Here are a few ways to nerf spells...
Double everyone's saves. Seriously...double them. That won't even come close to solving the problem, but it will make them maybe stand a chance to save once in a while at higher levels.
Return to the...if the spellcaster gets hit before casting the spell...they lose the spell and it never gets cast.
Of course, your spellcasters may feel you sort of over did the nerfing...but hey...it's one way to nerf them and their spells.
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Here are a few ways to nerf spells...
Double everyone's saves. Seriously...double them. That won't even come close to solving the problem, but it will make them maybe stand a chance to save once in a while at higher levels.
Return to the...if the spellcaster gets hit before casting the spell...they lose the spell and it never gets cast.
Of course, your spellcasters may feel you sort of over did the nerfing...but hey...it's one way to nerf them and their spells.
If saves are doubled then nobody should fail unless they roll a 1 or made no attempt to improve the save. . Even my fighters have a better than 50% chance at making a will save. If it is doubled then I need a nat 1 to fail. That is assuming normal WBL, and Pathfinder material. No 3pp.
If a spell only has 25% chance of succeeding then people will not use SoD's or SoS, which also hurts the party as a whole. Not only that but a good player can use spells with no saves allowed and still do well. You are not really stopping the casters. All this does is make things harder for them and remove some options. Battlefield control, and summoned monsters are still a thing. There are also spell such as enervation which dont give you a save.
*Just finished casting buff spells and summons while invisible*
Did someone say something about nerfs?
Mmmmh, if I had to generally nerf spellcasting in pathfinder, making the warrior classes more relevant while maintaining the caster niche of "masters of the impossibile", I think I would increase all spells casting time.
Increase all spells casting time to the successive step:
Swift -> Standard
Standard -> Full round
Full round -> 1 round (including metamagic spontaneous)
1 round -> 1 min.
...
Immediate > Immediate, but no other casting the following round.
Limit spellcasting to a maximum of 1 spell/round, whatever the circumstances (extra actions, contingency, etc.).
If you feel it's still not enough, take away casting on the defensive: casting always provoke.
In this case, at least re-purpose the Combat Casting bonus to all the other concentration rolls.
With these modifications, caster while still uber-powerfull, are much more vulnerable, static, and do require much more protection from their BFS friends.
There are no reasonable spell nerfs ...
A GM can adjust encounters as desired, but should also give the players the chance to use their cool <insert power or spell here>.
GM getting annoyed by color spray? Throw more high will save, sightless, or high SR creatures at the party. Make sure that the caster will pay with hit points when they get close enough to cast it.
Some of those spells needed scaling back, but some nerfs did seem a little excessive. I'm generally fine with combat spells, it's the ones outside of it that can overthrow a game. I prefer to use rare components for powerful spells and don't allow gold equivalents. "You want to cast that? Do you have the heart of a dragon to sacrifice?" It keeps the most powerful and plot rending spells in check. Other times I use rituals, for example: Resurrect. The generals spells such as Polymorph and Summon are more specific to the creature you are turning into or the entity you are summoning. I also use standard barrier mechanics where enough stone, wood, or a thin sheet of lead can block certain spells such as scrying or teleportation.
You've done a bunch of work here, but i have to ask: would this time be better spent locating a game with a magic system you like built in?
You'd have the benefit of professional game designers that way, and quite a lot of playtesting.
I ask becuase i tried to do this myself once, and it's harder than it looks to get right.
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In my experience saves are the king of ACTUAL, PRACTICAL, IN GAME power. "I don't suffer bad effects" Is the king of power when both the GM and players have system mastery. For example I can have a CR 3 meteor swarm haunt because the rules are absurd for haunts. If you do save against it you'll take only 42. If you don't you'll die. Shockingly I don't think many casters will save or survive that. If you assume the players will cheese assume the GM will do it as well but within the restrictions of the CR system.
Just sat down to play pathfinder for the first time in a while and someone mentioned you quoting my old example of how broken the haunt rules were... Lols!
I think if you followed 5E's example you'd have a better game.
First, give casters cantrip spells that scale better at higher levels.
Second, nerf spells per day across the board, but heavily biased against higher level spells.
These two things alone will help alleviate the wizard adventuring clock and reduce the options casters will have at their disposal.
Second, nerf spells per day across the board, but heavily biased against higher level spells.
You might have to do something about scrolls.
Personally, I don't think most individual spells really need all that much nerfing. Though there are a few.
The system has a bit of a bias that many people don't like. (Though I don't think it is as bad as many people seem to. We can and have argued that elsewhere.) Individual spell nerfs will not affect the systemic issues.
Most of the spell problems I have seen are when the GM/players don't really use the limitations the system does employ. Are the bad guys just standing around while you sit outside their door noisily casting 12 buff spells? Are you enforcing the costly material components? Are intelligent opponents taking reasonable precautions and making their own plans? The intelligent PC's often target any enemy casters first. Why do intelligent NPC's not do the same?
* Color Spray - Yes, it is pretty powerful for low levels. But if not every target was in the area of effect and all failed their save, that squishy caster is now very close and should be the priority target for any intelligent opponent. Also if you are casting through a line of your allies, probably at least one of them needs to also make a save. Many groups seem to ignore both of these.
* Grease - Here is another one. The acrobatics check the spell actually requires is actually pretty easy. But many groups continue to use the spell reflex save DC.
* Stoneskin - Again many groups ignore the material component cost then can keep this up on everyone almost all the time.
* Protection from Evil - Many people seem to let this work against more than it really should. So yes, it seems too powerful.
* Fly - I've heard many GM's complain about how easy this is. Then I ask did you make them roll all those fairly difficult fly skill checks for the maneuvers you just described? The answer is almost always no.
There are however a few, that I would seriously consider changing. They are ones that are so good that almost everyone seem to know/prepare and are often more game changing than others of the same level.
Greater invisibility, mudball (maybe), haste, scry, and teleport are the very few that immediately come to mind for me. I would be seriously tempted to raise the level of each of these spells by one or impose some other limitations.
Also Note: I think vanish, invisibility, and greater invisibility are only a problem because they combined listen/spot into perception and combined move silently/hide in shadows into stealth. I would probably prefer to undo that rather than nerf the spells.
You might have to do something about scrolls.
Second, nerf spells per day across the board, but heavily biased against higher level spells.
Well, perhaps that would need some adjustments too, but I'd rather adapt crafting rules to allow any characters with sufficiently high skill in a relevant craft to be able to create magic items generally. Once you become a legendary craftsman, things you create start to come to life... so to speak.
Well, perhaps that would need some adjustments too, but I'd rather adapt crafting rules to allow any characters with sufficiently high skill in a relevant craft to be able to create magic items generally. Once you become a legendary craftsman, things you create start to come to life... so to speak.You might have to do something about scrolls.
Second, nerf spells per day across the board, but heavily biased against higher level spells.
I was thinking more like you'll have to do something to stop wizards from abusing scrolls to get as many spells as they want. Actually they kinda need a nerf to stop wizards from playing sorcerer.
I've found that psionics as a whole is more balanced.
Not necessarily nerfed, but more balanced and rules better.
Just call it rune magic and you are good.
* Grease - Here is another one. The acrobatics check the spell actually requires is actually pretty easy. But many groups continue to use the spell reflex save DC.
Grease: "Any creature in the area when the spell is cast must make a successful Reflex save or fall." (But yeah, the acrobatics checks that you have to make to move through an existing patch of grease are fairly easy.)
Generally, we don't nerf a whole lot of spells. We have a gentlepersons agreement not to try to abuse things, and if they get out of hand we usually solve it through communication. For friends playing this works fine, but I get why it wouldn't work in a more official setting (or with certain people).
We don't nerf spells because they can be used in far-fetched or unintended manners, because we simply agree not to do that if it seems broken. There are a number of spells however that we feel are so inherently broken or vague or world-shaping as to need a definite nerf.
Blood Money can't create anything that costs over 1 gp. It's a first level spell, that's by far enough.
Teleportation, scrying and various means of alignment detection of any kind can be blocked by 1ft stone, 1 inch iron, or a thin layer of lead or silver, or cloth woven with silver thread. Astral travel of any kind can be blocked by a thin layer (or thread) of silver.
Simulacrum takes the base creature and applies a heavily-nerfing template to it, including removing all abilities mimicking a spell (or that are spells) of a level higher than 1/4 the caster level.
Planar Ally/Binding requires the caster to pay the cost of any material component normally used in a spell for the called creature to provide that service, even as a spell-like ability.
Summoned creatures cannot use abilities mimicking a spell with a material component costing more than 20 gp.
Fabricate costs as much in raw material as the finished product is worth; the magical crafting methods are messy and wasteful compared to the handcrafting of a master craftsman.
And a general change for spells that give bonuses to skills: Any spell that gives a bonus to a skill (including fly, invisibility, jump etc) has their bonus capped at +5 or the user's skill ranks in that skill, whichever is higher.
This is to give some benefits to investing in a skill; a clumsy cleric won't be able to fully utilize being invisible the same way a sneaky bard is.
Also, we have two more sweeping changes to spellcasting:
Caster level bonuses and bonuses to spell DCs are typed, either competence (from class features, feats or other passive abilities) or enhancement (from spells, magic items or other external or active abilities). As such, you can't stack an incredible number of different sources of bonus caster level etc; the various ways become different means to the same result, not a stacking mountain of bonuses.
Feats, abilities and gear that affect or grant metamagic outside of the metamagic feats - including spell perfection, rods of metamagic, wayang spellhunter, magical lineage etc etc etc, have the "metameta" tag. In a single round and on a single spell you can only ever apply one of these.
These two last rules changes has led to a lot more varied caster builds since introduction.
P.S., we've also changed level adjustments of a few metamagic feats, most notably persistant (+4) and dazing (+5).
* Grease - Here is another one. The acrobatics check the spell actually requires is actually pretty easy. But many groups continue to use the spell reflex save DC.Grease: "Any creature in the area when the spell is cast must make a successful Reflex save or fall." (But yeah, the acrobatics checks that you have to make to move through an existing patch of grease are fairly easy.)
It should be noted that the acrobatics check, while easy for a rogue or wizard or barbarian, it may not be as easy for that full-plated paladin that opted to dump Dex because of divine grace.
At low levels, many characters are likely to have negative acrobatics modifier, which is why I always max out acrobatics on my chars until I have at least +5 in whatever armor I'm inclined to wear.
This sounds pretty lame, because you are just casting acid splash forever? Also, it doesn't solve the problem because broken spells and combinations still exist.
You still have the standard wizard spell pool scaling from 1 to 9 that you can call on. You get something like four level 1 spells, three level 2, 3, and 4 spells, two level 5, 6, and 7 spells, and one level 8 and 9 spell at 20 (I think). And you have more than just acid spray as cantrips. Cantrips are just your martial equivalent "I hit the monster" attacks. I mean, don't fighters just cast "attack" forever? Not every turn has to be a long drawn out decision of which resource to spend... Also keep in mind this suggestion was never meant to cripple casters or fix the whole game. In fact, 5E casters are still the best (but not by the huge margin that is pathfinder). Implementing a 5E system would be miles simpler and more balanced than going through every pathfinder spell with a fine toothed comb.
* Grease - Here is another one. The acrobatics check the spell actually requires is actually pretty easy. But many groups continue to use the spell reflex save DC.Grease: "Any creature in the area when the spell is cast must make a successful Reflex save or fall." (But yeah, the acrobatics checks that you have to make to move through an existing patch of grease are fairly easy.)It should be noted that the acrobatics check, while easy for a rogue or wizard or barbarian, it may not be as easy for that full-plated paladin that opted to dump Dex because of divine grace.
At low levels, many characters are likely to have negative acrobatics modifier, which is why I always max out acrobatics on my chars until I have at least +5 in whatever armor I'm inclined to wear.
I agree the acrobatics DC=10 may be a bit difficult for the dwarf paladin wearing heavy armor. And it should be difficult for some characters. But it is still probably better than the DC=19 reflex save for most builds. Many groups have them rolling a DC=19 (or whatever) reflex save even if not moving.
They will tell you that the spell is too powerful. I tell them that you aren't using it correctly. They say that doesn't matter. yeah...Don't get me wrong. It is still one of the top level 1 spells. But don't make it more powerful than it already is, then complain that it is too powerful.
Oh, i agree that the ref save is way worse to face. Though grease isnt usually hailed as one of the top combat spells at level one, its more that its a versatile spell that remains combat viable until mid levels, unlike say color spray which is very powerful at level 1 but nearlt useless at level 5 (unless building around it).
Grease is decent debuff, decent buff, and battlefield control all in one, and even at quite high levels a quickened one can stop a land-based charge from a pouncer. And iys a conj spell, one of the most popular spells for SF