I've seen a lot of people arguing that spellcasters are broken at any level higher than five. I've got one friend who has flat out said the game ends for everyone else when the spellcaster gets fireball at level 6.
I'm pretty confused by this because there are a LOT of ways to keep spellcasters from dominating a game.
1. The Feats list has an entire tree dedicated to Disrupting spellcasting ability. Combining Step Up with Disruptive to Spellbreaker and you've got a melee character who gets an AoO every time the caster ties to cast a spell, can follow if the caster takes a 5' step and basically threatens the bejeezus out of the caster.
2. Most higher level spells have expensive material components. If DM's are being diligent in tracking those costs the spellcaster can run out of money REALLY fast, especially if they're doing item creation. Stoneskin alone requires several hundred gold per casting.
3. Controlling the amount of magical armor items in a game limits spellcaster's AC and keeps them reasonable.
4. Monsters with high SR, natural immunity, Golems, Rings of Spell Turning, Wands of Silence... there are a lot of ways to prevent spellcasters from making effective use of their powers. Give the enemy party a couple of one use magical items that produce short term Anti-Magic fields.
There are so many ways to limit the power of spellcasters to control how they make use of their powers. For instance, use your own judgement on Teleportation's definition of "well known" terrain. For instance if you decide that living in a place for a minimum of 6 months is what it takes to have a place considered "well known" then suddenly just teleporting around the planet is going to be a LOT more hazardous. Same with plane shifting and other forms of magical transportation. Those spells tend to have error radius built in for a reason.
When you look at the stuff a melee character can do with Improved Critical and the Critical Strikes and realize there is no saving throw offered for those effects, you realize that Pathfinder has worked pretty hard to keep things balanced.
Broken is relative to the group. What is broken for on group is not broken for another.
As to your anti-magic field solution, if you have to make up things just to stop class X then that class may be broken for your group. A GM can always use GM-Fiat to stop something. The issue is to stop a tactic without doing so.
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Your friend is laughably wrong, but not about spellcasters being too powerful - he's wrong because fireball is an utterly crap spell.
No amount of your solutions will help a poor Fighter who is confronted by a flying, mirror imaged caster who targets his worst save (Will) and makes him eat grass.
Now of course, such situation happens rarely (that's something that GodWizard crowd never cares to remember), so it doesn't hurt the game as much, but mano-a-mano spellcasters run circles around most martial classes.
Anti Magic Field is a spell in the Core Rulebook, so I'm not making anything up.
Also, said Fighter when confronted by a flying Mirror Imaged Wizard has several options. For instance both Feats and Magic Items can shore up a Fighter's weak Will save. (And considering Fighter's get a feat every level, they have them to spare) also a balanced Fighter can be arguably as good with ranged weapons as he is with melee weapons (especially with Weapons Training) so there is no reason he can't be shooting back at the Mage with his much higher BAB.
Also almost all mental control spells have built in fail saves that give beings a chance to re-roll every time they're made to do something that endangers their lives. "Eat grass" in combat is exactly such a situation. So there are numerous chances for the Fighter to regain control of himself.
Not to mention Pathfinder changed Mirror Image so that all the duplicates remain in your square. So the days of the Wizard casting Mirror Image and spreading out over half the battle field are gone. A lot of people fail to realize that Pathfinder made a lot of small changes to the wording of common spells to make them more reasonable.
Not to mention that a Fighter and a Mage at equal levels still have extremely disparate hit point totals. The average roll for a d10 is 5.5 and the average roll for a d6 is 3.25 Add to that any Fighter who doesn't take Toughness and make Con a solid stat is going about building his character strangely and by 10th level the average Fighter has 55 HP (before Con + Feats) vs the Wizard's 33. 10th Level Fireball does 10d6 which on average does 33 points of damage. So a Fighter can usually shrug it off at least once.
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You don't cast fireball, because it's a horribly crap spell. Especially against single targets. That's not how Wizards win battles against single, tough opponents.
You cast hold person, dominate person, confusion or whatever else have you that targets Will. Wizards have feats too, so they can boost the spell or apply something nasty like Persistent Spell (saved the first time? bad news, you have to save again!).
Anti Magic Field is a spell in the Core Rulebook, so I'm not making anything up.
Also, said Fighter when confronted by a flying Mirror Imaged Wizard has several options. For instance both Feats and Magic Items can shore up a Fighter's weak Will save. (And considering Fighter's get a feat every level, they have them to spare) also a balanced Fighter can be arguably as good with ranged weapons as he is with melee weapons (especially with Weapons Training) so there is no reason he can't be shooting back at the Mage with his much higher BAB.
Also almost all mental control spells have built in fail saves that give beings a chance to re-roll every time they're made to do something that endangers their lives. "Eat grass" in combat is exactly such a situation. So there are numerous chances for the Fighter to regain control of himself.
Not to mention Pathfinder changed Mirror Image so that all the duplicates remain in your square. So the days of the Wizard casting Mirror Image and spreading out over half the battle field are gone. A lot of people fail to realize that Pathfinder made a lot of small changes to the wording of common spells to make them more reasonable.
Not to mention that a Fighter and a Mage at equal levels still have extremely disparate hit point totals. The average roll for a d10 is 5.5 and the average roll for a d6 is 3.25 Add to that any Fighter who doesn't take Toughness and make Con a solid stat is going about building his character strangely and by 10th level the average Fighter has 55 HP (before Con + Feats) vs the Wizard's 33. 10th Level Fireball does 10d6 which on average does 33 points of damage. So a Fighter can usually shrug it off at least once.
I know the spell, but there is no item that duplicates it. In short if it is not in a book, then it is homebrew(made up).
edit:If you are saying a fighter can compete with an optimized caster then you might want to do a few searches. The math has been done. I am not being snarky, but casters are better than everything else. That does not make them broken though. It just means the GM has to pay more attention to the game at higher levels than he does at lower levels. For those that don't want to bother with system mastery high level play might not be their cup of tea.
Well, while I don't exactly see Fireball as a crappy spell, I admit it's pretty much useless in a 'big tuff Guy vs the party' scenario.
By the by... why exactly does anyone think the d6 to have an average of 3.25? Last time I checked, it was at a solid 3.5...
Stuff
I wrote you a lengthy post detailing why each of these things doesn't make as much of a difference as you'd first think, but the forums ate it and I don't have the fortitude to recreate it.
I'll happily go into detail about one or two things that you think are bulletproof on demand, though?
StuffI wrote you a lengthy post detailing why each of these things doesn't make as much of a difference as you'd first think, but the forums ate it and I don't have the fortitude to recreate it.
I'll happily go into detail about one or two things that you think are bulletproof on demand, though?
If you weren't all wizard, you wouldn't have failed that fortitude save.
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StuffI wrote you a lengthy post detailing why each of these things doesn't make as much of a difference as you'd first think, but the forums ate it and I don't have the fortitude to recreate it.
I'll happily go into detail about one or two things that you think are bulletproof on demand, though?
OFFTOPIC
Dire Mongoose (and anybody else), I recommend you to install a broswer plugin called Lazarus. It allows to recover form text (such as forum posts), which is incredibly useful.
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If your friend thinks the game ends when the Wizard gets Fireball, I have good news for you - if he plays the wizard your game is safe. If the best thing the Wizard has is Fireball then he is not only not breaking your game, but will quickly become the weak link in the party and actually perform worse than melee classes.
The Wizard is 'overpowered' because of the encounter ending spells he has, but if he spends his time focusing on dealing damage he will blend into the party along with the rest and not risk unbalancing the game or requiring the GM to come up with ways to mitigate the Wizard's impact.
A Fireball at 10th lvl with 10D6 can max at 60hp assuming no save.
At 6th lvl a Switch Hitting Ranger with a non magical bow can do 4D8+32 with a bow. Max of 64 damage assuming no misses and no crits. Factor in a favoured enemy and that becomes 4D8+48.
Looking at a 10th lvl Rogue (considered one of the weakest combatants) asuming he DWs, he gets to do 4 atks (or is it 5? Can't remember when greater TWF is available) assuming 4 atks, that is 4D6+8 (we gave the Rogue a pathetic 14 Str at lvl 10) +20D6, max of 132 damage compared to a Fireball doing 60. Again assuming no magic weapon bonus.
So, true theydo not hit multiple targets, but damage wise a Ranger 4 lvls lower can do greater damage individually and a Rogue does WAY more. Fireball does nothing more than tickle a few bad guys, or wipe out some trash mobs that were irrelevant anyway.
So, your friend was right for the wrong reasons and if he plays using his reasons he will find that he is fast becoming the irrelevant class
Actually my friend is a freakishly good player at designing hideous spellcasters. He just gets annoying with them when he's a DM.
You have to understand that I myself do not feel that the game is broken. Or at least, that any party is any more broken than any other. There are a lot of ways around spellcasters having encounter ending spells.
That was the entire point of my post. A lot of details can cause severe stumbling blocks in a spellcaster. Simple things like the availability of needed spell components.
I mean, once again, Stoneskin requires 250gp worth of ground granite and diamond dust. Wish requires a single diamond worth 25,000gp AND if it's duplicating a spell effect that has an expensive material component THOSE components are required on top of the diamond. So while in theory a Wizard could blow 5 wishes to raise his ability score by a permanent +5 the text reads that he has to do it in sequence, which requires 5 25,000gp diamonds.
Consider the Pathfinder Cost of Living lists a jewel worth 5,000gp a "Grand Jewel" that would equate a single diamond worth 25,000gp to the Klopman diamond, a truly rare thing to find.
Simply by fiddling with the economics in your game world you can control how often a wizard uses those game ending spells just by tracking how frequently they come across the items required to cast them.
The point I was trying to make is that people complain about spellcasters all the time, without considering the complicates that get overlooked frequently in everyday game play.
I mean, once again, Stoneskin requires 250gp worth of ground granite and diamond dust.
Okay, let's take that one, then.
You can pretty much just ignore all the expensive material component spells if you want to. Pretend they don't exist. That's about what my players do, honestly. Spellcasters are still really good even without those spells.
Yes, you can theoretically choose your spell list based on material components.
I'm not saying spellcasters aren't good. I'm saying they're not the insanely powerful godlike game breakers that so many people claim them to be.
Basically I'm saying: each of your "drawback" angles isn't as bad as you think it is, so yeah they still kind of are potentially insanely powerful godlike game breakers.
Winged boots. Tape a gem of seeing over one eye. Get a scroll of mind blank cast on you and a ring of counterspells with dispel magic in it. Ring of freedom of movement, armor of etherealness. Adamantine weapon. Pow! Now what can the wizard do besides port away like a little b***?
Have an alchemist giant form you for extra giggles.
Though, fighters should get an evasion equivalent for Fortitude saves.
I'll go ahead and throw this out there.
For the most part any normally geared PC class will loose to any other normally geared PC class of similar level who has had time to prepare and has access to all their daily resources. Some classes whose only limited resource is hit points (with exceptions of some magic items and feats) the jump between power of unprepared and prepared isn't as dramatic as the example wizard given above. But in 'normal' adventuring a wizard who puts every buff on himself before every fight is going to be fairly ineffective by the end of the day, while the fighter will be able to give the same performance for as long as he has access to healing.
Winged boots. Tape a gem of seeing over one eye. Get a scroll of mind blank cast on you and a ring of counterspells with dispel magic in it. Ring of freedom of movement, armor of etherealness. Adamantine weapon. Pow! Now what can the wizard do besides port away like a little b***?
Cast Greater Dispel Magic? :P
There's still all kinds of useful Will saves that aren't mind-affecting, too. A Gem of Seeing doesn't do you much good after Glitterdust blinds you, for example.
With all those resources in play I assume you're going against something ridiculous like a 16th level wizard, too?
This adds an interesting use for contact other plane:
"Has Melchizedek prepared greater dispel magic?"
"Has Melchizedek prepared dispel magic?"
"Can Melchizedek cast dispel magic spontaneously?"
"Can Melchizedek cast greater dispel magic spontaneously?"
"Does Melchizedek have an item that can produce dispel magic?"
"Does Melchizedek have an item that can produce greater dispel magic?"
And then the rest of your questions.