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What would you say is the biggest problem with Wizards, Clerics, Druids, and other "Tier 1" Spellcasters?
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<blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6074610" data-attributes="member: 1165"><p>Trying to fix this post by Elf Witch</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>(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 <em>any</em> 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.)</p><p></p><p>(Incidentally, one thing I considered was allowing <em>any</em> caster to burn a spell slot to power <em>any</em> scroll of the same level - thus allowing even the party Wizard to cast that <em>scroll of cure light wounds</em> in extremis. But, of course, <em>only</em> to cast it - they wouldn't get to add the spell to their "known" list!)</p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I decided to risk it. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Fair enough. What about the Cleric and the Druid?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p> 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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> 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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Really absolutely zero I guess then my 21 level wizard back in 2E didn't exist and was a figment of my imagination.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p> 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.</p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> So freaking what big deal<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" /> 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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(Psi)SeveredHead, post: 6074610, member: 1165"] Trying to fix this post by Elf Witch 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. (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 [i]any[/i] 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 [i]any[/i] caster to burn a spell slot to power [i]any[/i] scroll of the same level - thus allowing even the party Wizard to cast that [i]scroll of cure light wounds[/i] in extremis. But, of course, [i]only[/i] 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? 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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. 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. 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. So freaking what big deal:erm: 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. [/QUOTE]
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What would you say is the biggest problem with Wizards, Clerics, Druids, and other "Tier 1" Spellcasters?
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