Scaling: How many level 1 characters should it take to defeat a level 10 character?

[Buugipopuu]

"Small number"? I do not think that means what you think it means.

There are about 600 spells in the SRD. 95% of them are probably fine. It just looks like a higher proportion of them are broken because, unsurprisingly, the 5% sees a lot more play. A Wizard picking his spells at random stands a good chance of being a fairly mediocre blaster backed up with a bunch of utility spells of dubious utility. Take the following random set of arcane spells (from the Medium magic scroll table):

Summon Monster III, Fireball, Fireball, Dispel Magic, Fireball, Enervation, Tongues, Shadow Conjuration, Haste, Invisibility

Enervation's okay, but it's not an 'I Win' button, Invisibility is a little too good, but it's only good for one hit in combat, so it's not that bad (Greater Invisibilty needs bumping up a level or two, or a drawback added). The rest? Hardly dominating the game.

Well, three of those were Fireball, so let's reroll:

Nondetection, Fire Shield, Blink, Stoneskin, Ice Storm, Haste, Fireball, Confusion, Polymorph, Greater Magic Weapon, Summon Monster V, Fear, Magic Circle against Law, Blink

Woo! We got Blink. It hinders your own attacks though, and isn't an insurmountable barrier. Stoneskin's good against monsters, but Adamantine weapons are cheap, so it's easily countered. Polymorph is the one really good thing there, but even Wizards admitted that Polymorph was overpowered and tried to phase it out of the game.

You have to optimise pretty hard to get to the stage where a Wizard wtfpwns all other classes.

 

[Hussar]

/snip
Assuming your party has four tenth level pcs, A party four tenth level opposing characters would be EL 14 (or EL 10 +4).
/snip

This, right there, is where you're making a mistake. The party of four tenth level characters is certainly EL 14, although 4 tenth level PC's would be considerably higher (double wealth by level, almost certainly heroic level stats - both of which bump each character by 1, making this group actually 4*12 CR creatures.

However, the EL system isn't meant for doing what you're doing - a one to one comparison of creatures, particularly PC classes. After all, a creature might be EL 10 because of special abilities, while another might be because it's really tough. However, the special abilities creature will own the tough creature because of saving throw elements - or possibly the ability to fly while the other has no ranged attacks.

EL just doesn't work that way.

There are about 600 spells in the SRD. 95% of them are probably fine. It just looks like a higher proportion of them are broken because, unsurprisingly, the 5% sees a lot more play. A Wizard picking his spells at random stands a good chance of being a fairly mediocre blaster backed up with a bunch of utility spells of dubious utility. Take the following random set of arcane spells (from the Medium magic scroll table):

Summon Monster III, Fireball, Fireball, Dispel Magic, Fireball, Enervation, Tongues, Shadow Conjuration, Haste, Invisibility

Enervation's okay, but it's not an 'I Win' button, Invisibility is a little too good, but it's only good for one hit in combat, so it's not that bad (Greater Invisibilty needs bumping up a level or two, or a drawback added). The rest? Hardly dominating the game.

Well, three of those were Fireball, so let's reroll:

Nondetection, Fire Shield, Blink, Stoneskin, Ice Storm, Haste, Fireball, Confusion, Polymorph, Greater Magic Weapon, Summon Monster V, Fear, Magic Circle against Law, Blink

Woo! We got Blink. It hinders your own attacks though, and isn't an insurmountable barrier. Stoneskin's good against monsters, but Adamantine weapons are cheap, so it's easily countered. Polymorph is the one really good thing there, but even Wizards admitted that Polymorph was overpowered and tried to phase it out of the game.

You have to optimise pretty hard to get to the stage where a Wizard wtfpwns all other classes.

You are kidding right? Let's stick with your second scroll shall we?

Combine Haste with Summon Monster V and suddenly you double the effective damage output of a spell. I mean, heck, I summon a Giant Fiendish Crocodile and, with it's improved grab and grapple of +21, I just crushed anything medium sized or smaller. Didn't even need the Haste there. Confusion targets Will. Your fighter now has an 80% chance per round of not being able to do anything but take a beating. Never mind what you can do with a Fear spell.

Look, you can believe anything you like. That's fine. But, there's a REASON casters are considered top of 3e. It's not like this is some new idea that's sprung out of nowhere. What are the three most powerful classes in 3e D&D?

 

[Buugipopuu]

Combine Haste with Summon Monster V and suddenly you double the effective damage output of a spell. I mean, heck, I summon a Giant Fiendish Crocodile and, with it's improved grab and grapple of +21, I just crushed anything medium sized or smaller. Didn't even need the Haste there. Confusion targets Will. Your fighter now has an 80% chance per round of not being able to do anything but take a beating. Never mind what you can do with a Fear spell.

Oh, we're doing this again are we? You talk big, but the numbers disagree with you quite hard. Summon Monster V is a 5th level spell which is a risky proposition since you stand a reasonable chance of wasting it if you cast it and get hit before the start of your next go. You use it and summon a Fiendish Dire Crocodile, against the CR 9 monsters you'll be likely encountering in a best case scenario. Of the 40 CR 9 monsters in the SRD, 11 can fly and will laugh at your silly crocodile. The average AC of a CR 9 monster is handily 21, and so your crocodile has a 50% hit chance, or a 60% hit chance if you burned two feats on Augment Summoning. The average grapple modifier of said monsters is 24, so if you hit, you have a 35% chance of grappling, or 45% with Augment Summoning. So for your risky full-round-action spell, you get yourself a 17.5% chance of disabling an enemy each turn, or a 27% chance with Augment Summoning. Game breaking, that is not. Haste makes things significantly better, upping the percentages to 28%/39%, but that's still two actions and two spell slots for an attack with a worse than evens chance of success, and that's assuming your crocodile gets to full attack.

You're also overstating Confusion, it only works against things with bad Will saves, it's an Enchantment, which many things get a bonus to saves against, and it's Mind-Affecting, so a whole bunch of targets are non-starters before you look at the numbers. Then you can eliminate targets with decent SR, for whom its success rate is highly spotty. Its range is also a 15 foot burst. If you fire it off, chances are you are the 'nearest creature', and targets actually have a 50% chance of being able to gank you on their go. As an attack, it's really rather situational. You have to put yourself in harm's way, it only works on a subset of creatures, and its tiny range makes it not really that effective as a lockdown attack against anything that's actually a threat. Fear is similar, in that not only is it Mind-Affecting and allows SR, bonuses to saves vs. Fear and Immunity to Fear aren't uncommon, and its short range makes it a risky proposition even in situations where it works, it's good, but in order for it to end an encounter you need a quite a few things to go your way. And even then, neither actually do any damage, so you're relying on other people to actually do the work.

Look, you can believe anything you like. That's fine. But, there's a REASON casters are considered top of 3e. It's not like this is some new idea that's sprung out of nowhere. What are the three most powerful classes in 3e D&D?

Said reason being that it doesn't matter how powerful the majority of spells are if a few of them can one-shot encounters. The reason has nothing to do with the system and everything to do with the spell descriptions.

 

[Hussar]

Ahh, we're off to shifting goalposts. We're were talking about comparing PC to PC were we not? Not PC to monster. So, your summoning vs CR 9 monster doesn't really work.

Funny thing is, a 10th level wizard vs a CR 9 monster probably has a pretty decent chance of winning that encounter. The 10th level fighter is so much street pizza as the CR 9 monster improve grabs him and squishes him into jelly.

And, yes, the problem here is systemic. The Vancian system is predicated on the idea that all spells get more powerful as you go up levels. However, the costs for the more powerful spells do not go up at all. It is just as difficult to cast a 9th level spell as a 1st level one (presuming you can cast it at all). However, because the effects continue to be piled on higher and higher, because a 5th level spell has to be better than any 4th level spell, and 4th is better than 3rd and so on, the system grants casters powers that increase exponentially.

Take a look at the trap designing mechanics for 3e. There's a reason that traps top out at CR 10. A CR 10 trap is an instant death trap. There really isn't anything more powerful than that for a trap. Yet, a caster is just hitting his stride at 10th level. At 11th, he actually HAS instant death effects - Disintegrate is a 6th level spell.

Think about that for a second. In the magic system, a spell that not only kills you but kills you in such a way that you have virtually no chance to ever come back, is still THREE levels down from the most powerful spells. Dominate Humanoid is a 5th level spell. I gain pretty much total control over another character for about 2 weeks, and my control extends anywhere on the plane. And that's still at the halfway point in wizard power.

That's why I say the problem is system. Because the system is based on an escalating scale, each higher level effect MUST be more powerful than the lower level effect. That's fine for straight up damaging spells, but, anything else becomes problematic.

To me, to resolve this, I would have any spell that lasts longer than an encounter be a ritual with GP costs and also in game requirements. You want to Dominate someone? Fine, you have to get them to sign a contract agreeing to the domination - physical coercion is perfectly fine, but, if they don't sign, you don't dominate. There, lots of flavor, interesting effects, and nicely balanced in the game.

/edit to add because this bothered me so I looked it up:

You're also overstating Confusion, it only works against things with bad Will saves, it's an Enchantment, which many things get a bonus to saves against, and it's Mind-Affecting, so a whole bunch of targets are non-starters before you look at the numbers. Then you can eliminate targets with decent SR, for whom its success rate is highly spotty. Its range is also a 15 foot burst.

Umm, the range is actually Medium - 100 feet plus ten feet per level. The AREA is a 15 foot burst, meaning that I can hit multiple targets with the same spell.

 

[Buugipopuu]

Ahh, we're off to shifting goalposts. We're were talking about comparing PC to PC were we not? Not PC to monster. So, your summoning vs CR 9 monster doesn't really work.

The system isn't built for PvP, and since you're talking about a problem with the system, you can't invent edge cases where it falls down.

Funny thing is, a 10th level wizard vs a CR 9 monster probably has a pretty decent chance of winning that encounter. The 10th level fighter is so much street pizza as the CR 9 monster improve grabs him and squishes him into jelly.

Since when was this about Wizards vs Fighters? Anyway, why play a Fighter when you can play a Warblade?

And, yes, the problem here is systemic. The Vancian system is predicated on the idea that all spells get more powerful as you go up levels. However, the costs for the more powerful spells do not go up at all. It is just as difficult to cast a 9th level spell as a 1st level one (presuming you can cast it at all). However, because the effects continue to be piled on higher and higher, because a 5th level spell has to be better than any 4th level spell, and 4th is better than 3rd and so on, the system grants casters powers that increase exponentially.

That's not what "exponential" means. The effectiveness of most spells scales approximately linearly with spell level, not exponentially. Secondly, why is "characters being able to do better things as they level up" inherently unbalanced? The increased power of higher level spells is countered by the increased ability of higher level threats to deal with them. This is at least more interesting than a system where the only thing levelling up gives you is bigger numbers which are countered by the well-tuned bigger numbers of the monsters so every level feels exactly the same.

Take a look at the trap designing mechanics for 3e. There's a reason that traps top out at CR 10. A CR 10 trap is an instant death trap. There really isn't anything more powerful than that for a trap. Yet, a caster is just hitting his stride at 10th level. At 11th, he actually HAS instant death effects - Disintegrate is a 6th level spell.

Think about that for a second. In the magic system, a spell that not only kills you but kills you in such a way that you have virtually no chance to ever come back, is still THREE levels down from the most powerful spells.

Disintegrate certainly doesn't look like an instant-death spell. It's a high damage spell that's limited by the fact that it needs both an attack roll and a fort save to go through.

Dominate Humanoid is a 5th level spell. I gain pretty much total control over another character for about 2 weeks, and my control extends anywhere on the plane. And that's still at the halfway point in wizard power.

Dominate Person, as the spell is actually called, is overpowered for a 5th level spell, WotC put too much of a cost reduction on not being able to target non-humanoids. There's nothing in the system that says "5th level spells must include the ability to make someone your slave for days with a single save.", or "a spell can create an effect which can only be effectively countered by another spell". Jack Vance didn't decree "And thus, 11th level Wizards must have the ability to slayeth their foes with but a single spell.". WotC were just dumb and underestimated the effectiveness of Save-or-Suck spells.

That's why I say the problem is system. Because the system is based on an escalating scale, each higher level effect MUST be more powerful than the lower level effect. That's fine for straight up damaging spells, but, anything else becomes problematic.

Why is it a problem? If you make the difference between spells small enough, there's no reason any spells have to be a "Win Button".

To me, to resolve this, I would have any spell that lasts longer than an encounter be a ritual with GP costs and also in game requirements. You want to Dominate someone? Fine, you have to get them to sign a contract agreeing to the domination - physical coercion is perfectly fine, but, if they don't sign, you don't dominate. There, lots of flavor, interesting effects, and nicely balanced in the game.

If only the 3.5 system supported spells with expensive material components or effects which need specific actions to be completed to take effect. Oh, wait, it does. That has nothing to do with Vancian magic. Jack Vance also didn't decree "And lo, no spell shalt ever costeth gold pieces to cast, and must always be completeth in a Standard Action with but a single save separating success and failure."

 

[Hussar]

Who gives a flying fig what Jack Vance thought? Good grief, while the spell system might be called vancian, it's about as far from the actual texts as Harry Potter. The only part of the system that is Vancian is the fact that it's fire and forget.

And, yes, the power is exponential, not linear. The direct damage spells might be linear, but, not any of the rider effects. Dominate Person (thank you for the correction) isn't broken in this system. It's just that the spells scale that way. Charm person at 1st. Charm Monster at 4th. Well, what's the next step? Stronger Charm Person - which makes the target my effective slave for a signficant period of time. It's the nature of the scaling.

As far as expensive material components go - well, there goes 3e's game balance if you try. The wealth by level presumes that you can actually cast your spells fairly often. If you whack in difficulties casting the spell (and actually go beyond just needing coin value) then the game balance goes off.

Like I said, for my way of doing it, anything that has a duration longer than about 1 minute would require a ritual - probably a 30 minute casting time, magic circles and the like, and some specific material components with in-game consequences.

 

[Buugipopuu]

And, yes, the power is exponential, not linear. The direct damage spells might be linear, but, not any of the rider effects. Dominate Person (thank you for the correction) isn't broken in this system. It's just that the spells scale that way. Charm person at 1st. Charm Monster at 4th. Well, what's the next step? Stronger Charm Person - which makes the target my effective slave for a signficant period of time. It's the nature of the scaling.

How can you refer to anything that's not expressed as a number as exponential? Exponentual growth is a mathematical term and is meaningless in the context of Dominate/Charm Person/Monster unless you can assign numerical values to domination, charming, people and monsters. 'slightly better than Charm Monster' does not have to make someone your slave for a period of days. If the spell were slightly better written it wouldn't be nearly as good, because most of its effectiveness relies on the vague definition of "against its nature".

As far as expensive material components go - well, there goes 3e's game balance if you try. The wealth by level presumes that you can actually cast your spells fairly often. If you whack in difficulties casting the spell (and actually go beyond just needing coin value) then the game balance goes off.

Why? You know roughly how much weapon users are spending on weapons over their careers, so you can take the same amount and force casters to sink about that much into spell components. Then it's a simple matter to tune the costs to stop casters from spamming spells you meant to be rare. You know that for the two levels while Nth level spells remain a caster's most powerful spell, they'll have X gp to spend on materials that other characters spent upgrading their weapons, and so setting a cost to X/10 means they can cast it five times per level, about every third fight-ish, if they cast nothing else. If that's too good, then you can just up the cost some more.

Like I said, for my way of doing it, anything that has a duration longer than about 1 minute would require a ritual - probably a 30 minute casting time, magic circles and the like, and some specific material components with in-game consequences.

And how is any of this incompatible with a Vancian system? There are spells with casting times of an hour already in the PhB, after all. And, unrelated to this, "specific material components with in-game consequences" is a poor tool for balance, since unless you have some cumbersome mechanic to determine the availability of said components, either for sale or for killing-people-and-taking-their-stuff, the amount said restriction actually restricts the use of the spell will vary widely from group to group and from DM to DM. It's useless as a restriction because you don't know how restrictive it's going to be.

 

[gloomhound]

How many level 1 characters should it take to defeat a level 10 character?

One if he's lucky.

 

[Buugipopuu]

I think you mean "One, at sufficient velocity".

 

[Savage Wombat]

Well, assuming he's a human PC with 100 kg mass or so, and if you convert him to energy...