I want to reduce the number of spells per day for wizards, clerics, and druids, reducing them to their 1e levels for my next e6 campaign.

It is a pretty significant drop in power. Right now wizards can cast their best spell about 4 times as soon as they are powerful enough to cast it. At 1e levels, they can do it only once.

Clerics and Druids have so many abilities. In e6, if you put a little work into it, they can usually keep up with Fighters and Rangers in combat without casting any spells. Think of a cleric with an 18 strength, cleave, and power attack. If he hits once he can swing again and his main attack is only going to be two worse than a fighter. There isn't much of a gap.

Wizards on the other hand could probably use something. I was thinking of letting them have the school powers for two different schools of magic for free (even though there are no specialists). At 6th level, they can qualify for special E6 feats that grant the 8th level abilities.

The 3.5 spells per day isn't the problem. It's the ease of crafting and cheapness of magic items that allows caster to have incredibly cheap wands and scrolls.

I'd double the price of items. It makes crafting still useful, but expensive and makes finding items in dungeons much more valuable.

Of course, Pathfinder grants lots of powerful 3+Stat Mod per day abilities (aka, might as well be at-wills) and those are also an issue if you want to calm down casters vs. fighters on the power scale.

Tricky one. At least some of the PF specialist powers almost are like spells, anyway - acid darts and whatever.
 
I'd be tempted to instead add to the wizards' class skills and give them more skill points, instead of adding more supernatural abilities. This might make them more useful as non-combat characters - scholars with a spell or two.

Quote from: Spinachcat;508915The 3.5 spells per day isn't the problem. It's the ease of crafting and cheapness of magic items that allows caster to have incredibly cheap wands and scrolls.

I'd double the price of items. It makes crafting still useful, but expensive and makes finding items in dungeons much more valuable.

Of course, Pathfinder grants lots of powerful 3+Stat Mod per day abilities (aka, might as well be at-wills) and those are also an issue if you want to calm down casters vs. fighters on the power scale.

The wizard abilities aren't that bad in my opinion. The initiative bonus for divination is probably the best, but all the little one round buffs and 1d6 energy projections are just for fun.

I actually don't allow metamagic rods already, so wizard items are second rate.

The reason I want the change is that I usually only have one or two encounters per day. Having a wizard cast haste and then lightning bolt 3 times the one time he has to fight is too much.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;508931Tricky one. At least some of the PF specialist powers almost are like spells, anyway - acid darts and whatever.
 
I'd be tempted to instead add to the wizards' class skills and give them more skill points, instead of adding more supernatural abilities. This might make them more useful as non-combat characters - scholars with a spell or two.

I agree somewhat. I already give all classes two extra skill points just because I think even rogues have too few for what they are.

Really, the acid dart thing isn't that bad. You get 1d6 + half level. It is a lot weaker than say, spamming color spray 4 times.