I'VE BALANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: sORTa

[Visigani]

Spellcasters are neat and all... but they tend to be incredibly unbalancing. One thing I've noticed is that spellcasters with an intentionally limited selection of spells (i.e. the beguiler, warmage, healer, etc etc) tend to be much more "balanced" than their PHB counterparts.


A beguiler could be your enchanter, the warmage your evoker, the Dread Necromancer could be your Necromancer and so forth.


Putting these spell list limitations on spellcasting classes goes a long way towards making the game balanced and fun for everyone.

 

[ExploderWizard]

D&D isn't a checkbook.

 

[Hunter99]

My approach has always been, not to handicap casters, but to raise fighters to the level of casters.

I do this through the Bo9S.

 

[kitcik]

My approach has always been, not to handicap casters, but to raise fighters to the level of casters.

I do this through the Bo9S.

Really?

 

[xigbar]

Really?

Subsequently, the tier system lists the aforementioned Dread Necromancer, War Mage, Healer, and Beguiler, as being in a lower tier.

Anyway, as for balancing melee combat, they are still dependent on magic to come close to casters. Magic items, that is. So, you're either a powerful high level caster, or big stupid fighter, who is reliant on fancy relics and such, usually made by the powerful high level casters. In other words, magic is your strong point, with little exception. On the plus side, optimizers can get a lot of bang for their buck with BO9S.

 

[Elf Witch]

Well if you are worried about spellcasters being over powered and fighters being to weak then you could play 4 Edition.

I have played in a 3.5 game that did limited spell lists and found that the party could not keep up with normal CR threats.

So if you do this you need to make adjustments in the CR threats and realize if you run any time of module you really need to tinker with it.

If nobody playing in your game has an issue with the way 3E runs then why try and fiddle with the system just because you think it is unbalancing.

 

[Sammael]

Just lower the power of spellcasters slightly and up the warriors and bit and it works perfectly.