dulsin said:
I would hope you are going to give the mages a significant power up after doing this. Loosing 40% of there available spells is going to hurt alot. I have long felt that Arcane casters are at a huge disadvantage compaired to other classes and I have been concidering making them a -1 ECL.
I too have long felt this way. I've watched two or three mages in my games struggle mightily to keep with the party. Whenever they even though about multi-classing, a quick glance at they were sacrificing brought the thoughts to a quick end.
I even started a mage of my own in a friends game - out of morbid curiousity, and ran into identical issues as my players had. I read and read and read through the books hunting every edge I could find.
Then, in despair, I posted on here 'are mages broken?' about two weeks ago.
After 72 posts in 2 days, I suddenly realized something.
All of my players (myself included) were looking at wizards as 2e wizards - and this was crippling us.
The moment I considered a wizard to be a combat engineer, whose strength lay not in obvious, direct threat (i.e. soldiers with guns, grenades, flamethrowers, etc.) but in indirect threats via their sheer flexibility (i.e. the combat engineer with his mortar, first aid kit, binocs, bulldozer and sheer knowledge of how to improvise anything out of anything) - 90% of my issues died and withered away. All of my desires to house rule and tweak wizards stronger died off. Their flexibility IS their strength - it just takes a certain mindset to start realizing that, and practice to make it happen.
Which brings me to the topic here (bet you thought this was OT, didn't'cha?) - if you remove their flexibility, you've hurt the wizard. That's not to say you shouldn't - high level wizards make most classes highly redundant - everyone should play wizards, it'd make for a fascinating power experiment
as wizards can duplicate nearly any class ability...
However, should you choose to eliminate the wizards greatest strength by limiting them to two schools of magic only - consider allowing them a faster bonus feat progression. Maybe every 4th level instead of 5th. If you're daring (and can adjudicate magic item creation) - go for every third.
This will bring their power back inline to where they were in comparison to other classes before you removed their flexibility - while still allowing their flexibility to be removed.
Good luck - and I'd love to know how it works
