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There's a lot of vitriol against spellcasters, both here Paizo, ENWorld, and -- especially -- rpg.net. The 'hate' especially rears its ugly head when wizards are compared to fighters. Many folks point to Bo9S as the saving grace for fighters, giving them some semblance to match arcanists' higher level spells.
That got me to wondering. Why couldn't one go the opposite direction and reduce wizards' power? Borrowing a page from E6, cap all spells to 3rd level.
Class level progression continues so a 10th level wizard can throw 10d6 fireballs. However, they'll never be able to access Scry and Teleport and thus avoiding that particular headache.
What do you think? Would such a house-rule equalize the classes? The campaign, of course, would have to be adapted to such a new, less high-magic environment. No more Restoration, for example, so creatures with negative energy abilities would be fearsome.
(Hee hee hee...he didn't say anything about 10th-level spells)
Would such a house-rule equalize the classes?
Sort of. But it would be a false balance.
There would be (almost) no reason to take a caster beyond 10th level. The only reason I am not certain to say absolutely no reason is that there might be some 1st to 3rd level spells that get benefits from a Caster Level higher than 10th. Well, there would be to help with Spell Penetration... But taking levels in Barbarian could help at least as much against those enemies with Spell Resistance.
I've not noticed much viterol against spell casters here. There are those that will passionately defend BoNS on the basis that it makes martial types equal in power to arcane casters but I've not seen much more then that.
Part of the issue is its difficult to decide what kind of balance one is looking for. Can mages beat fighters in a straight up fight? Many would say yes. I'm not sure thats even relevant for the game table.
Also their is a great thread around here were a couple of people tested that theory out to settle an argument. One player took a 20th level fighter and the other player took a 20th level mage. They had lots of ground rules so the mage was not really allowed to prep for the fight still they played six matches and the fighter won all of them. The last three matches even had it so that the mage automatically won initiative (the fighter player had poured tons of resources into going first and had a great initiative bonus).
Now if the mage had had prep time and was able to use spells that cost XP he may well have had better luck in these fights however the mage player in a D&D game faces a situation more akin to the unprepared battle as players usually don't have that good an idea of what they are likely to face.
Now my experience has been that at higher levels the mage really is the lynchpin of the party but my experience has been that the mages job is to solve problems. That can mean being artillery but more often then not its fixing whatever the heck is going wrong. Its a critical role but the martial combatants are usually still the ones laying the smack down and garnering most of the kills - its the mages job to make sure that the martial players can can do their job of making the bad guys suffer from an acute case of being dead. Hence in terms of actual fun at the table I have not really found this to be a problem.
In fact if we were to argue on the basis of pure power I feel the cleric is a more powerful class. As a DM I tend to get more out of my Cleric BBEGs then mage BBEGs, better armour, comparable spells, more hps etc. but I rarely see people arguing that the cleric needs to be nerfed (major exception - mention bolt of glory and every DM freaks out). Powerful or not their less popular among the players. In the main becuase their job is often to make sure that the rest of the players are still standing.
In the end I think the game is fairly well balanced to deal with powerful mages. Between SR and a wide assortment of immunities for higher level monsters and the fact that if its going bad the mage needs to cast spells to save his hide or help out the rest of the party generally results in the mage doing something interesting most rounds but often not to the BBEG or when he does something to the BBEG and the BBEG has a defence up that totally nerfs the ability. Fighters don't have this problem - what they do usually works.
Thus my feeling is that the idea of eliminating spells above 4th solves a problem thats not really a problem. Knocking out the higher level spells mostly just removes the mages ability to be the parties problem solver at higher level and makes him into artillery soon to be far less effective once SR and various energy immunities become a big part of the game. It also means that no one would take a mage - they'll take druids instead. Now there is a class that can muck up a perfectly good game.