So you guys always complain about high level casters taking over games and out powering the other classes at high level...

So you guys always complain about high level casters taking over games and out powering the other classes at high level, but I've never seen any of you propose solutions to this.

The best solution is to play 4E

Just don't play pathfinder or 3.5, more specifically a high level game of it. It's not really a big enough problem to give a shit about outside of there, and you should avoid those systems for multiple other reasons anyway

Ever hear people talking about class tiers? That's a solution. Well, part of one.

Alternatively: don't play 3.PF, don't play d20 Star Wars if only one person is a fully-fledged-and-equipped Jedi, and don't play AD&D with a Monty Haul GM.
Outside of that it's all very functional and you shouldn't have any troubles like that.

>I've never seen any of you propose solutions to this

Read a thread about it. You'll see half a dozen in the first 10 posts.

ThisWizards cant be OP when every class is the same.

>but I've never seen any of you propose solutions to this.
This is one of those retarded Veeky Forums myths like "no-one ever gives me an alternative system to DnD when I ask" and "ivory tower game design means adding trap options on purpose to reward system mastery".

But they aren't all the same?

There are solutions, they just aren't particularly good ones. They tend to be GM intensive, requiring a lot of work and disallowing a lot of content, which is far from ideal.

The discussion of casters vs martials is mostly D&D/PF talk. It's a non-issue in many other games. It's just a side effect of D&D and PF having a lot of poor design decisions.

So rather than "solutions" it would be what design mistakes to avoid. The big ones being that giving one type of character way more useful, varied options than another type of character will tend to be imbalanced. Further, letting the privileged character type freely swap those abilities day-to-day further exaggerates this effect.

How about making magic increasingly volatile and risky at higher spell slots unless cast as a ritual or with some sort of prerequisite? That was wizards can still have access to game changing magic but there's enough risk that it might be best to mitigate uses of it.

>I've never seen any of you propose solutions to this.

Use a system where that isn't the case?

Specifically 3rd edition D&D mostly. The other 4 are at least passable balance-wise.

It's called playing a different game that doesn't have this problem, which includes some editions of D&D and some games built on the same system as D&D 3.5E, so this is a situation where D&D 3E/3.5E/PF made questionable design choices and straight-up errors, NOT something inherent to the premise of having casters and non-casters on the same team.
That said, most of us realize this problem and possible solutions have been discussed for around 15 years and it's a lost cause. If you're still playing a game where caster supremacy is built into the core rules, it's because you're okay with it, and there's no point in trying to convince you otherwise.

Play WFRP instead, where the magic system is actually fun, balanced, and not based on resource management.

It's been my experience that in most games with casters there's a noted disparity in power and capability versus other options.

Play Legend or FantasyCraft.

It's one way, but you also end up with your thumb up your ass as a caster if your magic is too dangerous to use.

Exalted: Sorcery is slow and expensive, and there are multiple ways to shut down spellcasting by martials. In general, sorcery is really only useful for a few things like overland travel, binding spirits and making food. Charms and martial arts are way faster, cheaper and mechanically diverse.

Anima: Spellcasting is divided into a bunch of different linear paths, only a couple of which are really good. Spellcasting can be very slow in combat if you want anything than bottom-level spells due to how accumulation works. Additionally, it can take multiple days to charge back up unless you devote most of your trait points to increased recovery speed, and even then it's painfully slow. Meanwhile, the martial arts system is extremely flexible, lets you freely create your own techniques out of a ton of different effects, pools refill within minutes, you can easily make one-shot moves or other broken shit, etc.

Other games like Burning Wheel simply have lower fantasy levels, where spellcasting is inherently more limited and thus doesn't immediately outstrip non-magic users.

We do, all the time. It's called "not playing D&D".

>I've never seen any of you propose solutions to this.
You must not actually read this board because there are tons of such solutions proposed constantly.

I didn't mean strictly more powerful. Rifts spellcastets for instance are kinda shit. Just that there is usually a disparity between characters that focus on magic and those that don't.

Just make the other options equally viable and interesting. Like in Shadowrun mages get some really cool and neat stuff, so do hackers, so do street samurai, so do technomancers, so do adepts.

So everybody has a decent number of interesting options.

Disparity in what regard, if not power? Versatility? Because both examples I listed have magic systems which are not significantly more versatile than the other systems offered. Both of them also specifically include magic as one of many powerset options, not THE only one, which likely contributes (Both have developed martial-arts systems, Anima additionally has stuff for psychics, summoning, invoking, etc. while Exalted has a bajillion knacks for every skill on top of sorcery/necromancy).

Not the best example since Shadow has been going down the path of Magicrun for a good bit now. Magic there is simply better and those that don't have it should just suck it up.

In power. I meant that it doesn't always favor casters.

Legend is fucking nuts. You could trivially turn everybody into a Jedi with a lightsaber at level one. It's amazing.

Has it been finished yet?

Fair enough. Then refer to something like Exalted. In Exalted, everybody uses magic to boost their actions. You use magic to boost your ability to sneak, your ability to jump, your ability to punch, etc.

There is explicit sorcery in the setting but sorcery is much slower than other forms of magic. It's usually more for ritual magic essentially.

It's dead, sadly. Still totally playable, the only thing they didn't finish was a compiled bestiary.

...

I could give you the best solution that also fixes exploration, fighters, and skill - monkey type characters. But you wouldn't accept it.

I am interested.

-Spell learning, no auto gain spell at lvlup, you need to find another Spellbook or a someone to teach you.
-Spellbook, limited space in your spell time, each spell taking up certain amount of pages
-spell components, can be dumbed down into just costing gold or certain gems for each spell.
-Spell interruption, if hit while trying to cast a spell it either fizzle or goes of in a way you did not plan.
-spell casting time bases on the spell lvl, you wanna cast a high lvl spell? Takes longer time to cast and enemies might be able to interrupt you before it goes off.
-Spell resistance, many creatures or monsters have a natural spell resistance, which may negate the spell.
-Saving throws, monster and creatures can have them as well, on a succes either halving or entirely ignoring the effect.
-immunities to certain spheres, elements etc.

Man... You have so many possibilities to nerf a caster and still people are whining.

It's not really the combat spells that are the problem, but the general utility of the other spells overlapping or even overshadowing class niches.

If you haven't seen solutions then you are a newfag.

There are definitely a lot of ways, but I disagree with many of yours.
>Spell learning
Allowing one type of character to gain more options independent of options gained on levelup is inherently imbalanced. One of the issues with the D&D Wizard isn't learning two spells per level, but being able to yoink spell books from enemy Wizards or trade spells with friendly ones in order to know dozens of spells. Solution would be the reverse, have all casters only know the spells they picked to learn.
>Limited page space
Has no effect at early levels, while being a pain at upper ones. Also requires a setting that dissuades simply having multiple books. I guess something where your power is derived directly from the book, and the book levels with you could work?
>Spell components
Isn't this already how it works? Anything not costly is handwaved as long as you have your pouch, anything costly you pay the money for ahead of time.
>Spell Interruption
Isn't this already how it works? Concentration checks are a thing, as are AoOs.
>Spellcasting time
Requires really building the system around it. In general, having to give up multiple turns in combat just isn't fun. Other players are getting to do things while you sit there, twiddling your fingers. You could allow basic spells to be standard casts and restrict big ones to multi-round, but it just means the multi-round will basically never be used unless they're encounter-ending due to being so unfun, and even then a snitch-type mechanic is boring for everyone involved.
>Spell resistance
Doesn't solve the main issue spellcasters pose (enormous number of options compared to other characters, ability to swap those options to fit the day's challenges, etc.)
>Saving throws
Still not addressing the problem. A fifth level wizard can fly, scry, dispel magic, create illusions, create magic circles, conjure monsters, see alignments, and much much more. The issue isn't targeted spells, it's their massive repetoir.

Remove them, make them hard to find, expensive to use

Or maybe you could do things like letting other character types have neat utility abilities that aren't outshined by low-level spells? The ability to fly at twice the speed most people move is a third level spell. Reducing the number of spells an individual caster has access to (though I'd argue being able to acquire massive numbers through loot/dealings with other Wizards is still an issue) is definitely a start, but there's still the manner in which those spells outshine other classes so much. Why stealth when you can invisible? Why linguist when you can Tongues? Why a ton of things when you can summon? Oh yeah, if you restricted wizard to a single spell per level, Summons would be even more popular than they already are, given how insanely versatile they are.

I think the simple solution is to split Wizard into two focuses.

>Red Wizard
>Brown Wizard
Red Wizards focus on destruction and power. The raw energy of magic. They get most of the offensive spells but can choose a handful of utility spells.

Brown Wizards learn the intricacies of magic. How it can subtly be shifted to defy gravity, bend light, shape matter. They learn of course how to use magic in a more brutish form but focus primarily on the utility of magic.

You mean give all the shitty spells to one class, and all the overpowered ones to the other? Sounds like a real good idea, champ!

Let physical fighters in fantasy perform fantastic feats.

Do what they did to the normal schmucks and break the magic guy into ever more narrowly focused classes (Illusionist, pyromancer, etc). That along with a less retarded spell-list should help. Even 3.pf had tier 3 casters that were more focused on a niche and less all-capable, omnidisciplinarian wizard. We got the normie that fights(or likes to think they can), the one that steals, the one what prances in the woods, the one that gets a boner from yelling real loud and yet the magic dude gets to be able to do most every kind of magic. Fucking retarded is what it is.

What wizards could employ the use of staffs and wands to better control higher level magic at the cost of weakening it? Or maybe there could simply be greater resource drain in using magic. Don't get me wrong I genuinely believe that casters should be more effective than martials but only when properly supported by martials. So let casters be powerful just have there be a huge cost involved through resources, risk, strain etc.

One thing I've found that really helps is running the E6 rules. Basically, that means that the players never advance past level 6 and instead gain Feats with their EXP. Simplifies a lot of things.

I think people tend to forget material costs for casting components are one of the major limiting facts of high level spell casters in D&D.
When the spell you're casting requires a 1000gp component that immediately gets destroyed, you tend to be a lot less free with it.

So the problem is self inflicted, people don't want to be bothered with casting components, which is a major part of what limits a mage in D&D.

You make caster magic 100% based on support. The Wizard can heal allies, disable debuffs, ward against magical creatures or energy, suspend or cure poison, and grant buffs to allied rolls or stats. You remove/fuse Wizards and Clerics in this gane.

Wizards can still have cool stuff like fireballs and summons, but they have to be plot related like how you'll give a fighter a powerful magic sword or a thief an invisibility cloak. The reason why people continue to have problems with balancing casters and martials is they continue to give Wizards powers that are way above managable.

You may think losing the flexibility of Wizards is bad, but it has many benefits. Being able to clear an obstacle by snapping your fingers, like casting flight over a gap, is not good design. It directly steps on the thieves role. Getting rid of battlefield spells means that fighters become the best at dealing with enemies. And at no point do Wizards become useless. It massively improves the game, but few would be willing to implement it.

WFRP have the best magic system - if you want to cast a powerful spell, you put yourself at a big risk - just how Fighter risks jumping over a pit and Thief risks trying to sneak past the sleeping dragon. There are no autosucceeds for magic users.
Spellcasters are also specialized with unique flavors of Winds of Magic, no boring "you can cast anything" D&D stuff.

Fighters get stupid powers too, cleaving mountains, cuting with the wind itself and shit.
That or magic is a lot less reliable and more limited like in Dark Heresy

...

I've played in weekly games, each with a wizard, for several years. In that time, with almost all of them getting up to 5 magic dice thanks to familiars, I've seen probably 7 major instances of Tzeentch's Curse. Of those, only a single one went horribly.

The only instance of a catastrophic (well, beyond catastrophic) was when an enemy spellcaster rolled FIVE 6's and then a 100 for the Tzeentch's Curse result. I will admit to no small amount of pleasure to the pants-shitting and scrambling my end-game party engaged in as they scrambled to book it from the bloodthirsty Tzeentch trolled and set on both sides (they were fighting a Nurgle magus and Tzeentch seems to hate Nurgle, so why not?).

Point is, I unironically think that Tzeentch's Curse isn't as big a deal as people say it is.

Also to add onto this, most people will fortune point to reroll it when they do get a major or catastrophic tzeentche's curse - especially if they're a Celestial Wizard and their rerolls are dispensed like candy.

The real risk with TC isn't the big mamma jamma perils, but the increased odds of getting a low or mid tier one as you use stronger spells and more die. Most of these aren't flashy at all, just inconvenient or embarrassing. The former can potentially be deadly. Players are also inclined to waste fortune soaking these up, which makes them less flexible and more vulnerable to really bad luck.

play a wizard

They can avoid wasting fortune points by getting their familiar Voice of Reason.

Getting a familiar is no easy task.

True, but depending on the GM, you'll easily have the means to get one. The adventure paths make it seem like you'll hardly get paid any gold, but every single GM I've ever had that's done their own campaign has ended up giving us lots of gold. Given how the wizard doesn't need plate armor/thief's tools, they can readily put their money towards the 500 GC to buy one if they're binding.

>high level casters taking over games

Doesn't happen in actual games hence there's no solution proposed as its an imaginary problem created as a meme that went viral.

In systems where it is a problem, there isnt really a solution, but when making new systems, tone casters down to be more subtle, slow magics, or martials up to herculean levels

Short on time so I'll just get my two major nitpicks out of the way.

>Spell components
Doesn't meaningfully change anything. Even assuming you ignore that the spell component pouch and that one feat that lets you ignore components exists, spell components are dirt cheap enough that they're never an issue anyways. Forcing them to quest for and track the components doesn't help because the game is designed around the spellcasters being able to cast these spells willy nilly. All this does is slow the game down so everyone can go help Mephis The Brainblaster scrape bat shit off cave walls because they want him casting those spells as much as he wants to be casting them.

>Spell Resistance
Too many spells that ignore it to be a big help. Golems, creatures that have literally infinite SR, are considered some of the easiest things for a Wizard to lock down.

Is there at least a homebrew bestiary or something? Because I can't imagine ever running a system where I have to stat out literally every monster.

>someone is trying to hammer in a nail using a screwdriver
>A: "Wow, how do I make this work?"
>B: "Have tried using a different tool?"
>A: "FUCK OFF YOU HIPSTER KEK STOP TRYING TO SHILL YOUR SHITTY TOOL THIS ONE IS GOOD REEEEEE"

Is that necessarily a bad thing?

There are some--there's a section for it on their forums which are still up. You can get pretty far just by throwing the right single abilities at Mooks and Operatives, which are a thing they released later--see attached PDF.

I wish someone would make a program to better compile track and template stuff. That'd make creating full complex creatures pretty trivial, as well as be useful for character creation.

But you can't use fortune points to reroll tzeentch's curse, as a casting roll is neither a characteristic or skill test.

Also
>using familiars
Familiars were a mistake because they exist only to make wizards stronger with pretty much no downside.

There's also this and another that has two more monsters.

...

Ban the Tier 1 and Tier 2 classes

>Disallow spellcasters
>Lower the level cap, for games where high level play is imbalanced as fuck
>Alter the spell list, alter specific spells to be less broken
>Raise the power of non-spellcasters and go full wuxia
>Play 4E (not my cup of tea)
>Stop playing d&d
There I think I gave every possible reasonable answer

You could always make all spells available to all classes.
Non-casters cannot cast the spells innately, they must use scrolls or magic devices, and must also research the spells they wish to cast from these devices to reduce the risk of failure. They are limited in their spell use by how many they can afford or find.
Casters can automatically learn one or a couple spells on level up at no cost and can cast them from their own resource pool (MP, dailies, etc).
This way thieves can get those same utility spells that would otherwise make their class redundant, freeing up the mage to spend his personal resources on spells to solve abnormal problems rather than general or mundane problems, and the fighters can have options in combat where their weaponry isn't as useful, or to assist the other characters in solving abnormal and mundane problems that their own innate abilities cannot solve.

OP, ignore the answers above - I got you:

ACTUALLY USE THE DEITIES IN YOUR FUCKING SETTING

YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE EXTRA PLANAR CREATURES TOO RIGHT?

EVER HEARD OF A SPELL CALLED GREATER WISH?

STOP BEING A LAZY FUCK AND SUMMON SOME GOD DAMN SOLARS

OR HOW ABOUT A FUCKING RED DRAGON?
OR A GOLD DRAGON?

FUCK.

To answer your memes question, I'm more of a WHIZZ are if you catch my drift.
And by WHIZZ I mean piss

>EVER HEARD OF A SPELL CALLED GREATER WISH?
No, because there's no such thing ya fucknut
There's Lesser Wish and Wish but no Greater Wish