Attrition and gameplay alternatives

[mekka2000]

Hello, I'm DMing a campaign since 2013 and characters died and were replaced, or were redone because players wanted to try something else.

Now we have a wizard, a medic (path of war), and two characters with spheres of power magic and they are all level 10.

The medic can heal a lot during combat, the two spheres of power characters have unlimited at will "a-lot-of-d6" damage from destruction sphere...

And the wizard... now is bored in combat. He delays his turns almost every time because he can avoid to waste his spells by letting the spheres of power characters playing before him...

Nobody is afraid of dying because of the almost unlimited healing of the medic...

This is no more a game of attrition, sphere PCs have good things to do every round, even with 0 spell points, and health is full every other round...

That's good in a way, because no 15 minute adventuring day, and the rythm of the game is more based on the story than the resource management game but... there is almost no challenge (even fights with CR a lot higher than theirs) and the wizard is still playing the attrition game and he's bored...

I've always seen people saying you could play sphere characters alongside vancian characters and never saw a problem until my player with the wizard PC told me he feel useless in combat and he's saying to himself each round "why waste a spell if they'll kill it without wasting resources if I delay my turn ?"...

Now with the medic it's worst !

Is there a solution that is not : "play with all sphere characters" or "redo all characters in the same system" ?

[MageHunter]

I don't really know much about the system, but it seems the simplest solution might be to pick a character different from a wizard.

[GM Rednal]

In fairness, dealing damage with blasty Spheres characters isn't much different from dealing damage with archery. In the end, it's just damage. The Wizard would likely have the same issue with other damage-dealing teammates.

It may help to throw more enemies at the party. If there are too many for the Spherecasters to pick off with their at-will Destructive Blasts, the Wizard's specialties - debuffing and battlefield control - will become more relevant.

[Cavall]

3rd party allowed in and balance is skewed in the other direction. Pretty much sums up my feelings on 3rd party, though I understand the one you're speaking of is regarded with some admiration mostly.

[GM Rednal]

It's worth noting that the Wizard is likely only just starting to hit his stride with his truly powerful spells. Spheres is stronger than full Vancian in the early game, but distinctly weaker in the end game - it's more of a linear progression overall.

[SteelGuts]

Up the Wizard with handmade feat or magic items, and then increase again the CR’s of encounters? Give him staffs so he can use more spells, or pearls of powers, or scrolls.

One thing I Iike is story feats. Basically you invent a feat, depending on the RP of the situations, what the players do, how the story evolves.... It allows you to increase the players that are behind.

Just give him more ressources or fun things to do. Check the Chronomancer archetype for Wizard, maybe it will have him more possibility to feel useful.

And once you had him a little buffed up, if you want, increase the difficulty of fights. Look at his skill list, and try to use the skills he’s the best at. Try to make some roleplay highlight on him, like a Wizard Guilde, a family member kidnapped, the possibility to have an improved familiar with a roleplay magical contract.

I hope this helps.

[Claxon]

I'm sorry I don't really have useful advice, but these sorts of reasons are why I don't run much 3rd party material.

Pathfinder isn't balanced well to begin with, but everyone has (in theory) the same expectations on how things work. When you introduce new systems that one player isn't familiar with, it can end up with a player feeling useless compared to other party members.

Perhaps the wizard character isn't as well built as they could be. At the very least spell selection may be a factor. With everyone being level 10 I would have expected everyone to hit their stride, and (at least in base Pathfinder) to everyone being able to roughly contribute equally (levels 9- 12 seem the most balanced to me).