How can I prevent casters from stealing the spotlight from non-casters?

Question

I have been running a game of D&D and the group is split with two non magic users (Fighter, Barbarian), one quarter-caster (Paladin), one half-caster (Bard), and two full casters (Cleric, Wizard). The game was going rather well as I had started them from level one, however the group has reached level five and the wizard and the cleric have started solving everything which has been making everyone grumpy. Wizard summons are better at tanking than the barbarian and Paladin. Cleric is far better at buffing the party and talking compared to the bard.

I don't wish to just go, "You guys walk into a dead magic zone. None of your fancy magic works now." What can I do to distribute the spotlight equally among the party members?

I was asked for examples. For prime example whenever there is a combat encounter the wizard casts alter self to gain a high natural armor combined with mage armor causing the wizard to have an AC equal to the paladin removing the whole squishiness disadvantage. The wizard also has spell focus conjuration and augment summon so his creatures are actually as good as the fighter and paladin during combat situation.

As for the cleric he has the divine metamagic feat focusing on persistent spell so he is able to give out two buffs that last all day long so the bards song bonuses are pretty much negligible.

Answer 1

So, there is definitely a systemic problem here, that is impossible to fix and difficult to work around, as Theik says, and it’s certainly true that E6 will help keep things from getting worse, as kviiri says, because things are very much liable to get worse at 7th and beyond.

But that’s not the whole story.

I think you have systemic problems compounded by player problems. To wit, the stronger classes (read: easier to get working well, requiring less optimization skill) are being played by those optimizing more, rather than those who are optimizing less, which might help to balance out the situation. In particular, Divine Metamagic is probably much-too-high-power for a game in which the barbarian and fighter aren’t optimizing much and falling into many of the myriad traps before those classes.

And on the flip side, the weaker classes (read: harder to get working well, requiring greater optimization skill) are being played by those optimizing less, rather than those who were optimizing more. It’s counter-intuitive, since the weaker classes are also branded the “simpler” ones, but they are actually harder to play. There are just so many traps for a fighter or a barbarian.

Which they must have fallen into, because a simple summon monster with Augment Summoning shouldn’t be enough for a summoned creature to be superior to a barbarian or a fighter. Are there options out there for a wizard to summon things so powerful that nothing a barbarian or fighter can do will help? Yes, there are—but they’re more involved than just the one feat.

For the bard, there is probably plenty of room for improvement just in feats and spells. This Q&A might be of assistance there. The bard isn’t cleric or wizard, but they can still definitely contribute.

The barbarian, fighter, and paladin are going to have a harder time.

So what I would recommend here is to consider suggesting that the barbarian, fighter, and paladin play better (read: easier to get working well) classes. Specifically, Tome of Battle was something of a revolution in D&D 3.5e design, finally working hard to ensure that there were no traps and things worked as well as they sounded on paper, giving martial characters nice things that enabled them to fight as well as mages cast (well, almost), and they’re pretty newbie-friendly.

Specifically, in my games, I have encouraged players’ class choices as follows:

• fighter → warblade,
• paladin → crusader, and
• barbarian → also crusader, but with the Devoted Spirit discipline swapped for the Iron Heart discipline
  • (and, if desired, the White Raven discipline swapped for the Tiger Claw discipline, though White Raven can work quite well for a barbarian and Tiger Claw is mostly only useful if you’re interested in dual-wielding).

These classes match the fluff and narrative role of these classes very well, to the point that they’re often considered just replacements for those classes (and third class in the book, swordsage, is a replacement for the monk or ninja classes). So what I recommend is that your 5th-level paladin, fighter, and barbarian become 5th-level crusader, warblade, and “crusader,” instead. The characters can stay the same, and gain substantially improved combat ability.

Tome of Battle also multiclasses very well—5 levels of barbarian, fighter, or paladin is hard to countenance, but the first 2 levels of each of those classes is quite good. That allows the barbarian to keep his iconic rage, the fighter to keep his armor and shield proficiencies as well as all but one of his bonus feats, and the paladin to keep detect evil, smite evil, and divine grace. Levels of non-Tome of Battle classes count half towards Tome of Battle “initiator level” (similar to caster level), so those levels also help their maneuvers (I have also had success with allowing fighter levels to count full for initiator level; fighter is a weaker class than barbarian or paladin). So these characters, if they did keep 2 levels in their original classes, would start with IL 2nd, get IL 3rd at their 2nd class level, and so on, allowing them to choose higher-level maneuvers sooner.

You can actually go further and take 4 non-initiating levels, so you start at IL 3rd and can select 2nd-level maneuvers and stances with your initial set of maneuvers, but this is minor and the three classes we’re discussing don’t get a whole lot at 3rd and 4th (the paladin’s doing a bit better than the others, and grabbing the aura of courage and turn undead might be worthwhile—and then they could go for the ruby knight vindicator prestige class, adapted as necessary, in the same book).

So I think if your party had a 2nd-level barbarian/3rd-level crusader, a 2nd-level fighter/3rd-level warblade (or just a 5th-level warblade, honestly), and a 2nd-level paladin/3rd-level crusader (or 4th-level paladin/1st-level crusader or 5th-level crusader or whatever), you would likely be in a much better place at 5th level than you are now.

The spellcasters should not have a lot of trouble with this; spellcasters are still more powerful classes. And they’ll still get (a lot) more powerful still at 7th level and beyond—E6 would still be a good idea. If you do that, I would lift the 3× restriction on Martial Study, and definitely suggest to the paladin that taking more than 2 levels of paladin (and thus never hitting IL 5th in 6 levels) would be very costly (and I might allow some feat to “catch up,” à la Practiced Spellcaster, though I would have to think carefully about what would be appropriate there because that might make their aura of courage and turn undead seem rather like freebies).

---

Note, Tome of Battle doesn’t spell it out and I think it should: the way to handle crusader maneuvers is with a little deck of cards. Wizards of the Coast made a free set you can print, if you want, or you can just pull scraps of paper out of a hat or just grab some playing cards and write down that the Ace of Spades is your mountain hammer or whatever. Point is, the crusader has some randomness with their maneuvers, and dice are the wrong tool to use to figure them out. With cards, you just draw cards as you get maneuvers, and then when the deck’s run out, you reshuffle the deck and start over: easy. With dice, you have to worry about odd numbers, and then which number is which maneuver discounting those already granted, and it’s just not worth it—cards are the way to go.

And if you do print out the maneuver cards, those have the extra advantage of having the full rules text of every maneuver right there in front of the players. They’ll know exactly what they can do and how it works, physically on the table in front of them. This is great for players who are daunted by the idea of resource management and special powers. These advantages, in fact, apply to all initiators, not just crusaders—swordsages and warblades never have to shuffle, but they certainly can keep cards in front of them to remind themselves what they have readied, and flip them over as they use them.

Answer 2

In addition to KRyan's answer, our group has found three more ways to reduce this issue:

Encourage teamplay

This is a solution that depends on the personalities of your players, so it may or may not help. But fact is: A buffed fighter will fight better than a buffed cleric. A wizard casting "grease" and "haste" to support his allies will by far outdo one casting magic missile and fireball. It's less personal glory for the casters, but the team as a whole will be stronger.

More encounters between rests

This one depends on your campaign, so YMMV. But we've found that with four encounters a day, a caster will barely have to worry about conserving spells and thus their strongest abilities will come to play all the time. With six or eight encounters? Maybe that group of goblins isn't worth a fireball. Maybe that self-buff will be needed later in the day. Suddenly, the casters have to play a resource-management minigame - and the fighter and bard can shine all the more.

Do try to find a balance there though - a tapped out wizard trying to hit things with a light crossbow for 1d8 damage if he hits with his half-level base attack bonus isn't having fun either.

Present counters... in measured doses

"You walk into an anti-magic field" would be an extreme example, and should be used very sparingly. But you mentioned the classic cleric with divine metamagic - do you know what works very nicely against that? A single wizard of level 5 or higher. Would a wizard living in a world where their enemies can cast powerful buffs ignore "dispel magic"? I know I wouldn't.

A group of level 1 characters will face random monsters - at level 5, they might already be somewhat famous. Their enemies might be plotting against them, preparing specialized counters to their most common tactics (unless they've gone to great lengths to not let their tactics be known). Play those enemies who are supposed to be intelligent (like a wizard with an 18 in the stat, or a cleric with divine guidance and the wisdom to listen to it) with more forethought than random monsters and it will at least mitigate some of the cheesiest things.

Answer 3

Try E6

DnD 3.5e is well-known for having these issues with class balance on higher levels. If you want to stick to the same core system, the easiest option is to never get to those levels at all.

E6 (superbly explained in this answer) is a modified ruleset for DnD 3.5e where the maximum level for player characters is six. After this, they grow in power slowly by gaining new feats, but don't gain the significant increases in raw power levels represent.

It should be noted that E6 also changes the overall feel of the game towards a grittier style of fantasy, which is not necessarily to your taste, but is still likely better than trying to come up with appropriate challenges for gritty muggles and epic wizards separately. I would not balance the game through anti-magic fields or such - having a part of the party be useless is not fun, even if they take turns.

If your group wants to retain the higher levels, you could try to convince them to switch to a later edition of DnD. 5e and especially 4e generally balance casters and non-casters much better at all levels of play.

Answer 4

Not much, really

D&D 3.5 is notorious for its "linear fighter, flying eye-lasering wizard" dilemna. At some level all of the non-magical classes fall off pretty much entirely and a wizard or cleric will do anything they do, better.

You can try to help your players that are feeling underpowered by showering them with magic items, but there's really only so much you can do because you're fighting a system in which pure casters reign supreme.

You could try having them fight magic immune enemies, but even that only goes so far, because there are plenty of spells that will not be bothered by those enemies either. (Summons, grease, etc.)

Answer 5

Don't mix T1 casters and non-casters

It's that simple. Instead of trying to make your Barbarian (or Crusader) try to compete with the Wizard, just... make a party of either a Wizard, a Cleric, a Druid and an Artificer, or of a Paladin, a Fighter, a Rogue and a Barbarian.

It doesn't suit every gaming table out there, but shuts down the power disparity and lets you, the GM, set the appropriate challenges.

For example, many GMs in my area (Moscow, Russia) just ban full casters (both spontaneous and prepared), because allowing them into a game changes it significantly.

Answer 6

I suggest two factors to consider:

1. The scarcest resource in D&D combat is the action. This was particularly driven home to me while playing a cleric. I had lots of options every round, but I had to choose only one of them. There are a couple of ways to address this.

   1. Consider creating encounters with more numerous enemies. Considering that casters often have area-of-effect spells that can affect large numbers of enemies, you may have to increase the number a lot. Also, smart enemies will use tactics that will limit how many of them will be caught in an area-of-effect.

   2. Try creating encounters where there are more things going on. e.g. Besides just enemies that the PCs are trying to defeat, there's a fire that threatening some innocents and an NPC trying to escape with a McGuffin that the PCs need.

2. While 3e did increase the amount of magic casters have available in a “day”, it is still limited. Whereas the fighter’s and barbarian’s attacks (ignoring for a moment their own resource-constrained abilities) are just as effective after any number of encounters. And, in general, if the party still has resources left when they’re resting (the fighter’s and barbarian’s abilities that they didn’t get a chance to use), then there’s room for you to increase the pressure so that they have to deplete more resources before resting.

Answer 7

Some in gamplay suggestions:

Surprise them

Their attackers soon find out that the wizard and the clerics magic is too strong. So they realise they have to ambush them while they rest. Maybe the Bard discover them and gets a head start in the fight. Just enough to alert the others and starting the buffing. This might give the others a chance to shine.

Split them up

Sidetrack the wizard and the cleric. Let them fall into a trap and end up in a cave/dungeon. It sounds to me that you have enough of a balance with them in two teams. Maybe they have to fight their way from two sides to be able to team up again.

Pesky minions

Have them being attacked by the bosses sidekicks. Either it is a semi strong one or multiple annoying small ones. Wait until the duration on the buffs are almost out as well and then set the fight in motion.

Interruptions

Find something to interrupt them while they are trying to recast their spells. Maybe minions that harass them or a sudden trap that they spring.