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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 6076123" data-attributes="member: 8863">One one hand, I don't want to say there is a problem, Wizard IS my favorite class and always has been.  I certainly want to play with all my toys as a PC.  OTOH, while I really haven't played high-level 3e, I did see an early example of the players trying to pull a 15 MAD.  As a DM who started with Basic and 2e, (and 2e was an edition which certainly discouraged playstyles like the 15 MAD rather strongly) naturally my instinct was to quash this right away before it became a problem.  My particular solution was to harass the PCs with an ethereal filcher until they got the hint and left the dungeon to rest up.  (Note the PCs were about 4th level IIRC and they simply rested in one of the rooms, there was no rope trick involved.  Also, I did not pull the filcher out of my ass, I put it there when I originally set up the dungeon.).  Rope trick abuse would likely irritate the hell out of me.Rope trick abuse isn't just a 3e problem from differing playstyles either, the RAW simply didn't support it earlier.  In 2e, the duration for Rope trick is 2 turns/level.  Now 3e removed the concept of turns from the game (a turn was = 10 minutes pre-3e), though some spells that had durations in turns were now 10 minutes/level which is the same thing.  Unfortunately, 3e changed the duration of rope trick to 1 hour/level, which is why it's become an element of the 15 MAD. An 8th level wizard can cast a rope trick long enough to rest in, where in 2e the wizard had to be level 24, and probably wouldn't need to bother.  Rope trick basically seems to be a spell that was meant to be cast to evade pursurers for a short time rather than a method to create a safe nap spot, and the 3e durations should have read 10 minutes/level if the original duration wasn't going to be preserved.  These issues were really always a problem, high level wizards were always good, but prior to 3e the issue wasn't as bad.  Wizards were technically allowed to craft items, though scrolls couldn't be made until 9th level and other stuff at 11th.  Of course, this is where campaigns in these editions started to wind down, and DMs may have placed a lot of restrictions on the process to the point where players didn't bother.  However, 3e lowered the levels on item creation, giving wizards scrolls rightaway and other items realatively low.  The idea that you'd need a feat to craft a type of item looks balanced at first because a PC probably won't be able to make everything, but it looks like in practice many players consider scrolls and wands to be sufficient, and maybe wondrous as well.  I agree maybe the costs should be steeper so the expenses aren't trivial.  Maybe cut the number of charges in wands down to 25 as well, since 50 is relatively high when you look at charges pre-3e.But you'd need to boost the other classes as well.  I'm not certain, but maybe changing the weak saves from 1/2 level to 3/4 level might help, I don't know.  The difference between weak and strong saves isn't too bad in low-level 3e, only a few points, but once you hit level 10 they're already off by a +5, and that is enough to make a difference.A specific issue is also how the fighter no longer gets his followers automatically. Oh sure, there's the Leadership feat, but I'm sure min-maxers would say it sucks (needs Cha to get more out of it, so not good if you're not a paladin, bard or sorcerer, and the bard and sorcerer should be taking other stuff, if not the paladin as well).  To emulate the fighter's old ability to attract followers, I'd give the class Leadership as a bonus feat at level 9.  I might also have a +2 to the Leadership score for classes that received followers in older editions as well to give the fighter a slight boost.Certainly one thing I'd to if I were to run 3e again would be to wind a campaign down around level 10.  No matter how much emphasis 3e tried to place on high levels, it's been said often that the game really does start to break down around the mid-teens.  Certainly, I'm not adverse to letting a campaign go into low epic, but I'd probaly limit the amount of high-level play to maintain my sanity.  I would however, in the sake of fairness, tell the players right off that I'm going to have things wind down past level 10.</blockquote>

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