troll, or about 95 all together.  Not bad.  However, doing 24 damage to 4 trolls doesn't kill them, or impact their combat ability in any way.  In future rounds, there's still going to be 8 claws and 4 bites coming in at your team.  The same amount of single target damage removes one troll with room to spare (which you'd probably need if they were trolls on potions), thereby reducing the attacks you face.  Not to mention that area attacks have friendly fire issues.  Fireball is a great spell to open with if the battle starts at range, but in the later rounds, friendly fire becomes an issue.Now let's look at alternative spells and situations.  A fighter or fighter/barbarian with 20 STR, focus and specialization in the greatsword will be pretty nasty.  Attack bonus with a masterwork weapon will be +15/+10, each doing 2d6+9 (16 per hit, ignoring criticals and other feats).  Against those trolls, he deals about 26.4 per full attack - without any magic items or use of the power attack feat.  At these levels, the wizard will mostly get more endurance from items (more spells from INT, wands, scrolls, etc) since he can't afford metamagic items.  The only short run offensive effect is a bonus to save DCs.  A +2 STR item and a +1 weapon are a pretty modest investment in offense for the 8th level fighter type, but they add a nice ~8 points against the troll, again without considering power attack. Since the wizard is using limited per day resources, we can make the fighter's situation analogous and toss rage on there from barbarian.  Now we're looking at attacks at +19/+14 for 22 per hit.  Again ignoring critical hits and other feats, we're looked at 41.8 damage.  Is 8d6 still looking like too much?  Maybe the problem is that the fighters you see suck?Quite frankly, what you want seems to be the wizard toasting crappy minions while the fighter engages in the climatic duel.  But, as you mentioned in the first place, without the BBEG, the minions don't pose a credible threat.  Therefore, having a wizard specialized in killing mooks and flunkies is pretty worthless, isn't it?  Especially since melees with the right feats are pretty good at killing losers themselves, even while fighting the big boss.  A 5th level spell that takes 2 full rounds to cast will essentially never get cast, except from invis or something.If you want fights to have rising action, then you need to convince your players to work that way and have the NPCs act the same.  Either that or add some house rules.  I've heard on idea mentioned that might help.  Essentially, characters get action points each round and can save them up.  These action points govern the intensity of combat.  Let's say characters get 4 AP per round.  Taking a single attack might cost 3, charges 4, full attacks 5, 1st-3rd spells 3, 4-6: 5, 7-9: 6.  Using metamagic items, smites, active combat feats, etc all increase the AP cost of actions.  Crap things like total defense or use of intimidate have very low AP costs (maybe zero).  This way, you have to work your way up to big attacks with either several rounds of weak attacks or a few rounds of near inactivity.  You could expand the system and get more detailed too.  Encourage fighting with the off hand, not using your specialized weapon, attacking to subdue, fighting defensively, etc.  The idea is that the paladin has to make several weak strafing passes before coming around and unloading a 500 point smite into someone, and the caster has to cast several low spells before blasting away with a pair of Maximized Meteor Swarms or Destructions.  Still, there might be some issues.  I can see people working on low level buffs while saving most of their AP, essentially using the system to keep the enemies from counteracting while they buff up.  Then you just get 2 rounds of buffing followed by an even more effective alpha strike.  And I still find it hard to believe that the party went 2/2 on save or die saves, especially since one of them went against a good save.  No spellturning, resistance cloaks, save feats?  Look at all the save or get screwed spells.  Then look at all the monsters with similar abilities.  How did these guys get to 16th level if they can't make saving throws?</blockquote>

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