Temporarily handicapping an overpowered character in a Pathfinder/D&D 3.75 setting

the December King

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Hello, all.

So, I have been welcomed to play an old favorite character of mine in a new Pathfinder game. The average level of the other characters is 10 - 12, but the character I'm going to play is of a substantially higher level- well into Epic rules in the old D&D 3.0 setting. Certainly unbalancing, to say the least.

Now, I could simply reduce the character's levels, but aside from the fact that I have already done this in the past in several games, with this character, I was wondering if anyone might have any other more exciting suggestions, or, perhaps, advise me in fleshing out my own skeleton of a solution:

My character is a wizard. The most recent events to transpire with this character in previous games was a confrontation, after a time and space-spanning journey, with the goddess Athena from the Greek Pantheon. In our game, the Goddess of Wisdom, an old aquaintance of my character's, has been driven mad and corrupted somehow, but while my character was in the process of finding out how this could have happened (indeed, before they could even discern what approximate time they had returned to!), Athena appeared in full form, and struck with all Her might, sending the wizard hurtling across an ocean and coming to rest in a crater on a far beach, with Her iconic spear firmly embedded in the wizard's bleeding side.

My character is disoriented, unsure what time they have returned to, and on death's door... and this is where they meet the other characters, and the adventure begins. I was thinking that the spear could be a dampening catalyst to the wizard's powers, at least temporarily (It's also an awesome visual).

But I'm unsure how best to establish exactly what mechanically the spear is doing to impede the character. Any suggestions would be welcome!
 

the December King

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For what it's worth, the game session takes place every second weekend (at least in theory). I have two weeks to come up with a reasonable strategy.
 

Saelune

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I dunno, I think a God's Spear just deleveling you down would be acceptable. A wizard's power is what they know, so you lost alot of what you know and are physically weakened by the spear too.

Plus just lowering your level will probably make it much easier on your DM.

As a DM, any solution outside of that hurts my head =. =;;
 

the December King

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Saelune said:
I dunno, I think a God's Spear just deleveling you down would be acceptable. A wizard's power is what they know, so you lost alot of what you know and are physically weakened by the spear too.

Plus just lowering your level will probably make it much easier on your DM.

As a DM, any solution outside of that hurts my head =. =;;
To be sure, de-leveling the character, and using this as an in-game catalyst, would be the most straightforward solution, and leave it in my hands to do the math- definitely easier on the DM!
 

Necrozius

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Perhaps you could just say that the wizard can only cast spells as a lvl10-12 character. That would be much simpler than going through all of the math of removing levels.
 

the December King

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Necrozius said:
Perhaps you could just say that the wizard can only cast spells as a lvl10-12 character. That would be much simpler than going through all of the math of removing levels.
That is a clean solution... perhaps combined with some sort of status penalty, kinda like being stunned or something, or maybe a cap to regaining HP while the spear is still puncturing them?
 

DarthCoercis

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You could have his spell-book wiped of all spells higher than those a 12th lvl wizard could cast, and that spear thing could cause him to "forget" any feats/powers of higher levels.

Or you could just build a lvl 12 wizard and say that your old character's mind/spirit has taken over its body.
 

DrownedAmmet

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the December King said:
Necrozius said:
Perhaps you could just say that the wizard can only cast spells as a lvl10-12 character. That would be much simpler than going through all of the math of removing levels.
That is a clean solution... perhaps combined with some sort of status penalty, kinda like being stunned or something, or maybe a cap to regaining HP while the spear is still puncturing them?
For balance it's probably better to take off some stats. Depending on how you levelled your wizard, you don't want to be out-strengthing a fighter you are playing with, for example.
Goddess magic is a good way to hand wave it all and roll through as a lower level character. Make sure the DM has a plan for when the party tries to heal that spear-wound, though
 

Asita

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Well you have a few potential interesting (if convoluted) potential hooks in there. Consider for a minute that - if I read you right - the spear belonged to a Goddess of Wisdom. You could give the spear a secondary effect based on that origin. Now, that's probably not going to work as a straight up stat debuff, considering that to my memory Wizards are Int heavy rather than Wis heavy.

But consider for a minute what wisdom actually is in a non-mechanical sense. Wisdom is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight. Imagine if the spear sapped or sealed that away in its targets. As experience and levelling in RPGs represents the accumulation and application of such knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight, the mechanical effect of such a spear would in effect be de-leveling. Simple and to the point. RP-wise, there's a good deal of leeway, ranging from amnesia to sanity slippage that would naturally be ameliorated as the character relevels and pieces their mind back together.

The other major possibility that comes to mind is just to play off of the fact that the last campaign was "a time and space-spanning journey". Only invert the effects this time. Instead of the character being propelled through time and space, have time and space go wonky on the character. Maybe the character's mind from...I don't know, 10 years ago gets thrown forward into the wizard's body, or maybe the mind remains the same and the body changes. Maybe both change. End result is the same as before, a unique (as far as the character is concerned) situation has occurred and their difficulty adapting to it is represented by the hit to their effective level.

Or, you know, you could just borrow a leaf from the Time Lords and have the character regenerate. New appearance, tweaked personality, not necessarily the same abilities, and possibly an immediate goal of returning to the prior form.
 

The Wykydtron

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DrownedAmmet said:
the December King said:
Necrozius said:
Perhaps you could just say that the wizard can only cast spells as a lvl10-12 character. That would be much simpler than going through all of the math of removing levels.
That is a clean solution... perhaps combined with some sort of status penalty, kinda like being stunned or something, or maybe a cap to regaining HP while the spear is still puncturing them?
For balance it's probably better to take off some stats. Depending on how you levelled your wizard, you don't want to be out-strengthing a fighter you are playing with, for example.
I've not played any Pathfinder so I can't speak for that but a level 10-ish Wizard will almost certainly beat a identical level Fighter in 3.x because Third Edition spellcasters (Wizards, Sorcerers, Clerics) are completely broken once you get through their early game. A player who knows how to make a Wizard optimally and use all his spells well is a nightmare to DM for. Unless you're talking about out Strengthing the Wizards as in the STR stat and yeah that's true unless the Wizard is going for a wonky self buff build maybe? Wouldn't be surprised if there's a troll build for that kicking about online.

OT: Honestly, as I said before mid to high level Wizards are crazy strong. Reducing levels is a good start but you'll hit a similar power level since level 10+ is where Wizards start to tip from good to ridiculous. Nerfing spell slots is a good idea, if you want to be drastic you could remove or limit one of the three schools of magic you're allowed? Like X amount of spells are locked for a time in the Evocation school? Maybe too similar to spell slot changes but if you're worried about specific spells that could work.
 

Raddra

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Isn't there a spell that let you create another body? Maybe you could play his.. body duplicate. If you're so set on that one guy.

Really though, maybe you could just play his apprentice?
 

Ugicywapih

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Aside from being effectively delevelled by trauma, as others have mentioned, there's the fact your character has been hurled through space and time - it's very likely the nature and laws of magic in the world your character arrived in are different from the one he originally comes from. This could be represented either by straight delevelling (with a potential return to power for a climatic battle in a world with more familiar magical background, if the DM agrees to roll that way), or a combination of reduced delevelling and negative modifiers to spellcasting (IE you can cast some basic stuff just fine, but level 4+ spells take more than one turn and require a spellcraft check of increasing difficulty based on spell level - this sort of thing would be hell to balance correctly though, especially without proper playtesting. Also, you might have to agree that you can only conjure temporary effects at spell level 6+ to prevent the option of abusing lasting spells, where casting time can be of little consequence and it would make no ingame sense for your character not to abuse spells like True Polymorph).
 

Synigma

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The differences between 3rd edition and pathfinder are not huge taken alone, but over the course of 10+ levels the powergap could end up being pretty huge. So I would recommend making the character from the ground up in the Pathfinder system, at least as far as stats/feats/powers are concerned.

That being said though I think it would be a huge missed opportunity to just play him straight from there. I'm getting a 'Tellah' vibe from Final Fantasy 2/4, the great wizard who has been weakened by time (only in this case it was a god's spear). If I was the DM I would love to let you keep your spellbook with a couple important caveats:
1) You no longer feel magic the way you used to - To cover any differences between the original 3rd edition spells and their pathfinder equivalent and any new powers you might have as a result of the pathfinder version of the class. This could add some RP "I don't remember being able to do that" or "I could have sworn that spell lasted longer before..."
2) Your magic is different - maybe keep the 3rd edition versions of some spells/feats/magic items you had. Here is where if you don't feel your new character is true to the old one you could make some tweeks and pass it off as a character 'out of time and space'
3) You can tap into some of your old power, but at great personal risk - if you don't mind losing them, you could cast the higher level spells from your spellbook like scrolls with equal chances of losing the spell to magic being different and casting as if you were still epic level.

I didn't feel like the differences between the 2 game settings was being addressed at all so I wanted to throw in my 2 cents.
 

Cowabungaa

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Just saying but eh; kinda hard being an effective wizard without a spellbook. Just throwing that out there. Could be a cool arc, building that up again.
 

bastardofmelbourne

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I'd just remake the character. It's not hard. Our gaming group does it all the time, usually when they want to try some new class combination (we do a lot of gestalt Pathfinder).
 

Smithnikov_v1legacy

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The fact that players get classes that even require such de-powering is why i prefer to stay the hell away from anything D&D/D&D related, especially anything going off of 3.5.
 

Saelune

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Smithnikov said:
The fact that players get classes that even require such de-powering is why i prefer to stay the hell away from anything D&D/D&D related, especially anything going off of 3.5.
What do you mean?
 

dohnut king

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At the very least, you will also have to lose any epic levels or abilities. Pathfinder's equivalent, the mythic rules are very different and it would be unfair to run a mythic character with a party of non-mythic characters. I would also argue for a rebuild at a level appropriate to the party. It is cleaner, fairer to the rest of the party, and is a good way to learn the differences between Pathfinder and 3.5
 

Asita

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Smithnikov said:
The fact that players get classes that even require such de-powering is why i prefer to stay the hell away from anything D&D/D&D related, especially anything going off of 3.5.
I think you misunderstand the situation. The op isn't using an overpowered class which needs to be handicapped. It's that the character is overleveled from prior campaigns.