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

[Jacob Marley]

I have noticed that no one seems to have an issue with the fact that a high level rogue with maxed out use magic device can access both divine and arcane spells, use any alignment restricted weapon or device they can fill the shoes of fighter, wizard, cleric and still do all the rogue things.

The issue is not just about fulfilling roles but also to the degree the character class can fulfill the role (primary, secondary, or tertiary), and the ease at which the class can transition from role to role. Clerics, Druids, and Wizards can fulfill a number of different combat and noncombat roles in a primary or secondary capacity. They can also easily transition into other different roles by memorizing a different set of spells. Whereas Fighters and Rogues tend to lock into a narrower number of roles at a primary or secondary capacity, and anything else that they do is in a tertiary capacity or they are incapable of doing it. It is also difficult to transition into a different role due to the sunk costs in armor, weapons, skills, and feats.

To use an investments analogy: Clerics, Druids, and Wizards are like investors who are highly liquid. They hold lots of cash, stocks, bonds and other securities that can be easily converted into cash. If an opportunity were to arise, they could quickly get in on it. Fighters and Rogues, on the other hand, are like investors who hold very illiquid assets such as real estate, art, and equity in small businesses. They are not as capable to act on new opportunities. While they may be very good at what they do, it is likely that is all they will be able to do.

 

[Obryn]

Trying to break the system is something like Ur Priest/Nar Demonbinder/Mystic Theurge ridiculousness. Or Pun-Pun. You are accusing me directly of a bad faith approach which is entirely absent. I am using core elements of the system in the way the game indicates you should use them and rewards you for and the system still collapses.

Yup. I think if your argument rests on, "only a terrible powergamer munchkin tries to find new spells, create magic items, and take broadly-useful choices to defeat monsters trying to kill them" ... well, it's not much of an argument.

(Also, your inbox, it is full)

-O

 

[Neonchameleon]

(Also, your inbox, it is full)

(Not any more )

 

[stevelabny]

EDIT: And like I suspected would happen, even though NC fulfilled your challenge under your original rules and gave you a 10th-level wizard's spell lists, you've completely skipped right by it and gone straight to "players are the problem."

-O

Well I was looking at his spell choices, which was going to take TIME. But I replied to the part I thought was most telling first. I suppose I could have said "I'll respond to the other bit later." but I didn't so good going jumping at me within an hour when it took almost a day for me to get my response. And now that he said he's not going to reply to me anymore, I guess I won't really bother unless he changes his mind. Because apparently its ok to keep sidetracking discussions by harping on off-hand comments. I hope I don't misspell anything, we'll be here all day.

But taking a quick look, I don't see anything helping armor class or saves beyond size-changing, so I see one more wizard who is counting on successful scrying, successful stealth to range, winning initiative, and failed saves. IF anything gets within 5 feet of him ever, he's probably dead.

I am unclear on how Silent Image keeps someone hidden from a sleeping dragon, or how exactly you're attacking through Solid Fog (most of the cloud-spells are great for escaping/delaying a fight, but not always helpful in WINNNG a fight). I find it hysterical that the spell list includes Alarm, but you want to attack a sleeping dragon who would have no such defenses? Invisibility is laser-awesome when it comes with some way to move silently. How's that move silently check holding up wizard of high intelligence cuz I know you're maxing out spellcraft, concentration, and at least 3 knowledge skills) And I hope the dragon doesn't have scent (Off hand I don't even know if an MM1 dragon can get scent and I'm not looking it up.)

princess scenario - you scry the princess. she's in the dark, she's a prisoner. If you have darkvision...she's in a 10x10 stone room with one door. There's a large chamberpot in one corner, and a flat wooden tray with some gruel on it. You have a 50% chance of Messaging her and finding out she knows nothing other than one of her captors is a male. As a DM I'll be nice and say there's a 5% chance that in the 10 minutes you're scrying, its possible for someone to open the door. Some scruffy looking nerfherder, presumably a flunky, opens the door and says something you can't hear. Still have no idea where to send Prying Eyes. Even if the princess could identify the sound of the waves on the shore or the local belltower... you've narrowed down the location but in a windowless room it will be nigh-impossible for Eyes to seek her out. Scrying and Prying Eyes aren't some be all end all. Taking out guards with Ghost Sound / Silent Image? That might work on one or two patrols...BUT you also run the risk of them sounding the alarm. You brought your wand of knock, great job. But the bad guy knows about knock and some of the doors have multiple locks or maybe guards are told to stand directly in front of doors and not move. Or maybe there's a portcullis (oops!) . And the base., like a normal building has 8-10 foot high ceilings..fly is pretty much useless.

Same thing with Prying Eyes in the enemy base. Even if they partially map the base for you, some of them are probably getting seen and destroyed. When you invisibility into the base (or the princess's prison above) anytime you stop to attack something, you break invisibility. There's the rogue/barbarian catch them with a will save... oh noes! it was the sorcerer in disguise and he makes his save.

Just as prepared as a caster thinks they are, that's how prepared the enemies can be also. Terrain is an actual thing, that will affect effectiveness of spells like fly, or provide all sorts of line of sight issues. Casters get a HUGE advantage if encounters start at a distance of 150 feet. There is rarely a reason for that to happen.

And since I failed in not responding, I might as well ask a bonus question, if you cast cloudkill outside on some monsters and it rolls 1000 feet away from you over the next 10 minutes and the next morning you find some dead merchant commoners on the road, and now everywhere you walk you here "stop right there, criminal scum" is the DM being a schmuck?

 

[Elf Witch]

This is honestly a change in emphasis I lay almost entirely at the feet of D&D 3.X. In most RPGs including every edition of D&D that isn't part of the 3.X branch, PCs use PC rules and NPCs use NPC rules. And the statblocks are significantly different. If an NPC can do something a PC can't or vise-versa this is to be expected. In D&D 3.X NPCs are (officially) built using the same rules as PCs. This means that the expectation is that if an NPC can do something so can a PC. And one of the criticisms I've seen of 4e is quite literally "If there's magic a wizard can't do then how is he magic?" (For the record, on the dispel issue, I'd have said "Fine. Caster level 50. Give it your best shot). 3.X according to the rules as written binds the NPCs to the same rules as PCs - and if the NPCs are all bound, so is the DM. People who didn't learn to play with 3.X don't even notice this as an issue. But if you learned by figuring out things from the 3.X books it's what you've learned to expect because it's what the game says the DM should do. (Even GURPS 3e gave the advice that the DM shouldn't bother with this and that NPCs cost as much as they cost).

There's a second change in emphasis as well. "All your class abilities don't work. Because I say so." Is considered bad DMing (and that's what magic dead zones mean - the wizard who signed up to be a wizard is an effective commoner which is not what he signed up for). On the other hand if the wizard war areas had been areas of wild magic where magic had unpredictable and generally weaker effects this doesn't change the wizard into a commoner in there. It allows the wizard to keep their agency while having unpredictable effects and the social effects envisaged by the dead magic zones. The spotlight now isn't entirely off the wizard if you want to venture in there. In fact the wizard probably gets more of the spotlight than previously even as he's nerfed.



Out of curiosity, is it that people recover their breath between rounds you don't like - and that a boxer at the start of the 9th round is harder to knock out and swinging harder than he was at the end of the 8th because he's had a drink and a breather? Or is it that they impose a limit to healing? Or is it the stupid decision to make an extended rest into an overnight rest rather than discuss possible options for an extended rest? (I favour at least a weekend in a secure environment, if not a week or a narrative stopping point (such as Rivendell or Lorien in Lord of the Rings)).



No. The 15 minute workday has always been about spellcasters using up all their spells. Wizards are just the most likely to be stupid enough to do this largely because they have magic and not much else. The cleric wears heavy armour and can swing a weapon decently, and there's an expectation on the cleric to save spells for healing. Of course healing in 3.X is effectively almost unlimited due to craft wand...

I don't believe it is because of 3E I believe it is because of games like World of Warcraft those kind of games encourage finding out how to win how to beat the system. And this player had only played 4E and video games. I also think a lot of it has to do with society and the changes where we give kids a trophy when they lose because we don't want to hurt their self esteem. There is a lot of self entitlement going on. I listen to the whines it is not fair that I didn't get to participate in the combat because I was paralyzed I came to play. Or we can't roll dice for stats what if someone ends up better than me that is just not fair. The DM dared capture us and took away our magic items that is not fair. What you mean we don't get plot impunity we should because we are the PCs and the game revolves around us.

I have taught 3E to people did not play any other RPG and no video games and I have never run into this kind of whiny scenario about fairness and the DM not having the right to plan encounters that can challenge the players by making them think outside of the box.

That whole idea that the any class is turned into a commoner just because they don't have access to all their abilities is one of the things wrong with how people look at the game it is video game thinking not role play thinking. I have played in games with dead zones, wild magic, been captured and lost not only our mundane items but our magical items to boot because we chose to run instead of stay and fight. And the DMs who crafted these were some of the best most creative DMs I have ever played with. Each one of those encounters were a blast because they required us to think and plan outside of our comfort zone and to work as a team.

Here again comes the spoiled its all about me thinking so for a part of this session we are in a dead zone that is not fair because for a couple of hours I don't get to be the powerful wizard I usually am oh no you mean I might actually have to fire my crossbow or throw tangle foot bags and acid at the enemy. Oh no we are fighting undead my sneak attack does not work that is not fair you are nerfing my abilities.

It is only bad DMing if the DM does not inform the players ahead of time if there might be things that could effect their class. It would bad DMing if I didn't tell a player who wanted to play a warlock that in my world it could get him burned at the stake. I played a sorcerer in a world that had dead zones a plenty in it. In another game I had a special sword that was merciful and if I chose to do subdual damage it was useless against things like undead and oozes. And for an entire module we fought undead. And through most of that the paladin shined. Later though we were fighting living creatures and my fighter racked up a lot more damage than the paladin.

The game should be a team game and sometimes the spotlight is on someone other than you. It should only be an issue if you never get your chance in the spotlight and yes I have been in those kind of games and they suck. But that is a DM issue and sometimes a player issue when other players won't share the spotlight. I firmy believe that it is everybody responsibility to bring the fun to the table.

My issue with healing surges is that they give back permanent hit points if they gave back temporary hit points then I would not have as much an issue with it. But as they are now they make me feel as if I am playing a video game and getting extra lives. That boxer may have more energy from taking a brief rest and having a drink but his broken nose is still broken and the cuts on his face are still there. In action moves when the hero gets his wind back and through sheer will forces himself back up that is a heroic moment but usually afterwards he collapses and you see him getting treated by the paramedics.

Thank goodness for the heal wands in 3E because they made clerics fun to play. Not everyone wants to play a healing clerics and why should they have to which is why there are way for the DM to put things into the game without having to run an NPC it is why healing wands, wands of knock and other wands can help a DM run a game that is missing a class. And while not common I had a situation where the fighter had both his weapons sundered and that was why the party did not continue on they ran until they could figure out what to do.

I am not going to argue anymore about the 15 minute day it has been beaten to death nobody will ever agree that it is a major issue a lot of us don't think it is and we don't agree that the only way to stop it if it does happen is by changing the rules instead of using DM tactics against groups that do this regularly.

BTW your prejudice of 3.5 is coming through loud and clear. It is okay you can dislike it all you want and think it is broken that is your opinion just like it is okay for me to think that 4E is a boring and plays like a video game and made all the wizard one of the most boring classes ever to play.

 

[Obryn]

And since I failed in not responding, I might as well ask a bonus question, if you cast cloudkill outside on some monsters and it rolls 1000 feet away from you over the next 10 minutes and the next morning you find some dead merchant commoners on the road, and now everywhere you walk you here "stop right there, criminal scum" is the DM being a schmuck?

I would mostly say you're continuing on this chain of "wizards are perfectly balanced so long as the DM hoses them on every occasion."

-O

 

[Manbearcat]

Which is great for the character once the character is formed. But if you go into a game as a player saying "Usually I always play X class/race combo because it is the most powerful, but I suspect this DMs playstyle will nerf that combo so I will use my fallback class/race combo, and if every time you play that class you make the SAME stat choices and feat choices and skill choices and spell choices because they are "optimal", then something is wrong.

Very much a bridge too far with this slippery slope and excluded middle. Just because you make sensible build decisions and sensible spell-load decisions when you're playing a brilliant generalist wizard (I don't know anything more of any character traits, instincts, background or thematic interests beyond "brilliant" and "generalist" and "wizard" so I'll stay with that) doesn't mean that you're going to never play any other class, build, or spell-load. It just means that you perceive there to be (and there may well be) a powerful class with an optimized, sensible default. Nothing more. You can't firmly extrapolate more than that. While never playing one, I've seen my fair share in play (and had to deal with them as GM) to know that this much is inarguable.

Second, the world doesn't even work that way in reality. People make bad decisions every day on purpose. Every time I reply to this thread I am willfully making a bad decision. My life has probably been a series of bad decisions. However, I'm pretty self aware and reasonably intelligent. Every time I eat too much, every day I don't go to work, every time I insult someone, every time I don't clean something... these are all bad decisions I'm conscious of.

You're extending the generalities of adaptation and the malleable relationship between an organism and its habitat far, far beyond its intended meaning here. Further, I'm using irrationality in the standard use here: an action taken or opinion given through inadequate application of reason, emotional distress, or cognitive deficiency...and I'm applying it to adventurers who live in life and death struggles...and must adapt to a malleable relationship between themselves and their habitat - eg. an aggressive one that wishes them dead. I'm not talking about the benign decisions of "do I get a sandwich or salad for lunch" or "do I post another post on this internet message board or take 5 and watch opening hockey night." When an adventurer does something in the game (by proxy of the player's decision-making) and is a decision that is clearly foolish or horribly defective from a risk assessment perspective (with some power of predictability...as an adventurer in an aggressive environment that wants you dead), it is either:

1 - the player metagaming and wanting to "make things interesting" or "shake it up"
2 - the player metagaming and doing something thematically compelling or character/genre-relevant
3 - the player metagaming and playing in a system that rewards metagame tokens/points as incentive for such behavior
4 - a product of inadequate application of reason

Let's work with the last as the other have baggage which is unrelated to the discussion. For a wizard (whose career is predicated upon ingenuity, reason, guile and technical study) to have carved out a lengthy existence (by level 10) as an "adventurer who inhabits an environment that aggressively wants them dead" and to have somehow lived out those long, dangerous years circumventing the process of natural selection erstwhile willfully attempting to not adapt (eg have willfully bad/indifferent risk assessment and accompanying indifferent/bad/suicidal adaptive strategies) strikes me as a bit difficult to grasp. "Foolish, irrational, impetuous, cognitively deficient" strikes me as the outlier amongst the wizardly types. A D&D character is not Indiana Jones. Indy is protected by plot immunity, not plot armor (HPs). His bad decisions are exclusively the purview of the author leveraging 1 and 2 above...and having absolute authority over the outcomes.

 

[Elf Witch]

The issue is not just about fulfilling roles but also to the degree the character class can fulfill the role (primary, secondary, or tertiary), and the ease at which the class can transition from role to role. Clerics, Druids, and Wizards can fulfill a number of different combat and noncombat roles in a primary or secondary capacity. They can also easily transition into other different roles by memorizing a different set of spells. Whereas Fighters and Rogues tend to lock into a narrower number of roles at a primary or secondary capacity, and anything else that they do is in a tertiary capacity or they are incapable of doing it. It is also difficult to transition into a different role due to the sunk costs in armor, weapons, skills, and feats.

To use an investments analogy: Clerics, Druids, and Wizards are like investors who are highly liquid. They hold lots of cash, stocks, bonds and other securities that can be easily converted into cash. If an opportunity were to arise, they could quickly get in on it. Fighters and Rogues, on the other hand, are like investors who hold very illiquid assets such as real estate, art, and equity in small businesses. They are not as capable to act on new opportunities. While they may be very good at what they do, it is likely that is all they will be able to do.

Again I am going to say so what. And if this is such an issue than make all the classes work the same. Wait they did that it was called 4E and it was not universally embraced as the way to play. You know why because people play the game differently what some see as a a bug others don't. The people I play with don't give a damn that a wizard can fill other roles just like they don't care if the rogue can. We don't care that a wizard can beat a fighter in a duel on some forum. We don't care that some one rolled better stats or has more power.

What we care about it did we have fun did our character work the way we want it too. We realize the game is a team game and sometimes it is my time to shine and sometimes it is someone else turn also we like role playing a lot and that does not have anything to do with how powered your class is. And the DMs including myself plan things to allow every character a chance to be the hero a chance for their skills to be highlighted.

And we are willing to let our players have fun if they want to scry and fry well then sometimes we are going to let them do it because they find it fun. If they want to use teleport sometimes as a tactic well we will let that work sometimes as well. If we don't want that kind of play then we will tell the players at the start that teleport is banned or as one DM did it was very risky unless using a teleport circle which cost a lot of gold to use and they were not everywhere so sometimes there was some travel involved.

The rules should be a tool kit for the DM.

Don't get me wrong there are things I think should be fixed in 3.5 and Pathfinder did not fix all my issues by a long shot. I like skills I hate how easy they are to max out and I think there should be ways to flub a skill check. BTW the people saying all a wizard has to do is take 20 for a spellcraft check to transfer a spell from a scroll to their spellbook is wrong. If there is a chance of something bad happening if you fail a skill check you can't take 20. Making it harder to max out concentration makes it harder to hold onto a spell if it hit or to combat cast.

I think crafting should cost more money and more XP then they do now.

Some spells should be rituals that take a lot of gold and time.

Fighters need to be buffed up and given more things to do as they level.

 

[stevelabny]

shows off his edumacation

Are you purposely trying to obfuscate your points with 50-cent words or do you really speak this way all the time? Can we get some elucidation up in here?

2 - the player metagaming and doing something thematically compelling or character/genre-relevant

This isn't meta-gaming. This is role-playing. Which is the first part of role-playing game. Why is it that people always seem to forget one part or the other. But yeah. This is what we've determined the problem is.
I don't consider this to be metagaming, you don't consider pre-play optimization choices to be metagaming. We disagree.

a wizard (whose career is predicated upon ingenuity, reason, guile and technical study)
"Foolish, irrational, impetuous, cognitively deficient" strikes me as the outlier amongst the wizardly types.

Say what now? Wizards have HIGH INTELLIGENCE. I would agree that usually involves technical study - as opposed to sorcerer. But ingenuity? reason? guile? NONE OF THOSE THINGS go hand in hand with high intelligence. People can be clever with being intelligent and intelligent without being clever. That's a book smarts vs street smarts kinda thing. Guile even more so. And reason? Why can't the wizard be religious or emotional instead of a vulcan? Foolish is the opposite of wise, which is a different stat. Why do you think wizards wouldn't be impetuous? Do you think that only falls on the rogue? An impetuous wizard and a clever patient rogue sounds like a fun team. You're nerfing human personality far more than I could ever nerf in-game abilities.

A D&D character is not Indiana Jones.

Not always. But Indy is one of the major archetypes that characters are usually built with bits of.

 

[stevelabny]

I would mostly say you're continuing on this chain of "wizards are perfectly balanced so long as the DM hoses them on every occasion."

-O

How is following the letter of the spell hosing the wizard? He cast cloudkill and presumably killed his targets. The spell rolls 10 feet every round for 100 rounds and does not say its dismissable. I'm not nerfing that...because maybe you WANT it to roll over armies in the future. So I am following the rules to the letter and I'm still hosing wizards? Maybe the wizard should just be more careful before he murders innocent civilians.

But yeah, thanks for the confirmation that no matter what happens, the DM is hosing players.