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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Obryn" data-source="post: 6256317" data-attributes="member: 11821">It was a combination of a lot of factors, but yes, those were among them!Cook's approach was basically to make some (not all) individual spells a little powered-down. For example, there weren't many save-or-dies. However, there were plenty of save-or-suck spells which serve essentially the same purpose in-game. And the spells that "just" did damage? Well, I'll get to those, but they were generally more powerful than in 3e; take the Sorcerous Blast, a flexible-element or -energy fireball look-alike with a longer range that forces a central target to save twice.Spellcasters were basically a 3e Sorcerer/Wizard hybrid not all too dissimilar to how Next's casters operate, but with a whole lot more spells at their disposal. What's more, they can trade a higher-level spell for several lower-level spells, or several lower-level spells for a higher-level spell meaning their flexibility was kind of immense.This also meant that all of their save-or-suck spells could be spammed more or less infinitely. And because Quickening spells was relatively cheap (still a feat, but you just used 2 same-level spell slots instead of one L+4 slot and you could do it on the fly) the situation was pretty darn dire. You also have a bunch of casters with generally higher attributes than in a normal game. And for the cost of a level, they could fly indefinitely, so there's that. But really, the biggest offense to caster balance by far were the feats. Two really stick in my mind. The first was Runic Spell, which looks unassuming but really isn't. Now, it's a full-round spell with this template, so there's that, but it forces a target to use their Intelligence modifier to resist the spell. Think of all the monster stat blocks you see, and imagine that Intelligence was used for all the saves.The second were feats like Acid (maybe Caustic) Spell. Remember how I said there were better fireballs? Well throw this template on top of an acid spell (for a cheap material component) and you get to stun your target for 1 round per 20 points of damage. Lightning forced a second save for (iirc) a 2-round stun.So while a few things were scaled back slightly, Monte Cook's desire to give spellcasters oodles of options ended up giving back more than he took away. The balance is really and truly dire, and the non-caster classes weren't buffed in any significant way to keep up with full casters.</blockquote>

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