"Fixing" Spellcasters

[bkdubs123]

I know I'm not alone in the opinion that all of the Core full casters are broken, and that almost all of the 3.5 full casters are broken period. The reasons are threefold: 1) Spellcasters, aside from the Cleric have very little survivability in the first 5 levels of play. 2) Spellcasters get ridiculously powerful as they emerge from the first 10 levels of play. 3) The spells from around 6th level onward get really strong, really fast, and sometimes even before that options for ridiculosity are out of control.

So, I'd really like to fix all three problems, and therefore hopefully balance the game better, but it seems to be an exhaustive effort. Okay, making sure the caster classes are viable in the low levels is probably pretty easy. Keeping the high end of the game in check is also probably not too hard to do. But what about the spells? This is what always turns me off, and forces me to give up. You see... it's to the point that I basically ignore the existence of the full spellcasters in my games, except Beguiler... and that's pretty much the only one I like to use.

So, I put it to the boards. Thoughts?

[SiggyDevil]

For the class(es) see my creation: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=2124.0change appearance to that of a monster or race but its not a disguise to impersonate individuals

[RobbyPants]

I have two posts in my Spells thread on General Spells and Abusive Spells.  I think a lot of the ideas there will be 90% of the spellcaster fix needed.  The ideas I have so far help with:

• Balancing direct damage, crowd control, and save or dies, so they're on a similar level.
• The save or suck spells (crowd control and save or dies) take a full round to cast, which gives others a turn to react to the spell or interupt it.
• Infinate cantrips allow very low level arcane casters something to do each round other than shoot a crossbow.
• Infinate orisons allow for unlimited healing out of combat.
• Specific fixes on specific abusive spells help fix a lot of the casters worst and most dirty tricks.

Now, it's far from complete, but that was the general direction I was hoping to take things.