Post/Author/DateTime	Post
kerbarian 11-06-06, 03:31 PM	In my campaigns, I've found that at high levels, casters consistently dominate the game. I've thought about the problem some, and I decided I wanted a house rule that would be simple for players to deal with -- no rewrites of the magic system or anything. What I came up with seems like about the simplest thing possible, in concept at least: Don't let casters reach a high caster level so quickly. Force them to multiclass (or take a racial level adjustment). This doesn't change any of the game mechanics about casting, but it means you'll never have a 15th-level wizard in a 15th-level party. Instead, you'd have a 12th-level wizard with a few levels in another class, which would hopefully allow the non-caster classes to keep up. As a nice side effect, this makes the partial-casting-progression prestige classes actually viable. The limit I had in mind was to allow full progression up to 6th level (since casters don't to be weakened at low levels) and 2/3 progression after that. So the limit of max caster level by ECL would be: ECL Max caster level ECL Max caster level ECL Max caster level 1 1 10 8 19 14 2 2 11 9 20 15 3 3 12 10 21 16 4 4 13 10 22 16 5 5 14 11 23 17 6 6 15 12 24 18 7 6 16 12 25 18 8 7 17 13 26 19 9 8 18 14 27 20 All of the detailed, rules-lawyery text for the house rule is available here (http://207.44.214.116/dnd/house_rules.html#limits_on_caster_progre ssion), along with some examples. For those of you who think casters are overpowered: does this seem like it would bring them into line? Is the allowed caster level progression still too fast? Too slow? Just right? I know there are also a number of people who think that high-level casters are balanced just fine as it is. To you, does this seem like a reasonable house rule, since it's not actually changing the caster classes at all? Or is it just another caster nerf?
LukiLoki 11-06-06, 05:16 PM	This is reasonable only in a game where starting mid- to high-level characters is commonplace. IMO, what "balances" high-level casters is how hard it is to actually play a single-classed wiard through the low levels and ultimately become uber-powerful. The same thing tends to happen with PrCs, in my experience. Usually, the better a PrC's benefits are, the more restrictive the requirements are. This creates balance when you have to play the character at low levels, accumulating all those sub-optimal feats and skill ranks that will eventually pay off when you get your PrC and you will then seem uber to the straight-class PCs who started out at the same time. But when you can start a 10th level character, complete with PrC levels, then you never felt the "sting" of being low level and relatively underpowered.
DIESCUMDIE 11-08-06, 03:14 AM	This is a good solution. It has one small flaw. A good optimizer will with this minor level of adjustment still be over dominant. A bad one might fall behind. If you are confident you can tailor it to the party though it should work fine. Although if you adjust it on the fly you will be taking away the players self-determination. So it's important you choose at the start what level of adjustment to use, explain it to the player, and not change it.