This line of thought was mostly sparked by debate on fighters going on in the general discussion forum but seeing as it doesn't exactly relate to fighters I thought it warranted its own section. Actually, the thread deals with wizards, as per the title.
As the situation currently stands, I think that the process in which a wizard memorizes and prepares their spells may be causing a bit of a problem. All it takes is a very short period of time to swap out a spell or two, or even radically alter an entire array of memorized magic. Besides effectively reducing the advantage of being a specialist wizard (and reducing the value of bonus spell slots in general), this lends wizards a large amount of versatility that they really shouldn't have. In fact, FK wizards are sort of like a weird blend of traditional wizards and sorcerers with all the advantages of both, since they can scribe as many spells as they want from scrolls but can also effectively rearrange their spellbooks mid-adventure.
The level of versatility this opens up to wizards also seems to be cutting back on the usefulness of other classes, as is evidenced in the fighter's brainstorming thread. I honestly had no idea that there were wizards going around tanking things better than fighters but if that *is* the case then perhaps the spells responsible for wizards acting in that capacity ought to be made weaker, or the appropriate spell components altered to something more expensive. While the components for stone skin and etc. are already moderately costly, it's fairly evident that they don't come close to reaching the cost of plate, which has me pretty much floored. However, spell component cost has its own thread, so I won't digress into that here.
Besides hopefully sparking some debate and friendly discussion, I had a few ideas of my own about how this situation might be resolved, so I'm going to introduce them here in a handy, numbered format
1) Fun new memorization code
I've no idea what kind of a chore this would be to code, but here it is anyways. The process of selecting spells and arranging your spellbook would stay the same, what would be different here is the function of the memorize command. Instead of having your spells prepared one at a time it would prepare them all at once, but with a much heftier cost in IC time. Something like twelve hours, which would work out to about an hour IRL, unless I'm grossly mistaken. This amount of time seems both feasible from a gameplay perspective, but is still typically too long for people to just sit down and wait for, especially if they're camping out in the middle of a hostile camp of whatever monsters are currently in season.
2) Removing the meditation skill
This idea is a pretty simple one, really, and I'm afraid it probably won't earn me many fans in the wizard community (though I'll go on record that my only PC is a wizard, too, and that might help
). The skill sort of reminds me of the old enhanced damage, insofar as I've never heard of anything like this in any other FR-themed place, though I'm hardly an authority on the subject. That said, it's the principle reason that spellcasters are able to turn over their spells on a dime, as it were, and I'm hoping its removal would encourage people to generally ration their spells more closely.3) Enhanced Spell Failure
I do like the idea of casters being unable to cast spells and attack at the same time, which strikes me as being a bit silly. As an added bonus I'd suggest that being attacked, even if the attack does no damage (ie. absorbed by stoneskin/armour), might nonetheless botch up spells in progress and cause spell failure.
Anyways, that's the lot of it, really. Thanks for your time and patience in reading all the way down here. Naturally I'm out looking for a debate on the subject, so if any of you want to add something, be it negative, positive, or neutral, about these ideas or any of your own, please feel free! (Though I wouldn't suggest posting just to bash your own ideas. It really seems rather silly
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