I have a question. Why is magic being better than mundane so bad?

[Tyndmyr]

Unless he is a monk. Or TWF ranger (or anything else TWF). Or maybe he is using a shield. etc......

TWF can be made to work. I don't generally bother, since it's generally not that great, but it's aright at first. Once they realize they are wasting double the money on weapon enchanting, invested a pile of feats, and are still missing a lot, they can switch things up. Retraining rules are a wonderful thing. Sometimes new players make bad decisions. Feh. These are likely the same types of players that, if they rolled a wizard, would use magic missile and fireball constantly.

And yknow, there's nothing wrong with that. It makes them happy, and when they eventually learn, it's more rewarding than if they just copied a build off the internet to start with.


You keep forgetting that this isn't JUST a Fighter versus Wizard debate. If you are talking about summoners who make fighters irrelevant, you are talking about druids. A Dire Bear has 105 hp base. And it is much, much better at crowd control (grappling) than a poorly built fighter.

Poorly built? Certainly. Note that the dire bear does have terrible AC, though. Like most animals, they're a wall of meat. Still, we should keep it to either class vs class, or magic vs melee. Cause if you swap around to druid, you gain certain things. But, yknow, if you swap out fighter levels for barbarian and warblade, the melee dude also gains certain things.

The hp a melee character has is important...but it's only one component of a decent fighter. Total resilience is a combination of hp, ac, miss chances, etc. Focusing on only one component leaves you vulnerable.


No, but it is ENTIRELY relevant to whether a fighter can be cheaply replaced by the rest of his party. The wizard isn't going to adventure alone.

They can replace him, yes. The question is, is it desirable to not have him there?


Fixed that.

Saying the fighter needs a good weapon is like saying a wizard needs good spells. Yes. Of course. Anyone who rolls up a fighter and doesn't bother to look at the damage possibilities before selecting Light Hammers is going to suck horribly. The wizard who fills his slots with Detect Undead is also g
going to suck horribly.

Both of these are joke characters, not things made by people who want to be competent. They are irrelevant.


1. At level 1, that is pretty much just undead and some vermin.

Swarms are nasty at first level. They are actually one of the better reasons to have an arcanist around. Undead are also some of the more annoying to kill things too. DR can be a big factor at level 1, if it happens to be the wrong type.

Don't optimize to kill the easy things. Optimize to kill the hard things. The easy things will die anyhow.


2. With the wonder that is rocket tag, the wizard can still fight things at first level. A crossbow or quarterstaff is still a valid weapon at that level of play. He is probably only about 15% less likely to hit than the fighter.

With the crossbow(an action sucking mechanism if ever one existed), probably. With the quarterstaff, no. Fighters almost invariably have strength, wizards almost invariably don't. And they'll do poor damage in melee anyway. No, while the crossbow is a (barely) capable backup weapon, the staff is not.


3. The wizard is still traveling with a party. If I solo 2 encounters per day, and plink with my x-bow in the other 2, I can expect the other PCs to do SOMETHING.

It is not reasonable to be able to expect to solo two encounters per day unless at least half your encounters consist of a single target or small group of targets who are not immune to mind control, stand together, fail their saves, and are comfortable with you initiating combat.

IE, your GM is throwing you a fight you're going to win anyway.


4. The problem ISN'T that the fighter is never relevant. It is that the fighter isn't relevant after a certain point. At level 1, the fighter could be replaced with a second wizard. The fighter isn't actually any BETTER. At level 10, the fighter can be replaced by a dozen things that are cheaper, and often better than a PC.

Oh, he's absolutely a lot less important. And he CAN be replaced eventually. But the thing is, just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD. After all, I CAN fill all those slots with detect undead. I just don't know why I ever would.

[Gnaeus]

TWF can be made to work. I don't generally bother, since it's generally not that great, but it's aright at first. Once they realize they are wasting double the money on weapon enchanting, invested a pile of feats, and are still missing a lot, they can switch things up. Retraining rules are a wonderful thing. Sometimes new players make bad decisions. Feh. These are likely the same types of players that, if they rolled a wizard, would use magic missile and fireball constantly.


Retraining rules are great. And every campaign should use them. But most don't. And if you are monk 8, or TWF ranger 8, or a twf fighter with high dex and int but medicore str, even retraining may not be able to save you.




Poorly built? Certainly. Note that the dire bear does have terrible AC, though. Like most animals, they're a wall of meat.

But of course, the thing it is fighting can't hit it, because it is grappled. The enemy next to it is grappled by the AC. If there is a third one, it is grappled by the druid, or another summon. And if the bear dies, the druid says a little prayer for its furry spirit and moves on. No loss.




Still, we should keep it to either class vs class, or magic vs melee. Cause if you swap around to druid, you gain certain things. But, yknow, if you swap out fighter levels for barbarian and warblade, the melee dude also gains certain things..

No. "Why is magic being better than mundane so bad?" You can swap with Monk. Core paladin. TWF Ranger. Knight. The issue isn't that Melee sucks. Warblades are fine. They are the FIX. The problem is in the games where they aren't allowed. Or the player who just reads the PHB and wants to be useful. Druid 20 is an easy, core only build.





stuff about first level fighters & wizards

Ultimately irrelevant to debate. Point is, at first level, a wizard can contribute meaningfully to his group. Even with only 3 spells per day, + some cantrips, lots of knowledges and a crossbow, he is a valuable addition who will be dropping some fights into easy mode. At high level (and where that cut-off is depends on optimization) the fighter cannot say that.



Oh, he's absolutely a lot less important. And he CAN be replaced eventually. But the thing is, just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD. After all, I CAN fill all those slots with detect undead. I just don't know why I ever would.

OOC: No. you shouldn't. I have never advocated telling the fighter's Player to burn his character sheet, put down the Doritos and get out of my house. Ideally, you have rules-savvy, team conscious players who do a conceptual rebuild of the fighter as a warblade or something. Or a caster who goes easy on the I win buttons while slowly retraining the fighter to something better, and while loading him down with magical bling so that it looks like he is pulling his own weight.

But a new druid player with a little bit of number-crunching might be able to hammer together a solid core druid (I think natural spell and augment summoning look good), while not having the vaguest idea of how to make a fighter competent. Some games are competitive, where characters have conflicting goals, and the other players may not want to help the fighter. Some players or DMs resist that kind of help. The problem isn't ACTUALLY that you will make the fighter player leave, it is that he will feel useless and not want to be there.

IC: What you should or shouldn't do is dependent on lots of factors, like personality, maybe alignment, group dynamic, comparative power levels, etc. I have certainly been in groups where the casters would have enslaved the muggles, except for ooc concerns.

[Malevolence]

Well, as I haven't given a shield in the beatsticks armor value, I assume he's using a two handed weapon. So, 2d6 base damage is more reasonable. And at level 6, two attacks for 2d6+10ish is not unreasonable.

After all, the bison has a single attack for 1d8+9. Factoring the lower chance to hit, the bison is far, far lower in damage.

Neither the Fighter nor the bison does enough damage to be significant. While 34 is technically more than 13.5, it is still far lower than the 70 necessary at that level. You either have HP or you don't, so doing HP damage is an all or nothing thing, and numbers below 70 at level 6 are effectively 0.


A 1/day smite for 5 points is fairly worthless. Odds are solid he won't even make the hit, even if the target is evil. This doesn't even start to overcome the damage differential.

The resists are an extremely minor factor. They do not include fire, the most likely damage type, and are too small to make a big difference regardless. The DR is somewhat more useful, but since it's negated by magic, it's only really of use against things that are unlikely to kill either the bison OR the fighter.

I never said that the resists and smite were not minor. I mentioned those for the sake of completeness. As for the DR, at this level surprisingly few enemies can break it.

I went to count up how many CR 5-7 enemies could break it but got bored after counting up a few dozen, out of which only 1 or perhaps 2 could possibly do so.


Well, sadly, the malconvoker loses it's first caster level. Being a summoner is a rough life.

It also requires CASTING the spell. Action economy is godly. By default, it takes a full round action to summon monsters. Standard, if we assume he'll ACF away the familiar for that, instead of the more popular(and IMHO, better) abrupt jaunt.

I'll take a Malconvoker casting summons over a Fighter. The Malconvoker can also do other things. There are no actions being lost by doing this. Malconvokers aren't that good, but they're still a better use of a slot than any Fighter.


Sure, a fighter can survive five rounds of combat. He might not get hit every single round, yknow. Consider a routine CR 6 opponent: The gargantuan monstrous centipede.

Nope, he's dead in 2 rounds if lucky, 1 if not.


He has a +11 attack, so he hits Fighty McNotOptimized slightly better than half of the time. 2d8+9 & poison if he hits. Oh, sure, the reach hurts, but the fighter'll probably make the fort save on the poison, and even if he doesn't, it would take two solid rolls of poison to down him. The damage is. about even. Cent AC is one lower, which is compensated for by the centipede having a few more hp. Attack bonuses are similar. I'd give an unoptimized fighter even odds vs the centipede, and with average damage, it's going to take about 3 hits or so for either of them to finish off the other one.

Let's see...

The bug hits 65% of the time, takes off over a third every hit, and also has its Dex poison. It also gets a free hit on the way in. The Fighter meanwhile has lower accuracy, lower damage, has to plow through more HP, and does not have any poison. So even if it doesn't just grab him and end it right there, he's dust.


Yeah, he gets eaten. Sure, he has DR, but it doesn't matter. A 13 AC vs a +11 attack = you get hit a lot, and the bison can't put out enough damage to matter.

The bison gets hit over and over for 13 damage each time. Which is about the same weighted average the Fighter is taking. And with Augment Summoning, it has about the same HP too, which means it holds up just as long as the Fighter, but is disposable, so you don't get upset when it invariably gets eaten.


You mean, like Summon Monster 6, when I can summon a celestial polar bear? Granted, durations are long enough that them lasting the combat isn't an issue, but 68 hp at level 14 is pretty terrible. It's not like even aug summoning is going to make that beastie relevant.

At level 14, the Fighter has long since been shelved.


And oddly enough, Handle Animal is not a wizard ability. So, it's not really relevant to if a wizard can displace a fighter.

And no, the entire party pooling their gold is not cheaper than giving a cut of it to a fighter. It'll be fantastic when you get it, sure...but the not scaling is kinda rough.

The DC to command a Magebred animal is... 8. +7 modifier = auto success. Since MW tools are cheap, that just leaves 5 points to come up with. If you'd prefer, a different character can command the Magebred animal. The Sorcerer could probably do it through raw Charisma, for instance. It doesn't much matter who does so, just as long as you are kicking the Fighter to the curb where he belongs, and replacing him with the cheaper and better attack animal.

The Fighter costs 1,000 at level 2. And will continue to cost exponentially more over time. Yes, it is cheaper. Far cheaper. 800 is less than 1,000, is substantially less than around 14,500 (what the Fighter costs at level 6), and is chump change compared to the 60k the Fighter costs by around level 10.


Most CR 1 opponents have <10 hp. The fighter is pretty much guaranteed to crush almost anything in one hit.

No, the average HP at that level is 13. That means there are things with more than 13 HP, and things with less. If you can only kill the weakest ones, well that's not a valid argument.


Things that hit them tend to be in the 1d4-1d8+1 range. Not a great pile of damage. The extra hp a fighter has is generally about an extra hit. More importantly, if the wizard is putting four level 1 slots into color spray, he has significantly lower AC than the fighter. Also, he's either a specialized illusionist with a 20 int or a focus specialized illusionist. That's some degree of optimization there. More importantly, it's optimization that's not terribly synergistic with the summoner you portrayed.

Orcs.

As for Color Spray, it's something that is a good idea to do anyways. You certainly are not going to be casting Sleep (1 round action, so everyone attacks you and interrupts it), and you most definitely will not waste actions and resources on terrible spells like Magic Missile.

And as all characters at level 1 randomly drop dead in 1-2 hits regardless of stats, build, or choices it does not matter.

Save or lose spammers are very synergistic with summoners. They work well with anything after all. The question is does those things work well with them? For a summoner, yes they do.


A wizard that's putting this much effort into replacing the fighter is being a really bad wizard.

PS: The wizard is useless against anything immune to mind affecting with your loadout. This is a significant flaw.

The Wizard is utilizing standard tactics. That's called being a good Wizard. And if any skeletons or zombies come up, he'll have to let the Cleric and Druid smash them. What a shame. But then I never claimed the Wizard could do everything, only that a summoner was a much better use of a slot than a Fighter. So I am not even sure why you brought this up.


Well, he'll be swinging twice. For a few points more damage. His hitting also gets a lot more reliable for his primary attack.

If the wizard wants to play fighter support, he'll do that great with such a loadout. If the wizard wants to use such a loadout and also tank with summon monsters, and specialized in illusions, he'll have blown his load after about...one fight.

No, he will cast one Color Spray, and the enemies will be KOed. And then he will repeat this three more times.

[Gnaeus]

As for Color Spray, it's something that is a good idea to do anyways. You certainly are not going to be casting Sleep (1 round action, so everyone attacks you and interrupts it), and you most definitely will not waste actions and resources on terrible spells like Magic Missile.


Sleep has its uses. If you are enclosed spaces, like a dungeon, and the other PCs are blocking for you it is a good way to target select enemies without hitting your teammates. Out in the open, blockers aren't so effective, but it has a really long range (for a level 1 character), so if you start out of charge range you can begin casting sleep while the melee types advance.

[martyrX]

It isn't a problem for me, or anyone I play with. This thread has turned into fighter vs wizard, but the question was magic vs. mundane.

Is it really so surprising that magic trumps mundane? A man with a vorpal sword is much more effective than a man with a regular sword - is that unbalanced? What can you really expect from a person who watches his friend teleport - how can he possibly match that with mundane abilities?

LOTR was an example - that Frodo was carrying a most powerful magical item, even more powerful than Gandalf, seemed to be missed.

As for inexperienced players, it wouldn't take much for the DM to say, "well, if you become a melee type, one day you can take on an entire army singlehanded. if you become a magic user, one day you can cast wish/miracle, and wish for most anything." I think they'll get it.

Regarding the wizard vs. fighter thread in a thread, IMO it is a DM problem. DMs need to challenge each of their players. This is easily possible at any level. Maybe I have been lucky, but every DM I play with does this well, and no melee type has complained. In fact, it's always been the opposite "thank goodness we had Lorthai to teleport us out of there," not "WHAAT? he gets to teleport and I don't? Unfair!" In a (nearly epic) campaign I play in, each character has had ample opportunity to save the others' butts, and each character has something helpful to do during most encounters.

[Gnaeus]

As for inexperienced players, it wouldn't take much for the DM to say, "well, if you become a melee type, one day you can take on an entire army singlehanded. if you become a magic user, one day you can cast wish/miracle, and wish for most anything." I think they'll get it.

The problem comes when you can't take on an army singlehanded. Or even fight a single creature of the difficulties that the game suggests.


Regarding the wizard vs. fighter thread in a thread, IMO it is a DM problem. DMs need to challenge each of their players. This is easily possible at any level. Maybe I have been lucky, but every DM I play with does this well, and no melee type has complained.

Good. A good, rules conscious DM can fix the problem. He can do it with rule 0. He can use houserules to nerf or aid strong/weak classes. He can go out of his way to make sure that everyone gets their time in the sun. Please believe me when I say that not all DMs do this. It can be fixed by players. It can be fixed by DMs. But the fact that it is fixable, doesn't mean that it isn't a problem.

[Malevolence]

Sleep has its uses. If you are enclosed spaces, like a dungeon, and the other PCs are blocking for you it is a good way to target select enemies without hitting your teammates. Out in the open, blockers aren't so effective, but it has a really long range (for a level 1 character), so if you start out of charge range you can begin casting sleep while the melee types advance.

If you are in a Dungeon, enemies are close to you. Which means you can use a 15 foot cone. And since it is a 15 foot cone, it's easy to make it not hit allies. It is also easy for them to attack you, such as to disrupt a long spell. Even if enemies cannot simply walk around, they can use ranged attacks.

Sleep = Good way to get yourself targeted.
Color Spray = Good way to take out targets.

[Gnaeus]

If you are in a Dungeon, enemies are close to you. Which means you can use a 15 foot cone. And since it is a 15 foot cone, it's easy to make it not hit allies. It is also easy for them to attack you, such as to disrupt a long spell. Even if enemies cannot simply walk around, they can use ranged attacks.


If you can cone in such a way that you don't hit allies, enemies that save can step up and hit you. Sleep does not have that problem. Some things don't have ranged attacks. Sleep isn't a better spell than Color Spray. Color Spray isn't a better spell than sleep. They are different spells with different situational advantages and disadvantages.



Sleep = Good way to get yourself targeted.
Color Spray = Good way to take out targets.

Sleep= good way to drop melees from where they can't hit you.
Color Spray = good way to move up to where melees can kill you if they save.

[Tyndmyr]

Neither the Fighter nor the bison does enough damage to be significant. While 34 is technically more than 13.5, it is still far lower than the 70 necessary at that level. You either have HP or you don't, so doing HP damage is an all or nothing thing, and numbers below 70 at level 6 are effectively 0.

What characters are normally doing 70 damage a round at level 6? Certainly nothing with the level of optimization of Fighter 6 OR malconvoker.

So, yes, 34/rnd is significantly better than 13.5


I'll take a Malconvoker casting summons over a Fighter. The Malconvoker can also do other things. There are no actions being lost by doing this. Malconvokers aren't that good, but they're still a better use of a slot than any Fighter.

Oh, sure, wizards are flexible. Nobody's arguing that.

Actions ARE lost, because the malconvoker needs to summon. If you've replaced the tank with a summoned creature, that is a minimum of one spell slot and caster round per fight that needs to be spent getting the summon in place.

So, sure, the wizard CAN play batman, or blast through things, or replicate a rogue, or summon fighter-substitutes, he cannot do all these things. Certainly not well.


Nope, he's dead in 2 rounds if lucky, 1 if not.

How could he possibly die in one round? Even if he takes a hit to the face, fails the save(fort!), and takes the poison, maximum damage is 8. IE, less than the fighters 12. Surviving this is not lucky, it is expected.

Using the fighter stats earlier, the probability of taking the hit is 65%(AC 19, nothing special).
The probability of a fighter 6 with con 14 failing the fort save is 50%. Multiclassing would have boosted this significantly. Sucks to be unoptimized.
He takes an average of 4.5 dex damage if hit.
So, on average, the scorpion does a shade over 1 dex damage per turn. This is not enough to be relevant unless the fighter is the most unlucky person in the world.


Let's see...

The bug hits 65% of the time, takes off over a third every hit, and also has its Dex poison. It also gets a free hit on the way in. The Fighter meanwhile has lower accuracy, lower damage, has to plow through more HP, and does not have any poison. So even if it doesn't just grab him and end it right there, he's dust.

Why would the fighter have lower accuracy? We've been assuming 12 dex and 14 con for the fighter...his points have to go somewhere. Strength is painfully obvious. And 2d6+10 is only 1 lower than the scorpions 2d8+9.

The dex poison is almost irrelevant in this matchup. It *might* equalize the superior fighter AC.

Sure, it's not a wise match for the fighter to take on solo...but if he's taking the hits, the scorpion is certainly going to die horribly before the fighter is in any real danger.


The bison gets hit over and over for 13 damage each time. Which is about the same weighted average the Fighter is taking. And with Augment Summoning, it has about the same HP too, which means it holds up just as long as the Fighter, but is disposable, so you don't get upset when it invariably gets eaten.

Well, the bison can only be missed on a natural 1. That's a problem. It means that he takes a lot more poison hits. He has the same fort save as the fighter...but less dex. So, more saves, less to burn through. The poison is actually a problem for him.

The bison contributes a *lot* less damage to the fight.

The fighter takes an average of 11.7 hp/rnd
The bison takes(with dr) an average of 12.35 hp/rnd.
The fighter has more hp.

The bison is in all ways inferior to the fighter in this matchup.

Again, if you're comparing a specialized summoner with feats to a fighter without them, you're not comparing apples to apples.


At level 14, the Fighter has long since been shelved.

See, now you're just repeating the point, not proving anything. If summons continue to get better than fighters, feel free to match them up.


The DC to command a Magebred animal is... 8. +7 modifier = auto success. Since MW tools are cheap, that just leaves 5 points to come up with. If you'd prefer, a different character can command the Magebred animal. The Sorcerer could probably do it through raw Charisma, for instance. It doesn't much matter who does so, just as long as you are kicking the Fighter to the curb where he belongs, and replacing him with the cheaper and better attack animal.

Well, yeah, if we're gonna play with cross class skills, then Giamoco's monk is also an example of monks being balanced because they have UMD, and can thus play wizard.


The Fighter costs 1,000 at level 2. And will continue to cost exponentially more over time. Yes, it is cheaper. Far cheaper. 800 is less than 1,000, is substantially less than around 14,500 (what the Fighter costs at level 6), and is chump change compared to the 60k the Fighter costs by around level 10.

Without scaling, it won't be replacing the fighter forever.


No, the average HP at that level is 13. That means there are things with more than 13 HP, and things with less. If you can only kill the weakest ones, well that's not a valid argument.

CR 1 opponents with <13 hp:23
CR 1 opponents with 13 hp:10
CR 1 opponents with >13 hp:9

You are wrong.

Also, that last category is comprised of: Camel, Horse, Hvy, Horse, Lgt, Manta Ray, Mule, Pseudodragon, Shark, Warhorse, Lgt, Zombie Trog.

Unless you consider typical opponents to be the contents of a stable, most of those are not even that relevant.


Orcs.

Orcs are the most lethal thing at their CR. They are not representative of average.

That said, a fighter has a significantly better ability to survive them at level one than a wizard does. The endless dungeon provided me with lots of data on this in actual play, and d4 types have a remarkably high mortality rate against orcs.

In fact, if memory serves, ALL the survivors of the level 1-3 dungeon were melee. Oh yeah, melee are definitely stronger at level 1.


As for Color Spray, it's something that is a good idea to do anyways. You certainly are not going to be casting Sleep (1 round action, so everyone attacks you and interrupts it), and you most definitely will not waste actions and resources on terrible spells like Magic Missile.

It's not a bad spell. I would recommend taking one of em in your first level loadout. It's not something I would reccomend taking four times, though.

I would also not recommend specializing in enchantment if your goal is malconvoker. That is...horrible.


And as all characters at level 1 randomly drop dead in 1-2 hits regardless of stats, build, or choices it does not matter.

Negative. The lethality of the levels make optimization more important, not less. Again, look at the history of the endless dungeon and the neverending dungeon. Certain builds are dramatically more successful. Crusader is fantastic, for instance.


The Wizard is utilizing standard tactics. That's called being a good Wizard. And if any skeletons or zombies come up, he'll have to let the Cleric and Druid smash them. What a shame. But then I never claimed the Wizard could do everything, only that a summoner was a much better use of a slot than a Fighter. So I am not even sure why you brought this up.

You missed swarms. Swarms suck terribly at level 1, and they're basically the biggest reason to have an arcanist with you, because if they packed anything blasty, they can destroy them.

It is futile to specialize in doing the fighters job so much that you cannot do your own.


No, he will cast one Color Spray, and the enemies will be KOed. And then he will repeat this three more times.

If the enemies are all in a convenient tiny area, they let you walk up with your painfully short range, and all fail their saves, then yes.

[Malevolence]

If you can cone in such a way that you don't hit allies, enemies that save can step up and hit you. Sleep does not have that problem. Some things don't have ranged attacks. Sleep isn't a better spell than Color Spray. Color Spray isn't a better spell than sleep. They are different spells with different situational advantages and disadvantages.

And if you don't, enemies that save can still step up and hit you. You haven't changed a thing. The difference is in one scenario you take out 75% of the stuff in the area, and in the other you also take out 75% of the stuff in the area, except that the area includes your allies.


What characters are normally doing 70 damage a round at level 6? Certainly nothing with the level of optimization of Fighter 6 OR malconvoker.

So, yes, 34/rnd is significantly better than 13.5

Answer: Anyone whose thing is doing HP damage, and is doing enough of it to be significant. Those doing less than this are not significant. It doesn't matter if it's half as much, or 20% as much. Either way, it's not HP damage winning fights. It's the effective spells. So either way, you have a non viable damage dealer whose only possible contribution is dealing damage. The difference is that the Fighter is a whole party slot, and the Bison is a mere tool of a party slot, who can also do plenty of other things.

As such, neither of them are a blip on the radar due to HP damage. All that matters is their ability to be a disposable decoy by taking hits. And since the Bison does that about as well, and is disposable...


Oh, sure, wizards are flexible. Nobody's arguing that.

Actions ARE lost, because the malconvoker needs to summon. If you've replaced the tank with a summoned creature, that is a minimum of one spell slot and caster round per fight that needs to be spent getting the summon in place.

And if you had a Fighter instead of the Malconvoker, you'd never get that action in the first place. You do not lose resources, you gain them.


So, sure, the wizard CAN play batman, or blast through things, or replicate a rogue, or summon fighter-substitutes, he cannot do all these things. Certainly not well.

If he is doing a poor job at those things, it is a poor reflection on his player, not his class.


Why would the fighter have lower accuracy? We've been assuming 12 dex and 14 con for the fighter...his points have to go somewhere. Strength is painfully obvious. And 2d6+10 is only 1 lower than the scorpions 2d8+9.

The dex poison is almost irrelevant in this matchup. It *might* equalize the superior fighter AC.

Meanwhile, the bug has a third more HP. It wins the auto attack contest.


Well, the bison can only be missed on a natural 1. That's a problem. It means that he takes a lot more poison hits. He has the same fort save as the fighter...but less dex. So, more saves, less to burn through. The poison is actually a problem for him.

The bison contributes a *lot* less damage to the fight.

Both of them are liable to die. The bison is meant to be disposable, and if nothing else can feed the hungry bug while the rest of the party walks by. A PC, not so much.

Now I'm not saying Malconvokers are good here, they aren't. I am saying Fighters are worse. I am saying that if you're going to drag something around that does nothing but attack for HP damage, and maybe trips there are any number of cheaper, not a PC things that do it better, which means players can play things that cannot be played just as well by graphing calculators.


Well, yeah, if we're gonna play with cross class skills, then Giamoco's monk is also an example of monks being balanced because they have UMD, and can thus play wizard.

Now you are simply being absurd. There is no comparison between a random, non Fighter party member, one who could very well have Handle Animal as a class skill I might add who gets MW tools and a +5 modifier from other sources and... one of the biggest jokes on the entire Internet. Who cannot actually do the things he claims he can, both in that his success rate is actually low instead of high as he claims and in that it takes more than waving a random low level wand around to be a Wizard, whereas it does not take more than a low level Handle Animal skill to replace the Fighter and then some. If you'd prefer, you can fill the slot with a Commoner. He has Handle Animal, so he can bring the better beatstick to the table, he has Spot, so he can actually kind of stand guard, and he has an infinite supply of chickens, and by extension eggs because... well I don't know what lead to the writing of Infested with Chickens, but that's still far more of a contribution than any Fighter... from a Commoner. That's right, Fred the Farmer is more deserving of a cut of the loot, because he offers more to an adventuring party.


Without scaling, it won't be replacing the fighter forever.

A non scaling Fleshraker will hold out until level 8-10, which is at least 4 levels longer than the Fighter lasts. This can be extended a bit by casting Awaken (more HD), or by one person spending one feat to get Wild Cohort. It will eventually fall behind regardless of stats, because beatsticks just stop being relevant no matter what at high levels. But that 800 gold attack animal still fares much better than a Fighter would, and for cheaper. Other animals are purchasable too. And since the cost is only 100 gold + 75 gold per HD, and doubled for Magebred this means doing the same thing with a T-Rex is 2,900 gold.

Alternate options include, but are not limited to 10 headed zombie hydras, who can still full attack by the way from level 5 on coming from a necromancer type character and other undead, enchantment magic + the contents of the last fight... If you care about attacking for HP damage, there are so many better ways of doing it.


Orcs are the most lethal thing at their CR. They are not representative of average.

That said, a fighter has a significantly better ability to survive them at level one than a wizard does. The endless dungeon provided me with lots of data on this in actual play, and d4 types have a remarkably high mortality rate against orcs.

In fact, if memory serves, ALL the survivors of the level 1-3 dungeon were melee. Oh yeah, melee are definitely stronger at level 1.

Orcs are a generic melee foe. All they do is attack with a two handed weapon. Which is exactly the same thing as every beatstick worth thinking about. Difference is, they probably have lower Strength despite their +4 racial bonus. So no, they are a good example, because other things will be attacking you in other ways.

At level 1, everything is so random that you die in 1-2 hits regardless of who and what you are. The Barbarian, raging with 16 HP? He gets two shotted too. There is no more or less survivable, there is only pure luck in surviving. Level 1, and 2 for that matter do not work. They are not valid arguments at any point in time.


It's not a bad spell. I would recommend taking one of em in your first level loadout. It's not something I would reccomend taking four times, though.

I would also not recommend specializing in enchantment if your goal is malconvoker. That is...horrible.

Why wouldn't you? Aside from the odd low level undead and such, it works on everything, and is certainly far better than the other attack spells. You don't have the slots for non attack spells.

The comparison is between a party with a Wizard, a Fighter, and two others, and a Wizard, a Malconvoker, and two others. So if the Wizard is Enchantment specced, and I'm not sure how that came up that does not affect the Malconvoker.


Negative. The lethality of the levels make optimization more important, not less. Again, look at the history of the endless dungeon and the neverending dungeon. Certain builds are dramatically more successful. Crusader is fantastic, for instance.

For optimization to be important, choices must matter. When you die randomly no matter what you choose, choices do not matter. As such, your actions don't really make a difference.


You missed swarms. Swarms suck terribly at level 1, and they're basically the biggest reason to have an arcanist with you, because if they packed anything blasty, they can destroy them.

It is futile to specialize in doing the fighters job so much that you cannot do your own.

And just what is the spell you are supposed to be preparing, if not the good Color Spray? Burning Hands? Even if you're going into Rat Swarm Land, you still are not going to prepare Burning Hands, because it is that terrible of a spell.

If the party needs an arcane caster with them primarily to deal with swarms, then said arcane caster's response is to ditch the incompetent party, and find one that has a better understanding of how things work. Swarms are beaten by everyone using torches and oil, if they are immune to weapons and simply beaten down just like anything else if they are not.

I would also like to direct you to read Runestar's signature, as the Fighter is the victim of that exact thing described there, and the Wizard, or any decent class really is the one able to initiate it with little to no effort.

[Tyndmyr]

And if you don't, enemies that save can still step up and hit you. You haven't changed a thing. The difference is in one scenario you take out 75% of the stuff in the area, and in the other you also take out 75% of the stuff in the area, except that the area includes your allies.

The status effects imposed by color spray are flat out superior to those imposed by sleep. Most importantly, if you miss someone with sleep, they can then spend their round to wake up the next guy in init order after them, and so on. Also, sleep is a full round action, which is kind of a downer.

The big compensating factor is the range.

Neither sleep or color spray should take up four slots, because doing so reduces you to a one trick pony. It also means you specialized in enchantment. Either of these things is fail.


Answer: Anyone whose thing is doing HP damage, and is doing enough of it to be significant. Those doing less than this are not significant. It doesn't matter if it's half as much, or 20% as much. Either way, it's not HP damage winning fights. It's the effective spells. So either way, you have a non viable damage dealer whose only possible contribution is dealing damage. The difference is that the Fighter is a whole party slot, and the Bison is a mere tool of a party slot, who can also do plenty of other things.

HP damage is less bad than people make out. I'd bet that the majority of dead things in all D&D games ever have died from hp damage. It's a very widely available type of damage and it always stacks. If you're gonna do hp damage, the more, the better.

Yknow, a malconvoker doesn't actually bring that much to the table besides summons. Sure, they can learn other spells...but in practice, if you're relying on summons, you tend to prepare a lot of summons.


And if you had a Fighter instead of the Malconvoker, you'd never get that action in the first place. You do not lose resources, you gain them.

Fighter: First round spent charging the guy and inflicting the hp damage you poo-poo. Second round spent trading hits.

Malconvoker: Since he apparently specialized in enchantment due to being really bad at being a summoner: first round spent casting. This means the beastie hits someone else. Someone squishy. Second round, the bison finally shows up. Someone squishy still has to escape without provoking.

At least, that's how it goes for the first two fights of the day. For the next two, the Malconvoker curses his miserable choice of specialization and resorts to casting Summon Monster 2s, which accomplish almost nothing.


If he is doing a poor job at those things, it is a poor reflection on his player, not his class.

It's a reflection on the nature of building a wizard to mimic melee classes.


Meanwhile, the bug has a third more HP. It wins the auto attack contest.

As previously mentioned, its not a wise solo fight for the fighter. But at least the fighter is useful.


Now I'm not saying Malconvokers are good here, they aren't. I am saying Fighters are worse. I am saying that if you're going to drag something around that does nothing but attack for HP damage, and maybe trips there are any number of cheaper, not a PC things that do it better, which means players can play things that cannot be played just as well by graphing calculators.

Malconvokers are certainly worse. Especially if you started out their career specialized in something not at all synergistic.


Now you are simply being absurd. There is no comparison between a random, non Fighter party member, one who could very well have Handle Animal as a class skill I might add who gets MW tools and a +5 modifier from other sources and... one of the biggest jokes on the entire Internet. Who cannot actually do the things he claims he can, both in that his success rate is actually low instead of high as he claims and in that it takes more than waving a random low level wand around to be a Wizard, whereas it does not take more than a low level Handle Animal skill to replace the Fighter and then some.

Oh, I'm aware of how bad the fake wizard monks are. But like him, you are ignoring all the gaping inadequacies in your plan.

Like the fact that you are now spending your round doing handle animal checks. So, you're STILL faking a fighter, and missing out on actual options.


If you'd prefer, you can fill the slot with a Commoner. He has Handle Animal, so he can bring the better beatstick to the table, he has Spot, so he can actually kind of stand guard, and he has an infinite supply of chickens, and by extension eggs because... well I don't know what lead to the writing of Infested with Chickens, but that's still far more of a contribution than any Fighter... from a Commoner. That's right, Fred the Farmer is more deserving of a cut of the loot, because he offers more to an adventuring party.

Leaving aside the ludicrous chicken option, this means that when the commoner dies horribly, because he's, well, a commoner, you have an uncontrolled fleshraker. Hopefully someone else has the skill.




And since the cost is only 100 gold + 75 gold per HD, and doubled for Magebred this means doing the same thing with a T-Rex is 2,900 gold.

Where is the base cost coming from? I'm pretty sure it's not standard for everything, and does not guarantee the availability of mage-bred T-rexes on the cheap.


Orcs are a generic melee foe. All they do is attack with a two handed weapon. Which is exactly the same thing as every beatstick worth thinking about. Difference is, they probably have lower Strength despite their +4 racial bonus. So no, they are a good example, because other things will be attacking you in other ways.

No. They are the single most lethal CR 1/2 foe, because they deal enough damage to one shot about everything. Well, knock em out, anyhow. For a wizard, death is certainly on the table.


At level 1, everything is so random that you die in 1-2 hits regardless of who and what you are. The Barbarian, raging with 16 HP? He gets two shotted too. There is no more or less survivable, there is only pure luck in surviving. Level 1, and 2 for that matter do not work. They are not valid arguments at any point in time.

There is a great difference between being one shottable and being two shottable.

Having a delayed damage pool or DR, improved toughness, high AC...yes, these things all matter immensely at level 1.

But you can SAY it's all random chance as much as you like. I have data. Go through the NED and TED, and see who lived. Look at the survivability of scores of actual low level attempts. Wizards don't tend to do well.


Why wouldn't you? Aside from the odd low level undead and such, it works on everything, and is certainly far better than the other attack spells. You don't have the slots for non attack spells.

Well, there's buffs. The classic mage armor is a pretty solid choice for level one. Not to mention, it's conjuration, so you can specialize in something useful, get a GOOD acf, and yknow, not die.


The comparison is between a party with a Wizard, a Fighter, and two others, and a Wizard, a Malconvoker, and two others. So if the Wizard is Enchantment specced, and I'm not sure how that came up that does not affect the Malconvoker.

No. The original argument is that it is more efficient for the wizard to replace the fighter with his abilities. Not that it is more efficient to replace the fighter with a second wizard. That was never a thing.


For optimization to be important, choices must matter. When you die randomly no matter what you choose, choices do not matter. As such, your actions don't really make a difference.

If you die randomly no matter what you choose, you are either in a terrible, terrible game, or are a really unwise player. Low level D&D is lethal, but lethality does not mean randomness. Optimization matters MORE with high lethality, not less.


And just what is the spell you are supposed to be preparing, if not the good Color Spray? Burning Hands? Even if you're going into Rat Swarm Land, you still are not going to prepare Burning Hands, because it is that terrible of a spell.

Well, we're looking at spider swarm at CR 1. So, you need a reliable way to deal 9 hp of damage. Rat swarm at CR 2 is only a bit more. I generally prefer shocking grasp, since I face single targets more, often with metal on em, but burning hands is not terrible. It's got a small aoe factor going for it. Not stellar, but okish.

Not enough to one shot it, but enough to take it down to the level where you can fix the issue with torches.


If the party needs an arcane caster with them primarily to deal with swarms, then said arcane caster's response is to ditch the incompetent party, and find one that has a better understanding of how things work. Swarms are beaten by everyone using torches and oil, if they are immune to weapons and simply beaten down just like anything else if they are not.

Swarms are indeed immune to weapons. Torches deal 1d3 damage on a hit. You generally want to take them down quickly enough that the poison and nausea are not an issue.

[Jayabalard]

Neither the Fighter nor the bison does enough damage to be significant. While 34 is technically more than 13.5, it is still far lower than the 70 necessary at that level. You either have HP or you don't, so doing HP damage is an all or nothing thing, and numbers below 70 at level 6 are effectively 0.No, that's not true; hp damage isn't just all or nothing, it's additive. If the Fighter hits and does 34 damage to it, the opponent only has 36 left, and can be killed by another player in the group, or by the fighter on a subsequent turn; the monster doesn't continue to have 70 hp. While killing things in one go is nice, it's far from necessary.

[Doc Roc]

I've seen some supposedly competent parties decimated by swarms. I think you vastly underestimate how deadly they are, particularly to the Tier 4 and lower.

[bladesyz]

Haven't read through the whole thread, but here's a thought:

Would things be a lot more balanced if save DC was based on Spell Level instead of caster level + attribute modifier?

This means that no matter how high level the wizard is, Hold Person isn't going to affect a high-level fighter. In order to counter high-level threats, the wizard will be forced to use his high level spells, which are few and precious. Add to this monsters that are spell resistant, and make spell resistance checks based on Spell Level as well.

Yes, this means that low-level "save vs." spells become useless at higher levels, but so what? The wizard can still use them for non-combat purposes, such as charming an inn keeper, or restraining a criminal without killing him.

Just a thought.

[Gnaeus]

Would things be a lot more balanced if save DC was based on Spell Level instead of caster level + attribute modifier?

DC is based on Spell Level. Caster level helps against SR. If you removed the attribute modifier, it wouldn't change too much. I can still pump DCs, or add Debuffs, more easily than you can raise all your saves.

Also, no it wouldn't alter balance significantly. A caster has a dozen ways to end a fight. Save or lose is only one. Other winners include no-save, just lose. Touch, and ranged touch attacks. Summons. Many kinds of battlefield control. Polymorph. You remove enchanters, invokers, and some necromancers, but transmuters and conjurers just shrug and cast something else. In other words, you force the weakest wizards to make better specialization choices.

[Tyndmyr]

I've seen some supposedly competent parties decimated by swarms. I think you vastly underestimate how deadly they are, particularly to the Tier 4 and lower.

In the endless dungeon, the single most frequent effective tactic vs them was running and sealing a door between them and the character. Almost nobody actually killed them.

[Malevolence]

I'm not going to respond to Tyndmyr any further until he stops resorting to straw man arguments.


No, that's not true; hp damage isn't just all or nothing, it's additive. If the Fighter hits and does 34 damage to it, the opponent only has 36 left, and can be killed by another player in the group, or by the fighter on a subsequent turn; the monster doesn't continue to have 70 hp. While killing things in one go is nice, it's far from necessary.

If the Fighter hits it for 34, it's still standing, it's still completely unimpeded, and therefore it can still fight back at full effect. Not to mention 34 assumes a full attack, and both attacks hit. Not likely with those stats. But more than that though, it means one of the following scenarios occurred:

Fighter went first, moved, attacked, got full attacked, and then launched his own full attack on round 2.
Enemy went first, moved, attacked, and then the Fighter launches his full attack.

Either way though the result is the same. The enemy is still standing, it is unimpeded, and it is its turn. It kills the Fighter with another full attack. Because he is on the wrong side of Rocket Tag.

If it takes two PCs to kill the enemy, then the moment either of them gets disabled people start dying. And it's a lot easier to disable either of two than both of two. Because it means you only have to knock out one target instead of two.

If it takes more than two, it gets even worse. Not to mention it means you have to actually have more than 1 HP damage based character. Which means you either effectively have less actual characters, or you have something far better.

And swarms, especially low level swarms are killed by mundane equipment, not otherwise even more useless than usual blasting spells. Or any other class features. As such they aren't a test of any class features, they're a test of whether you bothered to bring mundane gear or not. A group of Commoners could go swarm hunting and succeed easily, even though they'd fare far worse against anything else.

[Tyndmyr]

I'm not going to respond to Tyndmyr any further until he stops resorting to straw man arguments.

Feel free to point out what was a straw man.


If the Fighter hits it for 34, it's still standing, it's still completely unimpeded, and therefore it can still fight back at full effect. Not to mention 34 assumes a full attack, and both attacks hit. Not likely with those stats.

And the damage the bison puts out also requires a hit. The bison is no more likely to score a hit.

And yes, the target is still standing after round 1. After round 1, the malconvoker is still summoning.

That does not mean the damage is unimportant. Damage is additive. This ain't Magic the Gathering, here.


If it takes two PCs to kill the enemy, then the moment either of them gets disabled people start dying. And it's a lot easier to disable either of two than both of two. Because it means you only have to knock out one target instead of two.

Er...it's a CR 6 opponent. Having it face a party of level 6 PCs is completely appropriate.

Expecting an unoptimized single character to solo a CR6 mob in one round is...unrealistic.


If it takes more than two, it gets even worse. Not to mention it means you have to actually have more than 1 HP damage based character. Which means you either effectively have less actual characters, or you have something far better.

Is that really such a problem? The amount of classes that can deal HP damage is very large. Many classes, such as the aforementioned caster, can be effective at dealing HP damage without being relegated to ONLY dealing hp damage.


And swarms, especially low level swarms are killed by mundane equipment, not otherwise even more useless than usual blasting spells. Or any other class features. As such they aren't a test of any class features, they're a test of whether you bothered to bring mundane gear or not. A group of Commoners could go swarm hunting and succeed easily, even though they'd fare far worse against anything else.

They can be killed with mundane gear, certainly. You can throw your lantern at them or hit them with a torch for minor damage. More reasonably, you can kill them with spells and flasks of x, because these actually deal significant damage. Flasks are a substantial portion of level 1 budgets, and as such, should not be assumed to exist in quantity in all parties.

[Jayabalard]

I'm not going to respond to Tyndmyr any further until he stops resorting to straw man arguments.Wait... really? I mean, at least identify them if you're going to just ignore him.


If the Fighter hits it for 34, it's still standing, it's still completely unimpeded, and therefore it can still fight back at full effect. Not to mention 34 assumes a full attack, and both attacks hit. Not likely with those stats. But more than that though, it means one of the following scenarios occurred:

Fighter went first, moved, attacked, got full attacked, and then launched his own full attack on round 2.
Enemy went first, moved, attacked, and then the Fighter launches his full attack.

Either way though the result is the same. The enemy is still standing, it is unimpeded, and it is its turn. It kills the Fighter with another full attack. Because he is on the wrong side of Rocket Tag.

If it takes two PCs to kill the enemy, then the moment either of them gets disabled people start dying. And it's a lot easier to disable either of two than both of two. Because it means you only have to knock out one target instead of two.So, I'm not clear on what your point is... yes, the opponent gets to do something until you kill or disable them. That doesn't change the fact that hp damage is addative, or the fact that dealing 34 damage (which, as far as I can tell is a number you came up with) to a target with 70hp is more useful than dealing 13 damage to it.


If it takes more than two, it gets even worse. Not to mention it means you have to actually have more than 1 HP damage based character. Which means you either effectively have less actual characters, or you have something far better.I've been trying to puzzle out what your driving at here, and haven't had any luck.

But with very few exceptions, almost every character can deal hp damage in some way or another.

[bladesyz]

DC is based on Spell Level. Caster level helps against SR. If you removed the attribute modifier, it wouldn't change too much. I can still pump DCs, or add Debuffs, more easily than you can raise all your saves.

Also, no it wouldn't alter balance significantly. A caster has a dozen ways to end a fight. Save or lose is only one. Other winners include no-save, just lose. Touch, and ranged touch attacks. Summons. Many kinds of battlefield control. Polymorph. You remove enchanters, invokers, and some necromancers, but transmuters and conjurers just shrug and cast something else. In other words, you force the weakest wizards to make better specialization choices.

If a spell is particularly unbalanced, then the DM can always say, "No, I don't want that spell in my game". I don't think allowing players to choose any spell or feat in any source book ever published is a particularly good idea.

[druid91]

If a spell is particularly unbalanced, then the DM can always say, "No, I don't want that spell in my game". I don't think allowing players to choose any spell or feat in any source book ever published is a particularly good idea.

The counter argument to this is that you are no longer following the rules of 3.5.

You have changed them for your personal benefit at the expense of the casters.

I believe there was an argument somewhere earlier in the thread that a wizard should be more powerful than a fighter because of more levels, not just by being a wizard.

To counter that. Right now, I could go outside with my Bokken and have a somewhat passing resemblance to a fighter. Noone, can go outside and wiggle their fingers and incinerate a tree with a passing resemblance to a wizard.

Wizards are more powerful. They rewrite reality to their whim, and fighters are within reality.

[Gnaeus]

If a spell is particularly unbalanced, then the DM can always say, "No, I don't want that spell in my game". I don't think allowing players to choose any spell or feat in any source book ever published is a particularly good idea.

If your DM is removing all the strong spells, what is the purpose of nerfing saving throws? Fireball isn't overpowered, but it has a saving throw. The real balance adjustment there is pruning the spell list, not playing with the math.


I don't think allowing players to choose any spell or feat in any source book ever published is a particularly good idea.

YMMV. Anyway, it isn't a source book issue. Everything I mentioned I could do from core.

[Boci]

Wizards are more powerful.

But the advanced casters and ToB showed they do not have to be.

[druid91]

But the advanced casters and ToB showed they do not have to be.

ToB are Eastern martial artists. Which in their own culture are wizards.

Advanced casters?

[Boci]

ToB are Eastern martial artists. Which in their own culture are wizards.

Lockdown fighter then.


Advanced casters?

Beguiler and dread necromancer (warmage too, but its weaker).

[druid91]

Lockdown fighter then.



Beguiler and dread necromancer (warmage too, but its weaker).

Lockdown fighter?

Oh, the specialists. Those are specialists. And even then using the weakest of the three a properly built warmage will fry a fighter no problem.

[Tyndmyr]

If a spell is particularly unbalanced, then the DM can always say, "No, I don't want that spell in my game". I don't think allowing players to choose any spell or feat in any source book ever published is a particularly good idea.

Look, core is the least balanced of the books. Limiting splatbook use is not likely to do much in this regard.

Magic and melee are certainly no more balanced in core than out. Probably less so. Splatbooks brought us ToB.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

ToB are Eastern martial artists. Which in their own culture are wizards.

Advanced casters?

ToB aren't just Eastern Martial Artists. They can be just as easily seen as Western Martial Artists - it's foolish to think that the west hasn't got a similarly rich history of martial technique as the east. Don't believe me? Ask about the history of European Martial Arts over in the Real World Weapons and Armor thread.

/rant

[druid91]

ToB aren't just Eastern Martial Artists. They can be just as easily seen as Western Martial Artists - it's foolish to think that the west hasn't got a similarly rich history of martial technique as the east. Don't believe me? Ask about the history of European Martial Arts over in the Real World Weapons and Armor thread.

/rant

Yes but were Western martial artists likely to use spiritually powers to achieve fantastic effects?

IIRC no, they were really good at punching, kicking, and stabbing things to death. They didn't have that wizardly feel. Which ToB has for the most part.

[Boci]

Lockdown fighter?.

A fighter focused on stopping opponents by from moving. Will take stuff like: reach weapon, improved reach, combat reflexes, combat expertise + improved trip, stand still.


Oh, the specialists. Those are specialists.

So?


And even then using the weakest of the three a properly built warmage will fry a fighter no problem.

I'm not talking about PvP, I'm talking about a party, and a lockdown fighter will not frequently be over shadowed by a warmage.


@ Kalaska'Agathas: Don't respond to druid91 about ToB here. I know its hard, but PM him like I'm about to avoid derailing this thread.

[druid91]

A fighter focused on stopping opponents by from moving. Will take stuff like: reach weapon, improved reach, combat reflexes, combat expertise + improved trip, stand still.



So?



I'm not talking about PvP, I'm talking about a party, and a lockdown fighter will not frequently be over shadowed by a warmage.

Considering I played a druid once, and was overshadowed by a warmage... Yes I got to do what I wanted, but mainly all I did was summon things and make countries cry. I was actually built for too large a scale to really help much on damage in little fights.

[Boci]

Considering I played a druid once, and was overshadowed by a warmage... Yes I got to do what I wanted, but mainly all I did was summon things and make countries cry. I was actually built for too large a scale to really help much on damage in little fights.

How? Warmages get some spells that aren't a fist full of d6s, but not much. Besides, you just said your build was flawed, which says nothing about the power of a warmage.

[druid91]

How? Warmages get some spells that aren't a fist full of d6s, but not much. Besides, you just said your build was flawed, which says nothing about the power of a warmage.

He multiclassed, I forget what, but it was warmage, ultimate magus and something else I think wizard. Even so there are multiple builds that take the warmage and do awesome stuff.

And his fist ful of d6's hurt things. A lot. In addition he use the eclectic learning feature to get some nice picks off the wizard spell list.

As for the power of a warmage... He used a single metamagiced spell to kill an epic level wizard using epic spell buffs.

[Boci]

He multiclassed, I forget what, but it was warmage, ultimate magus and something else I think wizard. Even so there are multiple builds that take the warmage and do awesome stuff.

And his fist ful of d6's hurt things. A lot. In addition he use the eclectic learning feature to get some nice picks off the wizard spell list.

As for the power of a warmage... He used a single metamagiced spell to kill an epic level wizard using epic spell buffs.

And why do you think this speaks at all accuratly to the power of a warmage?

[Tyndmyr]

Warmages are highly underrated. Sure, the edge isn't huge, and they are boom-focused...but thanks to advanced learning, prestige classes that add spells known, etc, they don't have to be JUST boom. And HP damage is fantastic in quantity. Kills almost everything.

If you're gonna play a blaster sorc, you might as well get actual class features.

[Boci]

If you're gonna play a blaster sorc, you might as well get actual class features.

You mean warmages edge and the ability to cast in (eventually) heavy armour?

[bladesyz]

Look, core is the least balanced of the books. Limiting splatbook use is not likely to do much in this regard.

Magic and melee are certainly no more balanced in core than out. Probably less so. Splatbooks brought us ToB.

No, it's not about core or splat. It's about the DM approving each spell that a PC wants to get, no matter whether it's from core, splat, or homebrew.



The counter argument to this is that you are no longer following the rules of 3.5.

You have changed them for your personal benefit at the expense of the casters.


So what? The rule books are not dogma. They're just guideline material to help run your games.

And what do you mean by "personal benefit"? You seem to be under the illusion that the rules, "as is", are somehow balanced.

In any roleplaying game, the DM/GM/ST is always the ultimate arbitrator of balance and rules. Most White Wolf players understand this inherently, and nobody (or almost) argues over whether Tremeres are more powerful than Ventrue, even though some really broken, disgusting Thaumaturgy paths and rituals have been published. It seems strange to me that D&D players find this so difficult to grasp.



I believe there was an argument somewhere earlier in the thread that a wizard should be more powerful than a fighter because of more levels, not just by being a wizard.


I think everyone is overlooking one crucial aspect of this debate: a wizard isn't powerful just because of his levels. He's powerful because of his spells. Everybody seems to be operating under the assumption that a PC wizard has access to any spell he wants, which is obviously not the case in a real campaign. By the same token, we might assume that the fighter has access to any magical item he wants as well.

[Tyndmyr]

You mean warmages edge and the ability to cast in (eventually) heavy armour?

Well, those are aright. Bonus metamagic feats, though...those are useful.

[Boci]

Well, those are aright. Bonus metamagic feats, though...those are useful.

I forgot about those, but I still prefer the greater freedom when it comes to spells. 3.5, with all the spells scattered across 50 books does not allow a static spell least to compete that well.

[druid91]

And why do you think this speaks at all accuratly to the power of a warmage?

Why do you think it doesn't?

When most of the build Comes from warmage it is a warmage.

[Boci]

Why do you think it doesn't?

When most of the build Comes from warmage it is a warmage.

How? Warmages are spontenous casters, and Ultimate Magus greatly favours the prepared side.

[druid91]

No, it's not about core or splat. It's about the DM approving each spell that a PC wants to get, no matter whether it's from core, splat, or homebrew.



So what? The rule books are not dogma. They're just guideline material to help run your games.

And what do you mean by "personal benefit"? You seem to be under the illusion that the rules, "as is", are somehow balanced.

In any roleplaying game, the DM/GM/ST is always the ultimate arbitrator of balance and rules. Most White Wolf players understand this inherently, and nobody (or almost) argues over whether Tremeres are more powerful than Ventrue, even though some really broken, disgusting Thaumaturgy paths and rituals have been published. It seems strange to me that D&D players find this so difficult to grasp.

I think everyone is overlooking one crucial aspect of this debate: a wizard isn't powerful just because of his levels. He's powerful because of his spells. Everybody seems to be operating under the assumption that a PC wizard has access to any spell he wants, which is obviously not the case in a real campaign. By the same token, we might assume that the fighter has access to any magical item he wants as well. Considering I'm arguing that Wizards superiority over mundanes is the right way it should be.. no I don't think it's balanced. I dislike the idea of tryig to take earth shattering magic and putting it onthe same level as swinging a pointy bit of metal.

As for being incapable of having spells... by the rules without someone messing with them the wizard can afford to have every spell the fighter can't afford that many magic items.


How? Warmages are spontenous casters, and Ultimate Magus greatly favours the prepared side.

He had two or three levels of wizard. And had been a warmage up until around level 13.

[Jayabalard]

I think everyone is overlooking one crucial aspect of this debate: a wizard isn't powerful just because of his levels. He's powerful because of his spells. Everybody seems to be operating under the assumption that a PC wizard has access to any spell he wants, which is obviously not the case in a real campaign. By the same token, we might assume that the fighter has access to any magical item he wants as well.Likewise... this is not a D&D debate, nor is about "is the wizard more powerful than a non-wizard"... it's: given that magic is more powerful than non-magic, is this a bad thing.

[bladesyz]

Considering I'm arguing that Wizards superiority over mundanes is the right way it should be.. no I don't think it's balanced. I dislike the idea of tryig to take earth shattering magic and putting it onthe same level as swinging a pointy bit of metal.

As for being incapable of having spells... by the rules without someone messing with them the wizard can afford to have every spell the fighter can't afford that many magic items.


As far as I'm aware, the gold/level scale is just a guideline. It's not Diablo, where you can only hold so much gold at a certain level. A level 1 fighter certainly is capable of owning 1 million gold pieces, if the story goes that way.

And that's the key point: just as the DM uses gold as a precious reward, he should also be using spells in the same way. Players, not even clerics and druids, should have automatic access to any spell they want.



Likewise... this is not a D&D debate, nor is about "is the wizard more powerful than a non-wizard"... it's: given that magic is more powerful than non-magic, is this a bad thing.

That doesn't make sense. Without a context, the question is meaningless. No, it's certainly NOT a bad thing when you're writing books. Yes, it IS a bad thing when you're trying to run a game where every player should be able to make a fair contribution.

[Boci]

He had two or three levels of wizard. And had been a warmage up until around level 13.

And how many ultimate magus levels?

[Tyndmyr]

No, it's not about core or splat. It's about the DM approving each spell that a PC wants to get, no matter whether it's from core, splat, or homebrew.

This seems like a lot of work. As a wizard, it's normal for me to pick up a dozen or so spells of each level. If you want to read from seven different books before each session, you are welcome to. Note that for each one you deny, you then get to read another spell instead.

No, I prefer to set out rather more broad criteria before the game begins.


In any roleplaying game, the DM/GM/ST is always the ultimate arbitrator of balance and rules.... It seems strange to me that D&D players find this so difficult to grasp.

Dude, some RPGs don't even have a DM/GM/ST. So, clearly, that pretty much destroys your premise.


I think everyone is overlooking one crucial aspect of this debate: a wizard isn't powerful just because of his levels. He's powerful because of his spells. Everybody seems to be operating under the assumption that a PC wizard has access to any spell he wants, which is obviously not the case in a real campaign. By the same token, we might assume that the fighter has access to any magical item he wants as well.

Nah. A core wizard is plenty awesome. In fact, most people have postulated a core or mostly core wizard. And in practice, essentially everyone has access to core spells. And you do get to pick one spell per level. That's RAW. So you get at least a fair number of spells.

And I do assume fighters will make reasonable use of magic items. This is necessary for him to remain useful. He will still not remain equal.


I forgot about those, but I still prefer the greater freedom when it comes to spells. 3.5, with all the spells scattered across 50 books does not allow a static spell least to compete that well.

That's the great shortcoming of warmage. I certainly wouldn't recommend it for anyone who was going to do anything besides blasting, since you basically trade most of that off.

But being able to cherry pick a few spells from sorc/wiz allows you access to things like wings of cover and forcecage. It lets you get by on utility things.

The d6 hit die is of some use as well. It's not terribly significant later, but having a few extra hp for the early levels is nice. This is about the time where Edge is relevant as well.

[druid91]

As far as I'm aware, the gold/level scale is just a guideline. It's not Diablo, where you can only hold so much gold at a certain level. A level 1 fighter certainly is capable of owning 1 million gold pieces, if the story goes that way.

And that's the key point: just as the DM uses gold as a precious reward, he should also be using spells in the same way. Players, not even clerics and druids, should have automatic access to any spell they want.

That's not the problem. The wizard can make lots of money with magic. The fighter can't make as much.

And spellcasters can literally research a spell from nothing but money and time. And as they are druids and clerics get every spell on their list to choose from.

[Gnaeus]

In any roleplaying game, the DM/GM/ST is always the ultimate arbitrator of balance and rules. Most White Wolf players understand this inherently, and nobody (or almost) argues over whether Tremeres are more powerful than Ventrue, even though some really broken, disgusting Thaumaturgy paths and rituals have been published. It seems strange to me that D&D players find this so difficult to grasp.

A given tremere is unlikely to so overshadow a given ventrue at the same xp total that the tremere can do every single thing the ventrue can do, only better. He might be, ultimately, more powerful, but powers in WoD are so expensive that the Ventrue can carve out a niche and be better in that area. A Druid or Wizard can, with trivial cost, make party members obsolete.



I think everyone is overlooking one crucial aspect of this debate: a wizard isn't powerful just because of his levels. He's powerful because of his spells. Everybody seems to be operating under the assumption that a PC wizard has access to any spell he wants, which is obviously not the case in a real campaign. By the same token, we might assume that the fighter has access to any magical item he wants as well.

"A wizard begins play with a spellbook containing all 0-level wizard spells (except those from her prohibited school or schools, if any; see School Specialization, below) plus three 1st-level spells of your choice. For each point of Intelligence bonus the wizard has, the spellbook holds one additional 1st-level spell of your choice. At each new wizard level, she gains two new spells of any spell level or levels that she can cast (based on her new wizard level) for her spellbook. At any time, a wizard can also add spells found in other wizards’ spellbooks to her own. "

The rules state that a wizard can pick his own spells. A DM can rule 0 what spells are in play, but that is a DM nerf, not the rules as in the book.

Most of us assume that the fighter can pick his items (subject to WBL). In a world where that is not the case, casters (who can pick their own items by virtue of being to make them) have another huge advantage.

[Jayabalard]

That doesn't make sense. Without a context, the question is meaningless. No, it's certainly NOT a bad thing when you're writing books. Yes, it IS a bad thing when you're trying to run a game where every player should be able to make a fair contribution.I'm not sure what you think doesn't make any sense. The context is RPGs in general. And no... that's not a given, since several people on this thread have stated that they believe that it's not such a bad thing.

[Mike_G]

To get away from the "X PC can beat up Y PC" arguments and address the OP:

1) Magic being "more powerful" is all setting specific. On Earth, a guy who can bend spoons and read Tarot card is less useful than a Navy SEAL. Even in LOTR, Gandalf didn't say "screw dragging these deadweight muggles around. I'mma trade Aragorn and Gimli for Radsagast and KICK SOME @#$$#!!!!!!!!!!!"

2) It's bad because some people want to play fighter archetypes, like Conana or Aragorn or Cyrano, or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser,and if they never get to do squat because the elf in a dress has used Celerity to pwn the encounter before anyone rolls initiative, that's a sucky team game.

If four friends want to pay various fantasy archetypes in an adventure RPG, the archetypes should be close enough in power that they can function out of the box against appropriate challenges for their level, without needing anyone to hold back.

[Gnaeus]

1) Magic being "more powerful" is all setting specific. On Earth, a guy who can bend spoons and read Tarot card is less useful than a Navy SEAL.

Unless the Tarot tells him "Run away! you are about to get killed by a SEAL!":smallsmile:

[druid91]

To get away from the "X PC can beat up Y PC" arguments and address the OP:

1) Magic being "more powerful" is all setting specific. On Earth, a guy who can bend spoons and read Tarot card is less useful than a Navy SEAL. Even in LOTR, Gandalf didn't say "screw dragging these deadweight muggles around. I'mma trade Aragorn and Gimli for Radsagast and KICK SOME @#$$#!!!!!!!!!!!"

2) It's bad because some people want to play fighter archetypes, like Conana or Aragorn or Cyrano, or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser,and if they never get to do squat because the elf in a dress has used Celerity to pwn the encounter before anyone rolls initiative, that's a sucky team game.

If four friends want to pay various fantasy archetypes in an adventure RPG, the archetypes should be close enough in power that they can function out of the box against appropriate challenges for their level, without needing anyone to hold back.

Technically he did. He was always running off to go do things on his own leaving them to muddle along. The fact that he was more than a match for the rest of the fellowship combined should show that.

As for spoon bending and tarot cards. If you can bend a spoon why not pinch something in their brain?

And if they want to they can. just don't expect to rival a magic user.

Apropriate challenges for their level is subjective.

[Fhaolan]

Technically he did. He was always running off to go do things on his own leaving them to muddle along. The fact that he was more than a match for the rest of the fellowship combined should show that.


Right, so the one playing Gandalf gets to go play the PS3 for a couple of hours while the rest of the party goes and does something interesting to them. Or the mundane-character players say 'bugger this for a game of soldiers', and leave to have their own game where what their character do have meaning.

Which is pretty much what happens to me whenever I get involved in a 3.x+ D&D game above lvl 10 where there are magic and mundane characters mixed.

There's nothing wrong with high-magic games. It's just not what interests me.

[Frozen_Feet]

Magic being better than mundane is not a problem in a vacuum. There are many settings, and games, where magic is better, period.

The problems start when there's supposed to be a balance between magical and non-magical.

("Mundane" is a word that can be scrapped from the start, because Navy SEALS and so on are not mundane. They're just realistic end of extraordinary. There are great many games where you play people who are utterly non-magical, but are still special in the context of the game.)

If such balance is supposed to exist, magic can't be head-above-shoulders better at everything. It can be better at something, so it has its own niche - but non-magical options need to have their niches as well.

For example, magic could be optimal for taking out undead, while non-magical weaponry works best against enemies of flesh and blood. As long as there's an extent of both sorts of opposition, or if the abilities co-operate with each other, there isn't a problem.

3.5 D&D fails at the above, to varying degrees at different categories. At the same time, there are non-magical options that are supposed to have a niche on their own, but magic can be used to either replicate them or having it is so much of a boon that non-magical playstyle becomes jarringly unoptimal after a point.

In the end, D&D balance between magic and non-magic isn't - it becomes obvious less than quarter into the game that you can't compete without having lots and lots of magic. This of course saddens players who have their playstyle obsoleted by the changing game.

[druid91]

Right, so the one playing Gandalf gets to go play the PS3 for a couple of hours while the rest of the party goes and does something interesting to them. Or the mundane-character players say 'bugger this for a game of soldiers', and leave to have their own game where what their character do have meaning.

Which is pretty much what happens to me whenever I get involved in a 3.x+ D&D game above lvl 10 where there are magic and mundane characters mixed.

There's nothing wrong with high-magic games. It's just not what interests me.

You mean the wizard get's put in a private thread and adventures elsewhere. While the rest of the party does their thing with the wizard popping in to help.

[Fhaolan]

You mean the wizard get's put in a private thread and adventures elsewhere. While the rest of the party does their thing with the wizard popping in to help.

Oh, sorry, was this for play-by-post gaming? I'm more a 'play in person' kind of gamer where that technique just doesn't work so well. My various attempts at pbp games (as a player) usually fall through about three pages in because of various reasons. So I just don't think in those terms. Sorry, 'bout that. :smallsmile:

[druid91]

Oh, sorry, was this for play-by-post gaming? I'm more a 'play in person' kind of gamer where that technique just doesn't work so well. My various attempts at pbp games (as a player) usually fall through about three pages in because of various reasons. So I just don't think in those terms. Sorry, 'bout that. :smallsmile:

It's pretty much the only way I can game. I don't know anyone else who plays 3.5 around where I live.

Though it is a sad fact that most PbP games die soon after starting.

[Mike_G]

You mean the wizard get's put in a private thread and adventures elsewhere. While the rest of the party does their thing with the wizard popping in to help.

Which is, I feel exactly contrary to the intent of D&D. The stated intent, which is the party of various archetypes in co-operative roles. Now, something like Ars Magica comes out and says that magicians are powerful and everybody else carries luggage, but D&D makes a different claim.

As a player, I hate having a ton of downtime while the Wizard player hogs the DM's time or solos the whole thing. As a DM, I'll be damned if I'm going to have to write and run two separate adventures. I have other things to do with my life.

If a game says it's for four players and a DM to sit around a table and co-operatively meet adventuring challenges, and then does something completely different, it has failed.

The Wizard being great at one role and sucky at another would be fine. Everyone has his niche, and they co-operate. The Fighter smacks the bad guys and keeps them off the Wizard, the Rogue handles scouting, searching, and traps/locks, the Cleric handles divine spells and support and the Wiz does his thing.

At low levels, a Wizard really does better with a fighter and a skillmonkey. At the middle levels, they just save him some spell slots, and at high level he hardly notices them.

That is a a game that fails at its stated goal.

[druid91]

Which is, I feel exactly contrary to the intent of D&D. The stated intent, which is the party of various archetypes in co-operative roles. Now, something Ars Magica comes out and says that magicians are powerful and everybody else carries luggage, but D&D makes a different claim.

As a player, I hate having a ton of downtime while the Wizard player hogs the DM's time or solos the whole thing. As a DM, I'll be damned if I'm going to have to write and run two separate adventures. I have other things to do with my life.

If a game says it's for four players and a DM to sit around a table and co-operatively meet adventuring challenges, and then does something completely different, it has failed.

The Wizard being great at one role and sucky at another would be fine. Everyone has his niche, and they co-operate. The Fighter smacks the bad guys and keeps them off the Wizard, the Rogue handles scouting, searching, and traps/locks, the Cleric handles divine spells and support and the Wiz does his thing.

At low levels, a Wizard really does better with a fighter and a skillmonkey. At the middle levels, they just save him some spell slots, and at high level he hardly notices them.

That is a a game that fails at its stated goal.

It doesn't matter what the stated goal was, the result is an awesome game that happens to favour magic.

I Like complicated games.

[Reluctance]

It doesn't matter what the stated goal was, the result is an awesome game that happens to favour magic.

I Like complicated games.

Would you play in a game where "mundanes" had mythic-level abilities to alter the world on the level that T1 casters can?

Would you play in a game where the only casters allowed were the later-game, fixed list casters?

And most pertinent to what's looking more like a tier discussion than a magic vs. mundane one, how much experience do you have running games with T1 casters in their full glory? It can be a lot of fun to play a character with a bag full of win buttons. Up until the DM gets bored of having his plots exploded as soon as they're introduced, quits, and leaves your awesome character without a game to exist in.

[druid91]

Would you play in a game where "mundanes" had mythic-level abilities to alter the world on the level that T1 casters can?

Would you play in a game where the only casters allowed were the later-game, fixed list casters?

And most pertinent to what's looking more like a tier discussion than a magic vs. mundane one, how much experience do you have running games with T1 casters in their full glory? It can be a lot of fun to play a character with a bag full of win buttons. Up until the DM gets bored of having his plots exploded as soon as they're introduced, quits, and leaves your awesome character without a game to exist in.

Not really causethat makes no sense.

Sure.

Not much but a high power game I play in combat rarely lasts more than 2 rounds. We've lost three PCs Unfortunately it looks like it might be dead...

[Mike_G]

It doesn't matter what the stated goal was, the result is an awesome game that happens to favour magic.

I Like complicated games.

Complicated is neither here nor there. There are more complex systems and less complex systems out there that do what they say they'll do.

It matters a ton what the stated goal is. The reason people complain about the overpowered magic in D&D is that the game is false advertising. If I go to Sam's Steak House and find that they only serve fish, I will be upset, regardless of how good the fish is.

D&D has been billed for 30 years as a system for running a team adventure with a diversified party. If I tried to play a soldier in a Marvel Superheros game, I'd expect to suck compared to everybody else. If I show up for some sword and sorcery, and get bent over and boned because I picked "sword," I think that's a problem.

You can feel free to love D&D as is. You asked what the problem was with magic being much more powerful than mundane options. I've expressed my opinion as to what that problem is.

[druid91]

Complicated is neither here nor there. There are more complex systems and less complex systems out there that do what they say they'll do.

It matters a ton what the stated goal is. The reason people complain about the overpowered magic in D&D is that the game is false advertising. If I go to Sam's Steak House and find that they only serve fish, I will be upset, regardless of how good the fish is.

D&D has been billed for 30 years as a system for running a team adventure with a diversified party. If I tried to play a soldier in a Marvel Superheros game, I'd expect to suck compared to everybody else. If I show up for some sword and sorcery, and get bent over and boned because I picked "sword," I think that's a problem.

You can feel free to love D&D as is. You asked what the problem was with magic being much more powerful than mundane options. I've expressed my opinion as to what that problem is.

Since 3.5 has been out long enough that it is well known that magic wins.. and not only that but is a dying system. You really can't use that excuse anymore. maybe at first thats a viable explanation. but years after the discovery?

[Mike_G]

It's not an excuse.

For 20 years, D&D was a messy system, but not a clearly unbalanced one. For the first few years people played 3.0, us veterans played it like AD&D, and the glaring issues were slow to come up.

A lot of people miss that feel. Enough that one of the big points of 4e was class balance. Maybe too much class balance, but it was clearly a driving force for WOTC when they looked at 3.5. Even the later 3.5 stuff boosted melee (TOB) and tried to put the brakes on magic, with the focused spellcasting classes.

The core mechanics of 3.5 I like, over the mess that was 1e. The number crunching optimization I have no love for. The "just play a caster" response to "why can't the fighter do his job?" makes me see red.

You asked why power imbalance was bad. That's why it's bad for me.

That's why I bought a copy of RuneQuest.

[druid91]

It's not an excuse.

For 20 years, D&D was a messy system, but not a clearly unbalanced one. For the first few years people played 3.0, us veterans played it like AD&D, and the glaring issues were slow to come up.

A lot of people miss that feel. Enough that one of the big points of 4e was class balance. Maybe too much class balance, but it was clearly a driving force for WOTC when they looked at 3.5. Even the later 3.5 stuff boosted melee (TOB) and tried to put the brakes on magic, with the focused spellcasting classes.

The core mechanics of 3.5 I like, over the mess that was 1e. The number crunching optimization I have no love for. The "just play a caster" response to "why can't the fighter do his job?" makes me see red.

You asked why power imbalance was bad. That's why it's bad for me.

That's why I bought a copy of RuneQuest.

Actually I can to some degree agree. I dislike it when people ask for help with fighting and are told to play a caster.

Personally what I'd do is give fighters more feats. Or remove the limit on which feats can be fighter bonus feats.

[Tavar]

But that's not really the issue. The fighter's numbers can get plenty big with what he has. His problem is that the Wizard and other high level beings are playing a game where the numbers don't matter. I mean, look at BMX Bandit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw). It doesn't matter how many BMX skills and tricks he learns. Angle summoner is just better, because he's playing an entirely different game with different rules.

[navar100]

I think everyone is overlooking one crucial aspect of this debate: a wizard isn't powerful just because of his levels. He's powerful because of his spells. Everybody seems to be operating under the assumption that a PC wizard has access to any spell he wants, which is obviously not the case in a real campaign. By the same token, we might assume that the fighter has access to any magical item he wants as well.

Exactly my point as well!

Of course the wizard is powerful. That is not an inherently bad thing, and he doesn't make non-casters obsolete. As a thought excercise one can figure out what spells a wizard could cast using various feats to overcome all sorts of obstacles. However, in an actual campaign a wizard cannot do everything all the time in every situation.

[navar100]

Which is, I feel exactly contrary to the intent of D&D. The stated intent, which is the party of various archetypes in co-operative roles. Now, something like Ars Magica comes out and says that magicians are powerful and everybody else carries luggage, but D&D makes a different claim.

As a player, I hate having a ton of downtime while the Wizard player hogs the DM's time or solos the whole thing. As a DM, I'll be damned if I'm going to have to write and run two separate adventures. I have other things to do with my life.

If a game says it's for four players and a DM to sit around a table and co-operatively meet adventuring challenges, and then does something completely different, it has failed.

The Wizard being great at one role and sucky at another would be fine. Everyone has his niche, and they co-operate. The Fighter smacks the bad guys and keeps them off the Wizard, the Rogue handles scouting, searching, and traps/locks, the Cleric handles divine spells and support and the Wiz does his thing.

At low levels, a Wizard really does better with a fighter and a skillmonkey. At the middle levels, they just save him some spell slots, and at high level he hardly notices them.

That is a a game that fails at its stated goal.

If the wizard player is dominating the spotlight, that's a metagame problem. It's not about the spells the wizard knows but the wizard player wanting to do everything himself regardless of anyone else's feelings and the DM enabling him. Such spotlight domination has nothing to do with power; power is just one means spotlight domination can be done. The rogue player can do this separating himself from the party to steal whatever he can. The drama queen playing any class does this by taking up the DM's time socializing with various NPCs about minutae or personal story goals.

[Tavar]

So, then, what encounters can challenge both the wizard and the rest of the part?

[DeltaEmil]

Clearly, a hundred 1-hp monsters who are immune to magic and generate a 1000 feet-wide anti-magic zone who cannot be divined by any means but have only AC 11 would challenge both a wizard and his cleric or other tier 1 and 2-pals, and the rest.

[Tyndmyr]

It doesn't matter what the stated goal was, the result is an awesome game that happens to favour magic.

I Like complicated games.

Would agree.

I do agree, though, that advertising a game as something other than what it is can definitely cause disappointment and dissatisfaction. 3.5 is not an inherently bad game, but the designers did sometimes fail to understand the true effects of rules.

[Seerow]

It's not an excuse.

For 20 years, D&D was a messy system, but not a clearly unbalanced one. For the first few years people played 3.0, us veterans played it like AD&D, and the glaring issues were slow to come up.

A lot of people miss that feel. Enough that one of the big points of 4e was class balance. Maybe too much class balance, but it was clearly a driving force for WOTC when they looked at 3.5. Even the later 3.5 stuff boosted melee (TOB) and tried to put the brakes on magic, with the focused spellcasting classes.

The core mechanics of 3.5 I like, over the mess that was 1e. The number crunching optimization I have no love for. The "just play a caster" response to "why can't the fighter do his job?" makes me see red.

You asked why power imbalance was bad. That's why it's bad for me.

That's why I bought a copy of RuneQuest.

Honestly I'd love to see a system that hybridizes 3rd edition and 4th edition. 4th edition style powers, but every class gets their own progression rather than the standardized progression 4e leans towards, to make the classes feel and play differently, and 3rd edition style multiclassing/prestige classes, with a major change to the skill system which I don't think really hit the spot quite right in either 3rd or 4th edition.

[Tyndmyr]

Honestly I'd love to see a system that hybridizes 3rd edition and 4th edition. 4th edition style powers, but every class gets their own progression rather than the standardized progression 4e leans towards, to make the classes feel and play differently, and 3rd edition style multiclassing/prestige classes, with a major change to the skill system which I don't think really hit the spot quite right in either 3rd or 4th edition.

Grab Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, and the other specialized casting classes like warmage, beguiler, warlock, etc. Make sure to get factotum in there.

Throw the phb classes away.

[Fox Box Socks]

If you want a game that hybridizes 3.5 and 4e, play 3.5, but restrict the books to PHB1, PHB2, Tome of Battle, and Complete Mage. Now the melees have encounter options and the mage-types have at-will powers. Done deal.

Also, as for the OP, the short answer is that D&D is supposed to be a team game, and it is not very fun for the guy playing the Fighter when he realizes that the guy playing the Cleric can literally do everything his character can better, plus all kinds of stuff his character can't.

[Seerow]

Grab Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, and the other specialized casting classes like warmage, beguiler, warlock, etc. Make sure to get factotum in there.

Throw the phb classes away.

This leaves a huge chunk of magic using archetypes completely unrepresented. For example the only divine specialized caster is the Healer, unless you want to count Dread Necro. That already cuts out a lot. Then on the arcane side, there's no Conjurer specialist, no Abjuration specialist that I can think of, Divination and Transmutation are similarly just missing from a campaign played this way.

No, there's a middle ground somewhere, but it's not going to be found in unmodified 3.5, even with a very specific choice of books.

[tonberrian]

I've heard that ToM, ToB, EPH, and MoI with the Dragonfire Adept, Factotum, Dread Necromancer, and Beguiler make for a fairly robust playstyle. You've got some brokeness on either end of the powerscale, but I've heard that aside from exploits, it's fairly solid.

[Tyndmyr]

This leaves a huge chunk of magic using archetypes completely unrepresented. For example the only divine specialized caster is the Healer, unless you want to count Dread Necro. That already cuts out a lot. Then on the arcane side, there's no Conjurer specialist, no Abjuration specialist that I can think of, Divination and Transmutation are similarly just missing from a campaign played this way.

No, there's a middle ground somewhere, but it's not going to be found in unmodified 3.5, even with a very specific choice of books.

Oh, sure, there's additional things you might wish for, but for a hybrid, it's pretty decent. You end up with a solid number of classes that play pretty differently, and resource management ends up being a lot more 4e-like.

There's always reserve feats if you wish to incorporate other classes and the like too, but you could do worse than playing such a game. 3.5 adjusts to be like 4e much better than the reverse.

[Seerow]

Oh, sure, there's additional things you might wish for, but for a hybrid, it's pretty decent. You end up with a solid number of classes that play pretty differently, and resource management ends up being a lot more 4e-like.

There's always reserve feats if you wish to incorporate other classes and the like too, but you could do worse than playing such a game. 3.5 adjusts to be like 4e much better than the reverse.

If you want just minor adjustments, sure 3.5 is a lot easier to modify than 4th edition to get it. You could homebrew up a couple classes to represent the missing magic specializations, and call it done. But that's still ignoring a lot of the better qualities 4e introduced, the concept of at will and encounter powers is something I think really helped a lot, and could do to be used more widely. Similarly, 4e's healing method I think is far superior to 3e.

Just taking the classes mentioned would make for a more balanced game than 3e, but a far less comprehensive one (in terms of character concepts covered), while still being less balanced than 4e. The point I'm trying to make is both systems have a lot of strong points, 4e really was a great leap forward in a lot of areas, it just gave up a large chunk of customization to do it. Working with that as a base system, and reintroducing the customization aspect of things to get to a happy median, I think is a better way to go.

Personally, I expect we'll see something of the sort in 3-4 years when Wizards introduces D&D 5th edition, but we'll wait and see. The alternative is me taking the time out to homebrew a whole system, which is quite a bit of work, and I haven't invested that much time/effort into a game in a few years now.

[Tyndmyr]

It's a decent half-way point...and probably the easiest way to get to something approaching a true halfway point.

I do agree that the two systems are wildly different, with wholly different emphasis and goals.

Frankly, while homebrewing a hybrid may produce a better system than either, if I'm going to gen up a completely unique system(and I am), I'll just go classless. It's personal preference, but class based systems inherently have certain issues that I find easiest to deal with by sidestepping them entirely.

[Malevolence]

Wait... really? I mean, at least identify them if you're going to just ignore him.

What is there to point out? I have clearly stated my position, and he has then gone and misrepresented it, and continues to do so after being corrected.


So, I'm not clear on what your point is... yes, the opponent gets to do something until you kill or disable them. That doesn't change the fact that hp damage is addative, or the fact that dealing 34 damage (which, as far as I can tell is a number you came up with) to a target with 70hp is more useful than dealing 13 damage to it.

I've been trying to puzzle out what your driving at here, and haven't had any luck.

But with very few exceptions, almost every character can deal hp damage in some way or another.

You either have HP or you do not. If you do, you are completely fine. If you do not, you are not. As such, only the last HP matters. Further, D&D combat is extremely fast. 34 damage a round, which by the way is exactly what you have when your stated damage is 2d6+10 and you have 2 attacks, which he did takes 3 rounds and is therefore too slow, even in the best of cases where everything is hitting, which it is not with those numbers. 13.5 damage, the result of 1d8+9 is also too slow. 34 might be less slow, but this is a purely academic difference as neither the Fighter nor the Bison are there for their damage output.

The point here is very simple.

If there is more than 1 HP damage dealer here, then at least one of the following is true:

As you now have to have 2, or more people going after the same target to take it out instead of 1, it's far easier for the enemy to shut down that tactic as it is easier to disable any one of the attackers, leading to not enough damage being dealt to matter than it is to disable all of them, as it would require if the multiple damage dealers were competent, and not a Fighter. For example, they cast Slow and everyone has to save or you're screwed, whereas with the competent, Fighterless party everyone has to not save to be screwed, and additionally since you aren't dragging a Fighter along it is more likely that this will happen due to having better Will saves. It is more likely that at least one person will pass the save than that all of them will, so the second party is harder to screw over.

The other damage dealer(s) is/are a class that's actually useful, like a CoDzilla, or a Gish, or even something like a melee Bard. Or some kind of minion - animated undead, summons, attack animals... In any case the result is the same. Kick the Fighter, get a decent party member.

Having multiple people going after HP damage means there's fewer throwing spells around. That means substantially less resources, endurance, and survivability. It also means substantially lower offensive power. This in turn greatly weakens you overall.

[Tyndmyr]

....Spells do hp damage too. At least, a significant portion of them do. Look, I understand the value of buffs and battlefield control as much as the next person, but sometimes just nuking things to death by hp damage is a perfectly valid strategy. The orb spells are fantastic for a reason, and it isn't their status effects.

In my experience, even with relatively high optimization levels, everyone remains capable of dealing hp damage. It's additive.

And you don't need every single person dealing hp damage to be up all the time to remain effective. That's just...odd. Sure, it helps to keep everyone up, but it's not like if one person goes down, the rest of the party can't keep slapping hp damage on the monster till it drops.

[bladesyz]

Some of you have this curious idea that a DM banning certain spells/feats from his game is "nerfing", as in, somehow contrary or detrimental to the game of D&D as it was intended to be played.

I say, bollocks!

Any published material is only there to serve as a pool of interesting gameplay mecanics that a gaming group can dip into. As with any other aspect of RPGs, what players can get should be entirely left up to the DM.

P&P RPGs are not video games. They are completely open-ended and cannot be "balanced" the way closed-systems like video games can be. Further, WotC with their penchant for selling splatbooks, pretty much tries to publish anything/everything they think might be interesting, and sometimes/often, game balance gets put in the backseat.

Anyone remember what WotC started with? Yes, Magic cards. If you want to see how much importance WotC places on game balance, just look at how "balanced" Magic expansions are. Yes, they are pretty much using the same business strategy for D&D.

Therefore, please stop with the assumption that rules from published materials are somehow supposed to be balanced. If you want balance, that's what the DM is for!

Also, I'd like to ask, why do people think published materials are somehow more "legitimate" than homebrew stuff? It's your game, you should be able to make use of anything your group can agree on. As such, I would think homebrew stuff would be MORE legitimate than any published material, as they truly belong to *your* game.

[Tyndmyr]

As always, I feel required to point out that magic being better than melee is not a splatbook thing. It comes from no one specific point. It is pervasive throughout the entire system, and if anything, splatbooks boost melee more. Go, go ToB.

Published materials are generally more legit because homebrewed stuff so often lacks balance, playtesting, etc. The vast majority of homebrew I have seen used has been terrible. This doesn't mean all homebrew is bad...but it entirely justifies people being more cautious to allow homebrew in their games. Published sources are generally at least mostly solid. Homebrew should always be reviewed before being allowed.

[druid91]

Some of you have this curious idea that a DM banning certain spells/feats from his game is "nerfing", as in, somehow contrary or detrimental to the game of D&D as it was intended to be played.

I say, bollocks!

Any published material is only there to serve as a pool of interesting gameplay mecanics that a gaming group can dip into. As with any other aspect of RPGs, what players can get should be entirely left up to the DM.

P&P RPGs are not video games. They are completely open-ended and cannot be "balanced" the way closed-systems like video games can be. Further, WotC with their penchant for selling splatbooks, pretty much tries to publish anything/everything they think might be interesting, and sometimes/often, game balance gets put in the backseat.

Anyone remember what WotC started with? Yes, Magic cards. If you want to see how much importance WotC places on game balance, just look at how "balanced" Magic expansions are. Yes, they are pretty much using the same business strategy for D&D.

Therefore, please stop with the assumption that rules from published materials are somehow supposed to be balanced. If you want balance, that's what the DM is for!

Also, I'd like to ask, why do people think published materials are somehow more "legitimate" than homebrew stuff? It's your game, you should be able to make use of anything your group can agree on. As such, I would think homebrew stuff would be MORE legitimate than any published material, as they truly belong to *your* game.

I cant tell whether I should root for or against you. On theone hand you throw balance out thewindow. Good. On the other hand you advocate trying to bring balance. Bad.

[Gnaeus]

Some of you have this curious idea that a DM banning certain spells/feats from his game is "nerfing", as in, somehow contrary or detrimental to the game of D&D as it was intended to be played.

I say, bollocks!

When the rules say you get something, you can't just pretend they don't and leave it up to DMs everywhere. Lots of games run under RAW. Many, I suspect most games run on something close to raw, with some tweaks.

I have played in 100% RAW games. I have played in RAW like games where the DM nerfs a small % of the broken stuff. I have played in games with a sizeable set of houserules, including rewriting the most broken spells. I have never played in or seen a game where a DM systematically went through all the spells in all the splats and nerfed or rewrote all the broken ones. I suspect that there are very, very few games that do that, and that most DMs who might undertake such a challenge just play something else instead.


Any published material is only there to serve as a pool of interesting gameplay mecanics that a gaming group can dip into. As with any other aspect of RPGs, what players can get should be entirely left up to the DM.

When I buy a game system with 30 books, I expect for it to run basically as designed. If I have to rewrite it to make it work, I will just pick a different game.

3.5 D&D's balance is bad for 2 related reasons:
1. Character's crunch poorly mirrors their fluff. If I make a monk, thinking I will be bruce lee, and then I suck in combat, my enjoyment is diminished.
2. Its base assumption that it is a team game where everyone cooperates to take down the enemy ultimately fails at certain levels with common builds. Other people have explained this very well.


Therefore, please stop with the assumption that rules from published materials are somehow supposed to be balanced. If you want balance, that's what the DM is for!

Hey! Another assumption! Lots of DMs do not see enforcing balance as a primary, or even a significant, part of their job.

Also, enforcing balance in 3.5 is a big job. My DM has 10 pages of balancing houserules, and it isn't close to being a balanced game. And if you asked 10 people on the forums how to balance D&D, you would get 10 different answers. Even if your DM wants to, he may not be able to.

So, if your DM wants to make the game balanced, and he realizes that it isn't balanced, and he is rules savvy enough to make a set of houserules that are actually balanced, you have no problem. I hope that all the games you ever play in are like this, but I sort of doubt it.

Oh, or the DM can balance in play. He can keep dropping loot specifically for weaker players. He can use mostly monsters that play to weaknesses of strong characters. But after a certain point, it breaks verisimilitude, and pisses off players (hey, thats the third magical spiked chain we've found! why do I never get any loot?! Answer: You're a druid, you don't need loot. Grrr.........)


Also, I'd like to ask, why do people think published materials are somehow more "legitimate" than homebrew stuff? It's your game, you should be able to make use of anything your group can agree on. As such, I would think homebrew stuff would be MORE legitimate than any published material, as they truly belong to *your* game.

It depends. No one argues that use of homebrew is bad. There are entire homebrew forums which do great work. But even the best homebrew only applies to a handful of games. When you say things about 3.5, or another game system, you are talking about the published rules, not the stuff that only goes on in your game. If we thought houserules were bad, would we help players who post requests like "I want to make an X. These are the houserules in my game"? I mean, if they seem like really BAD houserules, someone is likely to say so, but that doesn't mean that they dislike houserules, only bad rules.


As always, I feel required to point out that magic being better than melee is not a splatbook thing. It comes from no one specific point. It is pervasive throughout the entire system, and if anything, splatbooks boost melee more. Go, go ToB.

Published materials are generally more legit because homebrewed stuff so often lacks balance, playtesting, etc. The vast majority of homebrew I have seen used has been terrible. This doesn't mean all homebrew is bad...but it entirely justifies people being more cautious to allow homebrew in their games. Published sources are generally at least mostly solid. Homebrew should always be reviewed before being allowed.

This is entirely true.

[bladesyz]

I cant tell whether I should root for or against you. On theone hand you throw balance out thewindow. Good. On the other hand you advocate trying to bring balance. Bad.

I think we're suffering from a confusion of terms here. I believe that D&D as a source material is too open-ended to be balanced. However, I do believe that it is possible for a (good) DM to "balance" gameplay. By that, I mean making sure that every player gets to enjoy the game.

[Tyndmyr]

I don't believe balance is necessary for every player to enjoy the game.

I also don't feel it particularly necessary for everyone to be perfectly balanced. If one player wants to run a monk, and one wants to run a wizard, I'll allow it. Sure, I'll warn the monk, and give him optimization tips if he wants em, but if not, fair enough. Some people enjoy different things. For some, being the underdog is what they want.

[Gnaeus]

I think we're suffering from a confusion of terms here. I believe that D&D as a source material is too open-ended to be balanced. However, I do believe that it is possible for a (good) DM to "balance" gameplay. By that, I mean making sure that every player gets to enjoy the game.

That is a terrible definition of balance. I have enjoyed lots of games that weren't remotely balanced in any way. Vampire games where someone played a Ghoul. Werewolf games that included Kinfolk PCs. They weren't balanced at all. But we did have full disclosure.

Heck, I was in one D&D game where balance meant that the DM had most big monsters in pairs. The druid and his pet fought 1, and the other 4 people fought the other. We had fun.

[randomhero00]

Magic is better because a wizard did it. Seriously, just cooler.

[bladesyz]

That is a terrible definition of balance. I have enjoyed lots of games that weren't remotely balanced in any way. Vampire games where someone played a Ghoul. Werewolf games that included Kinfolk PCs. They weren't balanced at all. But we did have full disclosure.

Heck, I was in one D&D game where balance meant that the DM had most big monsters in pairs. The druid and his pet fought 1, and the other 4 people fought the other. We had fun.

Isn't the main gripe of why "magic > mundane" is bad because magic users gets to do whatever the other classes can do, and thus players of those other classes no longer enjoys the game?

I mean, in your example, if everyone was fine with one character being clearly superior to all the other characters, then why would "balance" even be an issue?

To me, "balance" isn't about stats and numbers. It's about balancing the enjoyment of every player. You're right that in WW games, you can play ghoul with vamps, kinfolk with garou, but you will very rarely see D&D games with one level 3 fighter in a party of level 12 characters. Why? Because WW games tends to focus on situations where "power" (and by which we mean combat abilities, really) don't matter as much.

[Gnaeus]

Isn't the main gripe of why "magic > mundane" is bad because magic users gets to do whatever the other classes can do, and thus players of those other classes no longer enjoys the game?

I mean, in your example, if everyone was fine with one character being clearly superior to all the other characters, then why would "balance" even be an issue?

To me, "balance" isn't about stats and numbers. It's about balancing the enjoyment of every player. You're right that in WW games, you can play ghoul with vamps, kinfolk with garou, but you will very rarely see D&D games with one level 3 fighter in a party of level 12 characters. Why? Because WW games tends to focus on situations where "power" (and by which we mean combat abilities, really) don't matter as much.

Because when I make a kinfolk in a pack of Garou, I know that I can't fight what they are fighting. I know when I start the game that 3 years and 120 exp later, I am barely able to contribute in the same fight as a rank 1 garou who started play yesterday. So when I suck, I don't feel bad. Thats what I signed up for. When I make a ghoul, I know that I have a master, and that I will be treated like dirt by 90% of vampires. It is no surprise, then, when I get ordered around by my betters.

When I make a fighter, I expect to be able to defeat the demons with my mighty thews and glowing sword. I don't expect to carry the wizard's luggage. No one complains that Commoner, Warrior, Adept and Expert aren't balanced. They aren't supposed to be balanced. If I play one, they adequately fulfill all my low expectations.



I mean, in your example, if everyone was fine with one character being clearly superior to all the other characters, then why would "balance" even be an issue?

Correct. If the wizard one shots every encounter ever, and the fighter cheers and thinks that is great, "balance" is not an issue. Unfortunately, that is often not the case.

[Malevolence]

....Spells do hp damage too. At least, a significant portion of them do. Look, I understand the value of buffs and battlefield control as much as the next person, but sometimes just nuking things to death by hp damage is a perfectly valid strategy. The orb spells are fantastic for a reason, and it isn't their status effects.

Orb spells are primarily used for their save or lose properties, and secondarily used for taking out high level casters who think turning off their own class features is a good idea. The trivial amounts of damage they deal is an afterthought, unless you are going well out of your way to optimize it up to acceptable levels. In any and all other scenarios the result of trying to take things out by blasting them is that you burn a lot of resources, don't do a lot of damage, but do take a lot of damage, leading to a whole lot of party deaths.


In my experience, even with relatively high optimization levels, everyone remains capable of dealing hp damage. It's additive.

And you don't need every single person dealing hp damage to be up all the time to remain effective. That's just...odd. Sure, it helps to keep everyone up, but it's not like if one person goes down, the rest of the party can't keep slapping hp damage on the monster till it drops.

With a damage output of 34 at level 6, you need at least two, and likely three such characters just to deal with normal fights. Not to mention the ones harder than normal... if any of them gets knocked out, you can't do enough damage anymore.

Compare to a damage dealer actually worth something, who does 70. If there's multiple such characters, all of them have to get knocked out, as any one of them can handle the minimum damage contribution required.

So with weak characters like the Fighter, yes it is required, because you need multiple characters to do one character's job. With decent beatsticks, one can handle it, so if you have more than one you have redundancy systems.

Of course, since attacking for HP damage is not how you win fights, and taking enemies out is, the role of a beatstick is still not especially important. That is why it can, and should be delegated to a minion, or someone who can do that and also other things.

[Tyndmyr]

Orb spells are primarily used for their save or lose properties, and secondarily used for taking out high level casters who think turning off their own class features is a good idea. The trivial amounts of damage they deal is an afterthought, unless you are going well out of your way to optimize it up to acceptable levels. In any and all other scenarios the result of trying to take things out by blasting them is that you burn a lot of resources, don't do a lot of damage, but do take a lot of damage, leading to a whole lot of party deaths.

Really? You use spells primarily for SoL that, if you're fortunate, have a one round debuff that requires a touch attack AND a save? And are single target? That is among the worst SoLs ever. Not to mention, not all of the orbs even HAVE a SoL property.

No, they are used because they do solid damage, ignore spell resistance, have decent range, are instant conjurations, and can thus penetrate AMFs, and deal damage regardless of save. The line of spells exists to be reliable HP damage.


With a damage output of 34 at level 6, you need at least two, and likely three such characters just to deal with normal fights. Not to mention the ones harder than normal... if any of them gets knocked out, you can't do enough damage anymore.

Standard is four in a party, fighting an equal CR monster. That's a pretty normal fight. Four such characters would have absolutely no problem shredding this opponent. This melee character is also not at a high level of optimization at all(Fighter 6 w/o dungeoncrasher is never optimized).

So, it's doing quite fine in comparison with other equally leveled, equally optimized classes.


Compare to a damage dealer actually worth something, who does 70. If there's multiple such characters, all of them have to get knocked out, as any one of them can handle the minimum damage contribution required.

Yes, optimization is good. Of course. But nobody does 70 damage a round at level 6 without optimization. This is not really a relevant comparison with regards to magic vs melee.


So with weak characters like the Fighter, yes it is required, because you need multiple characters to do one character's job. With decent beatsticks, one can handle it, so if you have more than one you have redundancy systems.

Instagibbing everything in one attack is not a basic assumption of D&D, and it is not required to be competent and/or useful. Certainly not at level 6, which is one of the least rocket taglike levels.


Of course, since attacking for HP damage is not how you win fights, and taking enemies out is, the role of a beatstick is still not especially important. That is why it can, and should be delegated to a minion, or someone who can do that and also other things.

Hp damage can, in fact, take enemies out.

[Malevolence]

Really? You use spells primarily for SoL that, if you're fortunate, have a one round debuff that requires a touch attack AND a save? And are single target? That is among the worst SoLs ever. Not to mention, not all of the orbs even HAVE a SoL property.

No, they are used because they do solid damage, ignore spell resistance, have decent range, are instant conjurations, and can thus penetrate AMFs, and deal damage regardless of save. The line of spells exists to be reliable HP damage.

1 round is a long time in D&D. I never said it was the best save or lose, only that save or loses influence fights, and 1d6 a level does not. 1d6 a level does a nice job of tickling the enemy, and mildly annoying them, but it does not influence the fight against them. And the amount of optimization required to turn 1d6 a level into something good is actually higher than the amount required to make a beatstick able to contribute enough HP damage to make a difference. Of course the spellcaster stops sucking as soon as they realize Fireball and similar are a waste of time and resources, and the beatstick doesn't have a choice but to do HP damage, or maybe tripping.


Standard is four in a party, fighting an equal CR monster. That's a pretty normal fight. Four such characters would have absolutely no problem shredding this opponent. This melee character is also not at a high level of optimization at all(Fighter 6 w/o dungeoncrasher is never optimized).

So, it's doing quite fine in comparison with other equally leveled, equally optimized classes.

Because teams of 4 Fighters are great, right?

No. You're going to have some save or lose casters doing all the heavy lifting. If there's more than one beatstick, either you have multiple weak beatsticks dragging the party down, or the other one easily outclasses the silly Fighter.


Yes, optimization is good. Of course. But nobody does 70 damage a round at level 6 without optimization. This is not really a relevant comparison with regards to magic vs melee.

Yes, HP damage requires optimization to work at all. That's the point. And a part of that point is "don't be a Fighter".


Instagibbing everything in one attack is not a basic assumption of D&D, and it is not required to be competent and/or useful. Certainly not at level 6, which is one of the least rocket taglike levels.

Hp damage can, in fact, take enemies out.

Enemies take you out in 1-2 rounds at every level of play. To survive fights, you must at the minimum kill them even faster. And since only the last HP matters, that does mean you need a damage output that equals or exceeds the average HP of an at level enemy + 1, and that is the minimum benchmark. Harder than normal enemies will enforce a higher standard, and you encounter those quite often by RAW. So without even raising the difficulty of the game, you have a high benchmark for HP damage, and you're not even coming close to it without optimizing. Save or loses meanwhile make a difference right now, and as such are much more playable out of the box.

Which is why if you hand a new player a level 5 wizard who looks like this:

Int 21, Con 14, other stats don't matter too much.

3: Slow, Stinking Cloud.

2: Glitterdust, Rope Trick, Web.

1: Grease, Grease, Mage Armor, Ray of Enfeeblement, Ray of Enfeeblement.

Items: Headband of Intellect +2, Lesser Rod of Extend, miscellaneous non magical items.

Despite the complete lack of non obvious optimization, and complete lack of non core material he'll do fine.

[ffone]

Magic being better than mundane for the same character level is bad because that's the point - almost the would-be definition - of level.

If you think magic > mundane is good for fluff / world reasons, the solution is easy: DM declares the average NPC wizard's level is higher than the average fighter's. They study harder, they study for longer (age categories help them!), they gain experience in less lethal ways (studying instead of wars), whatever.

This dovetails with typical fantasy archetypes of The Wizard being an older dude who's studied and explored really hard for decades, and may have an unusual life span (like Gandalf or elves). Whereas the Hero-Fighter archetype tends to be a young brash dude (unlike Aragorn or Legolas) who just left home (or just had it burned down by orcs).

[Fox Box Socks]

Magic being better than mundane for the same character level is bad because that's the point - almost the would-be definition - of level.
This. Magic being more powerful than mundane is okay if a) everyone is either magic or mundane or b) if you are using a point-buy system (since magic, being more powerful, will be more expensive to invest in). A level system implies some sort of baseline comparison; that characters of level X will be about Y strong, so the GM can prepare threats that are appropriate for a Y strength. Certain options being stronger than other options just creates headaches for the guy creating threats.

[huttj509]

I don't believe balance is necessary for every player to enjoy the game.

I also don't feel it particularly necessary for everyone to be perfectly balanced. If one player wants to run a monk, and one wants to run a wizard, I'll allow it. Sure, I'll warn the monk, and give him optimization tips if he wants em, but if not, fair enough. Some people enjoy different things. For some, being the underdog is what they want.

If the folks involved go into it eyes open, and that's the situation they want...great! Seriously, people being able to play what they want together is the primary point!

The issue is, well, you know about the power difference, and you make sure the monk does as well. Upon an initial, and often repeated reading of the book, it's not clear. The book does not come out and say "the monk is a class that requires multiple high stats and careful planning in order to remain relevant at mid-high levels." The classes are presented on an equal footing (until you crunch the numbers a bit), and that leads to a monk starting to wonder why he seems to have too much trouble hitting, too many resists on stunning fist, and can't even get extra flurry attacks to compensate for the lower BAB if he needed to move to reach an enemy (though at least he needs to spend fewer rounds moving between foes, due to higher base speed). Meanwhile, the druid saw Natural Spell (hey, it lets me use my class abilities while using my class abilities) and accidentally broke the class wide open.

If someone wanted to, they could play an npc class, or be a few levels behind, or choose to have lower stats if they wanted a character deliberately more "Mr. Normal" than their allies.

[Gnaeus]

This. Magic being more powerful than mundane is okay if a) everyone is either magic or mundane or b) if you are using a point-buy system (since magic, being more powerful, will be more expensive to invest in). A level system implies some sort of baseline comparison; that characters of level X will be about Y strong, so the GM can prepare threats that are appropriate for a Y strength. Certain options being stronger than other options just creates headaches for the guy creating threats.

Not really. If that were true, Commoner would need to be as powerful as Wizard.

[Seerow]

Not really. If that were true, Commoner would need to be as powerful as Wizard.

Commoner is one of the 4 NPC classes that is explicitly expected to be weaker than player character classes.


Ironically, the caster NPC class is still stronger than a Fighter, but that's another problem altogether.

[balistafreak]

This. Magic being more powerful than mundane is okay if a) everyone is either magic or mundane or b) if you are using a point-buy system (since magic, being more powerful, will be more expensive to invest in). A level system implies some sort of baseline comparison; that characters of level X will be about Y strong, so the GM can prepare threats that are appropriate for a Y strength. Certain options being stronger than other options just creates headaches for the guy creating threats.

Thought for the day: unique level-up experience values for classes? Fighters would level up super fast, while Wizards remain at a crawl. Make CR and ECL based off of total experience, not "level".

[Seerow]

Thought for the day: unique level-up experience values for classes? Fighters would level up super fast, while Wizards remain at a crawl. CR and ECL is now based off of total experience, not "level".

Welcome to 1st/2nd edition D&D.


That said, it's not a bad solution. Fighters breaking into epic level feats at say ECL10-12 or so would certainly help them keep up, and the higher hit dice/BAB makes them more capable of standing toe to toe with monsters of their CR, and keep them well above animal companions/summons/created undead.

It doesn't really solve the problem of Fighters have no real choices though, and it brings up a lot of weird questions with regards to PrCs (ie what experience table does the PrC use?)



edit: By no real choices, I mean options and access to the action economy. Fighters would still have basically nothing to do with their swift actions, and would still mostly be locked into standing still and full attacking, they'd just be a lot better at that schtick. It's a great way to raise the power level of weak classes, it doesn't necessarily make them more fun to play. YMMV

[Tyndmyr]

1 round is a long time in D&D. I never said it was the best save or lose, only that save or loses influence fights, and 1d6 a level does not. 1d6 a level does a nice job of tickling the enemy, and mildly annoying them, but it does not influence the fight against them. And the amount of optimization required to turn 1d6 a level into something good is actually higher than the amount required to make a beatstick able to contribute enough HP damage to make a difference. Of course the spellcaster stops sucking as soon as they realize Fireball and similar are a waste of time and resources, and the beatstick doesn't have a choice but to do HP damage, or maybe tripping.[quote]

Fireball is not the best of spells, but it's not the worst, either. In E6, I helped a newbie create a warmage with arcane thesis and the appropriate reserve feat. Boom, CL 9 fireballs. This is a fairly moderate level of optimization(I only used two feats on it, in E6, after all), and still, it remains highly relevant.

HP damage certainly isn't always the best plan, but I find it odd that you value a rather meh chance of a single target debuff for one round higher than an average 21 damage at level six. And that without optimization.

[quote]Because teams of 4 Fighters are great, right?

Not my ideal choice of team, but four fighters can easily deal with an equal level CR in most cases. Walls of meat like the centipede are quite doable.


No. You're going to have some save or lose casters doing all the heavy lifting. If there's more than one beatstick, either you have multiple weak beatsticks dragging the party down, or the other one easily outclasses the silly Fighter.

SoLs have excellent synergy with many things, but I fear you've taken the PO advice of what is generally best and taken it much too far.


Yes, HP damage requires optimization to work at all. That's the point. And a part of that point is "don't be a Fighter".

That's not what I said. At all. I pointed out that you have gotten sidetracked on optimized vs nonoptimized instead of the magic vs melee that this topic is about.


Enemies take you out in 1-2 rounds at every level of play. To survive fights, you must at the minimum kill them even faster. And since only the last HP matters, that does mean you need a damage output that equals or exceeds the average HP of an at level enemy + 1, and that is the minimum benchmark. Harder than normal enemies will enforce a higher standard, and you encounter those quite often by RAW. So without even raising the difficulty of the game, you have a high benchmark for HP damage, and you're not even coming close to it without optimizing. Save or loses meanwhile make a difference right now, and as such are much more playable out of the box.

No, this is not standard D&D. This is, at minimum, heavily optimized D&D.

It is not standard for players to be expected to one-shot things 1CR higher than their level. It is standard for four players to be able to defeat an encounter with a CR equal to their level without excessive resource expenditure.

[Gnaeus]

Commoner is one of the 4 NPC classes that is explicitly expected to be weaker than player character classes.


Exactly. The problem isn't that everything with levels needs to be the same. It is all about expectations. If I wrote a D20 supplement which had 3 categories of classes (call them commoner, hero, and superhero) and all the commoner classes were balanced against each other, all the hero classes were balanced against each other, and all the superhero classes were balanced against each other, that wouldn't be a problem at all. The DM could say "only select from this group of classes". Or the players could balance among themselves. The fact that the different categories were at different power levels is less important than that they are all performing as advertised.

Edit: Also, Adept isn't necessarily stronger than fighter. Its spells make it more versatile, and therefore higher tier than fighter. A fight between a level 10 fighter and a level 10 adept is much less certain in outcome than a ftr 10 and a cleric or wiz 10.

[navar100]

So, then, what encounters can challenge both the wizard and the rest of the part?

My particular DM likes to have the bad guys out-number the party two to one, sometimes three to one. The wizard can cast his awesome spells of whatever to his heart's content, but he can't defeat all the bad guys by himself. When he's taken out some bad guys, so too have others which include the Fighter. Also, shocking as it might be to some people, the bad guys sometimes actually do make saving throws negating whatever effect the wizard's spell was meant to do.

[navar100]

Would agree.

I do agree, though, that advertising a game as something other than what it is can definitely cause disappointment and dissatisfaction. 3.5 is not an inherently bad game, but the designers did sometimes fail to understand the true effects of rules.

I would agree with that. When 3.0 first came out, it was clear they overvalued making an attack roll and undervalued casting a spell. This was shown by requiring two feats for two-weapon fighting while Haste was just there. As 3.5 was drawing to a close they were finally starting to get it. Book of Nine Swords was one means but even within the system dedicated warriors were improving their lot with better feats. I even include Duskblade in this line of thinking as a decent gish class such that melee and magic can coexist in one character. Contrast it to the earlier published Hexblade with its pathetic magic because warriors aren't allowed nice things thinking. Even Prestige Classes showed signs of improvement. Before, there was pathetic Eldritch Knight which didn't do anything. Later on we got Abjurant Champion which is a common route for gishes. To be fair I'll include Beguiler, Warmage, and Favored Soul as lower powered spellcasters that don't gimp playing a spellcaster.

[Tyndmyr]

I'd agree. I think hexblade is workable, in the debuff role...but it's nothing spectacular.

Either spellblade or abjurant champion are superior to EK, and more importantly, can be used in combo with EK(You can typically get into EK sooner). With just EK, you eventually ran out of it before you hit 20 and could do epic EK. Rather painful, really.

Later published caster classes tended to be a lot more reasonable, and later published melee had more options. I heavily favor allowing splatbooks, and feel it's great for making melee more useful in general.

[Malevolence]

1 round is a long time in D&D. I never said it was the best save or lose, only that save or loses influence fights, and 1d6 a level does not. 1d6 a level does a nice job of tickling the enemy, and mildly annoying them, but it does not influence the fight against them. And the amount of optimization required to turn 1d6 a level into something good is actually higher than the amount required to make a beatstick able to contribute enough HP damage to make a difference. Of course the spellcaster stops sucking as soon as they realize Fireball and similar are a waste of time and resources, and the beatstick doesn't have a choice but to do HP damage, or maybe tripping.

Fireball is not the best of spells, but it's not the worst, either. In E6, I helped a newbie create a warmage with arcane thesis and the appropriate reserve feat. Boom, CL 9 fireballs. This is a fairly moderate level of optimization(I only used two feats on it, in E6, after all), and still, it remains highly relevant.

HP damage certainly isn't always the best plan, but I find it odd that you value a rather meh chance of a single target debuff for one round higher than an average 21 damage at level six. And that without optimization.

So you raise it by 50%, and it's still only doing 31.5 in the stars align best case scenario. And since there's a long list of things that mess with blasting, having none of them be there is a stars align scenario. And even with that, the result is still less than half the strength it needs to be.

When you cast Orb of Fire, one of the following effects occurs:

You influence the combat: Enemy fails the save vs daze or whatever, and is dazed.
You effectively do nothing: Enemy passes the save. Obviously it easily shakes off the small amount of damage.
You literally do nothing: You miss, enemy negates all the damage, etc.

When you cast Fireball, one of the following effects occurs:

You effectively do nothing: The stars align, and nothing gets in the way of the blasting... but it is so weak that it doesn't make a difference anyways.
You effectively or literally do nothing: Enemy saves/has fire resist/etc. And the piddly, ignorable damage gets reduced further, most likely to 0.

Fireball has a 0% chance to influence the combat. Orb of Fire has a > 0% chance to influence the combat. As such, Orb of Fire is a better spell. It's still a single target one round save or lose which isn't that good, but that's still better than an attack the enemy will laugh off no matter how well it works. A better example would be Wings of Flurry, which is an AoE save or lose. In any case though the damage is an afterthought, except for popping anyone stupid enough to cast Anti Magic Field without Extraordinary Spell Aim and then only because they'll have bad saves and very low HP.


Not my ideal choice of team, but four fighters can easily deal with an equal level CR in most cases. Walls of meat like the centipede are quite doable.

And then you reach fight 2 of the day, and everyone dies, because they have no healing, no buffs, and none of the things that get you through combats.


SoLs have excellent synergy with many things, but I fear you've taken the PO advice of what is generally best and taken it much too far.

That's not what I said. At all. I pointed out that you have gotten sidetracked on optimized vs nonoptimized instead of the magic vs melee that this topic is about.

Nah, I haven't taken it too far. The sidetrack does tie into the topic though. Melee is so weak that an 800 gold attack animal does it as well or better, as do many other things. Of course it does not compare favorably to magic. It would need to step it up immensely to hold a candle to it. For starters, it would have to offer more than attack for HP damage, and often not that well.


No, this is not standard D&D. This is, at minimum, heavily optimized D&D.

It is not standard for players to be expected to one-shot things 1CR higher than their level. It is standard for four players to be able to defeat an encounter with a CR equal to their level without excessive resource expenditure.

Would you consider "1 PC" excessive resource expenditure? Because that is what you get when you try to rely on HP damage but have weak and ineffective damage dealers. For examples, see Saph's campaign journal. If you have damage dealers worth something, you're better off, but it's still save or loses that win fights. The HP damage is just an afterthought.

[Tyndmyr]

So you raise it by 50%, and it's still only doing 31.5 in the stars align best case scenario. And since there's a long list of things that mess with blasting, having none of them be there is a stars align scenario. And even with that, the result is still less than half the strength it needs to be.

When you cast Orb of Fire, one of the following effects occurs:

You influence the combat: Enemy fails the save vs daze or whatever, and is dazed.
You effectively do nothing: Enemy passes the save. Obviously it easily shakes off the small amount of damage.
You literally do nothing: You miss, enemy negates all the damage, etc.

When you cast Fireball, one of the following effects occurs:

You effectively do nothing: The stars align, and nothing gets in the way of the blasting... but it is so weak that it doesn't make a difference anyways.
You effectively or literally do nothing: Enemy saves/has fire resist/etc. And the piddly, ignorable damage gets reduced further, most likely to 0.

Fireball has a 0% chance to influence the combat. Orb of Fire has a > 0% chance to influence the combat. As such, Orb of Fire is a better spell. It's still a single target one round save or lose which isn't that good, but that's still better than an attack the enemy will laugh off no matter how well it works. A better example would be Wings of Flurry, which is an AoE save or lose. In any case though the damage is an afterthought, except for popping anyone stupid enough to cast Anti Magic Field without Extraordinary Spell Aim and then only because they'll have bad saves and very low HP.

Different situations for orb of fire and fireball. Fireball, you bust out your rod of empower, and aoe multiple opponent fights to death. Oh, sure, it's not a guarantee, but when you're targetting a bunch of people, you're likely to get a failed save or three. In E6, it's a fairly decent choice. Note that it has range. Note also that orb of fire is single target. Orb of fire is superior against single targets, but it is not against a group.

Note that choosing Wings of Flurry instead was literally not possible in the instance I gave. WoF is a level 4 spell, and is sorc only. It is not at all helpful for the situation. Also, WoF is d6/level as well. It's a beautiful spell in the right situation(ie, you're playing a blasty sorc, and want spells that scale well), but the SoL portion(dazed for a round if you fail your save) is just a bonus. Much like the SoL portion of orb of fire(the best debuff of the orbs).

Reducing hp so enemies fall over DOES influence the combat.


And then you reach fight 2 of the day, and everyone dies, because they have no healing, no buffs, and none of the things that get you through combats.

I have never played in a game where some method of recovery was not used to regain hp after a fight. Just because you don't have a cleric doesn't mean you need to play like you're terminally stupid.


Nah, I haven't taken it too far. The sidetrack does tie into the topic though. Melee is so weak that an 800 gold attack animal does it as well or better, as do many other things. Of course it does not compare favorably to magic. It would need to step it up immensely to hold a candle to it. For starters, it would have to offer more than attack for HP damage, and often not that well.

I could likewise say that healing is so weak that a 750 gp wand does it better, so you don't need a cleric. Both are roughly as true.


Would you consider "1 PC" excessive resource expenditure? Because that is what you get when you try to rely on HP damage but have weak and ineffective damage dealers. For examples, see Saph's campaign journal. If you have damage dealers worth something, you're better off, but it's still save or loses that win fights. The HP damage is just an afterthought.

Look, level of optimization is not the point here. Yes, I'm aware that you can optimize melee well beyond six levels of straight fighter. That is not what this discussion is about. It is about comparing magic to melee. Please, for the love of all that is good and just, realize that it's not about comparing optimized to unoptimized.

Magebred fleshraker = optimized.
Core Fighter 6 with no feats spent = unoptimized.
Comparing these two = silly.

[Gnaeus]

I could likewise say that healing is so weak that a 750 gp wand does it better, so you don't need a cleric. Both are roughly as true.

Not really. With the wand, you don't need the cleric as a HP healer, but the cleric can always pull his weight. He is far, far more flexible, and brings much more to the table than the wand.

The trained dinosaur fulfills most of the fighter's party role.

And the cleric, of course, will become far stronger as the game progresses. The fighter will only get comparatively weaker.

[Tyndmyr]

Not really. With the wand, you don't need the cleric as a HP healer, but the cleric can always pull his weight. He is far, far more flexible, and brings much more to the table than the wand.

Exactly. You can replace the traditional "cleric job" with a wand, yes. This is not at all the same as replacing the cleric for a number of reasons.

The same is true of the fighter. An actual melee guy will almost certainly bring a bit more to the table than just hp damage, be it tripping, or skills, or maneuvers. Sure, he does hp damage...and with work, he can do it quite well, and will in the long run be better at it than the dinosaur or fleshraker(hey...note what doesn't fly?), so while you can replace the traditional "I gots a shield and a sword and I hit things" fighter job, you're not really replacing the fighter as a whole.

Especially because people keep using much higher levels of optimization for the fighter replacement than the fighter. Yes, if I play pun-pun, I can replace the wizard as a paladin. However, that is trivial and proves nothing.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Malevolence: Your insistence that HP damage does nothing simply leaves me dazed. Even a cursory glance at the game should be enough to tell you that it's not just useful, but necessary to win most combats.

You can talk about SOL all you like, but when you stop a mob of goblins with Grease, what is the thing that actually kills them? That's right, sharp pieces of metal to the gut, ie. HP damage.

And it most often is necessary to kill them, because they'll eventually make it out of the grease, and then they're back in the battle. Which is varying degrees of bad, depending on what the players' goals are.

HP damage is perfectly viable in myriad other situation too. Many adversaries have great save or are outright immune to majority of status effects, which renders myriad SOLs and SODs ineffective. It's entirely possible that entire party attacking the opponent with sharp sticks or fireballs is enough to drop them, but trying to use spells will be waste of resources and just keeps the opponent in battle for one more turn.

You're too fixated on actions of a single character. Even if only that last HP matters, if the party as a whole can deal enough it to cross that treshold, causing HP damage can easily be better choice than status effects or battlefield control.

[Jayabalard]

What is there to point out? Examples of him using straw man arguments; I'm not seeing them.


You either have HP or you do not.No, HP is not a boolean condition, it's an integer.


The point here is very simple.You say this... and then fail to make any sort of point. There's just a wall of text reiterating your claim that it's less efficient while grossly misrepresenting the various probabilities involved. Being less efficient does not make it non-useful; it just makes it less efficient.

[Malevolence]

Exactly. You can replace the traditional "cleric job" with a wand, yes. This is not at all the same as replacing the cleric for a number of reasons.

The same is true of the fighter. An actual melee guy will almost certainly bring a bit more to the table than just hp damage, be it tripping, or skills, or maneuvers. Sure, he does hp damage...and with work, he can do it quite well, and will in the long run be better at it than the dinosaur or fleshraker(hey...note what doesn't fly?), so while you can replace the traditional "I gots a shield and a sword and I hit things" fighter job, you're not really replacing the fighter as a whole.

Skills stop mattering past low levels, and are better done by any number of classes that are not beatsticks in any case. Tripping is the only alternative to HP damage they have... and Fleshrakers can also trip things. Most maneuvers are simply means to do HP damage that allow you to also move. Fleshrakers can Pounce, thereby doing HP damage, and also moving. The few that are not come on cheap items (Moment of Perfect Mind, White Raven Tactics), aren't that good, or are rare enough that Martial Study on a Fleshraker animal companion will probably cover it. And in any case it still comes out to cheaper than a beatstick.

As for what doesn't fly, the answer is both the Fighter and the Fleshraker.


Different situations for orb of fire and fireball. Fireball, you bust out your rod of empower, and aoe multiple opponent fights to death. Oh, sure, it's not a guarantee, but when you're targetting a bunch of people, you're likely to get a failed save or three. In E6, it's a fairly decent choice. Note that it has range. Note also that orb of fire is single target. Orb of fire is superior against single targets, but it is not against a group.

Ok, so you spend over two thirds of your total wealth at the level to get an item that results in you tickling the enemies a bit more, but still not killing them. If you're fighting a large number of enemies, either they're mooks, in which case you can just blaze through with little to no resource expenditure instead of wasting time blasting, or it's an actually hard fight, in which case you need to cast good spells instead of wasting time blasting. In either case blasting is not the solution.

Against a single target Orb of Fire has a non 0% chance of diminishing their ability to fight back. Fireball has a 0% chance of diminishing their ability to fight back.

And if you insist on bringing up E6, you cast Slow, and you take out around 50-75% of the enemies on the spot, thereby influencing combat a great deal. Perhaps you use Stinking Cloud for the same effect. Or Glitterdust or Web, which are lower level.


Note that choosing Wings of Flurry instead was literally not possible in the instance I gave. WoF is a level 4 spell, and is sorc only. It is not at all helpful for the situation. Also, WoF is d6/level as well. It's a beautiful spell in the right situation(ie, you're playing a blasty sorc, and want spells that scale well), but the SoL portion(dazed for a round if you fail your save) is just a bonus. Much like the SoL portion of orb of fire(the best debuff of the orbs).

Orb spells are also level 4, so it is very possible indeed. And you have it exactly backwards. Things that influence fights are the meat. Piddly damage is just fluff.


Reducing hp so enemies fall over DOES influence the combat.

That requires you to use substantially more than 1d6 a level. If the enemy starts casting Fireball on you, and you spend every round river dancing, while the rest of the party deals with the encounter you will survive easily. It fares even worse when used on the enemy, as they have much more HP.


I have never played in a game where some method of recovery was not used to regain hp after a fight. Just because you don't have a cleric doesn't mean you need to play like you're terminally stupid.

So instead, you spend all your money on overpriced potions? Yeah, how's that working out for you and your extremely gear dependent team?


I could likewise say that healing is so weak that a 750 gp wand does it better, so you don't need a cleric. Both are roughly as true.

Healing is so weak that a 750 gold wand does it better. If you go without a Cleric you'll still have a hard time though. Not because of healing, because it was never about that but because of all the great other spells you miss out on. Hell, I have a game where the party is Artificer/Bard/Druid/StP Erudite and the lack of a Cleric is concerning. Without a Cleric, you don't get good saves, so if enemy casters get turns and cast effective spells on you you got a real problem there. After all, the influences combat right away thing works both ways.


Look, level of optimization is not the point here. Yes, I'm aware that you can optimize melee well beyond six levels of straight fighter. That is not what this discussion is about. It is about comparing magic to melee. Please, for the love of all that is good and just, realize that it's not about comparing optimized to unoptimized.

Magebred fleshraker = optimized.
Core Fighter 6 with no feats spent = unoptimized.
Comparing these two = silly.

Even if you get past those beatsticks that are not good at beatsticking, you have one guy who swings a weapon around for HP damage and the other who has fantastic cosmic power with the only balancing power being an irritatingly small home. Obviously, the two are not balanced. And it's a problem because these are presented as equal choices. Were they honest about D&D 3.5 borrowing moderately from Ars Magica, and D&D PF borrowing heavily from the same I'd have no problem with it. But they weren't. Curse you Ivory Tower Design and your not so vaguely phallic implications!

As it is though, there are still plenty of viable classes, and as such the game focuses on those. Most of those classes are magical based, because mundane solutions just don't solve problems. And even the ones that aren't end up relying on magic anyways, it's just coming from their gear and not them.


@Malevolence: Your insistence that HP damage does nothing simply leaves me dazed. Even a cursory glance at the game should be enough to tell you that it's not just useful, but necessary to win most combats.

You can talk about SOL all you like, but when you stop a mob of goblins with Grease, what is the thing that actually kills them? That's right, sharp pieces of metal to the gut, ie. HP damage.

A formality dealt out by minions, not a party role. Without the Grease, the beatstick gets swarmed with predictably fatal results.


HP damage is perfectly viable in myriad other situation too. Many adversaries have great save or are outright immune to majority of status effects, which renders myriad SOLs and SODs ineffective. It's entirely possible that entire party attacking the opponent with sharp sticks or fireballs is enough to drop them, but trying to use spells will be waste of resources and just keeps the opponent in battle for one more turn.

If they have great saves they also have a lot of HP. Great saves also make Fireballs even worse, by the way. And even with a low success rate, only one needs to land to win it. Give an enemy saves they pass on a 6 or better, and you will still most likely 1 round them.


You're too fixated on actions of a single character. Even if only that last HP matters, if the party as a whole can deal enough it to cross that treshold, causing HP damage can easily be better choice than status effects or battlefield control.

And then any member of the party gets disabled, you can't do enough damage, and bodies start to hit the floor.


Examples of him using straw man arguments; I'm not seeing them.

No, HP is not a boolean condition, it's an integer.

You say this... and then fail to make any sort of point. There's just a wall of text reiterating your claim that it's less efficient while grossly misrepresenting the various probabilities involved. Being less efficient does not make it non-useful; it just makes it less efficient.

I'm not going back several pages and picking out every example of him deliberately misrepresenting my position and arguing against that instead of what I actually said. You can go back and follow the discussion through if you want, it was clear enough.

HP is a boolean condition. As long as your HP are > 0 you are perfectly fine, and fully fighting effective. It doesn't matter if it's 1 HP left or 501, and doesn't matter if your max HP is 10 or 511. The moment they drop below 0, you lose all fighting effectiveness. When at exactly 0, you either lose most of it or none or it depending on class and then drop to below 0. Except that HP are high enough compared to damage that getting to the last one, the only one that actually matters takes prohibitively long without optimizing. Enemies do not have this difficulty against you though. One full attack, and at least 70% is gone. This in turn imposes a short time limit to the fight. You need to scale your damage up to levels to one round the enemy before they take you out just to even begin to have a chance.

Additionally, there is an opportunity cost behind all choices. Doing one thing means not doing another. So when you blast for inconsequential amounts of damage, not only are you not contributing to the fight at all, due to the weakness of HP damage in general and blasting spells in particular, but you are wasting a great deal of resources, thereby setting yourself up to let the entire team down and you are not casting effective spells instead, which would actually help. Similarly, the party stuck with the character who thinks that blasting is the best thing ever is not getting a caster who actually understands what they are supposed to be doing with their magic. So the opportunity cost is "does not have a good team member". Which, interestingly enough is the same comparison the Fighter is subjected to, and comes out on the wrong side of.

[Fhaolan]

Just fanning the flames here, not really contributing because technically I'm at work and shouldn't be browsing game forums. :smallbiggrin:


HP is a boolean condition. As long as your HP are > 0 you are perfectly fine, and fully fighting effective. It doesn't matter if it's 1 HP left or 501, and doesn't matter if your max HP is 10 or 511. The moment they drop below 0, you lose all fighting effectiveness. When at exactly 0, you either lose most of it or none or it depending on class and then drop to below 0.

Technically, this isn't a boolean condition, as there are four important 'states' of HP. Above 0 HP, Equal 0 HP, Between 0 HP and -10, and Below -10 HP [Dead]. Objects have boolean health as they are either 'intact' or 'destroyed', and don't have the 'restricted' and 'incapacitated' states (narrow though they might be) that PCs and NPCs have.

Your point still stands that it doesn't really matter what your current HP value is, or your Max HP value is, except as a vague measure of how many rounds/actions you can perform before the HP value reducers stop you. As long as you can absorb 100 HP of damage, taking 100 HP of damage has no effect on your performance. Other systems, even some d20 variants, do have health conditions to indicate injury, and personally I prefer that kind of system over the 'HP' system.

[Tyndmyr]

Technically, this isn't a boolean condition, as there are four important 'states' of HP.

You are technically correct...which is the BEST kind of correct.

I suppose you could argue for temporary hit points as a fifth state. After all, there are the major positive dominant planes where you 'splode for getting too many hp.

There's also an alternative rage class feature for barbarian. I could probably come up with more...but Im afraid I've gotten distracted.


Long story short, all other things equal, it is better to face an opponent with 26 hit points than one with 60. There is a difference in difficulty in those fights, is there not?

Therefore, there is value in doing hp damage equal to the difference in difficulty of those fights.

[Malevolence]

Just fanning the flames here, not really contributing because technically I'm at work and shouldn't be browsing game forums. :smallbiggrin:



Technically, this isn't a boolean condition, as there are four important 'states' of HP. Above 0 HP, Equal 0 HP, Between 0 HP and -10, and Below -10 HP [Dead]. Objects have boolean health as they are either 'intact' or 'destroyed', and don't have the 'restricted' and 'incapacitated' states (narrow though they might be) that PCs and NPCs have.

Your point still stands that it doesn't really matter what your current HP value is, or your Max HP value is, except as a vague measure of how many rounds/actions you can perform before the HP value reducers stop you. As long as you can absorb 100 HP of damage, taking 100 HP of damage has no effect on your performance. Other systems, even some d20 variants, do have health conditions to indicate injury, and personally I prefer that kind of system over the 'HP' system.

You either have them or you don't. If don't happens to be within the narrow not dead yet window, then it's easier to get up again, but your effectiveness is either 100% or 0% based on if the number is greater than 0 or not. And let's be honest - landing exactly on 0 is unlikely even at low levels, and at mid and high levels you'll go from fine to dead very easily, as after all that only requires 11+ damage, and even level 3 enemies easily hit for double digits.

Injury systems don't do anything except screw with beatstick type characters, who are the main ones getting hit (everyone else is out of melee range, has effective defenses, etc).

[Fhaolan]

Long story short, all other things equal, it is better to face an opponent with 26 hit points than one with 60. There is a difference in difficulty in those fights, is there not?

Therefore, there is value in doing hp damage equal to the difference in difficulty of those fights.

Providing the fight is resolved via the opponent being reduced to 0 or below HP, yes. Depending on the amount of HP you reduce each round of actions, this becomes a 'how long will it take to disable this opponent relative to how long will it take for the opponent to disable me'. It's not so much a 'difficulty' as time boxed race of resource depletion focused on a single resource (HP).

I find that the advantage magic has in D&D is that it's not limited to the single resource (HP). It can also deplete ability scores, for example DEX depletion via shivering touch. It can affect movement via terrain modification (Obscuring Mist, Iron Wall, Flight, etc.) so that the opponent never gets a chance to do damage. Magic tends to be viewed as overpowered relative to non-magic because it has the option to ignore HP resource depletion and resolve conflicts via reducing a different resource that there are few or no non-magical means to produce similar effects.

For example, you can't put an arrow into someone's leg to reduce their mobility in D&D. You can't temporarily blind someone by throwing dirt in their eyes unless you spend an entire feat slot on it [I believe there is a feat in Sandstorm for this]. Heck, combine the two and you can't partially blind a dragon by sticking a spear in her eye.

There are many perfectly reasonable non-magical combat tactics and strategies that are either not supported by D&D, or are burried under ridiculously complex sub-systems (grappling) that cause people to avoid those tactics because it's not worth the effort of figuring out the rules. It's so much easier to just pull out the magic wand. :smallsmile:

[Tyndmyr]

Yknow, I feel like there's maneuver's in ToB for such things.

Also, there's tripping. I seem to recall some way to get ranged trip attacks with a bow...but I seem to also require it being fairly high op to pull off.

I agree that there are other methods of ending fights besides hp depletion...but hp depletion is at least viable in the vast majority of situations, even though it certainly isn't always ideal. Plus, since it's such a widely available resource to attack, stacking isn't a problem.

Attacking ability scores for instance, is much more likely to be all or nothing. Shivering touch definitely tends to fall into that category. If it's the right kind of target(*cough* dragons are pretty much ideal), and you connect, it's a win. If not...your efforts are likely irrelevant to the rest of the parties efforts.

[Fhaolan]

Injury systems don't do anything except screw with beatstick type characters, who are the main ones getting hit (everyone else is out of melee range, has effective defenses, etc).

Only if the injury system is put on top of the existing D&D systems where the only method of receiving injuries is via direct damage, and that effective defences are cheap to obtain for non-melee combatants but expensive for melee combatants. Other systems do it differently.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Malevolence: You have two distinct arguments: one is that HP damage is useless, and second is that HP damage doesn't need a role dedicated to it. The latter I might agree upon, but the former is patently false.

Amount of HP matters, plain and simple, because it most commonly determines how likely a certain status effect (death) takes place. If a monster has 1000 HP and all the party member attacking it would cause 1000+ damage with 90% probability, but the party wizard using a SOL drops that probability to 0% and the SOL only has 25% chance of working, it's better to do HP damage. With attacking, the enemy only has 10% chance to survive and use its round to damage the PCs. With wizard using that spell, it's raised to 75%.

Even if the enemy survives and removes one PC from play, chances are the remaining ones can now inflict enough HP damage to it to win it with 100% certainty on their second round. SOL still has only 25% of working.

These kind of situations are actually quite commonly generated in play. So HP is not nearly as indifferent as you make it to be. You're taking an optimization premise way too far.

[Malevolence]

Providing the fight is resolved via the opponent being reduced to 0 or below HP, yes. Depending on the amount of HP you reduce each round of actions, this becomes a 'how long will it take to disable this opponent relative to how long will it take for the opponent to disable me'. It's not so much a 'difficulty' as time boxed race of resource depletion focused on a single resource (HP).

I find that the advantage magic has in D&D is that it's not limited to the single resource (HP). It can also deplete ability scores, for example DEX depletion via shivering touch. It can affect movement via terrain modification (Obscuring Mist, Iron Wall, Flight, etc.) so that the opponent never gets a chance to do damage. Magic tends to be viewed as overpowered relative to non-magic because it has the option to ignore HP resource depletion and resolve conflicts via reducing a different resource that there are few or no non-magical means to produce similar effects.

For example, you can't put an arrow into someone's leg to reduce their mobility in D&D. You can't temporarily blind someone by throwing dirt in their eyes unless you spend an entire feat slot on it [I believe there is a feat in Sandstorm for this]. Heck, combine the two and you can't partially blind a dragon by sticking a spear in her eye.

There are many perfectly reasonable non-magical combat tactics and strategies that are either not supported by D&D, or are burried under ridiculously complex sub-systems (grappling) that cause people to avoid those tactics because it's not worth the effort of figuring out the rules. It's so much easier to just pull out the magic wand. :smallsmile:

Exactly. Even for the weaker conditions, like Shaken, it's still doing something right now instead of nothing. Now if all you can do is render enemies Shaken, that's not a contribution. After all, CW Samurais can do better, and they're a terrible class.

Shivering Touch is admittedly a weird spell, but it works well on anything big, not just dragons. Most things are big. There's also other ways of dealing Dex damage, so it's hardly nonstackable.

As for injury systems in other games, they have their own problems. It might not be the same ones, but they're still gamebreakers.

[Tyndmyr]

Shivering Touch is admittedly a weird spell, but it works well on anything big, not just dragons. Most things are big. There's also other ways of dealing Dex damage, so it's hardly nonstackable.

Oh, it doesn't work JUST on dragons...but dragons are pretty much the optimal target for it, efficiency wise. Unless they can cast scintillating scales. At which point, it becomes worthless.

It's not just the "it works on it" factor. It's the fact that dragons are frequently difficult to take down if played intelligently, and have a fair amount of defensive options, rendering other attack methods less certain. So, shivering touch is particularly useful for them.

While there are other ways of dealing dex damage, it's much less likely that everyone in your party will have ways of dealing dex damage at hand. So, it's less convenient to stack.


As for injury systems in other games, they have their own problems. It might not be the same ones, but they're still gamebreakers.

Varies wildly. 7th Sea has a crippled mechanism that works quite well. I agree that injury systems do not work in D&D, though.

[Frozen_Feet]

As for injury systems in other games, they have their own problems. It might not be the same ones, but they're still gamebreakers.

That's a pretty terrible generalization to make. First, we can't even talk about that in a vacuum, without specific example. Second you seem to be denying even the possibility of working injury system, which is just ridiculous.

[Malevolence]

@Malevolence: You have two distinct arguments: one is that HP damage is useless, and second is that HP damage doesn't need a role dedicated to it. The latter I might agree upon, but the former is patently false.

Amount of HP matters, plain and simple, because it most commonly determines how likely a certain status effect (death) takes place. If a monster has 1000 HP and all the party member attacking it would cause 1000+ damage with 90% probability, but the party wizard using a SOL drops that probability to 0% and the SOL only has 25% chance of working, it's better to do HP damage. With attacking, the enemy only has 10% chance to survive and use its round to damage the PCs. With wizard using that spell, it's raised to 75%.

Even if the enemy survives and removes one PC from play, chances are the remaining ones can now inflict enough HP damage to it to win it with 100% certainty on their second round. SOL still has only 25% of working.

These kind of situations are actually quite commonly generated in play. So HP is not nearly as indifferent as you make it to be. You're taking an optimization premise way too far.

And to do that, you had to stack damage up to 1,000, which means there's a long list of obstacles between you and your ability to do that damage. Even so, what you have is a character who is at best saving a spell slot, except you have plenty of those, so all they are really doing is cleaning up. And then you run into all of the other problems, that I haven't even gotten into yet because the stuff I've mentioned so far is the tip of the iceberg. But with your 25%, even 2 casters 50/50 it, and 4 1 round it 70% of the time. And unlike the charger, there's not a long list of things that shut them down. There are counters, but not nearly as many. Plus you know, you can make your HP damage dealer something that is actually good, and that happens to be able to attack for HP damage such as a CoDzilla or Gish. Given that a good gish does 200 damage a hit, with 4 attacks without using charge multipliers at mid-high levels and is still a caster...

Edit: It is not possible for an injury system to be workable, as all systems of that type inherently favor the enemy. And while Shivering Touch is quite effective on dragons, said dragons also know this. Don't be surprised if they are flat out immune to ability damage. Though Scintillating Scales works alright.

[Fhaolan]

Yknow, I feel like there's maneuver's in ToB for such things.

Also, there's tripping. I seem to recall some way to get ranged trip attacks with a bow...but I seem to also require it being fairly high op to pull off.

I kinda dropped out of using D&D prior to ToB, so I can't speak intelligently about the systems it introduced. Nor can I talk about 4th edition for the same reason. While I do still play in several D&D-style games, the gaming groups each migrated their campaigns to various other game engines before ToB was published. As such, my debating points may be out-of-date. :smallsmile:

EDIT: I'm not sure I understand the statement of 'injury systems inherently favouring the enemy'. That is kinda the point, isn't it? Injuring a person has value as it makes it difficult for them to injure you. Otherwise, why bother trying to injure them? And they're trying to injure you so that it is more difficult for you to injure them. I'm sure I'm missing the issue here...

[Tyndmyr]

But with your 25%, even 2 casters 50/50 it

That's not how statistics work. You'll have a 43.75% success rate. And with four casters, you'll have a 68.36% success rate.

And since success is entirely binary, you'll not have an increased chance of success in later rounds. With hp, if you fail to get the 1000 damage cumulative needed between the party, odds are extremely good you got at least some of that, making the odds higher in round two.

So, hp damage remains relevant. And sometimes, it's even optimal.


Given that a good gish does 200 damage a hit, with 4 attacks without using charge multipliers at mid-high levels and is still a caster...

...what kind of gish does that? With four attacks and no charge multipliers?


Edit: It is not possible for an injury system to be workable, as all systems of that type inherently favor the enemy.

What?

edit: Fhaolan, ToB has a rather large number of ways for melee players to impose status effects. If you still play 3.5, I highly recommend the book. It is partially available as a free web enhancement (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060802a), if you're only mildly interested.

[tyckspoon]

EDIT: I'm not sure I understand the statement of 'injury systems inherently favouring the enemy'. That is kinda the point, isn't it? Injuring a person has value as it makes it difficult for them to injure you. Otherwise, why bother trying to injure them? And they're trying to injure you so that it is more difficult for you to injure them. I'm sure I'm missing the issue here...

Goes together with how dangerous you think it should be to fight, I guess. Injury systems favor the opposition, not the PCs, for the same reason increased randomness (crit fumbles, crits in general, long-odds SoD attacks) works against the party in the long run- they're exposed to much more of them than any given enemy force is. Say you have a 'long term injury' option- in D&D terms, maybe you suffer a slow-healing wound that makes you take -2 AC and to-hit until you get a week of rest-care. For an NPC you're fighting, that's basically meaningless, because you're probably going to kill him anyway. For a PC, he's been long-term debuffed by that fight, because he probably won't have a chance at a full week of doing nothing until the adventure is over. This is somewhat problematic in a system like D&D 3.x, which assumes you will be doing rather a lot of fighting.

[Frozen_Feet]

Edit: It is not possible for an injury system to be workable, as all systems of that type inherently favor the enemy.

No they don't. In general, they favor the offender, but those could as well be the PCs. And it's possible for a system to otherwise favor the defender, balancing it out. Do I need to craft an example?

[Tyndmyr]

Injury systems, like systems with high levels of rocket tag, favor whoever goes first. So, if you have a game like Shadowrun, it's very much better to be the ambusher than the ambushee.

But say, with 7th sea, where lethality is low to begin with(normal attacks don't kill you. At all. You basically need to be CdGed to actually die for good), dropping down to a crippled status at half health is not that terrible. Sure, the status sucks quite a lot, but you're not going to be taken out of the fight in the surprise round. That's just not how the game works. Damage is much more fluid, and there are no static hp numbers, but in general, fights take a good handful of actions to resolve(five or six is generally a fairly quick fight), and you can sacrifice two later actions to have an action to parry now, etc.

It works fantastic.

[Fhaolan]

Goes together with how dangerous you think it should be to fight, I guess. Injury systems favor the opposition, not the PCs, for the same reason increased randomness (crit fumbles, crits in general, long-odds SoD attacks) works against the party in the long run- they're exposed to much more of them than any given enemy force is. Say you have a 'long term injury' option- in D&D terms, maybe you suffer a slow-healing wound that makes you take -2 AC and to-hit until you get a week of rest-care. For an NPC you're fighting, that's basically meaningless, because you're probably going to kill him anyway. For a PC, he's been long-term debuffed by that fight, because he probably won't have a chance at a full week of doing nothing until the adventure is over. This is somewhat problematic in a system like D&D 3.x, which assumes you will be doing rather a lot of fighting.

Ah, I see. I was thinking in terms of the immediate combat, not in longer terms. I agree with this effect, but I accept that as part of long-term resource management. If you're injured in a truely debilitating way, you shouldn't be running after the dragon trying to stuff yourself down it's throat. :smallsmile: Or if you are, it's a heroic act that you will need skill and luck to overcome.

I find the 4 lethal combats a day recommendation of D&D to be a bit ... enthusiastic from a story-telling perpective. But then, I rarely run dungeon-crawl-style games. Which is really why most of the gaming groups I deal with migrated from D&D to other engines. The base assumptions built into the D&D system are counter to the kinds of scenarios the gaming groups I'm in like to play.

[Malevolence]

EDIT: I'm not sure I understand the statement of 'injury systems inherently favouring the enemy'. That is kinda the point, isn't it? Injuring a person has value as it makes it difficult for them to injure you. Otherwise, why bother trying to injure them? And they're trying to injure you so that it is more difficult for you to injure them. I'm sure I'm missing the issue here...

Except that you can injure them too. It still favors the enemy though, because if one group of enemies die, there are others. PCs are not meant to be expendable. Not in serious gaming systems, at least. It is simply a variation of luck favors the enemy.


That's not how statistics work. You'll have a 43.75% success rate. And with four casters, you'll have a 68.36% success rate.

I rounded. Sue me. Actually scratch that, you live in the US. You might take that seriously.

Disclaimer: Poster also lives in the US.


And since success is entirely binary, you'll not have an increased chance of success in later rounds. With hp, if you fail to get the 1000 damage cumulative needed between the party, odds are extremely good you got at least some of that, making the odds higher in round two.

So, hp damage remains relevant. And sometimes, it's even optimal.

On round 2, bodies start hitting the floor. If not theirs, yours. Letting the enemy live that long means dead PCs. Put simply, you are too slow.


...what kind of gish does that? With four attacks and no charge multipliers?

The good ones. Turns out you can do fun things by stacking on a few dozen Persisted spells, along with things that block Dispelling, Extraordinary Spell Aim on an AMF, and Wraithstrike Power Attack. It would become 5 attacks at level 16. Meanwhile, your saves are around 30, your AC is around 60, and your touch AC is around 40. And you can do much better than this.


No they don't. In general, they favor the offender, but those could as well be the PCs. And it's possible for a system to otherwise favor the defender, balancing it out. Do I need to craft an example?

The enemies are meant to be killed in a very short period of time. The PCs are not. Guess who is more inconvenienced by action penalties or whatever drawback is associated with them? It's the ones who are around longer. The PCs.

[Gralamin]

The enemies are meant to be killed in a very short period of time. The PCs are not. Guess who is more inconvenienced by action penalties or whatever drawback is associated with them? It's the ones who are around longer. The PCs.

Or, to put it another way:

The more rolls a character has, the higher the chance of something going wrong. PCs make far more rolls then NPCs, over the course of a game.

[Tyndmyr]

The good ones. Turns out you can do fun things by stacking on a few dozen Persisted spells, along with things that block Dispelling, Extraordinary Spell Aim on an AMF, and Wraithstrike Power Attack. It would become 5 attacks at level 16. Meanwhile, your saves are around 30, your AC is around 60, and your touch AC is around 40. And you can do much better than this.

You wouldn't happen to have an actual build, would you?

Because "few dozen persisted spells" on a gish at level 16 is going to pretty much require some form of metamagic reduction, and the more time you spend in caster classes, the less BaB you have to power attack away.

And, if as you claim, you have four attacks doing this much damage at level 16, you will literally need full BaB to pull it off. So this leaves us with what...duskblade? Surely not hexblade. No sorcadin or wizard based build is going to pull this off. So, how does an arcane caster pull off "a few dozen Persisted spells" when he only has level four slots, hmm?

[Fhaolan]

Except that you can injure them too. It still favors the enemy though, because if one group of enemies die, there are others. PCs are not meant to be expendable. Not in serious gaming systems, at least. It is simply a variation of luck favors the enemy.

Possibly true. However, this is an assumption that enemies are expendable, that the PCs are the only thing they have to deal with, that they have no interest in personal survival, and that they will not engage the PCs on multiple occasions, in each encounter injured as appropriate. Playing so that each encounter only ends in the elimination/death of one side or the other, and that resource depletion only occurs to the PCs, is a D&D-style game assumption that is not necessarily true in all RPGs.

For an example, one series of sessions I ran had one real 'enemy'. He was a serial killer in ancient Rome. The party had to track him down and defeat him in a battle of wits. He didn't have an infinite number of orcs at his command, he didn't summon demons from the nether planes, etc. It was just him, killing people in horrible ways. Yes, there were side encounters where the party ran into thieves, con-men, and the like, but the players had to make the decision whether to engage them or not, knowing that would deplete their resources for the final encounter with the vicious serial killer or prevent them from catching up with him at all. And the killer was getting injured himself in his various escapades as he evaded capture and occasionally engaged a victim that was more capable of self defence than he had thought.

This kept the players entertained and engaged for ten sessions. There were a total of five PC combats during those sessions, and ten victims (one each session). So in fact the enemy was engaging in combats more than twice as often as the PCs (because some of those five PC combats were with the serial killer). I am told that they found the game excellent and wanted to continue with another similar scenario, but I had to move to follow a job.

A game of this style is not something I would run in D&D, because it simply does not work with D&D's core assumptions. But it does work in some other game systems because their core assumptions are different.

[Seerow]

You wouldn't happen to have an actual build, would you?

Because "few dozen persisted spells" on a gish at level 16 is going to pretty much require some form of metamagic reduction, and the more time you spend in caster classes, the less BaB you have to power attack away.

And, if as you claim, you have four attacks doing this much damage at level 16, you will literally need full BaB to pull it off. So this leaves us with what...duskblade? Surely not hexblade. No sorcadin or wizard based build is going to pull this off. So, how does an arcane caster pull off "a few dozen Persisted spells" when he only has level four slots, hmm?

While I can't speak for the Arcane caster, I once played a nearly straight Favored Soul that did nearly exactly what he described. Playing it at its simplest (which is what I did) you pick up one of the feats that lets you spontaneously metamagic spells, and you keep putting up one quickened buff each turn as the fight goes on, with a few of the lower level buffs persisted. Oh and don't forget you cast a +5 Greater Magic Weapon/Armor on all your gear at the start of each day, so you can focus your resources on all the random +damage modifiers on your weapon instead.

Doing it this way you basically match the Fighter in everything he's doing, while assuming a 4 encounter day using about half your spell slots on buffs, and the like to match the Fighter, and the rest on other things that the Fighter has no answer for.




Doing it at its cheesiest, you find some way to add a couple specific arcane spells to your list (I remember there being some way[s] to do this, but don't remember the specifics. I'm pretty rusty on D&D these days), particularly the one that grants you one feat, then dip into sacred exorcist or something for turning, buy a bunch of nightsticks, and walk around with a half dozen persisted buffs, and as many persisted feats as you want.

The fun thing about doing it with a Favored Soul as opposed to a cleric (which doesn't need sacred exorcist, and probably not any real cheesing to get desired wizard spells thanks to domain spells), is it gains weapon specialization. This means you can gain the fighter unique feats in PHB2, along with whatever other fighter feats you want, without ever touching the Fighter class. Just to rub a little dirt in the wound.

And the best part is, for the most part, since you're using DMM(Persist), you're not tapping any spell level past 5 for the majority of this. You still have those high level spell slots for on demand healing, buffing others, no save - you lose spells (hi Holy Word).





Arcane gishes have it nicer as far as utility goes (easy access teleport spells, default access to the + feat spell, etc), but they get hit much harder trying to persist everything, and don't have a spell that gives them effectively full BAB. Also, like I said I'm almost sure there's some way to get a handful of arcane spells onto the divine spell list, be it via a prestige class, feat, or whatever, I just don't recall what it is. If anyone can help out with that (or tell me I'm wrong, there's no way to do that), it'd be appreciated.


edit: Found at least two ways for the Favored Soul to get arcane spells.

1) There is a variant in Dragon Magic that trades in weapon spec for a few goodies, including a 1st level arcane spell, and a 5th level arcane spell. Not a huge amount, but helpful. This costs you the ability to take the Fighter feats out of PHB2 however, so comes at the cost of that, for what it's worth. (Those feats aren't actually mandatory, but they're nice to have, and if you're looking to wholly supplement the Fighter, that's the best way)

2) If he dips into a PrC that gets him a domain added to his spell list, he can pick up the spell domain, for Anyspell. This forces you to prepare the spell rather than being able to spontaneously cast, and has a innate spell cost penalty, and is limited up to 5th level spells, but gets you access to buff goodies like Polymorph, and the previously mentioned Heroics spell.

[Malevolence]

You wouldn't happen to have an actual build, would you?

Because "few dozen persisted spells" on a gish at level 16 is going to pretty much require some form of metamagic reduction, and the more time you spend in caster classes, the less BaB you have to power attack away.

And, if as you claim, you have four attacks doing this much damage at level 16, you will literally need full BaB to pull it off. So this leaves us with what...duskblade? Surely not hexblade. No sorcadin or wizard based build is going to pull this off. So, how does an arcane caster pull off "a few dozen Persisted spells" when he only has level four slots, hmm?

Cloistered Cleric 1/Artificer x.

Full BAB, loads of Persist. Don't pretend full BAB is hard to get now.

A Duskblade could probably match the damage output, but since Duskblades lack the effective defenses that Gishes have they end up super squishy.

And the Fighter only feats are junk, so just ignore them. Now, domain devotion feats, those are different.

[Frozen_Feet]

The enemies are meant to be killed in a very short period of time. The PCs are not. Guess who is more inconvenienced by action penalties or whatever drawback is associated with them? It's the ones who are around longer. The PCs.
But those are not things inherent to the injury system. They're caused by other assumptions you have of the game.

Now, this is true;


The more rolls a character has, the higher the chance of something going wrong. PCs make far more rolls then NPCs, over the course of a game.

... but it isn't necessarily true for a given system that the PCs do make more rolls for the course of a game.

By your assumption, enemies (effectively) outnumber the PCs each time. Of course this favors them, but it's not a quality of the injury system. It's factor of being outnumbered.

In a game where PCs most commonly face equal or lesser opposition, injuries don't particularly favor either side. Or rather, it favors the offender, but the offender could be either party.

And again, this can be mitigated by other qualities for the game. If, like in D&D, the PCs often have easy-to-access healing methods while the same is not true for the opposition, the system as a whole can favor them even if injuries favor their opposition. It is possible to balance it so that injuries are not gamebreaking. That's what my original gripe with your statement was, Malevolence - the idea that injury systems are automatically broken. That's just a priori dismissal of them.

[Malevolence]

It would be much easier to respond to you if you did not resort to hand waving and instead stuck to solid, defined arguments.

The only way it is not true that PCs roll more dice than the enemy is if the PCs die more often than the enemy. So unless discussing joke systems, like Paranoia in which the entire point of playing is to see what sort of funny and/or crazy ways you can die (http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/) the point that injury systems favor the enemy, even if applied to both sides is completely and absolutely correct. And since discussions of systems default to serious systems, both because they are much more numerous and because they are the only ones that can be discussed seriously, what you are doing is akin to arguing that the sky is not blue.

[balistafreak]

Malevolence, you seem to play at an extremely high level of optimization, higher than even the (relatively speaking) overall higher levels found from players on these boards.

Super-gishes who full-cast with the best of them and do better damage than optimized "mundane" classes are hardly the norm. You keep claiming that "if you're not this, you are guaranteed to be dead, period", but has it ever occurred to you that not all parties play at that level of optimization?

As far as it might attract scathing comments of "DM babysitting" or "easy mode", not being the very best you can be isn't necessarily the end in D&D. The DM can set the challenge level lower - "Easy Mode" - just so you can play another kind of character other than "the best" and not die. :smalltongue:

Most bothersome is your reliance on minions. You recognize that HP damage is something that needs to get done by somebody. But unlike most of us, who would then take that task, turn it into a role, and then optimize a character who can deal out melee damage... instead, you say "delegate to a minion".

The norm for tables everywhere - and indeed, roleplaying games in general - is a distinct antipathy towards minions. Perhaps they're "optimal", but so is going all the way, turning to capitalism, and training and optimizing entire adventurer sub-parties to do your work for you for arguably even less risk. People want to play the game themselves, and that means some dork has to do the melee damage.

I realize that hirelings might have been classic for 1E/2E parties (correct me if I'm wrong) but they've become less so in more modern years, and I don't ever recall a system where a hireling was intended to overshadow an existing character archetype, suboptimal or not.

For the record, I'm not trying to negate your points, I'm just trying to qualify and stimulate discussion on them. I find the idea of playing at your level of optimization intriguing and yet at the same time impractical given the general D&D player body, and want to know how to bridge the gap.

[Frozen_Feet]

It would be much easier to respond to you if you did not resort to hand waving and instead stuck to solid, defined arguments.
I don't think you realize what I'm arguing here. I'm arguing that the generalizations you make are bad, in that it's wholly possible for a system to avert the negative qualities you assert to them a priori. Your arguments are undermined by the fact that they aren't nearly as universal as you make them out to be.

I'm not giving you anything more solid for you to work with, because I don't need to. We can talk about any specific system, and see if your caveat apply to them. That doesn't make your generalization any better.


The only way it is not true that PCs roll more dice than the enemy is if the PCs die more often are subjected to more checks than the enemy.
Fixed that for you. There are systems, with fighting and injury, where no-one really dies, whether that be PCs or their opposition. In such systems, what matters is more nebulous "screentime", or specifics of the combat system.

An example would be games with "rival" NPCs. These are not just there to die, they persist with the PCs. They are not one-off opposition, but meant to be used time and again. Barring other hostile opposition (not as uncommon as you'd think), the amount the PCs fight, and the amount their enemies fight, is exactly the same. If the forces involved are equal, then we can expect amount of combat checks for any single character to be roughly equal as well. If the opposition is numerically less than the PCs (say, it's four againt one), then the opposition can be making more checks than the PCs, as he only gets to attack once, while he has to deal with four attackers himself.


So unless discussing joke systems, like Paranoia in which the entire point of playing is to see what sort of funny and/or crazy ways you can die (http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/) the point that injury systems favor the enemy, even if applied to both sides is completely and absolutely correct. And since discussions of systems default to serious systems, both because they are much more numerous and because they are the only ones that can be discussed seriously, what you are doing is akin to arguing that the sky is not blue.

And pray tell me, how do you define a "serious" system? I can agree on Paranoia being a "joke system", but I recall earlier you implied Call of Cthulhu was one too, so I'd like to get that out of the way first.

[Tyndmyr]

While I can't speak for the Arcane caster, I once played a nearly straight Favored Soul that did nearly exactly what he described. Playing it at its simplest (which is what I did) you pick up one of the feats that lets you spontaneously metamagic spells, and you keep putting up one quickened buff each turn as the fight goes on, with a few of the lower level buffs persisted. Oh and don't forget you cast a +5 Greater Magic Weapon/Armor on all your gear at the start of each day, so you can focus your resources on all the random +damage modifiers on your weapon instead.

Right, Favored Soul = Divine = DMM. But FS doesn't have a Full BaB, and thus, can't possibly be what he's talking about for getting four attacks at level 16. Unless he's dual wielding, but that's generally not the way to do a gish build.


Arcane gishes have it nicer as far as utility goes (easy access teleport spells, default access to the + feat spell, etc), but they get hit much harder trying to persist everything, and don't have a spell that gives them effectively full BAB. Also, like I said I'm almost sure there's some way to get a handful of arcane spells onto the divine spell list, be it via a prestige class, feat, or whatever, I just don't recall what it is. If anyone can help out with that (or tell me I'm wrong, there's no way to do that), it'd be appreciated.

Well, there's always domains. Magic Domain is the easiest way to gain use of arcane in general. Now sure, you tend to end up item dependent that way, but it's a relatively low investment character wise, and some of the domain spells are useful in themselves.


Cloistered Cleric 1/Artificer x.

Full BAB, loads of Persist. Don't pretend full BAB is hard to get now.

A Duskblade could probably match the damage output, but since Duskblades lack the effective defenses that Gishes have they end up super squishy.

And the Fighter only feats are junk, so just ignore them. Now, domain devotion feats, those are different.

Oh, Full BaB, by itself, is not hard to get. It's hard to get and still get giant piles of persisted spells. I'm not seeing the point of cloistered cleric 1, and I'm not seeing your dozens of claimed persists.

CoC is not a joke system. I've already listed one example,(7th Sea) where an injury system is in effect, and it's not hard on the players at all.

[Lans]

Your point still stands that it doesn't really matter what your current HP value is, or your Max HP value is, except as a vague measure of how many rounds/actions you can perform before the HP value reducers stop you. As long as you can absorb 100 HP of damage, taking 100 HP of damage has no effect on your performance. Other systems, even some d20 variants, do have health conditions to indicate injury, and personally I prefer that kind of system over the 'HP' system.
High hp matters at low levels when it comes to being able to outlast Save or Loses.
One example on this is the CR 3 white dragon, it has enough hp to lose to glitter dust, get beat on by a level 3 wizard, then go and kill the wizard.



And then you reach fight 2 of the day, and everyone dies, because they have no healing, no buffs, and none of the things that get you through combats.

You can stick around at 1/2 hp pretty easily, provided you use race/template cheese, add in healing items and its not hard. Especially when the fighters are optimized to hell and back.

Also those things you mentioned are class nonspecific. A VoP Commoner can have healing, buffs, and 'the things that get you through combat'.

[Malevolence]

Malevolence, you seem to play at an extremely high level of optimization, higher than even the (relatively speaking) overall higher levels found from players on these boards.

True but irrelevant.


Super-gishes who full-cast with the best of them and do better damage than optimized "mundane" classes are hardly the norm. You keep claiming that "if you're not this, you are guaranteed to be dead, period", but has it ever occurred to you that not all parties play at that level of optimization?

The super gish is an example. It doesn't require anywhere near that level of power to outclass a silly mundane. In fact, you'd have to be actively trying very hard not to. Simply because mundanes offer so little, it is incredibly easy to outclass them. Just like the 1k HP thing was an example. If you want to nitpick, the baseline at level 20 is actually 500 damage, not 1,000, but whatever.

Things like Fighters are dead weight, or simply dead even in low powered games. The better beatsticks fare better, but dedicating a whole party role to a formality is silly. It means you have someone not very useful in battle and completely useless outside of it. And you should not assume that just because I know how to build something that I will in an actual game. The super gish isn't a character I have played, only made.


As far as it might attract scathing comments of "DM babysitting" or "easy mode", not being the very best you can be isn't necessarily the end in D&D. The DM can set the challenge level lower - "Easy Mode" - just so you can play another kind of character other than "the best" and not die. :smalltongue:

Something in Latin about reducing a scenario to its absurd extreme is coming to mind. I can't quite place it.


Most bothersome is your reliance on minions. You recognize that HP damage is something that needs to get done by somebody. But unlike most of us, who would then take that task, turn it into a role, and then optimize a character who can deal out melee damage... instead, you say "delegate to a minion".

If the job can be done by a disposable throwaway creature, why spend a PC on it? Similarly, why make someone's net contribution to the game be declaring full attacks ad infintium?


The norm for tables everywhere - and indeed, roleplaying games in general - is a distinct antipathy towards minions. Perhaps they're "optimal", but so is going all the way, turning to capitalism, and training and optimizing entire adventurer sub-parties to do your work for you for arguably even less risk. People want to play the game themselves, and that means some dork has to do the melee damage.

Getting other parties to do it for you means less rewards. So no, it's not.


I realize that hirelings might have been classic for 1E/2E parties (correct me if I'm wrong) but they've become less so in more modern years, and I don't ever recall a system where a hireling was intended to overshadow an existing character archetype, suboptimal or not.

Given that it only happens because the existing archetypes offer so little, I am unimpressed.

And a "serious system" is anything other than Paranoia or CoC. Unless I am missing some joke systems. No, FATAL does not exist. Its entire existence is a joke.


Right, Favored Soul = Divine = DMM. But FS doesn't have a Full BaB, and thus, can't possibly be what he's talking about for getting four attacks at level 16. Unless he's dual wielding, but that's generally not the way to do a gish build.

Favored Souls get Divine Power without tricks. How could you possibly say that? And I said 5 attacks at 16.


Oh, Full BaB, by itself, is not hard to get. It's hard to get and still get giant piles of persisted spells. I'm not seeing the point of cloistered cleric 1, and I'm not seeing your dozens of claimed persists.

Cloistered Cleric 1 grants the build two domains, + Knowledge domain, which can be used to get more feats, or traded in for domain devotion feats. It also gives turn attempts, which are primarily used for recharging said domain devotion feats as Artificers can Persist whatever they want in a better way.


You can stick around at 1/2 hp pretty easily, provided you use race/template cheese, add in healing items and its not hard. Especially when the fighters are optimized to hell and back.

Also those things you mentioned are class nonspecific. A VoP Commoner can have healing, buffs, and 'the things that get you through combat'.

Half HP means you are constantly in one round kill range, even from the things that would normally take two. And against such a team, there aren't many of those. Fighters are super squishy.

[Frozen_Feet]

And a "serious system" is anything other than Paranoia or CoC. Unless I am missing some joke systems. No, FATAL does not exist. Its entire existence is a joke.


Uh huh. Listing two completely different systems as an example, when one is decidedly non-humorous, doesn't really help your case. What exactly make them "jokes" to you?

And yes, you are missing *cough* some *cough* "joke systems". Like, twenty thousand of them. Ever heard of Toon?

In any case, let's take a game I'm 99% sure you've never heard of or played. It's called "Tähti" ("Star"), and in it the players play teenage Finnish mutant girl pop-stars in the year 2020. The sole game mechanic is based around cracking open fortune cookies and using their divinations to determine where the game goes.

Joke or not?

[Tyndmyr]

Cloistered Cleric 1 grants the build two domains, + Knowledge domain, which can be used to get more feats, or traded in for domain devotion feats. It also gives turn attempts, which are primarily used for recharging said domain devotion feats as Artificers can Persist whatever they want in a better way.

So, Cloistered Cleric is just a fun dip, got it. I'm pretty sure it has a poor BaB, though. Now, I'm not saying that domains are bad at all...they're not. Ditto turning. But it's not providing what was advertised, which was 5 attacks for 200+ dmg each, and dozens of persisted spells.

So, presumably, that's all on the artificer portion of the build. And while artificer is certainly a good class, I don't immediately see how you get from there to your claimed power. As artificer also lacks full BaB, it's clear you need to get Divine Power persisted. So...how do you maintain dozens of persisted spells? And which array of spells grants you this damage?

[Malevolence]

Uh huh. Listing two completely different systems as an example, when one is decidedly non-humorous, doesn't really help your case. What exactly make them "jokes" to you?

And yes, you are missing *cough* some *cough* "joke systems". Like, twenty thousand of them. Ever heard of Toon?

In any case, let's take a game I'm 99% sure you've never heard of or played. It's called "Tähti" ("Star"), and in it the players play teenage Finnish mutant girl pop-stars in the year 2020. The sole game mechanic is based around cracking open fortune cookies and using their divinations to determine where the game goes.

Joke or not?

So there are more than two joke systems. Fine. That in no way changes the fact that in non joke systems, which are the only systems that can be discussed seriously means that injury systems simply screw the player, even if they apply to everyone.


So, Cloistered Cleric is just a fun dip, got it. I'm pretty sure it has a poor BaB, though. Now, I'm not saying that domains are bad at all...they're not. Ditto turning. But it's not providing what was advertised, which was 5 attacks for 200+ dmg each, and dozens of persisted spells.

So, presumably, that's all on the artificer portion of the build. And while artificer is certainly a good class, I don't immediately see how you get from there to your claimed power. As artificer also lacks full BaB, it's clear you need to get Divine Power persisted. So...how do you maintain dozens of persisted spells? And which array of spells grants you this damage?

5 attacks at level 16. 4 at the level I'm assuming, which is obviously in the 11-15 range.

Yes, Divine Power is one of the Persisted spells.

I'm not going to redesign the entire build for you. That takes too long, and given how this thread has gone so far I don't think it'd make any difference if I did break down exactly how it is possible.

Artificers however have several things:

The ability to get items super cheap, which means their wealth goes further, which effectively means more wealth. Money is power, and even without just chain binding, Artificers bring a lot of power to the table for precisely this reason.
Infusions. Think of them as spells, but even more efficient. And that's an accomplishment. For example, how does 1 3rd level infusion for about level +6 Persisted buffs sound?
Spells. Yes, they're good. If you need someone to break down exactly why spells do everything better, find someone else. Suffice it to say that there are a great deal of damage boosting spells in there, and many of them are Persist targets.

[Frozen_Feet]

So there are more than two joke systems. Fine. That in no way changes the fact that in non joke systems, which are the only systems that can be discussed seriously means that injury systems simply screw the player, even if they apply to everyone.


But you still haven't answered the question: what exactly makes a system a joke to you?

Tähti, for the record, is decidedly not a joke. It's very narrow in scope and very rules-light. Were it not for GM and the fortune cookies, it's almost freeform. But it still takes itself and its target subject seriously, and can be discussed in that way as well.

And you're still dismissing a priori the very idea of a balanced injury system - you've only specified that this applies to non-joke, or "serious" systems. Which leaves at least me at loss, because there are games where injuries don't screw the players over, and I still can't tell whether you'd count them as serious or not.

[Malevolence]

Paranoia is a joke system because the whole point of it is to die in humorous ways. Same deal with CoC, except you might go insane instead which is effectively the same thing.

Contrast to say... Shadowrun, which is not a joke system, and injury systems mean you get shot once, and you might as well sit out now because you take massive penalties to everything, and will therefore not succeed at any actions. If you get shot twice you die. But if it didn't have injury systems you could at least fire some rockets back at them.

[Tyndmyr]

So...yes, artificers are good...I don't see what that has to do with anything.

But apart from not explaining how you got the one thing most critical to the build, the persists, I'm still not at all sure how it became a relevant comparison to an E6 warmage or an unoptimized level 6 fighter.

Is 7th Sea a joke system? If so, please explain why. If not, please explain why the injury system is a problem.

Edit: The point of CoC is not dying/going insane...those are the obstacles you face. The point of CoC is generally investigate to figure out whats going on, then figure out how to stop it/flee before it gets too far.

[Frozen_Feet]

Then Tähti can't count as a "joke" system, because the point in it is not to die, but to play drama-filled life of teenage pop-idols. Though I disagree with you that the point of CoC is to die in humorous ways; death and insanity is conclusion the system nudges all adventures towards, but it's hardly what's expected of every single adventure, or the reason it's played.

In any case, I think your definition of "joke system" is haphazard at best, as the element of PCs dying isn't exactly humorous in many games that use it. How would you even apply it to systems that lack combat alltogether?

What your Shadowrun examples shows is the thing I talked about earlier - it favors the offender. But the offender might as well be the PCs. It is not enough on itself to be an example of how injury system inevitably screws over the PCs.

Do the PCs have means to avoid injury? Remove injury? Does the game system let the enemies go first more often than the players? Depending on the answers to these question, it should be easy to notice that it isn't necessarily the injury system that's broken. Your claim was that it's the injury system that's inherently bad, but if the fault is in weapon damage or turn order system, then it's not inherent to injuries that the players get screwed over.

[Malevolence]

So...yes, artificers are good...I don't see what that has to do with anything.

You asked "how does a gish do this"? Pointing out that the answer is Artificer means it has everything to do with it.


But apart from not explaining how you got the one thing most critical to the build, the persists, I'm still not at all sure how it became a relevant comparison to an E6 warmage or an unoptimized level 6 fighter.

No one is still talking about warmages and fighters but you.

As for the Persists, you simply take Persistent Spell like everyone else, and then you cast this neat infusion called Metamagic Item, which lets you apply a Metamagic feat to an item. And then you Lesser Chain rod it, and do the standard CL buffing thing, so you Persist level + 6 or so buffs at a time. And remember, you're an Artificer, so you make all items super cheap even if you don't use any infinite wealth tricks.


Is 7th Sea a joke system? If so, please explain why. If not, please explain why the injury system is a problem.

Edit: The point of CoC is not dying/going insane...those are the obstacles you face. The point of CoC is generally investigate to figure out whats going on, then figure out how to stop it/flee before it gets too far.

7th sea is a bad system because it does nothing it is supposed to do, but that is quite off topic. The point of CoC is for the DM to troll you.

Anyone that can't raise some points that haven't already been addressed, countered, and dealt with will be ignored.

[Tyndmyr]

At this point, I have no idea what you're trying to prove with the build things, since the topic appears to be nothing but "optimize more", which has little to do with the main topic.


7th sea is a bad system because it does nothing it is supposed to do, but that is quite off topic. The point of CoC is for the DM to troll you.

Well, you say it's a bad system, but you don't say why...and you don't say it's a joke system. I hold that it is neither.

It has a crippled mechanic that means you lose capability as you lose health. I believe this fulfills the definition of an injury system that you said was unworkable.

In short, it appears to be a perfect counterargument to your broad statement.

Edit: No. The point of CoC is not trolling. That does not exist anywhere in the rulebook. Where are you getting this from?

[The Big Dice]

7th sea is a bad system because it does nothing it is supposed to do, but that is quite off topic. The point of CoC is for the DM to troll you.
I'm sorry, but that is just blatantly untrue in both cases. 7th Sea is a great game, a flawed gem. And CoC is a true masterpiece regardless of edition. Saying that neither of them does what they set out to do when both are held up as examples of games that do exactly what the designers wanted is just ridiculous.

[Malevolence]

I'm sorry, but that is just blatantly untrue in both cases. 7th Sea is a great game, a flawed gem. And CoC is a true masterpiece regardless of edition. Saying that neither of them does what they set out to do when both are held up as examples of games that do exactly what the designers wanted is just ridiculous.

7th sea design: Ok, so let's make a game where you're supposed to swing around and be all swashbuckley!
7th sea reality: That requires multiple different skills, instead of just one, which means it's prohibitively expensive to actually do that, and very cheap to do something else, so you do that instead.
7th sea result: A swashbuckling game that serves only to discourage people from doing everything it is supposed to encourage you to do.

That is an epic failure, pure and simple.

CoC meanwhile is an exercise in being trolled for the lols. You're not supposed to take it seriously, because if you did you might actually get upset about the whole unwinnable and hopeless thing. Your responses do explain a lot though.

[Tyndmyr]

7th sea design: Ok, so let's make a game where you're supposed to swing around and be all swashbuckley!
7th sea reality: That requires multiple different skills, instead of just one, which means it's prohibitively expensive to actually do that, and very cheap to do something else, so you do that instead.
7th sea result: A swashbuckling game that serves only to discourage people from doing everything it is supposed to encourage you to do.

That is an epic failure, pure and simple.

Well, first off, skills are cheap. And for those people used to D&D, a skill in 7th Sea means you get a bundle of knacks, each of which is roughly equivalent to a skill in D&D. You also get a free rank in each basic knack. You get 100 points in character creation. A skill costs 2. The maximum # of ranks you can have in a skill is 5.

In a roughly D&D analagous term, it'd be like paying a tiny amount of experience to get half a dozen skills in the bundle of choice. Oh, and they automatically have free ranks in a bunch of em.

Skills are fairly cheap. Skills are also valuable. For instance, your defensive roll is determined primarily by the skill appropriate to the situation you are in. On a ship? Better have balance. So...if you like not taking swords and guns in the face, you're going to have a fair amount of skills ANYWAY.

And you can use those skills to attack in an interesting way to be awarded drama dice, which can be traded out for xp at a 1 to 1 ratio. Yes, acting in a swashbuckly, awesome fashion results in more xp, significantly more. You get rewarded for doing such things.


CoC meanwhile is an exercise in being trolled for the lols. You're not supposed to take it seriously, because if you did you might actually get upset about the whole unwinnable and hopeless thing. Your responses do explain a lot though.

To me, this sounds as if you hate the horror genre. This has nothing to do with the mechanics, you just dislike the whole setting. It's fine not to enjoy a type of game, but this is very different from insisting that game is a joke game. I know a few people that enjoy their CoC in a serious fashion.

[Malevolence]

The horror genre is all about being trolled for the lols. The difference is people that show up for that like it. Which is fine and all, but it does mean they aren't taking it seriously. Why do you think there's always at least one instance of a person going off on their own and at least one instance of two people going off to have sex, only to be eaten by the monster of the week?

[Gnaeus]

The horror genre is all about being trolled for the lols. The difference is people that show up for that like it. Which is fine and all, but it does mean they aren't taking it seriously. Why do you think there's always at least one instance of a person going off on their own and at least one instance of two people going off to have sex, only to be eaten by the monster of the week?

I have never seen either of those things in a CoC game I ran. Very rarely in a game in which I was involved. I do see both somewhat regularly in 3.5, which presumably means that 3.5 is a joke game and CoC is serious.

[Tyndmyr]

I have to agree. I've only seen that behavior in D&D. In CoC, the players know better off that to wander off to have sex.

I don't know how you could reasonable consider CoC a joke. It's among the more serious of worlds. Sure, you can make jokes by doing something remarkably silly, in contrast to that serious world, but that doesn't make the game not-serious any more than cracking a fart in a courtroom would make the law not-serious.

[Malevolence]

There are some people that don't take D&D seriously. They aren't allowed at the same table as my group. Not to mention, they're doing it in spite of the game, and not because of it.

Anyways, repeating arguments doesn't make them true. So other than trying to claim joke systems are not joke systems, is there something that you would like to discuss?

[Tyndmyr]

You haven't shown that they are bad/joke systems.

You've merely stated your opinion that they are, based on some rather farfetched ideas that all of horror is trolling, and an obvious lack of experience with 7th Sea.

[Britter]

Anyways, repeating arguments doesn't make them true. So other than trying to claim joke systems are not joke systems, is there something that you would like to discuss?

Respectfully, can you stop asserting that your opinions are esthablished facts? It is completely fine to dislike a game or genre, or consider a game or genre to be silly. It is, however, just an opinion. You are arguing that you are correct by repeatedly stating your opinions as fact.

[Frozen_Feet]

Anyways, repeating arguments doesn't make them true. So other than trying to claim joke systems are not joke systems, is there something that you would like to discuss?

You've been repeating fair few arguments yourself without backing them up in any sensible manner. Your insistence that CoC is a joke system is just the most ridiculous ones, because you've failed to demonstrate how it's a joke. "Being trolled for the lulz" is a pretty flawed description of how horror, and especially CoC, works. Those horror cliches you pointed out aren't even part of the horror genre CoC represents. Have you actually read CoC, or H.P. Lovecraft's stories that inspired it?

[Malevolence]

I take the dismissive posts that did not offer an alternate topic as a concession that no, there is not something else you would like to discuss. Very well then. I will shift the topic back to something useful and productive myself.

How about the original topic?

It's bad because magic and mundane are presented as equal options when they are not. Were they honest about the fact that mundane = mook, people would be a lot more accepting of it. As it is, there are still plenty of viable classes to discuss, but all of them centralize around magic. Their own, or that of their stuff. Typically the former. It's easy enough to see why - you just can't handle non normal problems without non normal solutions, so magic = problem solving ability. Conversely, say a team of four fighters needs to be constantly pointed at what to kill, and will probably fail to kill it.

[Tavar]

So, disagreeing with you and bringing up reasons/evidence for that disagreement means they're being dismissive? Because that's what the majority seem to be doing.

[Britter]

It's bad because magic and mundane are presented as equal options when they are not.


System dependent. There are a number of game systems that use magic and mundane rules that give mundane charcters a considerable degree of problem solving ability. While generally most magic system are more powerful than equivalent mundane system, not every game operates according to 3.5 assumptions as to the operation of magic and the capabilities of mid-to-high level threats.

You will now procede to discount me with some sort of comment about "author fiat".



Were they honest about the fact that mundane = mook, people would be a lot more accepting of it. As it is, there are still plenty of viable classes to discuss, but all of them centralize around magic. Their own, or that of their stuff. Typically the former. It's easy enough to see why - you just can't handle non normal problems without non normal solutions, so magic = problem solving ability. Conversely, say a team of four fighters needs to be constantly pointed at what to kill, and will probably fail to kill it.

Again, system specific assumptions and genre specific assumptions. There are fanstasy roleplaying systems that have viable problem solving tools for both mundane and magical characters.

As far as this topic as it relates to DnD, I am actually in a fair degree of agreement. Magic certainly does trump mundane, even in non-optimal play, because of the design assumptions of the game and the general capabilities of mid-to-high level foes. Flight and dr, for example, do a pretty good job of making the mundane meleers job very difficult. Magic in 3.5 DnD is incredibly flexible and does have a remarkable variety of problem solving capabilities.

I personally feel that the extreme power and flexibility of the 3.5 magic system is one of the weaker parts of the system design. It essentially turns all problems in the game into nails that can be driven with the hammer that is magic, and removes the need for any other tools to be in the toolbox (this is, of course, assuming a particular style of play and a fairly high degree of optimization. DnD does not have to play this way).

To be fair, even my favored non-DnD system gives a tremendous amount of flexibility and power to magic. Unlike DnD, it attempts to balance out the power and flexibility with a system much like Shadowruns, that being that casting does fatigue you, sustaining spells does fatigue you, and once you over-extend yourself you become vulnerable. Much like Shadowrun, however, prior to the point where casting becomes dangerous to you, you are a powerhouse.

It is a real design challenge to allow mundane and magical problem solving mechanics to exist within the same rule set, while remaining viable and distinct from each other.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

I mean really. I mean look at gandalf, the stereotypical wizard, he barely did anything "on screen" but he still was more powerful than everyone in the hobbit.

And in Lord of the rings it took ancient horrors, and another wizard to even put up a fight.

Really? Why is magic just being better than the other guy's sword-fighting so horrible?

Does the fact that the wizard blinded the whole room with glitterdust before you ran in and lopped everyones heads off matter?

Does it matter if he could reduce the dragon to ash if he could get a good spell in?

Really, if the wizard is dominating to the point where noone else is getting anything done that is more a sign of a bad DM to me than the class itself being bad.

Yes the wizard is powerful, It's supposed to be. Just like a fighter is supposed to stab things. And so on.

Yet I keep seeing people insist it's broken? Personally I think the fighter is more broken than the wizard. Looking at what the old fighter got compared to the new fighter? Yeah the wizard got a bit of a power boost... but still. The fighter got cut down to nothing.

So It is my opinion, that the fighter, not the wizard, is broken.

That's sarcasm, right? I really hope that's sarcasm.

[Mystic Muse]

That's sarcasm, right? I really hope that's sarcasm.

Well, he's right that the fighter is broken in that it doesn't work.

[Gnaeus]

It's bad because magic and mundane are presented as equal options when they are not. Were they honest about the fact that mundane = mook, people would be a lot more accepting of it.

As it relates to 3.5, I agree. Although I think that this was discussed in detail in the first several pages of this thread.


As it is, there are still plenty of viable classes to discuss, but all of them centralize around magic. Their own, or that of their stuff. Typically the former. It's easy enough to see why - you just can't handle non normal problems without non normal solutions, so magic = problem solving ability. Conversely, say a team of four fighters needs to be constantly pointed at what to kill, and will probably fail to kill it.



It is a real design challenge to allow mundane and magical problem solving mechanics to exist within the same rule set, while remaining viable and distinct from each other.

3.5 aside, I don't actually agree with this.

You can limit what any individual caster can do in a day (with fatigue or spell points).

You can force casters to tightly specialize, so that a wizard can set things on fire, or control minds, or raise the dead, but make it impossible to do all three things well (replacing wizard with Beguiler/Warmage/Dread Necro + other similar homebrewed classes would do this, or you can require spell prerequisites like GURPS). Lacking an omniscient mage, players would have to figure things out with their skills, or have a dedicated diviner, who wouldn't also at the same time be a combat god. Or a "generalist" wizard wouldn't be as good as a dedicated mundane character at anything.

You can make magic require mundane skill to be effective (replace Knock with a level 2 spell that gives a bonus to search and open locks, so you can't replace the rogue unless you invest some xp or skill ranks in it. Replace polymorph's rewriting of physical attributes with a static bonus, as pathfinder does, so if your str 6 wizard turns into a bear, it is a really weak bear).

You can separate magical and mundane challenges entirely (the wizard can detect the astral tripwire, but not the hidden camera. He can see the curse on the door, but not the mechanical trap. The rogue can see the opposite).

You can write systems to give weaker character types extra luck or fate or destiny. I understand that Dresden Files does a good job of allowing a Murphy (non-magical cop) to contribute in the same party with a Harry Dresden (vastly powerful wizard) as part of its game mechanics.

There are quite a few ways to do this.

[tonberrian]

I've heard good things about FATE systems, and Dresden Files in particular. From what I heard about the system, don't they present magic and mundane relatively equal?

[Malevolence]

So, disagreeing with you and bringing up reasons/evidence for that disagreement means they're being dismissive? Because that's what the majority seem to be doing.

The dismissive part comes from claiming that facts are merely opinions. The continuing to beat a dead horse is a separate problem.

I will now ignore all posts along those lines henceforth.


As it relates to 3.5, I agree. Although I think that this was discussed in detail in the first several pages of this thread.

It was, but covering something on topic that has been covered is better than covering something off topic that has been covered.


3.5 aside, I don't actually agree with this.

You can limit what any individual caster can do in a day (with fatigue or spell points).

Spell slots are not a limiting resource.


You can force casters to tightly specialize, so that a wizard can set things on fire, or control minds, or raise the dead, but make it impossible to do all three things well (replacing wizard with Beguiler/Warmage/Dread Necro + other similar homebrewed classes would do this, or you can require spell prerequisites like GURPS). Lacking an omniscient mage, players would have to figure things out with their skills, or have a dedicated diviner, who wouldn't also at the same time be a combat god. Or a "generalist" wizard wouldn't be as good as a dedicated mundane character at anything.

While Beguilers and Dread Necros are weaker than full casters, they are still far better than beatsticks both in winning fights and in advancing plots. Warmages are terrible because blasting is, but if blasting were worth something, Warmages would be in the same category as the other two. Skills suck, so having to use them and them alone just means you don't get anywhere, not that terrible options are suddenly not terrible because you don't have a good option anymore.


You can make magic require mundane skill to be effective (replace Knock with a level 2 spell that gives a bonus to search and open locks, so you can't replace the rogue unless you invest some xp or skill ranks in it. Replace polymorph's rewriting of physical attributes with a static bonus, as pathfinder does, so if your str 6 wizard turns into a bear, it is a really weak bear).

Knock is a terrible spell, not worth casting. Open Lock is also a terrible skill, not worth investing in. Polymorph is a diversion from real power.

[Frozen_Feet]

Spell slots are not a limiting resource.

Not in 3.5 D&D, yes. They can be, in other systems entirely.

Let me put this simply: your arguments mainly fall back on power dynamics in 3.5 D&D. Those dynamics are created by peculiarities of that one ruleset. It should not be that hard to understand that if the rules get changed, the power dynamic created by them also changes.

There are systems where spell slots, or spell points, demonstrably put a stopper on what a caster can do in a given situation. (Heck, it's even true in low-level D&D magic and psionics!) It's possible to devise new systems where they are likewise limiting.

[Tavar]

{Scrubbed}

[Gnaeus]

It was, but covering something on topic that has been covered is better than covering something off topic that has been covered.

If it had been fully covered, unless you had something new to add, being silent is even better.



Spell slots are not a limiting resource.

As was pointed out, not in 3.5 by RAW, but they can easily be made to be in another system, or by houserules.


Skills suck, so having to use them and them alone just means you don't get anywhere, not that terrible options are suddenly not terrible because you don't have a good option anymore.

Uhm, no. You really shouldn't argue for things like why mundane being worse than magic is a problem (which I agree with), because your lack of understanding of the game is so glaring that it makes the entire side of the argument look worse. Skills are very useful in solving problems. In the real world, people solve problems with skills all the time. Skills may be weak in comparison with easily available magic (hide is lame if you can become invisible, for example), but there are a great many skills that are VASTLY powerful even in 3.5 (Diplomacy and Handle Animal, for 2 examples are gamebreakingly strong). In a game where I can't solve a murder with commune, I will look for clues (with skills!). Most DMs actively prefer this. One reason that casters are so good is that they can duplicate many skills. That might make skillmonkeys obsolete, for focusing on something that a caster can do easily along with a lot of other stuff, but it doesn't mean that the skills themselves are bad.


Knock is a terrible spell, not worth casting. Open Lock is also a terrible skill, not worth investing in. Polymorph is a diversion from real power.

Knock is only not worth casting because mundanes can do it more cheaply, and a wand of Knock is widely regarded as a highly useful item.

Polymorph is so strong most people consider it to be broken. It is probably the single strongest spell in 3.5 below about 6th level. When you say otherwise, it really makes your other arguments look even more foolish.

[balistafreak]

True but irrelevant.

... must you be so dismissive that you have to negate the broadest of statements? That wasn't aimed towards anything, and certainly was irrelevant, but your need to refute me on such a minor point... is bothersome, from an ethical standpoint.


The better beatsticks fare better, but dedicating a whole party role to a formality is silly. It means you have someone not very useful in battle and completely useless outside of it.

Tell that to every Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade in existence. They're no full-caster in terms of power, but their class abilities allow them to throw in enough HP damage to off mooks and incapacitated foes to be useful (unlike perhaps a Commoner or underpowered hireling), and the attacks they soak (with their better-than-Fighter defensive abilities) let them stick around longer.

And all three of these classes have the skill points and skill lists to accomplish things out of combat - diplomancy, (admittedly skill-based) stealth, Knowledges. Again, not full-caster "I'm a genius" outside of battle useful - but hardly "completely useless".

You seemingly have a love for making statements to an extreme, without any grey in the middle: black and white, "useful and the only good choice" or "useless and never worth taking". However, I find this at odds with your next statement:


And you should not assume that just because I know how to build something that I will in an actual game. The super gish isn't a character I have played, only made.

Why are you willing to cite something you have only made and never played? This is the sort of vein that makes people hate Pun-Pun. A super-gish is hardly Pun-Pun, but it's the same kind of argument.

A sample argument using this logic:

"Hey, you shouldn't bother with your useless little full caster build. Oh sure, you take all the right prestige classes, and make it 'better' in the scope of full casters, but Pun-Pun exists, and therefore you shouldn't even bother, because Pun-Pun just makes full casters useless. I mean, anything a full caster does, Pun-Pun can do better, there's no reason to play a full caster when you can play Pun-Pun. Pun-Pun does all the party roles that a full caster can do and more, so if you want to fulfill those party roles, you might as well go the whole nine yards and be Pun-Pun."

If Pun-Pun wasn't the exemplar of overpoweredness that it is, this argument would actually make sense. However, because only the most depraved are willing to try to play Pun-Pun seriously in a campaign, the argument loses all credibility. Your statement that this super-gish build "isn't something you will use in an actual game", to paraphrase you, puts your entire argument in similar predicament; losing its credibility.

For discussion: what kind of character would you play in an actual game, and what sorts of benchmarks would you be attempting to meet?


Something in Latin about reducing a scenario to its absurd extreme is coming to mind. I can't quite place it.

Wish I could help you, but I took French, not Latin. :smalltongue:


If the job can be done by a disposable throwaway creature, why spend a PC on it? Similarly, why make someone's net contribution to the game be declaring full attacks ad infintium?

I've eaten a meal at my home, and some dishes need cleaning before they can be reused. The job can certainly be done by a hired maid, so why waste my personal time on it? Similarly, why should people ever consider "dishwasher" a viable occupation?

Simple: because no matter what one might gripe about washing dishes, it's a task that needs to be done. And again, with the "anti-hireling" convention that surrounds most tables (the "actual tables" that you wouldn't bring the aforementioned super-gish to), that means that some PC had better pick up the slack, because there's no maids to be hired anywhere at all to do the menial labor for them. Heck, some people can make a living doing nothing but picking up menial labor, because enough people need it done that don't want to spend the time on it.

If everyone considers the job beneath them, then it never gets done and the world suffers. See: Jamestown colony, gentlemen colonists, and the coming of John Smith. The original Jamestown settlers in America were all gentlemen, and considered farming for food to be beneath their stature. Food supplies dwindled, and they nearly starved. John Smith arrives, and declares "no work, no food (you idiots)". Gentlemen farmers grumble, and have to actually dirty their hands when it might be spent doing something "better" - but they survived, instead of starving as they would have.

If you don't have someone beneath you to do your dirty work by circumstance (whether the colony's population or roleplaying convention), then you have to make sure its covered. You spend a PC on it because you can't spend any other resources on it, for the same reason you shell out hundreds of dollars for batteries when a hurricane threatens: you can't get it without such massive resource expenditure, but without it you're completely screwed.


Getting other parties to do it for you means less rewards. So no, it's not.

I might only get a 5% cut off of another adventuring party, but if I can collect the profits from 30 in the time it would take me to run the same adventure personally I'm coming out 50% ahead. It's all about scale, really.

I'll be the first to say that obviously this is walking down the capitalism road that drives most DMs to insanity, so it is most certainly worthy of dismissal around "actual tables", though. So let's most likely best to kill this discussion before it gets into an economics argument, because that is an entirely new can of worms. :smalltongue:


Given that it only happens because the existing archetypes offer so little, I am unimpressed.

... with what? The situation of hirelings overtaking existing archetypes? My argument? Modern editions of role-playing games that the existing archetypes come from? All I can gather from this statement is that you are... "unimpressed". I cannot do build anything from this.


The dismissive part comes from claiming that facts are merely opinions. The continuing to beat a dead horse is a separate problem.

I will now ignore all posts along those lines henceforth.

I beg you to reconsider your position. You lose all hope of convincing your (I hate to use this word) opposition the moment you presume that any information at all can be ignored. If your purpose is merely to state your own beliefs and/or have the last word, then we have nothing more to discuss, and we can continue along our own paths and hopefully never encounter each other again. As long as you wish to influence our opinions on the situation, however, you cannot ignore anything that is said - no matter how incorrect it is, how pointless it is, or how unworthy of notice you deem it.

[The Big Dice]

The horror genre is all about being trolled for the lols. The difference is people that show up for that like it. Which is fine and all, but it does mean they aren't taking it seriously. Why do you think there's always at least one instance of a person going off on their own and at least one instance of two people going off to have sex, only to be eaten by the monster of the week?

I think you're confusing Call of Cthulhu with Scream.

[Malevolence]

If it had been fully covered, unless you had something new to add, being silent is even better.

And let the thread die?


Uhm, no. You really shouldn't argue for things like why mundane being worse than magic is a problem (which I agree with), because your lack of understanding of the game is so glaring that it makes the entire side of the argument look worse. Skills are very useful in solving problems. In the real world, people solve problems with skills all the time. Skills may be weak in comparison with easily available magic (hide is lame if you can become invisible, for example), but there are a great many skills that are VASTLY powerful even in 3.5 (Diplomacy and Handle Animal, for 2 examples are gamebreakingly strong). In a game where I can't solve a murder with commune, I will look for clues (with skills!). Most DMs actively prefer this. One reason that casters are so good is that they can duplicate many skills. That might make skillmonkeys obsolete, for focusing on something that a caster can do easily along with a lot of other stuff, but it doesn't mean that the skills themselves are bad.

No, skills are still weak. Hide is terrible even if you can't go invisible. Even skillmonkeys are terrible at using skills.


Knock is only not worth casting because mundanes can do it more cheaply, and a wand of Knock is widely regarded as a highly useful item.

Polymorph is so strong most people consider it to be broken. It is probably the single strongest spell in 3.5 below about 6th level. When you say otherwise, it really makes your other arguments look even more foolish.

Knock is garbage because you do not open locks with Knock, and you do not open locks with Open Lock, either.

Polymorph is just a means to attack for HP damage, which is automatically inferior to proper spells, and maybe an AC buff, which is automatically inferior to proper defense spells. It's a distraction, nothing more.

There's a huge wall of text there, but there was so much absurdity and false statements in the first half of it that I just stopped reading. Protip: If you would like people to read and respond to your posts, try not doing the very Reductio Ad Absurditum he was alluding to and implying that you should not do.

[Gnaeus]

Polymorph is just a means to attack for HP damage, which is automatically inferior to proper spells, and maybe an AC buff, which is automatically inferior to proper defense spells. It's a distraction, nothing more.


Polymorph is much, much more than that. As you say, it can be used for damage, but appropriate amounts of damage, like what you get from a full attack from a 12 headed Hydra.

It can give lots of great effects. Like shooting a dozen strands from a roper which all debuff for strength damage and drag enemies into your meleer's range. Or it can let you turn your fighter or minion into a War Troll that has a nice high strength, reach, AC, and delivers stun effects with every hit.

It gives you the things type and subtype abilities and movement modes. So if I turn into (say) a flying (fire) creature I get the effects of fly (a 3rd level spell) and Energy Immunity (a high level spell) in a single action, using a single spell slot, and it probably improves my AC at the same time.

It can give you a huge Str (in case you want to move something, but didn't memorize TK). It can let you disguise yourself as a monster. It can give you a climb, swim, or burrow speed. Or you can turn into an ooze and crawl through tiny openings. Or a bird for spying.

Yes, there are better spells for many of those things. But there are no equivalent level spells that are remotely that versatile. There are lots of encounters that polymorph won't win, but very few encounters where polymorph isn't helpful.

Since you do not use spells to open doors, and you do not use open locks. I guess you break all locked doors down? It must be nice getting to fight entire dungeons full of buffed monsters all at once with all the noise you are making. Or if not that, how do YOU get past locked doors? I'm curious.

[balistafreak]

There's a huge wall of text there, but there was so much absurdity and false statements in the first half of it that I just stopped reading. Protip: If you would like people to read and respond to your posts, try not doing the very Reductio Ad Absurditum he was alluding to and implying that you should not do.

I appear to have been... dismissed out of hand. :smallannoyed:

Reductio Ad Absurditum would be used if I wanted to take offense not to the statement but to the argument itself. In this case, the argument is "why play X when Y does it better". In this case the particular statement would be: "because this train of thought leads to Pun-Pun, you should not try to argue playing Y just because it does it better than X"... which basically says "optimization is bad", something I completely disagree in.

What I am targeting in your argument for examination is the object: a super-gish that you, I reiterate, "will not bring to an actual game". I doubt you'll actually respond, but tell me: what kind of character would you bring to a game? You appear to have a system of expected benchmarks of what a character should be able of accomplishing by a certain level, or else risk completely failing completely fail, no questions asked, at their task.

If you continue to insist dismissing people while continuing to trumpet your own personal statements as correct, you are not going to convince anyone of anything.

[ryu]

{Scrubbed}

[Tyndmyr]

3.5 aside, I don't actually agree with this.

You can limit what any individual caster can do in a day (with fatigue or spell points).

Spell point system is exploitable as hell.

A. It allows and promotes novaing off as many high spell slots as possible. MORE oomph in a given fight than a standard caster.
B. Proponents of spellpoints tend to counter that spell points are limited and so on...while technically true, there is a great flaw. Bonus spell points increase by maximum spell level you are capable of casting. This in increasable in a number of ways, allowing you fun little boosts in overall spell capacity.

It is not a limitation, it is a bonus in 3.5. In other systems, I still see the nova tendency, but not the other issue.


You can force casters to tightly specialize, so that a wizard can set things on fire, or control minds, or raise the dead, but make it impossible to do all three things well (replacing wizard with Beguiler/Warmage/Dread Necro + other similar homebrewed classes would do this, or you can require spell prerequisites like GURPS). Lacking an omniscient mage, players would have to figure things out with their skills, or have a dedicated diviner, who wouldn't also at the same time be a combat god. Or a "generalist" wizard wouldn't be as good as a dedicated mundane character at anything.

You can homebrew all sorts of things. That doesn't make the original thing not broken. All broken things anywhere can be fixed with a sufficiently large amount of correct homebrew. Feh.

Also, I can break a warmage wide open too. Just saying. I find them to be almost as good a base as sorc...better for specific things.


You can make magic require mundane skill to be effective (replace Knock with a level 2 spell that gives a bonus to search and open locks, so you can't replace the rogue unless you invest some xp or skill ranks in it. Replace polymorph's rewriting of physical attributes with a static bonus, as pathfinder does, so if your str 6 wizard turns into a bear, it is a really weak bear).

Wizards are int based, so they get tons of skill points. Lots of skill boosting spells already exist. Stacking lots of bonuses is pretty much the same as just doing something anyhow.


You can separate magical and mundane challenges entirely (the wizard can detect the astral tripwire, but not the hidden camera. He can see the curse on the door, but not the mechanical trap. The rogue can see the opposite).

Wizards are not generally terribly fussed about the mechanical trap on the door. The ability to open doors remotely is core, and is accessible at Wizard 1.


You can write systems to give weaker character types extra luck or fate or destiny. I understand that Dresden Files does a good job of allowing a Murphy (non-magical cop) to contribute in the same party with a Harry Dresden (vastly powerful wizard) as part of its game mechanics.

There are quite a few ways to do this.

There are ways to blend magic in with melee more evenly than D&D does it...but it's not at all easy to convert D&D to those ways.


The dismissive part comes from claiming that facts are merely opinions. The continuing to beat a dead horse is a separate problem.

I will now ignore all posts along those lines henceforth.

You saying something is a fact does not make it so. That's not how arguments work.

Spell slots can be a limiting resource. Mostly at low level. I agree that as you get into the mid-high levels, you have enough slots to do pretty much whatever is necessary, and enough wealth to fix that if someone houseruled most of your slots away.

Skills are not bad at all. I would argue that being int based is a significant bonus for wizards simply because of the skill points. For instance, consider the skill trick to disguise your casting via a slight of hand check. This is gold for enchanters. Sure, you can emulate this with feats, but feats are precious. Save them for the things you can't do with skills. And if you think diplomacy is a poor option by RAW, you're just wrong.

Hide can be fantastic. Invisibility has fairly easy counters in terms of spells. Hide AND invisibility is an obvious combo, and with the right build(the usual dark stuff and skill boosting), hide can be amazingly hard to defeat.

If you consider Polymorph to be a poor choice, I really have to question your experience with it. The only real negative against it, IMO, is the fact that the player casting it has to have decent knowledge of the monster manual. A downer for some players.


"Hey, you shouldn't bother with your useless little full caster build. Oh sure, you take all the right prestige classes, and make it 'better' in the scope of full casters, but Pun-Pun exists, and therefore you shouldn't even bother, because Pun-Pun just makes full casters useless. I mean, anything a full caster does, Pun-Pun can do better, there's no reason to play a full caster when you can play Pun-Pun. Pun-Pun does all the party roles that a full caster can do and more, so if you want to fulfill those party roles, you might as well go the whole nine yards and be Pun-Pun."

Well said. I'm actually playing a gish at the moment, and it's worked out well enough for me...but the other melee characters are certainly not invalidated. Sure, nobody actually takes six levels of straight fighter or the like...I think the most anyone has is two levels of it, but we're all on about the same level optimization wise. So, even if I occasionally get to pull a neat trick based on spells, they certainly aren't worthless.

Ryu, that is fairly similar to my definition, though I admit that what constitutes Trolling is somewhat subjective. That said, trolling is forbidden per the board rules.

[Malevolence]

Polymorph is much, much more than that. As you say, it can be used for damage, but appropriate amounts of damage, like what you get from a full attack from a 12 headed Hydra.

So, a bunch of low damage, low accuracy attacks?


It can give lots of great effects. Like shooting a dozen strands from a roper which all debuff for strength damage and drag enemies into your meleer's range. Or it can let you turn your fighter or minion into a War Troll that has a nice high strength, reach, AC, and delivers stun effects with every hit.

Or low DC strand effects? It's not a dozen by the way. War Troll is an anomaly as it actually offers something else.


Since you do not use spells to open doors, and you do not use open locks. I guess you break all locked doors down? It must be nice getting to fight entire dungeons full of buffed monsters all at once with all the noise you are making. Or if not that, how do YOU get past locked doors? I'm curious.

Casting Knock makes a lot of noise too. Anyways, you do not bypass locked doors with the Knock spell, because it is inefficient and wastes resources, and you do not bypass them with Open Lock, as it does not succeed and wastes resources.

You bypass the locked door by smashing it down or breaking it open, which will at worst mean you don't get a surprise round because the door will go down in a single action, thereby not allowing enemies to buff up whereas dragging your feet gives them plenty of time to do so and if you really care about the noise you instead spend a 2nd level spell on Silence, instead of a 2nd level spell per door on a bad spell. Alternately you dissolve the lock with acid, cut the lock out with a cheap adamantine weapon, which ignores all hardness of 20 or less and therefore cuts through it like a hot knife through butter, or just blink walk through the door.

The point of course is that locked doors are not a serious obstacle at any level of the game, and that the intended means of dealing with them are all terrible, so you must instead find alternate means to deal with them properly, meaning easily, because they are not meant to be real obstacles.


What I am targeting in your argument for examination is the object: a super-gish that you, I reiterate, "will not bring to an actual game". I doubt you'll actually respond, but tell me: what kind of character would you bring to a game? You appear to have a system of expected benchmarks of what a character should be able of accomplishing by a certain level, or else risk completely failing completely fail, no questions asked, at their task.

The super gish was a character building exercise. While not on nearly the same scope as Pun-Pun, it was constructed for the same reason - as a demonstration, and proof of concept of what is possible within the system.

As for what sort of character I'd bring, let's see... My most recent characters, in reverse order newest to oldest are Druid, Artificer, Cleric, Cleric, Bard, Wizard, Artificer, Wizard, Artificer. Despite the similar classes, there is a great deal of variance, simply because there is a long list of possible things that can be done with those classes. Additionally, all of these characters were designed to competently do whatever it is they were supposed to do. Proper DCs on the save or lose spam, proper damage on the auto attacking for the CoDzillas, proper saves on everyone, defensive measures that are actually effective, meaning not AC... In short, they were designed to survive, and thrive in campaigns. Both in general, and specifically in regards to the campaign in which they were played in. Doing this requires going through a checklist though. One of the things at the top of the list is passing all saving throws on a 2 or better. Since if a spell lands on you, you're gone. If you can get no fail on a 1, even better.


Spell slots can be a limiting resource. Mostly at low level. I agree that as you get into the mid-high levels, you have enough slots to do pretty much whatever is necessary, and enough wealth to fix that if someone houseruled most of your slots away.

At level 1 you have a Color Spray a fight. The Fighter's resources (HP) are gone in 2 rounds. At any level higher than one you have more spells, and HP is still gone in 2 rounds.


Skills are not bad at all. I would argue that being int based is a significant bonus for wizards simply because of the skill points. For instance, consider the skill trick to disguise your casting via a slight of hand check. This is gold for enchanters. Sure, you can emulate this with feats, but feats are precious. Save them for the things you can't do with skills. And if you think diplomacy is a poor option by RAW, you're just wrong.

Do something that probably won't work... or just get cheap items that give Silent and/or Still? Even Diplomacy, at best with a DC 60 check is just a slower, and different Dominate. So, you hit a super high DC and get a mid level spell effect. And that's the best you can possibly do with it. Assuming that isn't houseruled out because mundanes are not allowed to have nice things. Wizards get a lot of skill points, but those are going towards skill taxes.


Hide can be fantastic. Invisibility has fairly easy counters in terms of spells. Hide AND invisibility is an obvious combo, and with the right build(the usual dark stuff and skill boosting), hide can be amazingly hard to defeat.

Hide, in any amount is completely nullified by very low level abilities. If you get the thing that makes you not automatically lose to a housecat, you are marginally better off but still lose to every single undead, outsider, and various other creatures automatically. It's also completely shut down without any actions at all in a long list of very common scenarios.

Invisibility, meanwhile is countered by some or all of the same things, but since you aren't investing anything into it, you don't really care.

[Gnaeus]

You can homebrew all sorts of things. That doesn't make the original thing not broken. All broken things anywhere can be fixed with a sufficiently large amount of correct homebrew. Feh.

The point of the list that you are trying to refute is not what you seem to think it is. I didn't say that 3.5 wasn't broken. I was countering a statement that it is very difficult from a game design perspective to make magic and mundane stand side by side. When I respond "No, it isn't, and here are a bunch of different ways you can do it." And you answer "But you can fix anything with homebrew" you aren't actually disagreeing with me, or even addressing my point.

[Tyndmyr]

At level 1 you have a Color Spray a fight. The Fighter's resources (HP) are gone in 2 rounds. At any level higher than one you have more spells, and HP is still gone in 2 rounds.

Wizards are limited by the hp resource too. It's also a limited resource for them...even more so. And it requires protecting.


Do something that probably won't work... or just get cheap items that give Silent and/or Still?

It's opposed by spot. Not everyone has spot pimped out, and you can certainly boost your skills as well. Even better, the logical progression is using False Theurgy. Yes, the deception is handy. The fact that it entirely shuts down the normal method of counterspelling with no counter is the real gem, though. And it does so in a non-obvious way, meaning you can get opposing casters to occasionally burn actions trying to stop you.


Even Diplomacy, at best with a DC 60 check is just a slower, and different Dominate. So, you hit a super high DC and get a mid level spell effect. And that's the best you can possibly do with it. Assuming that isn't houseruled out because mundanes are not allowed to have nice things. Wizards get a lot of skill points, but those are going towards skill taxes.

Negative. Dominate has a quite achievable skill check for other people to notice they are dominated. It can also be detected in other ways and dispelled. Diplomacy is better.


Hide, in any amount is completely nullified by very low level abilities. If you get the thing that makes you not automatically lose to a housecat, you are marginally better off but still lose to every single undead, outsider, and various other creatures automatically. It's also completely shut down without any actions at all in a long list of very common scenarios.

I don't see this. Break it down for me, how does a zombie automatically detect folks using hide?

[Malevolence]

Wizards are limited by the hp resource too. It's also a limited resource for them...even more so. And it requires protecting.

Wizards have actual defenses, don't have to go into melee range to attack (no, not even with Color Spray), and can move and be useful on the same round. Any of these things makes them far more durable. All of them means you can easily go whole levels without losing a single HP, and that's with intelligent enemies who saunter around the silly Fighter to go attack the caster right away.


It's opposed by spot. Not everyone has spot pimped out, and you can certainly boost your skills as well. Even better, the logical progression is using False Theurgy. Yes, the deception is handy. The fact that it entirely shuts down the normal method of counterspelling with no counter is the real gem, though. And it does so in a non-obvious way, meaning you can get opposing casters to occasionally burn actions trying to stop you.

Except that no one uses counterspell.

[Chuckthedwarf]

I'm very late to the party, so I'll just blindly respond to the OP!

I don't think that Gandalf is anything near to stereotypical wizard, at least not in D&D terms. If anything, he might be sort of like a warlock. Consider this - he's a fairly supernatural dude himself, basically a demigod similar to balrogs. His powers all come more or less from what is pretty much equivalent to deities in that setting, although he did study some things. And magic isn't exactly showy in Middle Earth, too.

So if anything, he's more of a warlock (limited set of powers from a supernatural being of some kind) or, I don't know, something like a cleric. Strangely enough, more like a paladin even - he's not exactly using a lot of spells to accomplish things, he is fairly charismatic and he has a magic mount. Plus he's pretty good at swordfighting and scaring away evil foes.

[Tyndmyr]

Except that no one uses counterspell.

Well, if you play in highly optimized games without opponents who ever counterspell, I'm not surprised your viewpoint is a bit skewed.

Someone built to be good at counterspelling can shut an unprepared caster down hard. There's a few different ways to do so. With optimization, counterspellers can gain a significant action advantage.

As one example, join ye old church/organization o' Magic. Gain ranks in it. Considering one of the ways to gain ranks is "defeat an enemy using only magic", it's pretty trivial. You now gain 1/day counterspell without needing to use a spell slot or have an action. This is an extremely low resource way to increase your effectiveness against casters.

[Lans]

Half HP means you are constantly in one round kill range, even from the things that would normally take two. And against such a team, there aren't many of those. Fighters are super squishy.

Thats why I said with race/template cheese. I think you can get +10 con on a LA+0, and fighters can take a full attack from most things up to pretty high levels. I think its about 3 at CR 7 and it slides down from there when you take AC into account. Though I haven't looked at all the monsters, so It might not be representative. For example Earth Elemental at CR 7 is just a hair below being able to drop a decent 'fighter' in two full attacks.


Not in 3.5 D&D, yes. They can be, in other systems entirely.

Nit pick for low level wizards, half casters, and shadow casters they are a limiting factor.

[Malevolence]

Well, if you play in highly optimized games without opponents who ever counterspell, I'm not surprised your viewpoint is a bit skewed.

Someone built to be good at counterspelling can shut an unprepared caster down hard. There's a few different ways to do so. With optimization, counterspellers can gain a significant action advantage.

As one example, join ye old church/organization o' Magic. Gain ranks in it. Considering one of the ways to gain ranks is "defeat an enemy using only magic", it's pretty trivial. You now gain 1/day counterspell without needing to use a spell slot or have an action. This is an extremely low resource way to increase your effectiveness against casters.

Counterspelling isn't used because it is terrible, both in general, and as a means of disrupting spellcasting. Even Evocation is better as counterspelling than counterspelling, because if you're going to go first, and then spend that action readying an action instead of taking an action then hitting them with a DC impossible Concentration check means they lose the spell, and actually attempting to counterspell means they most likely do not lose the spell.

Organizations are extremely expensive.

[Tyndmyr]

Counterspelling isn't used because it is terrible, both in general, and as a means of disrupting spellcasting. Even Evocation is better as counterspelling than counterspelling, because if you're going to go first, and then spend that action readying an action instead of taking an action then hitting them with a DC impossible Concentration check means they lose the spell, and actually attempting to counterspell means they most likely do not lose the spell.

Look, most spellcasters that are worth anything have some basic defences against getting blasted by evocations. Sure, it works great...if it gets through. But that's not a guarantee. Even with orbs and such, you've got contingencies, abrupt jaunts, resistances or immunities.

Yes, disrupting via damage is great, but it's not the ideal method of shutting down a caster.

It seems as though you believe counterspelling always suffers a significant failure chance. This is only true if you go about it the dispel magic route. It is not, for example, true of the organization method I mentioned.

There are extremely few ways to counter counterspells of the sort that do not rely on dispelling.


Organizations are extremely expensive.

Rank 4, the level required for the counterspell is an 8k one time tithe.

That's not horrific. If the idea of spending money is abhorrent to you though, note that it's a church of frigging magic. They tend to have useful toys around. Failing to return said toys costs you a mere -1 affiliation score per 1k gold value. Considering each thing you kill with magic gets you +1 CR/4 affiliation points, you should be able to recoup your investment with ease, and if you wish, continue milking them. One wonders how these churches stay in business.

[tonberrian]

One wonders how these churches stay in business.

Presumably, there are NPC members that are not money-grubbing hobos like the PC's who are both wealthy and willing to provide support for their vested interest.

[Fax Celestis]

Counterspelling isn't used because it is terrible, both in general, and as a means of disrupting spellcasting. Even Evocation is better as counterspelling than counterspelling, because if you're going to go first, and then spend that action readying an action instead of taking an action then hitting them with a DC impossible Concentration check means they lose the spell, and actually attempting to counterspell means they most likely do not lose the spell.

...oooooooor you could use battlemagic perception and be a Noctumancer (with or without the non-dual-progression adaptation). Counterspelling is okay, but (like anything else you want to be good at) you have to invest some resources in it.

[Tyndmyr]

Pretty much. A caster that hasn't put any effort into it is going to generally be bad at counterspelling, and will only use it in specific circumstances. But one with a touch of focus on it is great.

[Tavar]

Presumably, there are NPC members that are not money-grubbing hobos like the PC's who are both wealthy and willing to provide support for their vested interest.

Aren't the rules also guidelines? So, if someone starts abusing them, the organization can punish them in some way?

[Tyndmyr]

Aren't the rules also guidelines? So, if someone starts abusing them, the organization can punish them in some way?

Probably. In an actual game, I would probably limit my klepto ways to a bluffable amount. One expensive item another member of my party wants, perhaps. Sell it to him at a discount, and we both win.

[tonberrian]

Isn't there also a feat somewhere that let's a caster counterspell with any spell of the same school (I think it might have to be a higher level, but I'm not sure)? Combine that with a Sorcerer and Heighten Spell, Earth Spell, Rapid Metamagic, Battlemagic Perception, and a couple of low-level spells from every school and you've got a decent Counterspeller right there.

[Tyndmyr]

Isn't there also a feat somewhere that let's a caster counterspell with any spell of the same school (I think it might have to be a higher level, but I'm not sure)? Combine that with a Sorcerer and Heighten Spell, Earth Spell, Rapid Metamagic, Battlemagic Perception, and a couple of low-level spells from every school and you've got a decent Counterspeller right there.

That would be a nasty fellow to encounter as part of a high level challenge indeed. I don't fight dedicated counterspells *too* often...but it generally comes up a few times per campaign. Right now, it's fresh in my mind because I faced one last night.

And of course, on other uses of skill points...getting into prestige classes. Quite frequently important.

[Malevolence]

Look, most spellcasters that are worth anything have some basic defences against getting blasted by evocations. Sure, it works great...if it gets through. But that's not a guarantee. Even with orbs and such, you've got contingencies, abrupt jaunts, resistances or immunities.

Yes, disrupting via damage is great, but it's not the ideal method of shutting down a caster.

It seems as though you believe counterspelling always suffers a significant failure chance. This is only true if you go about it the dispel magic route. It is not, for example, true of the organization method I mentioned.

There are extremely few ways to counter counterspells of the sort that do not rely on dispelling.

The sort that don't have their own problems. And the point is that when Evocation does it better, it's a good indication that what you are doing is not good. And the broken clocks being right twice a day principle is already met by Contingency and Forcecage, so that's right out.


Rank 4, the level required for the counterspell is an 8k one time tithe.

That's not horrific. If the idea of spending money is abhorrent to you though, note that it's a church of frigging magic. They tend to have useful toys around. Failing to return said toys costs you a mere -1 affiliation score per 1k gold value. Considering each thing you kill with magic gets you +1 CR/4 affiliation points, you should be able to recoup your investment with ease, and if you wish, continue milking them. One wonders how these churches stay in business.

That is not the manner in which organizations work.

There's also the other problem with counterspellers. Great, so a caster uses his turn, and at best stops one of our four casters. Except if he cast an actual spell he could do more than that, and in any case the other three rofflestomp him.

And apparently, no one wants to discuss the actual topic anymore. Which is not some irrelevant tangent about counterspelling, but is an archetype balance problem.

[Tyndmyr]

That is not the manner in which organizations work.

Pop open Complete Champion. It's all in there.


There's also the other problem with counterspellers. Great, so a caster uses his turn, and at best stops one of our four casters. Except if he cast an actual spell he could do more than that, and in any case the other three rofflestomp him.

Oh dear...you really do think EVERYONE plays casters...Ok, I've played in all caster parties, but it's the exception, not the rule. Some people do play other things.

And a good counterspeller does not use his turn to stop you, then die. Oh no, he casts spells like everyone else. And also counters you. Action advantage. It's among the most powerful things in the game, when combined with spellcasting.


And apparently, no one wants to discuss the actual topic anymore. Which is not some irrelevant tangent about counterspelling, but is an archetype balance problem.

I've given up trying to get it back on topic...but the value of counterspelling shows a specific value on skills, which can be used to become immune to counterspelling except via the dispel route. Note that the dispel route is the one that requires the CL check, so, with a bit of CL pumping, that can be managed.

[averagejoe]

The Mod They Call Me: I'd like to keep this open, but it has been completely off topic for too long. Thread locked.