Reducing the cap of spells to +4

[Argumantive]

Regarding to issues of balance, I would like to say that nerfing the max enchantment bonus will not balance casters vs non casters.

The main thing that, those buffs make things more convenient rather than broken. Yes, right now a melee caster will be more efficient than a warrior/fb/wm and so on, yet the solution that was suggested, the implementation of better gear will even it out, and unlike some may claim, it will not make casters gimped, simply because the bonuses casters provide can be added to the items equipped, it will only affect exclusivity.

"- INTRODUCTION: THE LOGIC OF BALANCING: Feats, spells, skills and abilities of every kind, as well as classes and races, have in my view two balancing criteria: they MUST be balanced according to the gaming environment (and the BEST PLAY: player errors aren't a balance concern) and they MUST have some forms of counterplay (soft counters are better than hard ones, which just tend to make characters "one trick ponies")."

I would like to adress by the logic above that what makes caster superior to non casters, from my point of view, is the sole existence of "I win" buttons certain spells provide.

I would suggest that rather than gimping casters, make options available to counter the usual "must have" spells most casters would take. First among those would be an access to efficient spell resistance ( 45 +) which will always have a real chance to protect the wearer against cl 30+ spells. (1-20+ 30+6 is 37-56 SR check, so at least 20% chance to resist a spell is not too much to ask)

Items with true sight, permanent death wards/freedom of movement, immunity to spells (a working one I mean, if it is not too hard to implement). While at first the suggestion might sound too OP, I would add that it will -FORCE- casters take sub optimal spells, simply because they do not know what their opponent is protected against, thus increasing variety and making no optimal arsenal of spells for ANY situation, and basically put them on even ground even with a lowely pure barbarian that is properly equipped. in this scenario a lvl 30 barb with proper equipment vs a lvl 30 caster (even a pm) both have a fair chance of killing one another, making proper preparation (learn about the enemy, what he uses most often etc) and ofcourse, RNG, more important than caster vs non caster.

The main principle behind the suggestion is that right now casters have two main things, unmatched control and the ability to instakill, while any non caster, does not have ANY kind of countermeasure (unless is a lvl 30 monk or drow or svirf).

Simply nerfing the least problematic aspect of a caster, will be just a band aid on a stab wound imo.


-EDIT : What I wrote above is pure PvP balancing suggestions, please do not use PvE as a basis for them.

[WhatsInTheBox]

I'm a huge supporter of scaling up the power of magic items but it would equate to almost wiping the value of a veteran player's hoard (having quite a few epic items myself, I'd be perfectly fine with that). It could be a good moment to rewrite some gear rules such as not allowing Skills/Saves bonuses to stack from multiple sources.

Would introducing +5 AC/EB and +4 Attribute items negatively impact caster / non-caster relations? I think not. People seem to undervalue the advantage of a spare item slot. For example, if a wizard buffed a rogue with Cat's Grace, then the rogue could swap his +DEX item with a +2 hide/ms one, or get +2 to all saves, or put on a belt adding 20 more hit points etc. These are great bonuses.

And let's not forget the power hierarchy on the server. Right now, it's:

Casters (melee casters included) >> Non-casters

With small scaling up, it will become:


Casters > Non-casters.

It won't tip over unless you plan on adding +7 items with Death Magic immunity and permanent haste.

Hold the phone! Non casters NEED save gear to stack to even have the slimmest ray of hope to beat a caster. Also casters are NOT supposed to be so much stronger than non casters. They are only stronger than non casters by a lil bit in DnD because it's hard to survive the early levels as a Mage in DnD

[Kanada]

Just gonna leave this here:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... ticWizards