What would you say is the biggest problem with Wizards, Clerics, Druids, and other "Tier 1" Spellcasters?

[Manbearcat]

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[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Trying to fix this post by Elf Witch

Well, I did mention the tasty hobbits and gnomes rather than humans. Mmm, bite size! Still, I think the real issue is something else:

I think @Hussar 's point is that exactly the same reasoning should explain the bear companion's willingness to stick and keep its head underwater.

It is not the same at all as I said people train bears without magic. The keep the bears well fed when there is an attack you will usually find extenuating circumstances like the bear was sick or something or someone was stressing it out. The white tiger that attacked Roy had been distracted by a woman who had a elaborate hair do and reached out her arm to pet the tiger. Roy stepped in front of the tiger fell and the tiger grabbed him by the neck. Most think that since he did not grab and shake he was not trying to kill Roy. They think that the tiger who had been with him since a cub was trying to drag him away to safety like a mother with a cub.

Since bears do swim and will dive then as I said earlier I would allow the druid to spend some time training the bear to stay under water it would not be that hard to do. But again there is a difference between diving for food and spending and extended amount of time under water and even fighting under water.

As a DM I don't want to stop my players from having fun but that does not mean that you can't give them challenges. Because of the size of most animal companions there may be places they can't go simply because they don't fit or they lack the physical ability to over come obstacles a horse cannot climb up the side of a mountain. So it might make better sense to leave it until you come back. They are not familiars who if something happens to them is going to effect the druid/ranger in any way other then a role playing way if something happens to them.

Is the Heal skill not an adequate fallback?

Also, what about the case where the party don't have an appropriate scroll available?

(Basically, I take the view that there will always be cases where the PCs might not have a suitable resource available to save a fellow PC... and that's okay. But if there are any cases where they might not have a suitable resource, I don't see it as unreasonable to require them to have a spell slot available to power a slot.)

(Incidentally, one thing I considered was allowing any caster to burn a spell slot to power any scroll of the same level - thus allowing even the party Wizard to cast that scroll of cure light wounds in extremis. But, of course, only to cast it - they wouldn't get to add the spell to their "known" list!)


I don't disagree with your logic here, but it's not the standard assumption in the DMG, which spells out that even in a smallish settlement it should be possible to find multiple instances of most low-level scrolls.


I decided to risk it.



Fair enough. What about the Cleric and the Druid?

Funnily enough, in my current campaign the Rogue has a magic item infused with the knock spell which he uses to bypass his own skills. And very useful it was too, when I recently put in a riddle-locked door and forgot to put in a solution to the riddle. (Oops! Not my best moment.)



Actually, there's a much better solution to the "locked door and no Rogue" problem - for every door in the place include at least one key!

As for the wider issue with knock, generally speaking I agree. However, as has frequently been said, just because you can house rule an issue away doesn't mean it isn't bad design. Or, in this case, just because table convention can remove an issue doesn't mean it isn't bad design.


The problem is that too often the Wizard gets to move his mountains and then, when the fight against the "big bad ugly things" comes up (to give the Fighters their chance to shine), the Wizard pulls out some save-or-suck spell and renders that challenge meaningless as well.




I don't really want to weigh in on the "bears underwater" argument, but I do agree with the above. Provided it's done occasionally this is fine. What isn't fine is where the DM is constantly looking for ways to negate the abilities of the PCs (or, even worse, one PC in particular).

If they don't have a scroll or healing potion they they are out of luck, but it seems to be a punishment to say well you have this scroll but you don't have a high enough spell slot to left to use so you are out of luck. I think most players would get rather angry over that I know I would. Usually when I play wizards the scrolls I keep are spells I rarely use but have in case of an emergency or need. One I try and keep is tenser floating disc. Which usually gets used to cart down PCs to safety.

Maybe I have been lucky but I have never seen scrolls abused either as a DM or a player that way many people here have. But like I said if it is an issue then I would rather see a limit but on how many scrolls you can use in a day put a cap of say 2 and that solves a lot of the issues.

LOL it am glad it worked for you. I think druids and clerics like sorcerers, warlocks, beguilers should have limited spell lists. They should not know every spell and as for clerics they should be tailored to their god and alignment. The reason I support wizards having the chance to know a lot of spells is because of the nature of the class they study magic unlike a sorcerer who just has the magic come to them. Since they study why shouldn't they have the ability to add spells to their spellbook. As I have said if you are worried about power levels control it by restricting how many they cast in a day.

Funnily enough, in my current campaign the Rogue has a magic item infused with the knock spell which he uses to bypass his own skills. And very useful it was too, when I recently put in a riddle-locked door and forgot to put in a solution to the riddle. (Oops! Not my best moment.)



Actually, there's a much better solution to the "locked door and no Rogue" problem - for every door in the place include at least one key!

As for the wider issue with knock, generally speaking I agree. However, as has frequently been said, just because you can house rule an issue away doesn't mean it isn't bad design. Or, in this case, just because table convention can remove an issue doesn't mean it isn't bad design.

Our rogue has a once a day knock on his lock picking tools. He rarely uses it because he hoards it in case he can't get through a door so often it ends up not being used.

And how do they find the key for every locked door what if the door has been locked for centuries and the key was lost. I remember in one campaign we did things out of order and went a different way then the module plans for we got to a door could not get it opened so the cleric cast stone shape and made us an entrance. Later we found the key to the door. Which gave us a good laugh. It is one way to do it but I don't believe it should be the only way.

The problem is that too often the Wizard gets to move his mountains and then, when the fight against the "big bad ugly things" comes up (to give the Fighters their chance to shine), the Wizard pulls out some save-or-suck spell and renders that challenge meaningless as well.

Again I have to say in 30 years of role playing I have never seen this happen. I have talked about this with my son and his friends and with the players in my group over the years and they to have never seen this happen. Where a wizard always takes out the big bad after using their most powerful spells just to get there. And if this happens a lot I lay the blame at the DMs feet for not planning better encounters that allow all the PCs a chance to participate. As a DM you know what your players can do you have far more knowledge when it comes to preparing the bad guys and the encounter. If your wizard pulls those kind of spells hold back some of your NPCs to attack after the wizard has blown these spells this allows you to have throw a huge amount of bad guys at the players for a very climatic battle and do so without just outright killing them. When I play part of the fun is getting to the battle and if we all get to have fun doing that then often it does not matter who takes out the big bad guy it only becomes an issue if it is the same player again and again. We are supposed to be a team and at my table there is always a lot of high fives when the bad guys go down we don't much care how it goes down as long as he goes down. But then I play and run games where it is rare for one or two spells to wipe out everything.




I agree that a DM should not be looking for ways to negate abilities all the time. But there is nothing wrong with taking players out of their comfort zones either now and again. I played in a campaign where there were these traveling mage storms that made magic act wonky. We got hit with one just as a kraken attacked the ship we were on. We found that our magic would work but we were taking blow back damage from the spell basically we took half the damage we dealt. We had a choice take damage or attack using mundane methods. The wizard after taking the damage started firing crossbolts at the thing. In the end it was the fighter, paladin and the monk who did most of the damage with the paladin in a last ditch desperate attempt threw his most powerful spell prepared to die if necessary to save the ship. Not one of us felt that DM had screwed us over we loved the encounter because it was challenging and even the player who was willing to sacrifice his PC loved it. It was an epic battle that was talked about for months.

A good DM knows when and how often to throw these kind of encounters at a party. A good DM knows when to nerf the magic users and let the mundanes shine brightly and vice versa it is a matter of planning and knowing what your players want out of the game.

The number of 19th level MUs in play in AD&D games back in the day? Approximately zero. So those 19d6 fireballs generally didn't come into play.

(There may have been more than a negligible number used by GMs as NPC antagonists, but that raises issues of encounter design, not class balance.)

Really absolutely zero I guess then my 21 level wizard back in 2E didn't exist and was a figment of my imagination.

I have a question I'd like to put the posters here.

I've notice that the fact divine spell casters have access to the entire spell list is one of the chief complaints.

I was wondering, if the cleric/druid/whomever asked for a certain spell, have you ever had the deity step in and say "I can grant you that but I want X in return".

I've seen it done where it lead to some awesome role-playing and I've seen it result in a half hour bicker-fest between the player and gm.

I'm just curious if anyone else has had experience with that.

I have seen it done now and then. The example that comes to mind was a cleric who wanted to speak with the dead his god ST Cuthbert told him he could not give him that power because the spirit was in the hands of another god and the cleric would have to petition that god directly. The cleric did and had to bargain doing something for the god in exchange for the spell.

Which in 3.5 means that you have to be about second level - and not count cantrips.

I don't think I could better underline one of the core problems of the wizard. "A wizard who memorizes this spell gives up other better useful spells". But the rogue, naturally, can't do any of the better useful things a wizard can so he pitches in by picking locks and allowing the wizard fun toys. 4e Knock wins here - it takes a minute to cast when the rogue can have the lock open in seconds.


The point is the rogue should be better at picking locks than the wizard. That you have to impose metagame limits on very basic roleplaying just points to a problem with the system. { [_quote]



No rogue in the party has never stopped me either. If necessary the PCs can use a crow bar or even a battering ram. Picking locks merely allows stealth and speed. An unpickable lock can still be forced. So the entire argument vanishes in a puff of smoke..




If you don't want to be special and powerful don't play a fighter." Right.

As for "An epic level fighter can mow down most armies", Giant in the Playground had a series of duels. Level 13 wizard vs Level 20 fighter. The wizard was seriously nerfed - no teleporting away, no prebuffing, no scrying. And the fighter did win one - but that had nothing to do with being a fighter rather than being a glorified commoner with three quarters of a million GP worth of equipment. The level 20 fighter wasn't a match for the level 13 wizard, despite the wealth.



And for an army? 1 arrow in 20 from the commoners is going to hit. Doing about d8 damage. 400 archers with light crossbows? That level 20 fighter is going down like Jacques Cousteau.

The squishiest team member can protect himself. A high level wizard is a hell of a lot harder to kill than a high level fighter (who just gets punked by something against his will save). The fighter's schtick is waving a pointy bit of metal around. This can be fun. A big part of the wizard's schtick is making pointy bits of metal irrelevant. This too can be fun. Unfortunately, put the two together and there are problems.

To put things another way, in the 1970s Pong looked like a fun computer game. As computer games go, a high level fighter is still playing pong - the wizard, meanwhile, is carrying a smartphone loaded with games. Including pong (Tenser's Transformation) if the wizard can be bothered.

Okay I will bite one of those six spells is going to be a protection spell like mage armor the rest will either be offensive spells or utility spells. So you now can throw five spells in a combat situation as for cantrips it is going to depend on how many combat ones you have to throw. Now if not all of those spells are magic missile then most have saving throws so you may or may not take out the bad guy. Now the fighter on the other hand can use main ability which is bashing things all day long and through the night if the DM makes it where they can't rest. Eventually the wizard will be out of spells and use a crossbow. I have really never played in a gmae where you only have one small encounter a day hat often usually at lower levels the mages run out of combat spells before the days end.

I don't think I could better underline one of the core problems of the wizard. "A wizard who memorizes this spell gives up other better useful spells". But the rogue, naturally, can't do any of the better useful things a wizard can so he pitches in by picking locks and allowing the wizard fun toys. 4e Knock wins here - it takes a minute to cast when the rogue can have the lock open in seconds.

I don't even really know what to say about this except you underestimate what else a rogue gets to do lets see they also disable traps, sneak attack, get evasion and improved evasion eventually can't be caught flat footed which is a very big thing considering that you are flat footed until it is your time to go at the start of a combat. They also get a lot of skill points and eventually get good at using magic device opening up magic to them. If a player is going to be whiny because he as a chance of failure on one his abilities that he can do all day long and thinks it is unfair that a wizard has to spend a limited resource just to mimic his skill and they don't fail then I would not want them at the table. My issue with the ritual in 4E is not that it takes extra time I have no problem with that but that it cost the wizard gold and I believe healing surges. That I don't like at all.

That is ridiculous logic the rogue can pick locks all day long and disable traps on them and then still take an active roll in combat using is other ability of sneak attack he can also stand s the best chance of taking the least amount of damage from area spells. And after doing all that he can still go on a and pick more locks. The wizard can't do that is spells are a limited resource once he has used up his knocks he can't do them anymore and he can't take care of the traps you need the cleric to use a spell for that so two limited resources used in place of a non limited things a rogue can do. Sorry don't buy that using spells is better for every situation.

The point is the rogue should be better at picking locks than the wizard. That you have to impose metagame limits on very basic roleplaying just points to a problem with the system. {

The rogue is better at picking locks because he can do it all the time that is what makes him better at it. And the reason there is a chance of failure is because it is not such a limited resource. A wizard can't pick the lock if they don't have the spell memorized or on a scroll. If they do use it they can't do it all day long and if they use most of their slots for knock when it comes time for combat then they can hide in the corner and fire their crossbow take the minuses for firing into melee. It is not a metagame thing at all it is playing your wizard smart and no wizard is going to use their limited spell resources to do something that another character can do more often.

No rogue in the party has never stopped me either. If necessary the PCs can use a crow bar or even a battering ram. Picking locks merely allows stealth and speed. An unpickable lock can still be forced. So the entire argument vanishes in a puff of smoke..

So your party carries around crowbars mine rarely do but then my DMs enforce weight limits. And lets make a hell of a lot of racket breaking down the door so that the evil guys know we are coming unless of course we use silence and what happens when we run out of that spells because there are more locked doors than silence spells. What if we don't have a battering ram or we need to do it quickly before the city guard comes. Oh and what about those doors that have a magical lock on them I guess we just give up and go home.

"If you don't want to be special and powerful don't play a fighter." Right.

Oh please that is so much BS. I have played plenty of fighters and I felt pretty powerful swinging my way through the enemy and mowing them down. I also felt powerful when I can keep doing what I do best when the mages have run out of effective spells or have run out of spell all together. I have never felt that my fighter was not powerful sure I may not be able to stop time and point my finger and someone dies. But I am okay with that because I am effective at what I want to do which is swing my weapon use my fighting skill and my strength to make my enemies cower in front of me. There are times I don't want to play a wizard I want to play a fighter type. It s a choice and if it was such a bad choice then please tell me why everyone does not just play mages. I know plenty of players who prefer the melee classes and it is not because they prefer playing weak characters.

As for "An epic level fighter can mow down most armies", Giant in the Playground had a series of duels. Level 13 wizard vs Level 20 fighter. The wizard was seriously nerfed - no teleporting away, no prebuffing, no scrying. And the fighter did win one - but that had nothing to do with being a fighter rather than being a glorified commoner with three quarters of a million GP worth of equipment. The level 20 fighter wasn't a match for the level 13 wizard, despite the wealth.

So freaking what big deal in a duel which is a planned fight a wizard mainly won against a higher level fighter. How does this prove anything other than wizards are better in duels. Now in actually games I have seen plenty of wizards die at the hands of lower level fighters and high level fighters. It depends on how many and what kind of spells the wizard has left and if they have already taken damage from another caster or been sneak attacked by a rogue or been at the mercy of a monk who specializes in killing wizards. You can do duels all day long and they won't mimic what happens in a actual game.



So you are claiming that in over 30 years of play we were not having fun and the players who still play 3.5 by the thousands are just to dumb to realize that you can't mix mundane fighters and wizards in the same game and expect their players to have an equally good time. I know to many player who would disagree that they fill that playing a fighter is like playing pong. If you don't like how wizards and fighters work in 3.5 then house rule them or play 4E which sounds closer to how you want to play. Just realize that your experiences and opinions are not universal just like I realize that mine are not universal.



Just read what I said above about rogues and all the other things they get to do and it is not about things being more or less important. A rogue who uses his ability to pick locks will still be able to effectively do his job in combat which is to flank and sneak attack. A wizard on the other hand who uses up all their spells on knock then cannot do their job in combat so basically they will having to do what the melee character do which is hit things with a weapon or fire crossbolts and they do this far less effectively than the fighter, cleric, rogue, monk, druid. The rogue will also still be available to use his skill at scouting, picking more locks disabling traps to get to the loot. While the wizard who has blown all their spells on knock can stand their picking their nose and scratching their butt.

 

[Hussar]

At the end of the day, I just loathe the idea of trying to use in-game elements to try to fix mechanical issues. It will work in the short term, but, it is a band-aid solution. It never actually resolves the issue in the first place.

Look at the bear example. Fair enough. We'll say that the DM disallows the bear in this adventure and the player is groovy. Ok. What about the next adventure? Or the one after that? And the one after that? You've managed to rein in the druid this time, but, unless you do it every time, you're right back to square one.

And if you do it every time, the player is likely going to get pretty annoyed. And rightfully so.

Same goes with the special ops dungeon dwellers who know exactly what a rope trick is and have all the proper counters for it. Yup, it works in THIS dungeon. But is every dungeon the same? Every single adventure will have NPC's with detailed SOP's to counter a rope trick? It's not believable. ((Also, while it does say it's hazardous to have an extradimensional space within another one, it never exactly tells you what that means. It's going to explode? It's going to give me cancer? What?))

Same goes with the pacing arguments. It makes too many assumptions about the campaign. "You won't have time to craft because things are happening." Well, that depends. I mean, I ran the Savage Tide Adventure Path from Paizo a few years ago. In one adventure, you spend over six months on ship. In another, you will spend at least three months getting to the adventure location. Tons and tons of free time. Our current Dark Sun campaign is about 9th level right now and we've been on the go for over two years in game time. So, no, high speed pacing is too campaign specific.

Again, if you resolve these issues before play starts, then you don't have to mess about afterward.

 

[billd91]

At the end of the day, I just loathe the idea of trying to use in-game elements to try to fix mechanical issues. It will work in the short term, but, it is a band-aid solution. It never actually resolves the issue in the first place.

Look at the bear example. Fair enough. We'll say that the DM disallows the bear in this adventure and the player is groovy. Ok. What about the next adventure? Or the one after that? And the one after that? You've managed to rein in the druid this time, but, unless you do it every time, you're right back to square one.

And if you do it every time, the player is likely going to get pretty annoyed. And rightfully so.

Same goes with the special ops dungeon dwellers who know exactly what a rope trick is and have all the proper counters for it. Yup, it works in THIS dungeon. But is every dungeon the same? Every single adventure will have NPC's with detailed SOP's to counter a rope trick? It's not believable. ((Also, while it does say it's hazardous to have an extradimensional space within another one, it never exactly tells you what that means. It's going to explode? It's going to give me cancer? What?))

Same goes with the pacing arguments. It makes too many assumptions about the campaign. "You won't have time to craft because things are happening." Well, that depends. I mean, I ran the Savage Tide Adventure Path from Paizo a few years ago. In one adventure, you spend over six months on ship. In another, you will spend at least three months getting to the adventure location. Tons and tons of free time. Our current Dark Sun campaign is about 9th level right now and we've been on the go for over two years in game time. So, no, high speed pacing is too campaign specific.

Again, if you resolve these issues before play starts, then you don't have to mess about afterward.

In many of these cases, it's not about reining in something though that tends to be a byproduct. Animals, even animal companions, aren't suited to all adventuring tasks. The DM should strive to make the cases in which it can, the ones in which it needs special adaptations before it can, and the ones it can't be believable. Who cares about reining in the druid's mechanics in this way? I care about the bear (or stoat, wallaby, giant squid, chickenhawk, or whatever its companion is) not being just a pool of mechanical effects the PC gets to manipulate. Same with cohorts, mounts, and even familiars.

As far as pacing goes, the reining in effect comes from not allowing the PCs' actions to go without a meaningful response. Pop in and hit a couple rooms and turtle up? They've stirred a hornet's nest and the hornets might be savvy enough to find the PCs directly. And whether they do or don't, the situation won't be the same when the PCs stick their necks out again.

As far as crafting goes, one of the limiting factors is also money. The PCs might be spending up to 6 months on a ship, but their access to supplies is limited (hope they stocked up before they left or can search for the components on the way) and their income is probably limited too. Chances are, they'll run out of money before they run out of time. Now, the amount of money in a campaign - that really is about reining the PCs in. You didn't happen to complain about that or should that be resolved before play starts too (somehow)?

 

[Hussar]

I disagree. Every single one of the examples I listed are primarily about reining in imbalances. Why do we have high paced campaigns? To stop the 5 minute adventuring day. Otherwise, it wouldn't matter. If 15 MAD didn't exist as a tactic, then whether the party goes fast or slow would be entirely up the party and the game would not break either way.

But, because the 15 MAD group is far, far more powerful than the hurry up group, the game breaks down if you allow 15 MAD.

The only reason that the druid's animal companion is an issue is because druids are so powerful. One of, if not the, most powerful classes in 3e. There's a reason we NEVER see anything about the wizard's familiar. Who cares about the familiar? It's not going to break the game. We never see DM's being advised to force the wizard to leave his familiar at home after all. That's because familiars, while a nifty cool thing to have, rarely are going to make a huge difference in game balance.

The druid's companion, OTOH, makes the druid a better front line combatant than the fighter and that's a problem. So, instead of manipulating the in-game environment to strip away the class ability, why not bring the class ability in line with other classes?

Put it another way. If you fix all these imbalance issues, then it doesn't matter what the DM chooses. The game will still work. The mechanics are no longer forcing you to choose specific scenarios to nerf classes. This has been a problem since day one. Looking at those old AD&D high level modules and you see pages of nerfs for casters yet virtually nothing for non-casters and there's a reason for that. The classes were borked even back then.

If the classes are on par with each other at any given level, then you no longer have to nerf classes in order to run an adventure.

 

[Elf Witch]

I disagree. Every single one of the examples I listed are primarily about reining in imbalances. Why do we have high paced campaigns? To stop the 5 minute adventuring day. Otherwise, it wouldn't matter. If 15 MAD didn't exist as a tactic, then whether the party goes fast or slow would be entirely up the party and the game would not break either way.

But, because the 15 MAD group is far, far more powerful than the hurry up group, the game breaks down if you allow 15 MAD.

The only reason that the druid's animal companion is an issue is because druids are so powerful. One of, if not the, most powerful classes in 3e. There's a reason we NEVER see anything about the wizard's familiar. Who cares about the familiar? It's not going to break the game. We never see DM's being advised to force the wizard to leave his familiar at home after all. That's because familiars, while a nifty cool thing to have, rarely are going to make a huge difference in game balance.

The druid's companion, OTOH, makes the druid a better front line combatant than the fighter and that's a problem. So, instead of manipulating the in-game environment to strip away the class ability, why not bring the class ability in line with other classes?

Put it another way. If you fix all these imbalance issues, then it doesn't matter what the DM chooses. The game will still work. The mechanics are no longer forcing you to choose specific scenarios to nerf classes. This has been a problem since day one. Looking at those old AD&D high level modules and you see pages of nerfs for casters yet virtually nothing for non-casters and there's a reason for that. The classes were borked even back then.

If the classes are on par with each other at any given level, then you no longer have to nerf classes in order to run an adventure.

I don't agree with you about so much of this I have to wonder if you truly believe that the only reason not to make it easy to take a companion some place is because it is used to nerf druids. Using the bear example what if the druid leaves the bear and calls an squid or a shark or a dolphin then just how much have you nerfed the druid. The only reason I would do it is for story reasons. Any one just doing it to nerf the druid is not doing a very good job of it because the druid can just pick up another companion with 24 hours of uninterrupted prayer. And right there in the players handbook it says "this animal is a loyal companion that accompanies the druid on her adventures as appropriate for its kind."

I do agree if the DM is only doing it to nerf the companion which is really not a good nerf then yes that is wrong if they feel it is game breaking then they need to take it out of the game.

And I do think game limitations work in some cases. You mentioned being on a ship well in that case the DM needs to recognize that the a wizard may be able to craft a lot of things in the period and if that is an issue in his game then fix it before it becomes an issue with mechanical fixes. But not all games run like this Age of Worms for example does not have built in breaks as easily.

But I can see in game sound challenges to this crafting an item while the ship is in a storm or on rough seas should not be as easy as crafting back home in your library. You have to make sure you have all the supplies you need.

I personally don't have much issue with crafting because it is not something that gets abused often in my games so I am content for the most part in some of my campaigns to allow it. If you think it is an issue then fix it or ban it in your home campaign. Or play an edition that is better suited for this.

As for rope trick it should work sometimes and sometimes it should not also the 15 workday only happens if other players and the DM allow it. What I find interesting is the argument that wizards have to much magic and are to powerful yet there is an issue about them burning their resources to fast. Which would easily be fixed by allowing them more resources to get their spells back sooner. It seems schizophrenic to me

Pacing does work because there are going to be times that stopping just because the party wizard is out of spells is going to bite them in the butt. It is not just a matter of controlling the pacing but makes real world logical sense. If they have to stop a sacrifice before the full moon which is three days away if they stop to rest every single time for the wizard to get back spells they are not going to make it. If you go into a dungeon kick over the hornet nest have an encounter then run and hide for 24 hours you can't expect that denizens to just go into stasis it is going to be a little harder as they dig in and search for the intruders. That is not the DM screwing over the players that is a fair DM running the world in logical manner.

If you do a mix of sometimes they can rest and sometimes they can't the players usually learn that doing so does not guarantee things are better so they don't use it as tactic all the time.

But some of this has to do with your players and their style of play and that the DM can control better than any mechanic. If you have players who like to nova and then rest let them plan the game around that have one big encounter every day. If you don't like that then talk to your players that usually solves more issues than changing the rules to try and stop abuse that only some DMs deal with.

I have never played with a group that has this kind of logic we keep going on the only thing that will stop us is lack of healing and injured party members. And we know by resting early it is going to make things more difficult but we are taking what we see as the lessor of two evils which is resting so we stand a chance of living through the rest of the adventure.

I do not see the 15 day as a mechanical issues as much as it is a playstyle issue. I have noticed it goes hand in hand with the issue of players getting resentful if the DM temporary nerfs any of their abilities like a druid not taking his eagle into the water or the rogue complaining because this section of the dungeon has a lot of oozes and puddings and things he can't use his sneak attack on or the fighter upset because his sword got sundered or the wizard is in a dead magic zone.

These kind of players don't like having any of the abilities nerfed ever for any reason and are more likely going to want to stop if the wizard is out of spells. And the only fix is to let wizards get their spells back faster nad personally that would over power them in my games and take awy some of the challenges and balances in the game that are there to help make the mundane characters have things that make them special.

 

[pemerton]

Really absolutely zero

Who said "absolutely zero"? I said "approximately zero". Yes, some people played 19th level PCs in AD&D. Very very few, though.

 

[Elf Witch]

Who said "absolutely zero"? I said "approximately zero". Yes, some people played 19th level PCs in AD&D. Very very few, though.

I misread it. Though do you actually have facts to back this up? I know many games that had that high a level wizards in it back in the bad old days when DMs would let you bring in characters from other games and a party could eun the gamut all the way from 1st level to 20th and a couple of times higher. In most of Gygax home games they got that high as well.

 

[pemerton]

I misread it. Though do you actually have facts to back this up

<snip>

In most of Gygax home games they got that high as well.

In Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, the PCs are around 12th, and that's touted as a challenging high level adventure. In the World of Greyhawk boxed set the highest level NPC is (from memory) the lord of the Hold of Stonefist, at (again from memory) 18th. Many rulers are around 10th to 12th.

Most of the gods in DDG do not have 19th level in any character class, though some do.

There are very few monsters in the MMs that are challenging for a party above 10th level or so.

I never heard of many games grinding to a halt when 2nd ed AD&D was released with PC advancement charts capped at 20th.

That's some of my evidence that playing 19th level PCs, particularly wizards (who have the steepest XP requirements), wasn't very common.

 

[Neonchameleon]

(Thanks (Psi) - very useful )
It is not the same at all as I said people train bears without magic.

Indeed. But this is because they do not have magic - or they would. And a D&D animal companion obviously puts up with a lot more than almost any trained animal. And above all they are used to magic and to the idea that if their human tells them something ... it's probably right.

As a DM I don't want to stop my players from having fun but that does not mean that you can't give them challenges.

You can give them challenges - you just shouldn't say "No".

Maybe I have been lucky but I have never seen scrolls abused either as a DM or a player that way many people here have. But like I said if it is an issue then I would rather see a limit but on how many scrolls you can use in a day put a cap of say 2 and that solves a lot of the issues.

Everything I read from you indicates that you play 2e using 3e rules - if taken on their own merits the games are very different in many ways (and 3.0 was tested as if it was 2e). And have never seen what a player can do with a wizard PC who is (a) smart and (b) determined.

The reason I support wizards having the chance to know a lot of spells is because of the nature of the class they study magic unlike a sorcerer who just has the magic come to them. Since they study why shouldn't they have the ability to add spells to their spellbook. As I have said if you are worried about power levels control it by restricting how many they cast in a day.

Flexibility is power. But take it back to the 2e situation where even the smartest wizards had caps on how many spells they use.

[quoet]Again I have to say in 30 years of role playing I have never seen this happen. I have talked about this with my son and his friends and with the players in my group over the years and they to have never seen this happen. Where a wizard always takes out the big bad after using their most powerful spells just to get there.[/quote]

Scry and Fry? It definitely was a thing. But "Using their most powerful spells just to get there" actually saves them spell slots in the long run. Instead of using a level 5 spell and a level 4 to take the enemies out, and burning a couple of buffs, they use a level 5 to simply bypass the terrain and most of the guards. The problem isn't actually the wizard taking out the big bad - if the fighter can get in sword's reach of the big bad he can do a lot of damage. The problem is the wizard making things irrelevant (or almost irrelevant). Things including monsters he's just teleported past, or hit points because he's broken out the save or suck.

And if this happens a lot I lay the blame at the DMs feet for not planning better encounters that allow all the PCs a chance to participate. As a DM you know what your players can do you have far more knowledge when it comes to preparing the bad guys and the encounter.

Me, I put the blame squarely at the feet of the system. When I run a game I present the PCs with challenges and, depending on the game, a motivation. How they solve it is up to them. And it's not as if a castle designer goes round saying "I'll put a locked door for the rogue here, and a ward to dispel for the wizard here, and a portcullis to lift here". This is not a technique that fails in most games.

I agree that a DM should not be looking for ways to negate abilities all the time. But there is nothing wrong with taking players out of their comfort zones either now and again. I played in a campaign where there were these traveling mage storms that made magic act wonky. We got hit with one just as a kraken attacked the ship we were on. We found that our magic would work but we were taking blow back damage from the spell basically we took half the damage we dealt. We had a choice take damage or attack using mundane methods.

Option C. Attack using spells like Glitterdust or Slow which don't do damage but make the monsters sitting ducks for everyone else. Given these are the sort of spells a smart wizard uses anyway this isn't much of a hinderance.

And yes, this is a change from 2e which is one of the many reasons I say you're playing 2e using 3e rules. Hit points rose massively from 2e to 3e due to the change in the way constitution works for monsters. The fireball is still doing only 1d6/level damage here and when a monster like a giant gets +5 hit points per hit dice, that no longer is as useful as it once was. (Which means, to take one example, that a cloud giant went up from 16+2-7 hit points (or about 80) to 17d8 + 102 (!) or over 170.)

On the other side of the coin, saves also changed. In AD&D as level rose spells became easier to resist so you'd rely on the half damage from a fireball because it wouldn't entirely be resisted. And more debilitating spells would use the death or poison line or the paralysis or petrificiation line, both of with were easy to resist. The spell line on the other hand was hard to resist - so wizards didn't normally try to paralyse people and again fireball had a huge advantage that it's lost. Also save DCs now scale nastily with the attacking wizard - higher level means that the gap between the defences is bigger so a smart wizard can get an unresisted debilitating spell through easily.

All this means that throwing direct damage spells in AD&D was a very good idea - and it really isn't in 3.X

Really absolutely zero I guess then my 21 level wizard back in 2E didn't exist and was a figment of my imagination.

Very few. The highest PC in Greyhawk was Sir Robilar at level 14. And the game intentionally changed at level 10 in older editions (with the demihuman level limits giving further incentive to keep the level low). It wasn't playtested up there and wasn't intended to be run up there, and the game quite deliberately changed at level 10 (when, at least partly to keep the balance, the fighter gained an entire army).

Okay I will bite one of those six spells is going to be a protection spell like mage armor the rest will either be offensive spells or utility spells. So you now can throw five spells in a combat situation as for cantrips it is going to depend on how many combat ones you have to throw. Now if not all of those spells are magic missile then most have saving throws so you may or may not take out the bad guy. Now the fighter on the other hand can use main ability which is bashing things all day long and through the night if the DM makes it where they can't rest.

This is a myth. The fighter can keep bashing things until he runs out of hit points. He's as dependent on spells as a wizard (unless you're playing with Wands of Cure Light Wounds).

Eventually the wizard will be out of spells and use a crossbow. I have really never played in a gmae where you only have one small encounter a day hat often usually at lower levels the mages run out of combat spells before the days end.

And healing? And yes, this happens at lower levels. Especially if the wizards aren't scroll monkeys. On the other hand, if the wizard has a handful of colour sprays prepared, that ends a few encounters fast.

I don't even really know what to say about this except you underestimate what else a rogue gets to do lets see they also disable traps, sneak attack, get evasion and improved evasion eventually can't be caught flat footed which is a very big thing considering that you are flat footed until it is your time to go at the start of a combat.

Disable Traps: So useful 4e rolled it up with Sleight of Hand and Open Locks into one single skill (Thievery). It's also incredibly niche. Sneak Attack is just damage - useful I'll grant. And Evasion and Uncanny Dodge are both passive not active.

They also get a lot of skill points

No they don't. They get more skill points than any other class. And fewer skills than any other incarnation of the rogue.

If a player is going to be whiny because he as a chance of failure on one his abilities that he can do all day long and thinks it is unfair that a wizard has to spend a limited resource just to mimic his skill and they don't fail then I would not want them at the table. My issue with the ritual in 4E is not that it takes extra time I have no problem with that but that it cost the wizard gold and I believe healing surges. That I don't like at all.

Why not?

That is ridiculous logic the rogue can pick locks all day long

The ridiculous claim is that this is meaningful. That you want to pick locks all day long. That there are enough locks to make this meaningful except in edge cases. How many locks do you meet a day?

and disable traps on them and then still take an active roll in combat using is other ability of sneak attack he can also stand s the best chance of taking the least amount of damage from area spells.

See my comment above about direct damage spells being not terribly useful. The rogue's evasion is utterly useless against even a reflex-affecting spell like Web (there's no save for a partial effect). And it certainly does nothing against Glitterdust, (Evard's) Black Tentacles, Slow, or Stinking Cloud - i.e. the sort of area spells a wizard casts when they want to end a fight in 3.X.

So your party carries around crowbars mine rarely do but then my DMs enforce weight limits.

2lb. W00t. Yes, most are heavier. (7.5lbs there).

And lets make a hell of a lot of racket breaking down the door

So noisy real life burglars use them. A crowbar breaks the lock, not the middle of the door. And breaks it at the weakest point. The advantage of picking the lock is it does no damage and people can't normally see where you've been.

so that the evil guys know we are coming unless of course we use silence and what happens when we run out of that spells because there are more locked doors than silence spells.

Silence lasts 1 minute/level. In other words a while. And kicking the door open doesn't give the monsters much time to react.

What if we don't have a battering ram or we need to do it quickly before the city guard comes.

If speed is that important, it's time to use knock rather than the rogue. Or to use the crowbar - it, too, is more reliable than the thief in most circumstances, and faster. (The entire combined strength of the party vs the weaker of the physical strength of the lock or whatever's holding the lock against the frame when backed up by a long lever allowing about a 10:1 force multiplier is a hugely unequal struggle in almost all cases).

Oh and what about those doors that have a magical lock on them I guess we just give up and go home.

If all you have is a rogue and the door is locked with an arcane lock you might as well just give up and go home. The rogue's having serious problems. If, on the other hand, you have a crowbar, you can force the thing open anyway. You can also continue if you have the Knock spell. You're making my case that the 3.X Rogue's Open Locks skill isn't that useful for me. (And no, a lock isn't a trap so trapfinding won't work here).

Oh please that is so much BS. I have played plenty of fighters and I felt pretty powerful swinging my way through the enemy and mowing them down. I also felt powerful when I can keep doing what I do best when the mages have run out of effective spells or have run out of spell all together.

That's because your wizards are going for direct damage spells... See above for how the game changed between 2e and 3e. And in 2e the high level fighter pretty much shrugged off spells. Not so in 3e where they have two weak saves including Will.

So freaking what big deal in a duel which is a planned fight a wizard mainly won against a higher level fighter.

The conditions were rigged to favour the fighter. No divination, no scrying, unprepared wizard, no pre-buffing.

How does this prove anything other than wizards are better in duels. Now in actually games I have seen plenty of wizards die at the hands of lower level fighters and high level fighters. It depends on how many and what kind of spells the wizard has left and if they have already taken damage from another caster or been sneak attacked by a rogue or been at the mercy of a monk who specializes in killing wizards. You can do duels all day long and they won't mimic what happens in a actual game.

Translation: In plenty of games you've seen a fighter finish off a wizard after the wizard has been weakened by other factors.

So you are claiming that in over 30 years of play we were not having fun and the players who still play 3.5 by the thousands are just to dumb to realize that you can't mix mundane fighters and wizards in the same game and expect their players to have an equally good time.

You're moving the goalposts. Hard. Different editions have different characteristics - and you haven't been playing 3.X for more than 12.5 years. 3.0 removed most of the previous restrictions on the wizard and slackened the rest, while stealthily crippling fighters by raising monster hp, lowering weapon damage against large monsters, reducing their number of attacks, and moving them from incredible saving throws at high level to arguably the worst of any PC class. By going for direct damage spells your wizards are bringing a knife rather than a gun - which is just as well because the fighter only has a knife.

Just read what I said above about rogues and all the other things they get to do and it is not about things being more or less important. A rogue who uses his ability to pick locks will still be able to effectively do his job in combat which is to flank and sneak attack. A wizard on the other hand who uses up all their spells on knock

Is dumb. A wizard who has three scrolls of knock at the back of his spellbook and carries around a crowbar for the fighter to open any other doors on the other hand covers this job.

As for rope trick it should work sometimes and sometimes it should not also the 15 workday only happens if other players and the DM allow it. What I find interesting is the argument that wizards have to much magic and are to powerful yet there is an issue about them burning their resources to fast. Which would easily be fixed by allowing them more resources to get their spells back sooner. It seems schizophrenic to me

4e fixed that one. The issue with wizards is twofold.
1: Nova potential. This is in theory not a problem because of everything you mention.
2: Type of resources. A properly prepared wizard can do anything. Including teleport straight to Mount Doom, or the like.

I have never played with a group that has this kind of logic we keep going on the only thing that will stop us is lack of healing and injured party members.

Or to put things another way, you stop when you run out of spells. Right.