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Message: <blockquote data-quote="stevelabny" data-source="post: 6073751" data-attributes="member: 9298">I think most of the answers have already been given but I'll answer anyway. 1> Magic shops / the Economy :   Just because an item has a price, doesn't mean a player can buy it whenever they want. Magic shops should pretty much not exist, and even if the setting calls for them, it should put limits on powerful items.  And the D&D economy just simply cannot be used as a "rule". The DM must override it when necessary because it makes absolutely 0 sense from peasants and meals all the way up through artifacts.  Which means you also have to consider...2> Crafting : I personally don't "get" people who like to play crafters. And I have never seen anything other than scribe scroll used in game.  BUT I acknowledge its could be a problem in the rules as written  IF you give PCs unlimited time for crafting.  If players have crafting feats, then the DM has to be careful about how much time he allows and what effects spending that time to craft has on the game world. 3> Not building characters from the ground up:  This is something I always bring up when people complain about Rope Trick. When building a character from 1st level, no wizard would ever take Rope Trick.  You want other more useful spells at low level, and by the time you get to higher levels there are better spells to choose from.  When characters get created at high levels all sorts of wonky stuff happens that would not have happened in normal play.4> Control over treasure including spells:  A wizard only gets to choose 2 of their own spells per level, if there is a spell a DM doesn't like or is part of a busted combo.. If the player doesn't select it as one of his 2 choices..the DM needs to make sure enemy casters don't have it in their spellbooks or leave scrolls of it lying around.  5> Two hands. You have two hands. : I see a lot of players talking about having potions, scrolls, wands etc for every occasion. And somehow they're always available when needed.  NO.  You get an item for your left hand/sheathe, an item for your right hand/sheathe, an item strapped to your back,  2 or 3 items attached to your belt or lower leg etc,  And MAYBE a fancy bandolier thing that can hold a few items.  Everything else is in your backpack, good luck searching through it in the middle of combat. Or going back to your pack mule.  BUT all the "exposed" items need to remember...6> Item saves.   Potions/Scrolls on your belt? Don't forget that if you roll a 1 on your save, they have to make a save too. Yes, stealing or setting fire to a player's backpack or spellbook isn't something you can do repeatedly, but at least once during a campaign? Sure.  And I really hope everybody takes precautions if they're going underwater. Remind players of these things and you'll see how quickly they stop carrying around a ton of magic items "just in case."7> Monster skills.   Any spell (or ability) that forces a monster skill check is over-powered against monsters as written. Unless the DM is slapping some class-levels on them, or re-statting them, they simply do not have enough skills.  7> The CR/EL system is a guideline and levelling speed is way too fast:   A group of 4 wizards, a group of 4 rogues, a group of 4 fighters, a group of 4 clerics and a "standard" mixed group will have 5 completely different outcomes against encounters of the same level. An EL 7 fight against undead will be completely different for clerics and rogues.  And the same is true with a mixed group with different feats and spell selections.   Tailor encounters to your party's strengths and/or weaknesses.  You might feel the need to bump up XP for this, but it doesn't matter.  The XP system is just as bad as the CR/EL system and the economy.  As just pointed out, leveling in 3-10 days is just embarrassing. 8> Divine casters get every spell:  If I would house rule ONE thing, it would be this. 9> five minute workday:  Can't be allowed regularly. Other players have to police it. DM's have to police it.  Attempting a  mission but stop to rest and recover spells?  Sorry, now the hostage is dead, the trail's gone cold, the ritual is complete and the bigger evil is here, reinforcements have come, etc etc.   Sure, there are times where it is a good idea, and times when PCs can get away with it with no negative effects.  But the PCs should not always be able to determine exactly when its safe and when its not. 10> Misconceptions, misunderstood rules and theorycraft : Too many people have read rules and not played, or heard of broken/over-powered things on the internet and assumed they're true.   I'll use Grease as an example for this... almost every single person who says this spell is overpowered thinks that being prone means you are vulnerable to sneak attacks and this is simply not true.  But it has persisted for 10 years. 11> DMs are too nice to casters :  I'll throw in the loss of spell drawbacks here. If haste aged players, it wouldn't be cast constantly. But for the most part, the general feeling of the player base is that if the DM steals spellbooks, or has all the bad guys target the wizard, or constantly has enemies use counterspells or ready to attack the caster, or has big bads who scry and attack party weaknesses, or use tremorsense against invisibles or flying minions against flyers, or anything else that specifically screws with players  - the DM is a bad, lazy DM who is playing to "win" instead of telling a story.  And this community think has infected DMs who have mostly become too scared to play hardball. 12> Poor play.   If a caster is taking the time to make a few spells from his spell list, they're probably more beneficial in the hands of a rogue with Use Magic Device than in the hands of the wizard, in the same way that healing potions are better in the hands of party members other than the cleric.  But modern players have decided that specializing is better than versatility and that buffing up one party member is better than splitting buffs, and pretty much let the casters run the show. 13> And most importantly, a wizard can't do EVERYTHING.  If the wizard has a bunch of 5 minute workday workarounds like teleport x2 or rope trick or whatever,  or if he has a bunch of defensive spells like invisibility, fly, stoneskin, etc  or he has a bunch of utility spells to shame other party members... he can't also have an unlimited amount of offensive spells that exploit every possible enemy weakness.  This goes back to the theory and the 5MWD and the two hands and possibly every other rule, but no matter how many spells a caster has per day, there is no way they are able to handle everything over multiple encounters.</blockquote>

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