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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 9168914" data-attributes="member: 996">While that's consistently been the case through much of D&D's history, y'know what's even more consistent?Removing restrictions/limitations from casters.Like, unarguably, 3e made casters more powerful than ever before, and 5e made casters far more powerful than 4e.  2e raised non-/demi-human level limits on caster classes, which made some casters more powerful, but it also capped some spells, curtailing power slightly.  4e obviously had the intolerable effrontery to balance casters and non-casters.  So caster power has not just been on a straight-line increase the whole time.  It's had ups and downs.Making casting easier, tho, has been very consistent in WotC's tenure.  3e made a lot of hard restrictions on casting more a matter of trade-offs, in particular, you could invest in skills like concentration and some feats, to optimize away all sorts of traditional downsides, like casting being interrupted for instance, or impossible while grappled, or impossible while wearing armor, etc...  In 4e, while caster power was slashed, many of those traditional restrictions that 3e had made it easy to circumvent were wiped away almost entirely - some spells still provoked OAs, some powerful dailies required an action each round to sustain, but all the old no casting in armor, spell loss for interruption etc, were just gone.  5e did the impossible and further lightened casting burdens, everyone cast spontaneously, OAs for casting vanished, sustain became action-free concentration for simpler action enconomy and faster combat.I couldn't call to mind changes 2e made, since I was using my own casting variants by then, so I'm going to forward-quote a later comment that gives an example:Thanks, Voadam.I mean, nobody wants their PC overshadowed, and I think pointing at a segment of the fanbase 'wanting' excessively powerful characters is off, it's not a matter of blame, so much.Rather, casters in general, and wizards (including 11th level magic-users, my fellow grognards) in particular, have been decidedly powerful for virtually the game's entire history.  Getting accustomed to that is not, like, selfishly wanting your character to be more powerful than everyone else's.  (I mean, it's like it in that it has that consequence, but it's not necessarily the implied selfish motivation)</blockquote>

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