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jseah
2010-06-22, 01:31 PM
While lurking and reading the threads about optimization, it struck me that abilities can be classified into 2 types with 4 categories that have a set progression.
So I made a chart with some examples. Modifications, critique, and comments are more than welcome.

Explanation, quite long:
Basically, abilities either help achieve a goal, prevent others from achieving it or make other abilities better.
This analysis was done with two opposing groups of approximately equal power in mind and that the storyline wasn't a railroad. Other assumptions could change the analysis.

Offense is the first type, offensive abilities help the party achieve a goal, bypass obstacles and destroy opposition.
Defense is the second type, defensive abilities help the party prevent damage or recover from it.
Abilities that help other abilities are not covered in the following chart. These enhance other abilities or grant new ones. Eg. Stat buffs, WBL, UMD, Action Economy... etc

The 4 categories are Statistics, Tactical, Information and Strategic. I find that abilities tend to lie at some point along the line from Statistics to Strategic, going from a small scale to a large scale.
Statistics improve the basics of a character. Dmg, to-hit, HP, AC and stats. That sort of stuff. Haste is a good buff that almost purely improves statistics (increased speed is Tactical though)
- "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
Tactical covers short range positioning and achieving some kind of advantage over an enemy group in a local area. Focus fire tactics is a very good example.
- "Enemies crawling around blind, choking and confused are soon dead enemies"
Information covers the knowledge of enemy positions, abilities, defenses and enemy knowledge.
- "What you cannot see, cannot hurt you... or can it?"
Strategic covers things that change the environment and setting. Summoning a storm at sea, raising an army or getting powerful allies.
- "And when you have conquered all of Europe what will you do?"

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh47/jon_seah/Analysis.jpg
Italics are skills
Bold are innate character traits
Underline are feats or class abilities
Unformatted are magic
As you can see, some abilities have a very wide range of applications. These have a box around them and the arrows represent the range those abilities cover. I hope that isn't too confusing. If someone asks for it, I'll make one without the lines.
The abilities' positions are simply by my best guess, that could be wrong of course.

Observations:
This is interesting in showing what situations you might expect a certain ability to be applicable. Probably can be used as some kind of guide to split abilities up into discreet chunks to nerf OP ones.
eg. Summoning (specifically SM line) has an insanely broad range of applications. Perhaps it should be split into summoning lines that summon creatures good at specific areas.

Another observation is that Summoning, Illusion and Shapeshifting, while covering a large area, are really many abilities in one, each of which has a much smaller area.
Some abilities, like Dispel, Invisibility and Fly, have relatively large applications for a simple ability.
It is my hypothesis that the more basic an assumption an ability breaks, the more applications it has. Flight makes combat 3D, Invisibility makes information gathering practically impossible (without appropriate counters), Dispel is a general purpose get-rid-of-magic. I am not sure how those could be nerfed, specific counters are not... satisfactory to my mind.

I also observe, simply by flipping through SRD, that the majority of spells are Tactical and Statistics. Strategic spells and abilities, in particular, are extremely short in supply.