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Gamer Girl
2011-06-04, 01:29 PM
So I keep seeing this around and I think it's kinda odd. Why is there such a huge split and division between Martial characters and Magic characters?


Why do people somehow get the idea that a Martial character must have or use no magic? Or that Martial is anti-magical? Why is it so 'wrong' for a fighter to have a magic sword?

Why do people always give examples like ''well if this wizard took four feats and six spells and did this and that, then they could kill a fighter in three seconds''. While it's true, it does not make for a great character. And worse the wizard in the example can do only that....a one trick pony.

I'm still waiting to see an Uber spellcaster that can take out anything or go nova or whatever. Can anyone give me an example of a character like this?

Eldan
2011-06-04, 01:36 PM
The thing is this with wizards: at high levels, they can literally do everything. Fighters, especially, get a handful of feats, which they have to focus on one thing. Wizards, on the other hand, not only can write as many spells as they want in their spellbooks, they can also cast spells that have literally infinite applications.

Compare:
When going up to level 18, the wizard gets, say, Gate. The fighter, at the same level ,gets one feat. What should he use that feat for? +2 to damage? Improved Trip? Melee weapon mastery? Meanwhile, the wizard learns to summon solars, which are full casting angelical clerics.

This gets worse with every spell you look at. How do you defeat a wizard who never leaves his private plane, except by Astral Projection? How do you defeat a wizard who knows the future and can stop time? How do you defeat spells that, literally, allow no defences?

Volthawk
2011-06-04, 01:37 PM
Also, Wizards are never a one-trick pony. Even if, say, all their feats are orientated around blasting and damage, all their other spells still work just fine.

Also, when people say 'Martial', they mean melee. So they have their WBL and magic weapons/armour. Still won't close the gap, unless you go Giacomo-type stuff, but that's really just seen as being a crappy mimic of a wizard.

AmberVael
2011-06-04, 01:38 PM
The Mailman. (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19868534/The_Mailman:_A_Direct_Damage_Sorcerer)

It isn't the most versatile of builds, nor the iconic Wizard that most people talk about, but if something needs to be destroyed? It can do it, whether that something is the fighter, a pixie, or a giant purple people eater.
Mailman is a more blatant demonstration of spellcasting power.

I link this one simply because it is one of the more specific and more easily calculated examples. Much less complicated than some of the other builds and ideas, and generally more fleshed out.

J.Gellert
2011-06-04, 01:43 PM
And worse the wizard in the example can do only that....a one trick pony.

I think you got your wizards mixed with your fighters :smalltongue:

Eldan
2011-06-04, 01:44 PM
Or look at it like this: even with only those they get for free, wizards get 38 spells from leveling, plus the free ones from level one. Fighters get 10 feats.

Seerow
2011-06-04, 01:47 PM
Or look at it like this: even with only those they get for free, wizards get 38 spells from leveling, plus the free ones from level one. Fighters get 10 feats.

Excuse me sir. Fighters get 11 feats. Don't sell them short. One feat is easily worth 2 spells each, and full BAB all day every day is worth at least 4 spells. Let's not even get into what that d10 hit die is worth!

Curious
2011-06-04, 01:51 PM
Excuse me sir. Fighters get 11 feats. Don't sell them short. One feat is easily worth 2 spells each, and full BAB all day every day is worth at least 4 spells. Let's not even get into what that d10 hit die is worth!

:smallbiggrin:

This describes (sarcastically) the situation perfectly. Wizards have an infinite number of spells with an infinite number of purposes, while the Fighter is limited to only those feats that he can choose when leveling up. This means that a wizard can do literally anything he sets his mind to, while the fighter is stuck with his one schtick; hitting things.

Johel
2011-06-04, 01:53 PM
Just to say that, while I fully agree with Eldan and thank Vael for his handy example, Wizards are not always all-powerful.

Before level 6, fighters do have their chances and are in fact far more capable than an wizard of equivalent level.
The reason ? Wizards, at that point, have less spells per day and the spells they have offer much less versatility.

So sure, a 5th level Wizard can fly and be invisible for 5 minutes.
But he will run out of juice quickly.

Note : wands can then take over but then our fighter also has his own magic item to help him survive.

Eldan
2011-06-04, 01:54 PM
Hmm. Change the fighter: give him a feat book. Whenever he sees someone use a feat, he can write that feat down in his book. Every morning, he prepares his feats for the day.

No, it's not ToB :smalltongue:

dsmiles
2011-06-04, 01:56 PM
Is this another Exponential Wizard/Linear Fighter debate? I thought those were on Wizard Wednesdays.

Seerow
2011-06-04, 01:58 PM
I'm sorry, upon further evaluation, I seriously underestimated the value of full BAB.

Consider, Weapon Focus (an awesome feat made for Fighters who are masters of weapons), gives +1 to hit. Full BAB is +1 to hit every other level. So full BAB is worth 10 feats right there. Now on top of that, full BAB also grants you 2 extra attacks with a -5 penalty on each... since that's really close to slashing flurry (1 attack -5 penalty), I think we can call those bonus attacks worth 2 more feats.

Clearly this means that full BAB is worth a whopping 12 feats. Since we determined earlier that a feat is worth at least 2 spells, then the fighter is now up to 46 effective spells.

Now, I know I said I wasn't going to get into this, but it's really bugging me so here it goes. Fighter gets a d10 hit die. A d10! A wizard only gets a d4. That's an average of 3 hit points per level!. Consider, the toughness feat gives you 3 hit points. So that means the fighter with his d10 hit die is effectively gaining a full extra feat every level in hit points! That's right, that hit die is worth an additional 20 feats over the course of his career.

So our fighter? He doesn't have 10 feats. He effectively has 43 feats. That's the equivalent of 86 spells. Wizards? They only get 38 spells. Do you know how much new spells cost? Do you have any idea how much stuff my fighter can buy if your wizard even tries to buy the extra 48 spells needed to catch up with what my fighter gets for free?

And then those spells eventually run out. My fighter can swing his sword all day long and never tire out. Your wizard will run out after the 30th enemy or so. Yeah, Wizards suck dude. Don't underestimate the Fighter.

Tvtyrant
2011-06-04, 01:59 PM
The funny part is the one caster they made that is actually balanced (shadowcaster) brought up cries of outrage because it wasn't quadratic in nature.

AmberVael
2011-06-04, 02:01 PM
...and thank Vael for his handy example...
*cough cough*


I'm sorry, upon further evaluation, I seriously underestimated the value of full BAB.

Consider, Weapon Focus (an awesome feat made for Fighters who are masters of weapons), gives +1 to hit. Full BAB is +1 to hit every other level. So full BAB is worth 10 feats right there.

No way. Weapon Focus only gives +1 to hit with a single weapon. BAB adds to ALL attacks. You're still underselling it.

Seerow
2011-06-04, 02:03 PM
*cough cough*



No way. Weapon Focus only gives +1 to hit with a single weapon. BAB adds to ALL attacks. You're still underselling it.

Good gods, you're right! How do we model that though? Do we have to count it as taking weapon focus with every weapon in the PHB? That could add up pretty quickly. Maybe just count it as triple, figuring you will have one weapon for each general type (a 1 hander, a 2 hander, and a range)?


edit: You know, this post reminded me, I totally forgot to account for weapon and armor proficiencies in my calculations. Proficiency with Heavy Armor and all shields (Even tower shields!) is already 5 more feats. Then proficiency with all martial weapons.... eegads, this is going to get ugly quick.

Eldariel
2011-06-04, 02:07 PM
Why do people somehow get the idea that a Martial character must have or use no magic? Or that Martial is anti-magical? Why is it so 'wrong' for a fighter to have a magic sword?

Everyone (I know of) is fine with Fighter having a magic sword. Yours truly just finds it cheap that a Fighter needs to be a Christmas tree of magical equipment before he is actually proficient at fighting. This has less to do with Fighter not using magic and more with the idea that a class should be competent with its class features.

Fighter with just its class features is pretty much nothing and it's the magic items that actually allow it to do anything; if you give a class with inherent competency the same amount of magic items, he'll come out far ahead.

And while Martials Using No Magic isn't a prerequisite, many people enjoy having that one non-magical badass class for when they want to play that character. This mostly draws from the fact that fiction is generally filled to the brim with such characters. Few classic heroes are spellcasters; those are generally the villains while the hero is a perfectly mundane man who through ingenuity and skill manages to overcome magic. It's not rare for players to want to be that hero. Which leads to people wanting a class capable of being non-magical while still kicking ass right alongside the Wizard, with just the Excalibur.


So basically, the disconnect is here:
- People want the option to be a non-magical hero.
- People don't want to rely on magic items for the non-magical hero to do his thing.
- High magic systems rarely cater to non-magical heroes capable of shining without loads of magic items.

Johel
2011-06-04, 02:09 PM
*cough cough*

Well... Right... My bad. :smallbiggrin:

Tvtyrant
2011-06-04, 02:11 PM
Well for the sword thing we could just graft the VoPs effects onto all martial characters so that their weapons become +5 anyways. It would reduce prices a little, and allow for more badass attachments like flaming/shocking/icy rather than just straight improvements.

JonestheSpy
2011-06-04, 02:18 PM
How do you defeat a wizard who never leaves his private plane, except by Astral Projection?

Wrong question. The right question is: Why would a DM ever allow such nonsense in their game?

Radar
2011-06-04, 02:21 PM
We're talking D&D here? Spells give options, that cannot be obtained any other way. Take Freezing Fog for example: immobilises a group of foes in two different ways, deals damage and doesn't allow any save. In most cases, you can solve a given problem with a single spell:
- need information? Contact Other Plane, Scry
- need to subjugate your enemies? Glitterdust, Grease, Solid Fog...
- need to get somewhere? Flight, Phantom Steed, Planeshift, Teleport
- need a helping hand? Summon line, Planar Binding, Gate
- need to be sneaky? Alter Self, Invisibility, Flight again
- need to open something? Knock, Desintegrate, Passwall
You don't get such options from any other source with such little effort.

Johel
2011-06-04, 02:21 PM
Wrong question. The right question is: Why would a DM ever allow such nonsense in their game?

Because said wizard is an NPC and not a player ?

Tvtyrant
2011-06-04, 02:23 PM
Wrong question. The right question is: Why would a DM ever allow such nonsense in their game?

Better nonsense; by using a trandimensional Widened Cloud Kill on the spot where the demiplane attaches to the Ethereal.

Seerow
2011-06-04, 02:25 PM
Well for the sword thing we could just graft the VoPs effects onto all martial characters so that their weapons become +5 anyways. It would reduce prices a little, and allow for more badass attachments like flaming/shocking/icy rather than just straight improvements.

Personally I've been contemplating a system where you get something similar to VoP (but beefed up, cause VoP pretty much sucks) for stat boosts/weapon damage boosts/AC boosts, for all characters. Possibly also in the VoP style stuff from levelup allow some of the more mundane magical enhancements (like as you level up you're able to make it so all attacks you make with a weapon are treated as wounding, or as if you have the speed property. Or you can increase your weapon damage by xd6, increasing to xd10 on a crit.)

Alternatively (or in addition to) make a broader weapon upgrade system replacing masterwork (something akin to the Shadowrun weapon upgrade system, where weapons have X max amount of upgrades, and various upgrades tweak things slightly), granting various minor bonuses to attacks with that weapon without it needing to be magical.

Then drastically limit magic items (ie since you're now guaranteed to have the numbers that CRs assume you have, you don't need that full wealth by level, magic items are now of the utilitarian variety). Magical Weapons are the special sorts of things that grant things like buffs on yourself, or auras for the party, or convert your +x damage into a specific element/alignment. Little utility things that are nice, but not really necessary to function. Most magic items are things more like boots of teleportation, wings of flying, horn of blasting. All the things that open up new options or utilities, all of the +x swords.

It seems to me like it would work, though it would take a while pruning through what is and is not fitting with the new system, but at the moment it's taking a back seat to a different project I want to finish first.


Spoilered because I started rambling in response to that. So now back to our feat breakdown of the Fighter.

As determined in my edit, the Fighter's BAB is actually valued 3 times higher than expected, due to working with various weapons. We also picked up 5 feats in armor proficiency, and 31 in weapon proficiencies.

BAB was previously valued as 12 feats, so we just added 60 feats in total to our evaluation of the fighter, making his total feat count 103. That is the equivalent of 206 spells. Yeah, no way the wizard keeps up with that.

dsmiles
2011-06-04, 02:31 PM
Stuff about wanting to be a non-magical hero.Have you checked out Monte Cook's Iron Heroes?

Eldan
2011-06-04, 02:32 PM
Wrong question. The right question is: Why would a DM ever allow such nonsense in their game?

Everyone bans astral Projection? Probably not. It's a core spell.

Tvtyrant
2011-06-04, 02:34 PM
Personally I've been contemplating a system where you get something similar to VoP (but beefed up, cause VoP pretty much sucks) for stat boosts/weapon damage boosts/AC boosts, for all characters. Possibly also in the VoP style stuff from levelup allow some of the more mundane magical enhancements (like as you level up you're able to make it so all attacks you make with a weapon are treated as wounding, or as if you have the speed property. Or you can increase your weapon damage by xd6, increasing to xd10 on a crit.)

Alternatively (or in addition to) make a broader weapon upgrade system replacing masterwork (something akin to the Shadowrun weapon upgrade system, where weapons have X max amount of upgrades, and various upgrades tweak things slightly), granting various minor bonuses to attacks with that weapon without it needing to be magical.

Then drastically limit magic items (ie since you're now guaranteed to have the numbers that CRs assume you have, you don't need that full wealth by level, magic items are now of the utilitarian variety). Magical Weapons are the special sorts of things that grant things like buffs on yourself, or auras for the party, or convert your +x damage into a specific element/alignment. Little utility things that are nice, but not really necessary to function. Most magic items are things more like boots of teleportation, wings of flying, horn of blasting. All the things that open up new options or utilities, all of the +x swords.

It seems to me like it would work, though it would take a while pruning through what is and is not fitting with the new system, but at the moment it's taking a back seat to a different project I want to finish first.


Spoilered because I started rambling in response to that. So now back to our feat breakdown of the Fighter.

As determined in my edit, the Fighter's BAB is actually valued 3 times higher than expected, due to working with various weapons. We also picked up 5 feats in armor proficiency, and 31 in weapon proficiencies.

BAB was previously valued as 12 feats, so we just added 60 feats in total to our evaluation of the fighter, making his total feat count 103. That is the equivalent of 206 spells. Yeah, no way the wizard keeps up with that.

I have been wavering between allowing Tier 4- free VoP benefits and setting up a more systematic, tier by tier system. Gestalt for 5-6 and VoP benefits, VoP benefits for 3-4, nothing but the lamp for tier 1-2. Other things like free LA reduction equal to your tier -1 and giving people blood lines/epic destinies correlating to their tier also have sprung up.

Major bloodline for tier 6, moderate bloodline for tier 5, minor bloodline for tier 4 gives a bunch of random bonuses that help add variety, but it seems a little weird that all the fighters would be dragon-blooded while the wizards are just people.

I become more and more convinced that WotC consistenly picked the worst spell per spell level and balanced the other characters against that. "Wizards using burning hands are weak! Remove the Fighters' ability to fly!"

Seerow
2011-06-04, 02:43 PM
I have been wavering between allowing Tier 4- free VoP benefits and setting up a more systematic, tier by tier system. Gestalt for 5-6 and VoP benefits, VoP benefits for 3-4, nothing but the lamp for tier 1-2. Other things like free LA reduction equal to your tier -1 and giving people blood lines/epic destinies correlating to their tier also have sprung up.

Major bloodline for tier 6, moderate bloodline for tier 5, minor bloodline for tier 4 gives a bunch of random bonuses that help add variety, but it seems a little weird that all the fighters would be dragon-blooded while the wizards are just people.

Personally I'm against the idea of using things like gestalt, stats, or whatever else as a way to balance the tiers. Remember, the tiers are what they are not because of abject power level, but because of options. Two tier 5 classes meshed together still won't have half the options a caster has, and VoP does nothing to address that deficiency at all.

My reasoning for wanting a different system for magic items is I don't like the concept of everyone needing the same +stat items, +x weapons, and +x armor, not to mention the same +x animated shield. I want to see those eliminated in their entirety, for everyone, not just lower tiers, and make magic items actually special, as opposed to something that you need to be competitive. ie make it actually possible to run a low magic world without gimping martial types, and then if you prefer high magic, it's still more interesting because everyone is more likely to have more variety in their magic items, with lots of different items that do different cool things, rather than spending half their wealth on that magic sword they needed to keep up with enemies of their level


I become more and more convinced that WotC consistenly picked the worst spell per spell level and balanced the other characters against that. "Wizards using burning hands are weak! Remove the Fighters' ability to fly!"

I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn this was the case. If you look at a blaster wizard and a healbot cleric in core, they're actually pretty balanced in a party with a fighter and a one weapon rogue. But it makes you wonder wtf wizards was thinking giving them all these other options if they didn't actually think the casters would use them.

The Glyphstone
2011-06-04, 02:50 PM
The funny part is the one caster they made that is actually balanced (shadowcaster) brought up cries of outrage because it wasn't quadratic in nature.

The Shadowcaster is balanced? No, it's horribly weak - mainly because its abilities scale up appropriately, but it gets far too few uses per day.

The truly balanced casters are the focused casters - the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and (almost) Warmage. T3, and people love them for it.

Tvtyrant
2011-06-04, 02:50 PM
Personally I'm against the idea of using things like gestalt, stats, or whatever else as a way to balance the tiers. Remember, the tiers are what they are not because of abject power level, but because of options. Two tier 5 classes meshed together still won't have half the options a caster has, and VoP does nothing to address that deficiency at all.

My reasoning for wanting a different system for magic items is I don't like the concept of everyone needing the same +stat items, +x weapons, and +x armor, not to mention the same +x animated shield. I want to see those eliminated in their entirety, for everyone, not just lower tiers, and make magic items actually special, as opposed to something that you need to be competitive. ie make it actually possible to run a low magic world without gimping martial types, and then if you prefer high magic, it's still more interesting because everyone is more likely to have more variety in their magic items, with lots of different items that do different cool things, rather than spending half their wealth on that magic sword they needed to keep up with enemies of their level



I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn this was the case. If you look at a blaster wizard and a healbot cleric in core, they're actually pretty balanced in a party with a fighter and a one weapon rogue. But it makes you wonder wtf wizards was thinking giving them all these other options if they didn't actually think the casters would use them.

They were thinking "Gandalf" Seerow, they were thinking Gandalf. The reason Wizards get Tenser's Transformation, and there are gish Prcs? Gandalf was good at sword fighting. Why do they have a "close portal" spell? Because Gandalf did. And Gandalf being Merlin/Odin, wizards in our sub-culture harken back to a god to begin with.

Jay R
2011-06-04, 02:52 PM
So I keep seeing this around and I think it's kinda odd. Why is there such a huge split and division between Martial characters and Magic characters?


Why do people somehow get the idea that a Martial character must have or use no magic? Or that Martial is anti-magical? Why is it so 'wrong' for a fighter to have a magic sword?

Because D&D started as an attempt at simulating fantasy, and there is a wide gulf between Sir Lancelot and Merlin, between Oddyseus and Circe, between Orlando and Atlantes, between Thor and Mimir, between Prince Charming and the Evil Queen, between Gwydion and Dallben.

And it's not limited to fantasy literature. The stereotypes of the uneducated jock and the skinny little wimp scholar are alive and well, because we've all known such people.

Arneson wanted rules that could allow simulations of the classic fantasy characters, and so D&D was written that way. But the idea of the gulf between wizards and warriors is far older than the game.

There are also examples of warrior / wizards in the literature, also nowhere near as many, but in original D&D this was restricted to elves, so both levels could be limited, supposedly for purposes of balance.

But I suspect the real reason is rooted in the desires of the people playing Arneson's first game in Blackmoor.

OverdrivePrime
2011-06-04, 02:53 PM
I'm sorry, upon further evaluation, I seriously underestimated the value of full BAB.

Consider, Weapon Focus (an awesome feat made for Fighters who are masters of weapons), gives +1 to hit. Full BAB is +1 to hit every other level. So full BAB is worth 10 feats right there. Now on top of that, full BAB also grants you 2 extra attacks with a -5 penalty on each... since that's really close to slashing flurry (1 attack -5 penalty), I think we can call those bonus attacks worth 2 more feats.

Clearly this means that full BAB is worth a whopping 12 feats. Since we determined earlier that a feat is worth at least 2 spells, then the fighter is now up to 46 effective spells.

Now, I know I said I wasn't going to get into this, but it's really bugging me so here it goes. Fighter gets a d10 hit die. A d10! A wizard only gets a d4. That's an average of 3 hit points per level!. Consider, the toughness feat gives you 3 hit points. So that means the fighter with his d10 hit die is effectively gaining a full extra feat every level in hit points! That's right, that hit die is worth an additional 20 feats over the course of his career.

So our fighter? He doesn't have 10 feats. He effectively has 43 feats. That's the equivalent of 86 spells. Wizards? They only get 38 spells. Do you know how much new spells cost? Do you have any idea how much stuff my fighter can buy if your wizard even tries to buy the extra 48 spells needed to catch up with what my fighter gets for free?

And then those spells eventually run out. My fighter can swing his sword all day long and never tire out. Your wizard will run out after the 30th enemy or so. Yeah, Wizards suck dude. Don't underestimate the Fighter.

/Stands
/Applauds
/Drinks Heavily

Reluctance
2011-06-04, 02:58 PM
I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn this was the case. If you look at a blaster wizard and a healbot cleric in core, they're actually pretty balanced in a party with a fighter and a one weapon rogue. But it makes you wonder wtf wizards was thinking giving them all these other options if they didn't actually think the casters would use them.

Probably just how to best port it over from the 2e PHB without too much effort.

Even looking just at core 3.5, it's telling how much time and work it took the devs to go from a simple translation to the EOL game's finally coming into its own. Makes you wonder what a 3.5 followup would be if they junked core and started new core from the best of the later stuff.

Seerow
2011-06-04, 03:05 PM
The Shadowcaster is balanced? No, it's horribly weak - mainly because its abilities scale up appropriately, but it gets far too few uses per day.

The truly balanced casters are the focused casters - the Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and (almost) Warmage. T3, and people love them for it.

I'd hesitate to call dread necromancer truly balanced. It may have less game breaking potential than the full casters, but it will still **** up most encounters via really strong undead minions if the necro goes that route. It may be strictly tier 3 by definition of "tier 2 and 1 can do anything", but it's at the very strong end of tier 3.


They were thinking "Gandalf" Seerow, they were thinking Gandalf. The reason Wizards get Tenser's Transformation, and there are gish Prcs? Gandalf was good at sword fighting. Why do they have a "close portal" spell? Because Gandalf did. And Gandalf being Merlin/Odin, wizards in our sub-culture harken back to a god to begin with.


Honestly, I don't mind Gish PrCs. Though I think any Gish PrC that doesn't lose at least one caster level should lose one at first level, the concept of a character who fights with magic is a fun one. ToB characters generally end up roughly on par with a gish that's lost a few caster levels and has most of his spells focused on buffing and movement. And if the Gish is using his spells on battlefield control and save or sucks, then you have to ask why he decided to gish it up in the first place, but is probably suffering more from those lost caster levels and the MAD associated with Gishing.

But yeah, I suspect you're right on the rest. Our culture assumes magic = omnipotence, and so magic can do everything. Especially since it's so easy to handwaive it as magic. That's one of the biggest issues in D&D, that magic wasn't given any real limits on what it is capable of doing, so by extention it became capable of everything.

What baffles me though is how they could make a class that is capable of pretty much everything, and then balance it at its weakest point (as a blaster)? I understand that blasting is the easiest thing to quantify, but jeeze...

dsmiles
2011-06-04, 03:16 PM
No, really. You should check out Iron Heroes. It kicks the martial characters up a notch or two.

Starbuck_II
2011-06-04, 04:18 PM
No, really. You should check out Iron Heroes. It kicks the martial characters up a notch or two.

Not really, the casters in Iron Heroes are overpowered or underpowered (at same time) at different times. The arcanist unless a damage dealer is overpowered (Illusions are always shadow magic, thus just use them to duplicate you).

The non-casters are good. Executioner is awesome in fluff/crunch.
The Wapon Master is just a Pathfinder fighter though (both have weaspon training).
Both most of Iron Heroes is decent.

MeeposFire
2011-06-04, 04:24 PM
This is very much a 3.5 conversation. If you go into 4e for instance martial can compete easily with magical characters. In fact in a strange twist of fate the fighter might be the most powerful class in 4e overall (though the wizard and the martial warlord give it a strong run for its money).

dsmiles
2011-06-04, 04:42 PM
Not really, the casters in Iron Heroes are overpowered or underpowered (at same time) at different times. The arcanist unless a damage dealer is overpowered (Illusions are always shadow magic, thus just use them to duplicate you).

The non-casters are good. Executioner is awesome in fluff/crunch.
The Wapon Master is just a Pathfinder fighter though (both have weaspon training).
Both most of Iron Heroes is decent.I wasn't referring to casters. I was referring to the martial classes. Casters are magic classes.

erikun
2011-06-04, 05:28 PM
So I keep seeing this around and I think it's kinda odd. Why is there such a huge split and division between Martial characters and Magic characters?
Because D&D 3.5e was poorly designed.

Heck, just take a look at the other versions of D&D for comparison. In AD&D, anything standing in front of the Fighter would be minced into a fine gravy. 2-3 attacks a round, hitting the best AC on a 3 or greater, dealing 20 damage a hit? A creature with 20HD was only sporting around 50 HP in the system, which means a Fighter could easily drop a Great Wyrm Black Dragon in a single round. Heck, the Tarrasque - at 70 HD - would likely drop after only 6 rounds. (Mind you, the Tarrasque would probably tear the Fighter apart long before then.)

Comparing it to D&D 4e, there is virtually no split between the two classes. A Fighter so inclined can pick up most of the utility tricks that the Wizard has, and while there are a number of things the Wizard can do that the Fighter cannot (AoE debuffs/difficult terrian), there are a number of things the Fighter can do that the Wizard cannot.

herrhauptmann
2011-06-04, 06:44 PM
Because D&D 3.5e3.X was poorly designed.

Heck, just take a look at the other versions of D&D for comparison. In AD&D, anything standing in front of the Fighter would be minced into a fine gravy. 2-3 attacks a round, hitting the best AC on a 3 or greater, dealing 20 damage a hit? A creature with 20HD was only sporting around 50 HP in the system, which means a Fighter could easily drop a Great Wyrm Black Dragon in a single round. Heck, the Tarrasque - at 70 HD - would likely drop after only 6 rounds. (Mind you, the Tarrasque would probably tear the Fighter apart long before then.)


I think some of the problem does come from older editions. The fighter is essentially unchanged, but a lot of what made him special, was taken away, or given to everyone. Like getting extra HP for a high con.
The wizard, well he had many, many splatbooks worth of spells to choose from. When they created 3.0, they HAD to include most of their favorite 2E spells in the newest edition.
However, they took out a lot of the disadvantages of many spells. Haste for instance took a year off of your life. Many other spells also lost their disadvantages.
In old editions, if a wizard got hit while casting, he lost the spell. In 3.X, he gets a concentration check to retain the spell. The check becomes easy to pass around the time that wizards dominate the game. Now the only way to ensure he loses the spell, is to hit him with so much damage that he dies. (Which has its own issues)
In old editions, if a wizard ended up next to an enemy fighter, he was dead. Now he can just 5ft step. Or cast a quickened dimension door. Or any of a large number of other issues.

To gamer girl,
Personally I don't think that a warrior type is 'anti-magic' unless he's being played that way. Personality, goals, prestige class, etc. Feats like Mage-slayer exist, but they don't represent an automatic hatred of wizards, jsut that you've studied and trained yourself to defeat a particular enemy.

randomhero00
2011-06-04, 06:56 PM
I've kind of wondered the same thing. A highly skilled martial person is like magic. The move faster than the eye can see, do feats that you thought not possible, and are so tough you think they'd be an alien. If anything, the "magic" oozes from martial characters as much as actual magic characters.

navar100
2011-06-04, 06:59 PM
This is very much a 3.5 conversation. If you go into 4e for instance martial can compete easily with magical characters. In fact in a strange twist of fate the fighter might be the most powerful class in 4e overall (though the wizard and the martial warlord give it a strong run for its money).

If you go into 4E magic doesn't exist at all. It's just another word to describe using a sword or firing an arrow with a bow.

The fallacy in the wizards rule fighters drool logic is the assumption the wizard knows every spell in existance, has prepared the most opportune spell to have at the precise time it is needed, always gets through spell resistance, and all opponents always fail their saving throws. On paper a wizard can indeed do anything. In practice, that is not the case.

There is nothing wrong with a fighter using magic items to do stuff. The fighter is a "gadgeteer".

The Glyphstone
2011-06-04, 07:02 PM
The fallacy in the wizards rule fighters drool logic is the assumption the wizard knows every spell in existance, has prepared the most opportune spell to have at the precise time it is needed, always gets through spell resistance, and all opponents always fail their saving throws. On paper a wizard can indeed do anything. In practice, that is not the case.


Very true. In practice, wizards use spells that don't allow saves or spell resistance, and prepare a handful of general purpose spells that work on everything while using dirt-cheap scrolls for the rare speciality cases.

Eldariel
2011-06-04, 07:22 PM
There is nothing wrong with a fighter using magic items to do stuff. The fighter is a "gadgeteer".

Umm. Why wouldn't I just play a class actually focused around items if I wanted an item Wizard? Like Artificer or any caster with Crafting or some such? If I'm playing a Fighter, I want a guy who's badass without magic. Badass enough to compete with people capable of bending magic while the Badass only has a pointy stick.

That pointy stick can be magical for all I care, and even his shield and armor, but if he needs cloak and vest and boots and eye patch and rings of magic, he isn't badass. His items are. He's a loser cloaking himself in power trying very hard to appear special while in reality, he's a dime dozen with no special capabilities of his own. And Fighter isn't a very good word for Gadgeteer to start with.


And really, let's stop with the "no, Wizards can't do that"-stuff? If you really don't believe they can, try it yourself: Take a Wizard of level X (Wizard 7/Loremaster 8/Archmage 5) where X is any level whatsoever. Take as high an Int as you can with rest in Con and Dex. Prepare a bunch of good spells (see e.g. Logic Ninja's guide for basic good spells). Be Gray Elf or Human. Stick to only Core for simplicity's sake.

Pick Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration, Extend Spell, Quicken Spell, Improved Initiative (since it's Core, you get MR penetration and initiative out of feats; drop Greater Spell Focus and Improved Initiative if needing more room tho), Spell Focus: Conjuration & Greater (if excess featz) and buy any caster level improving items and Metamagic Rods and stat boosters and maybe Cloak of Resistance if you feel so inclined. And a couple of contingency scrolls of more rare, solution-type spells (Wind Wall, Knock, Tongues, Ray of Enfeeblement & al.) and maybe a Wand of some repeatable spell without need for casting stat or caster level if playing on a level where you can afford items.

See how many encounters you can find you don't have an overwhelming percentile chance to beat without much effort. And really, they roll that nat 20 for a save on low levels where you primarily attack saves? Just cast a second spell for crying out loud! It's not really that hard. Then run another encounter. And two more. See what percentile chance you have of not being able to go through 4 encounters a day. It starts off pretty small on level 1 and grows ever smaller. And around level 5 you begin having access to safe rest in most level appropriate environments in Rope Trick and by level 9, Teleport makes reaching a safe place out of almost anywhere trivially easy if you do need a recharge without encounters.

Really, if people bothered testing things themselves we wouldn't need that discussion over and over. All the information is available publicly so anyone can run the tests.

Thrice Dead Cat
2011-06-04, 07:34 PM
Wrong question. The right question is: Why would a DM ever allow such nonsense in their game?

Because it's all core? No, seriously, people mention that all the broken stuff with a few exceptions, spell-wise, are core. Outside of core, through all the books, you get the celerity and its big brother, shivering touch, and streamers. That's four spells. The first is often thrown down with Time Stop (core), the second is easily stopped with a means of energy immunity (doable in core, but expensive out the wazoo, easier for non-magical classes outside of core), and the last is an obscure evocation spell that is used to counter other spellcasters.

Looking at core, a level one wizard can pop grease, sleep, and, if feeling lucky or forced to due to positioning, color spray. Three spells that can ruin a level one enemy. If he specializes or just has high INT, you can use all three in a day, popping one per fight before going to the crossbow. It gets worse from there. At level 3, he now has web, glitterdust, daze monster, and hideous laughter. To of those can stop several enemies, the other two stop a single target with luck.

It gets worse from there. The nature of 3.X is that spells do so much and are a daily resource compared to the most mundane fighter's all day stick and feats. For wizards, even if every single feat they have is toughness, their spells will still hurt just as much as another's, not because of raw damage, but because saying "no" is better than just hitting things.


The issue there is, some people get it in their heads that all casters are allowed to be strong later, no matter the game, because of how fragile they are either at the start or in general. Sadly, 3.X doesn't use that balance, nor do I think it should. What happens if you start at low levels and the wizard is the luckily one and survives each fight from level 1 to 20 while the fighter types go through more characters than dice rolled? What happens if the game doesn't scale the full run? It just doesn't work. At some point in time, assuming core rules and a level 1 to 20 game, someone will be unhappy with their character. The casters may fear for their lives at low levels, but that's due to low levels. There is about a difference of 1-3 hits worth of difference between a level 1 Fighter's 13 HP and a level 1 wizard's 6 HP. It's closer for clerics and druids, too.

Other systems can work with a dichotomy of magic versus science or mundanity: 3.X is not that system. Magic just has too many options. The classic (and silly) example of a low level wizard with access to time, a wand of Orb of X, a wand of fly, and his own SR: No spells can still take on an epic monster or three (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/colossus.htm) simply because he can play the distance with flight and smack them with nonmagical balls of fire or acid or whatever else is needed to bypass their outdated 3.0 Magic Immunity.

EDIT: That being said, I believe mundanes deserve nice things as well. Tome of Battle, 2/3s of the classes in Magic of Incarnum, and the Binder all do it well, even if only the first book listed is truly mundane.:smalltongue:

NNescio
2011-06-04, 07:39 PM
I wouldn't exactly call Swordsages with their fancy shadow teleports and channelling fire from their fingertips mundane, but your point still stands.

(Not that I have anything against ToB. In fact I love it.)

Eldariel
2011-06-04, 07:40 PM
I wouldn't exactly call Swordsages with their fancy shadow teleports and channelling fire from their fingertips mundane, but your point still stands.

Yeah, well, they're the Monks of ToB; warriors with tons of different magical ki/psionic/whatever abilities to augment their general kickassitude.

MeeposFire
2011-06-04, 09:02 PM
If you go into 4E magic doesn't exist at all. It's just another word to describe using a sword or firing an arrow with a bow.

The fallacy in the wizards rule fighters drool logic is the assumption the wizard knows every spell in existance, has prepared the most opportune spell to have at the precise time it is needed, always gets through spell resistance, and all opponents always fail their saving throws. On paper a wizard can indeed do anything. In practice, that is not the case.

There is nothing wrong with a fighter using magic items to do stuff. The fighter is a "gadgeteer".

Of course there is magic in 4e. Just because they use a standardized format to show attacks does not make them the same. That is like saying the flashing sun maneuver (which is essentially flurry) is magic just because it is a second level something and thus bears a superficial resemblance to spells in format. You are also completely disregarding rituals which are very much like magic in many facets of literature, movies, and other stories (now whether you want to use them is a whole different issue) and are explicitly magical in system.

What 4e changed was that casters were brought down. Casters can't break the rules of the universe anymore. In 4e operate fully under the same rules but magic allows them to do different things that martial classes can't do. For instance a martial character can't hit every enemy in a 100 foot radius for damage and stunning them all (errated to immobilize but martial classes can't do that either).

dsmiles
2011-06-04, 09:18 PM
Of course there is magic in 4e. Just because they use a standardized format to show attacks does not make them the same. That is like saying the flashing sun maneuver (which is essentially flurry) is magic just because it is a second level something and thus bears a superficial resemblance to spells in format. You are also completely disregarding rituals which are very much like magic in many facets of literature, movies, and other stories (now whether you want to use them is a whole different issue) and are explicitly magical in system.
And that's what I consider one of the top three features of 4e. Everybody uses the same format for their abilities. It makes it a bit more user-friendly, IMO.

Vknight
2011-06-04, 11:25 PM
Wizards do though have one thing that is super reality altering.

'Raise Land' get a group together assit on arcane checks and you can make floating islands and fortresses.
Combine with other rituals and you wizard at lvl24 and up can then force the big bad to come to him.
It's not as bad as 3.X but they still have a few things.

Now these few things are available to any class with 'Ritual Caster' or the Int to get.

But the point stands Magic User, Ritual Caster, they have some advantages and disadvantages and there advantages often seem to outweigh the disadvantages.

This has lead to that idea of a fighter with no magic items which can be done. It will hurt but can be done.

Heck 4e has a thing which gives you bonuses to attack and defense like a magic item in a world without or if your character does not use them

The Glyphstone
2011-06-05, 12:08 PM
This has lead to that idea of a fighter with no magic items which can be done. It will hurt but can be done.

Heck 4e has a thing which gives you bonuses to attack and defense like a magic item in a world without or if your character does not use them

Which is something 3.E sorely needed, but never, ever got, much to its shame. Vow of Poverty was an attempt, but a disastrous failure of one...people who want to play a "low-magic" game of 3x are crippled because the game's internal math falls apart without the christmas tree effect. 4E does the same, but at least gives the option of inherent bonuses replacing items.

dsmiles
2011-06-05, 12:41 PM
I've never really agreed with the whole "low-magic fighter" thing. I've always liked finding the magic sword. All my favorite heroes had magic swords. King Arthur, Elric, Artemis Entreri, Belgarion. All had magic swords.

The Glyphstone
2011-06-05, 01:08 PM
I've never really agreed with the whole "low-magic fighter" thing. I've always liked finding the magic sword. All my favorite heroes had magic swords. King Arthur, Elric, Artemis Entreri, Belgarion. All had magic swords.

Well, that is what low-magic is supposed to be. Magic items, such as swords, are rare and powerful....not in the "+1 swords are artifacts" sense, but in the "the only magic swords are +5 Vorpals, +5 Holy Avengers, etc." sense. One-of-a-kind, but worthy of their legendary status.

Eldariel
2011-06-05, 01:10 PM
I've never really agreed with the whole "low-magic fighter" thing. I've always liked finding the magic sword. All my favorite heroes had magic swords. King Arthur, Elric, Artemis Entreri, Belgarion. All had magic swords.

Magic swords are fine. But if you need magic boots, magic hat (that's WIZARDS' STUFF DAMNIT), magic amulet, magic rings, magic boots, magic shirt, magic cape and magic contacts, it's overdoing it (did I mention magic boots?). I'm more than 110% fine with warriors needing a magic sword to truly shine, and even magic armor and magic shield (if using one) but all that extra mumbo jumbo trinket nonsense? Leave that out of it.

Maybe a 4th item of some sort. Maybe that Belt. Maybe the Ring of Power. It's all fine. 11 bodyslot items, a bunch of slotless tools, various magic-negating rods and such as the baseline tho? Unless I'm making Jarlaxle, I'd rather not. And I refuse to wear Magic Contacts; they aren't fashionable.

Seerow
2011-06-05, 01:12 PM
I've never really agreed with the whole "low-magic fighter" thing. I've always liked finding the magic sword. All my favorite heroes had magic swords. King Arthur, Elric, Artemis Entreri, Belgarion. All had magic swords.

But is finding Excalibur all that special when all it is is a +5 Holy Axiomatic Sword, and you already had a +4 Flaming Burst Shocking Burst Sword?

Magic swords are much cooler when they're rare and not everyone needs to have them to function effectively. Especially when the magic sword has more interesting effects than just +hit/damage.

The Big Dice
2011-06-05, 01:18 PM
I've never really agreed with the whole "low-magic fighter" thing. I've always liked finding the magic sword. All my favorite heroes had magic swords. King Arthur, Elric, Artemis Entreri, Belgarion. All had magic swords.
Elric and Belgarion are bad examples. Technically, both would be gishes. Elric being the archetypal warrior sorceror summoner and Belgarion being a blaster with a big sword.

Tvtyrant
2011-06-05, 02:23 PM
Elric and Belgarion are bad examples. Technically, both would be gishes. Elric being the archetypal warrior sorceror summoner and Belgarion being a blaster with a big sword.

Belgarion being just this side of a deity, and having killed one, he definitely doesn't count. The only reason he doesn't roflstomp ever problem in the series is he just never thinks to.

NNescio
2011-06-05, 02:24 PM
Does Garion have Divine Rank 0? And does he count as a proxy?

Zale
2011-06-05, 02:40 PM
Rolfstomping attracts mook hordes though. :smallconfused:

The Big Dice
2011-06-05, 02:42 PM
Belgarion being just this side of a deity, and having killed one, he definitely doesn't count. The only reason he doesn't roflstomp ever problem in the series is he just never thinks to.

Elric kills multiple deities and wanders round with a sword built specifically to kill deities. In a fight between the two, I'd put my money on Stormbringer belching after drinking Belgarion's soul.

Lord Raziere
2011-06-05, 03:28 PM
Elric kills multiple deities and wanders round with a sword built specifically to kill deities. In a fight between the two, I'd put my money on Stormbringer belching after drinking Belgarion's soul.


Stormbringer


Stormbringer


Stormbringer

.....:smallfurious:

darn it, that is already taken :smallannoyed: now I have to come up with different title for Kalectro Stelvana!

MeeposFire
2011-06-05, 03:36 PM
The nice thing about the inherent bonus system in 4e is that it only replaces the required item parts which are the enhancement bonuses from armor, neck, and attack items. You still can find and use magic items and the enhancement bonuses overlap so you can still find that magic sword and it will still be awesome but you are no longer beholden to finding it.

erikun
2011-06-05, 04:46 PM
.....:smallfurious:

darn it, that is already taken :smallannoyed: now I have to come up with different title for Kalectro Stelvana!
Stormrender?
Stormbreaker?
Endbringer? (I'm sure that's been used somewhere, though.)
Earthcrasher?

Any particular reason you can't just steal the name anyways? (Published work, perhaps?)

DontEatRawHagis
2011-06-05, 06:14 PM
How do I put this delicately, if you like high fantasy the poster child is the Wizard/Mage. A few DM's I know subvert this(one has been playing since chainmail), but a few seemed a bit stuck into the whole you need a wizard mentality. But that is probably because wizards are OP.

I play monk or any psionic class most of the time. Got grief from a 3.5e game when I did Monk. All items found fell into the classic Thief, Fighter, Cleric, and Mage category. I sort of felt that a bunch of people would have been a little happier if I rolled Wizard.

NNescio
2011-06-05, 06:28 PM
Stormrender?
Stormbreaker?
Endbringer? (I'm sure that's been used somewhere, though.)
Earthcrasher?

Any particular reason you can't just steal the name anyways? (Published work, perhaps?)

Noun Verber. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NounVerber)

squeekenator
2011-06-05, 07:12 PM
What 4e changed was that casters were brought down. Casters can't break the rules of the universe anymore. In 4e operate fully under the same rules but magic allows them to do different things that martial classes can't do. For instance a martial character can't hit every enemy in a 100 foot radius for damage and stunning them all (errated to immobilize but martial classes can't do that either).

Well that's just the thing - those wizards exist in 3.5 too. The 4th edition limited power wizard who throws around a few fairly powerful spells and only occasionally breaks the rules of the universe is supported in 3.5. The supremely omnipotent magical wizards of death only come into play once you reach high levels and start to battle supremely omnipotent magical enemies of death. In 3.5 terms, a 30th level 4th edition character is approximately level 10. The difference between the two systems is that 3.5 allows you to reach even higher levels of power, where being good at hitting people with a big stick simply doesn't cut it, as well as lower levels of power where wizards are terrible and sword-and-board fighters reign supreme. Is this a good thing? That's an entirely subjective matter. But 3.5 does support playing a campaign where martial = magic in terms of power.

EDIT: This applies to the entire magic vs. martial thing, not just edition wars. Martial classes are perfectly fine if you put them up against enemies that obey the laws of physics, but in order to do battle with foul demons with godlike powers who have been preying on mortals since before the dawn of time you need some supernatural powers yourself.

JeminiZero
2011-06-05, 08:33 PM
I once wrote a thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152637) that states some of my thoughts on the matter.

The short answer: If you want a world where martial characters can punch out world-ending threats, and keep up with mystics who can bend reality to their will, look up the superhero genre.

dsmiles
2011-06-05, 08:54 PM
I think the biggest problem is DnD is making people confuse High Fantasy with high magic.

The definition of High Fantasy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy) actually has no implications as to whether it's high magic, low magic, or even no magic.

High fantasy is defined as fantasy fiction set in an alternative, entirely fictional ("secondary") world, rather than the real, or "primary" world. The secondary world is usually internally consistent but its rules differ in some way(s) from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set in the primary, or "real" world, or a rational and familiar fictional world, with the inclusion of magical elements.
Now, Sword & Sorcery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_and_sorcery) is another topic, but it is another sub-genre of fantasy fiction. (The other two being Low Fantasy and Medieval/Historical Fantasy.)

navar100
2011-06-05, 09:10 PM
Umm. Why wouldn't I just play a class actually focused around items if I wanted an item Wizard? Like Artificer or any caster with Crafting or some such? If I'm playing a Fighter, I want a guy who's badass without magic. Badass enough to compete with people capable of bending magic while the Badass only has a pointy stick.

That pointy stick can be magical for all I care, and even his shield and armor, but if he needs cloak and vest and boots and eye patch and rings of magic, he isn't badass. His items are. He's a loser cloaking himself in power trying very hard to appear special while in reality, he's a dime dozen with no special capabilities of his own. And Fighter isn't a very good word for Gadgeteer to start with.


And really, let's stop with the "no, Wizards can't do that"-stuff? If you really don't believe they can, try it yourself: Take a Wizard of level X (Wizard 7/Loremaster 8/Archmage 5) where X is any level whatsoever. Take as high an Int as you can with rest in Con and Dex. Prepare a bunch of good spells (see e.g. Logic Ninja's guide for basic good spells). Be Gray Elf or Human. Stick to only Core for simplicity's sake.

Pick Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration, Extend Spell, Quicken Spell, Improved Initiative (since it's Core, you get MR penetration and initiative out of feats; drop Greater Spell Focus and Improved Initiative if needing more room tho), Spell Focus: Conjuration & Greater (if excess featz) and buy any caster level improving items and Metamagic Rods and stat boosters and maybe Cloak of Resistance if you feel so inclined. And a couple of contingency scrolls of more rare, solution-type spells (Wind Wall, Knock, Tongues, Ray of Enfeeblement & al.) and maybe a Wand of some repeatable spell without need for casting stat or caster level if playing on a level where you can afford items.

See how many encounters you can find you don't have an overwhelming percentile chance to beat without much effort. And really, they roll that nat 20 for a save on low levels where you primarily attack saves? Just cast a second spell for crying out loud! It's not really that hard. Then run another encounter. And two more. See what percentile chance you have of not being able to go through 4 encounters a day. It starts off pretty small on level 1 and grows ever smaller. And around level 5 you begin having access to safe rest in most level appropriate environments in Rope Trick and by level 9, Teleport makes reaching a safe place out of almost anywhere trivially easy if you do need a recharge without encounters.

Really, if people bothered testing things themselves we wouldn't need that discussion over and over. All the information is available publicly so anyone can run the tests.

Just today the party (4th level) needed to enter a heavily fortitfied fort in our Pathfidner game. We wanted to do so without the bad guys knowing we were there for as long as possible. To fight the initial skeleton guards would have ruined everything from the start. With imaginative use of Ghost Sound and a Silent Image, my Sorcerer got the party inside without being noticed. We reached a heavily occuppied courtyard, hiding in the stable. We still needed to get inside the main building. We started a fire to spook the horses. I casted Prestidigitation for a puff of smoke to simulate the fire being bigger than it is as well as to obscure the party exiting the stable. With everyone distracted by the fire and horses, we were able to get inside the main building. It didn't matter if we were seen. No one was paying any particular attention.

Me, the sorcerer, with two level 0 spells and one level 1 spell got the entire party inside the fort undetected. Hooray for me! I know full well the power spellcasters have. How did the paladin, fighter, cavalier, rogue, and cleric feel about this? They were happy. We got inside. No one gave a damn it was all me. No one was complaining I used 0 level spells, which you can use at will in Pathfinder, to get everyone inside. Me, the all so powerful spellcaster, and I'm only Tier 2! In a later combat, I used Hypnotic Pattern to keep one very young white dragon at bay while the paladin battled the other one. The rest of the party was fighting a yuan-ti. The paladin was not complaining I was keeping one of the dragons off his back while he smited the other. He killed his dragon. The yuan-ti ran away. The rest of the party came into the room, and they and the paladin killed off the second dragon.

No kidding spellcasters are powerful. It's just not a problem unless you choose to make it one.

Eldariel
2011-06-05, 09:15 PM
No kidding spellcasters are powerful. It's just not a problem unless you choose to make it one.

How does this relate to your earlier statement:


The fallacy in the wizards rule fighters drool logic is the assumption the wizard knows every spell in existance, has prepared the most opportune spell to have at the precise time it is needed, always gets through spell resistance, and all opponents always fail their saving throws. On paper a wizard can indeed do anything. In practice, that is not the case.

Seems your argument has shifted from "Wizards aren't notably more powerful" to "Sure, they do more stuff but it's fine".

navar100
2011-06-05, 09:20 PM
How do I put this delicately, if you like high fantasy the poster child is the Wizard/Mage. A few DM's I know subvert this(one has been playing since chainmail), but a few seemed a bit stuck into the whole you need a wizard mentality. But that is probably because wizards are OP.

I play monk or any psionic class most of the time. Got grief from a 3.5e game when I did Monk. All items found fell into the classic Thief, Fighter, Cleric, and Mage category. I sort of felt that a bunch of people would have been a little happier if I rolled Wizard.

That's the DM's faut. No magic item exists without his permission. It was his job to put in treasure hoards magic items suitable for a monk.


How does this relate to your earlier statement:



Seems your argument has shifted from "Wizards aren't notably more powerful" to "Sure, they do more stuff but it's fine".

My point was that those who complain about wizard power auto-assume the wizard always wins. Today my sorcerer rocked. Just because my sorcerer rocked doesn't make the fighter be The Suck. In previous combats many sessions ago, my sorcerer sucked. What happened? I casted Color Spray, but the bad guys made their saving throw! There I was, uberspellcaster casting uberspell, but gosh darn it, the bad guys made their saving throw. See bad guys not stunnued ot unconscious. See bad guys take their turns doing full attack womping, knocking party members to below 0 hit points. That is never taken into accoutn by those who complain of wizard power. They always assume the bad guys fail the save or but of course have the spellcaster has exact spell needed that didn't require a saving throw.

Thrice Dead Cat
2011-06-05, 09:33 PM
The problem with spellcasters having so many options to them compared to a mundane character, though, isn't so much that they have MOAR POWER! (Even if that is usually true.:smalltongue:) But that they can just be effective in so many situations compared to, say, a fighter or a barbarian. With proper spell choice, nearly any of the tier 1-2 casters can have a say in any scenario. Yes, even one held entirely in an antimagic zone.:smalltongue:

It's not so much that it's one guy at the table being Superman while everyone else is stuck being Jimmy Olsen, but that, for a team game designed to have levels of threats (the whole basis of a level system and, by extension, the CR system) there are some classes that constantly can beat certain "impossible" threats without having to rely purely on luck. The reverse is also true. The vast majority of classes without access to something supernatural (even if said supernatural thing is only a +1 sword) can never deal with ghosts or any other incorporeal foe. Those that can but don't have access to spells that don't care about corporeality still have to slog through that 50/50 miss chance.


EDIT: This whole wizards rule/fighters drool dichotomy isn't actually an argument. Yeah, a fighter can still do something: he is just very limited in what he can do because of his limited options (feats, level, gear, race, etc.) while any caster with time can pick up a new spell or entirely change their game plan day-to-day.

EDIT2: Thus, a "fighter sucks" not because he can't be effective, but because he can only really be effective at one thing at a time, if he is lucky.

Tvtyrant
2011-06-05, 09:35 PM
I say everything in reality is +1 if it is masterwork, and since the gods created the world and they are its masters all rocks are masterwork, and therefore you can hit ghosts with a rock.

herrhauptmann
2011-06-05, 11:13 PM
I say everything in reality is +1 if it is masterwork, and since the gods created the world and they are its masters all rocks are masterwork, and therefore you can hit ghosts with a rock.

Masterwork != Magic. Your masterwork rock still can't hit the ghost.

Tvtyrant
2011-06-05, 11:21 PM
Masterwork != Magic. Your masterwork rock still can't hit the ghost.

Ah, but it was made with magic! And things made with magic are magical, because I don't understand them! Therefore they hit the ghost.

Lord Raziere
2011-06-05, 11:23 PM
Stormrender?
Stormbreaker?
Endbringer? (I'm sure that's been used somewhere, though.)
Earthcrasher?

Any particular reason you can't just steal the name anyways? (Published work, perhaps?)

Kalectro wields Storm Magic. can't be stormbreaker, render or anything like that cause he creates storms, earthcrasher or endbringer are not his theme.

well no, not published work right, but he might or not be a protagonist in a book, still working it out. its just that he uses Storm Magic exclusively, Stormbringer fits, not much else does.

JeminiZero
2011-06-05, 11:42 PM
Kalectro wields Storm Magic. can't be stormbreaker, render or anything like that cause he creates storms, earthcrasher or endbringer are not his theme.

well no, not published work right, but he might or not be a protagonist in a book, still working it out. its just that he uses Storm Magic exclusively, Stormbringer fits, not much else does.

StormCaller? StormMaker? StormRider? StormWalker? Storms-r-us?

NNescio
2011-06-05, 11:52 PM
Maelstrom Maker. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AddedAlliterativeAppeal)

Lord Raziere
2011-06-05, 11:58 PM
StormCaller? StormMaker? StormRider? StormWalker? Storms-r-us?

Stormmaker has too many M's next together, makes it sound weak, Stormcaller....maybe....Stormrider...maybe.....Sto rmwalker....too slow...

hmmmm...oh I got it: Stormrunner, much better.

DontEatRawHagis
2011-06-06, 06:26 AM
I think the biggest problem is DnD is making people confuse High Fantasy with high magic.


Quoted for truth.

A friend of mine, doesn't like me because I hate High Fantasy, reason why I didn't like D&D until I found Dark Sun, I'm more into urban or punk fantasy.

Eldariel
2011-06-06, 06:33 AM
My point was that those who complain about wizard power auto-assume the wizard always wins. Today my sorcerer rocked. Just because my sorcerer rocked doesn't make the fighter be The Suck. In previous combats many sessions ago, my sorcerer sucked. What happened? I casted Color Spray, but the bad guys made their saving throw! There I was, uberspellcaster casting uberspell, but gosh darn it, the bad guys made their saving throw. See bad guys not stunnued ot unconscious. See bad guys take their turns doing full attack womping, knocking party members to below 0 hit points. That is never taken into accoutn by those who complain of wizard power. They always assume the bad guys fail the save or but of course have the spellcaster has exact spell needed that didn't require a saving throw.

What? Of course everyone is aware of it. We're talking low levels here; fails happen even for stronger characters. However, the chances of the save succeeding tend to be as as low or (usually) lower than the chances of an attack missing, with the difference that if the save fails, it's game over for the baddie(s) while attack is going to merely chip HP off it. And spells are multitargeting meaning there's often a bunch of opponents who get to roll saves making it even likelier that there'll be a significant number of fails.

Boci
2011-06-06, 06:34 AM
My point was that those who complain about wizard power auto-assume the wizard always wins. Today my sorcerer rocked. Just because my sorcerer rocked doesn't make the fighter be The Suck. In previous combats many sessions ago, my sorcerer sucked. What happened? I casted Color Spray, but the bad guys made their saving throw!

So what did you do next round?


I once wrote a thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152637) that states some of my thoughts on the matter.

The short answer: If you want a world where martial characters can punch out world-ending threats, and keep up with mystics who can bend reality to their will, look up the superhero genre.

You do know most fixes for D&D 3.5 tend to de-power magic, not vice versa?

paddyfool
2011-06-06, 06:51 AM
Homebrew feat: Vow of No Spells
Benefits: As Vow of Poverty
Restrictions: You must have never taken, and may never in future take a level in a class which grants spellcasting or manifesting. (Or SLAs?)

(The text probably needs tightening up, martial remains wholely outgunned, and every Fighter, Barbarian or Rogue ever would take this feat... but it's still tempting).

dsmiles
2011-06-06, 06:59 AM
Quoted for truth.

A friend of mine, doesn't like me because I hate High Fantasy, reason why I didn't like D&D until I found Dark Sun, I'm more into urban or punk fantasy.All of which are High Fantasy, unfortunately for you. :smalltongue:
Low fantasy is characterised by being set in the real ("Primary") world, or a rational and familiar fictional world, with the inclusion of magical elements. In contrast, high fantasy is set in an alternative, entirely fictional ("Secondary") world with its own, albeit internally-consistent, rules that separate it from the real world. Low fantasy can be described as non-rational events occurring in a rational setting. It is important to note that the use of the word "low" is not an indication of quality but of the relative level of "fantasy" contained within a particular work of fiction.
Sorry. I'm a stickler for terminology. What you're referring to is still High Fantasy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy). If it were Low Fantasy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy), it would be more like d20 Modern with magic (i.e. The Dresden Files). If it were Sword & Sorcery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_and_sorcery), it would be pulp action with rare magic (like the works of R.E. Howard, specifically, Conan, The Bloody Tales of Solomon Kane, and Kull, Exile of Atlantis).

navar100
2011-06-06, 06:00 PM
The problem with spellcasters having so many options to them compared to a mundane character, though, isn't so much that they have MOAR POWER! (Even if that is usually true.:smalltongue:) But that they can just be effective in so many situations compared to, say, a fighter or a barbarian. With proper spell choice, nearly any of the tier 1-2 casters can have a say in any scenario. Yes, even one held entirely in an antimagic zone.:smalltongue:

It's not so much that it's one guy at the table being Superman while everyone else is stuck being Jimmy Olsen, but that, for a team game designed to have levels of threats (the whole basis of a level system and, by extension, the CR system) there are some classes that constantly can beat certain "impossible" threats without having to rely purely on luck. The reverse is also true. The vast majority of classes without access to something supernatural (even if said supernatural thing is only a +1 sword) can never deal with ghosts or any other incorporeal foe. Those that can but don't have access to spells that don't care about corporeality still have to slog through that 50/50 miss chance.


EDIT: This whole wizards rule/fighters drool dichotomy isn't actually an argument. Yeah, a fighter can still do something: he is just very limited in what he can do because of his limited options (feats, level, gear, race, etc.) while any caster with time can pick up a new spell or entirely change their game plan day-to-day.

EDIT2: Thus, a "fighter sucks" not because he can't be effective, but because he can only really be effective at one thing at a time, if he is lucky.

It is the DM's job to give everyone equal spotlight time. If the fighter player likes to trip, the DM is being a donkey-cavity if he continuously uses large flying four-legged creatures as foes. If the rogue went the weapon finesse short sword/rapier two-weapon figthing sneak attack quisinart route, the DM is being a donkey cavity if all the foes are undead plant construct earth elementals.

As for out of combat, the fighter can use Spot and Search just like everyone else. The DM is being a donkey cavity if every foe maxes out Hide into the stratosphere. Let the wizard waste a wand charge to fly up a wall. The fighter can use his rope and grappling hook to utilize his Climb skill. The fighter can take the Track feat if he wants. Not every track DC needs to be 30 only the ranger can find and follow.

Certainly in 3E the warrior classes could be improved upon without breaking the game. Pathfinder helps. A fighter maxing perception is only 3 less than a rogue maxing stealth. Track is no longer a feat; rangers just get a class bonus. Undead can be critted and sneak attacked. The feat changes are debatable good/bad, I'll grant.


So what did you do next round?


Bad guys moved out of Color Spray formation. Tried Silent Image for a poor man's Mirror Image-like effect for the party members in battle. Give at least one round of miss chance. Unfortunately the monsters had Scent, which I didn't know. I contributed very little that combat.

Eldariel
2011-06-06, 06:11 PM
It is the DM's job to give everyone equal spotlight time.

Meh. Some things just aren't made equal. Less hassle to give everyone a somewhat equal base ground to work off on than bend over backwards making the most implausible adventure ever to suit your entire group instead of running the world as designed.

Engineering a campaign is one way to run a game, but I certainly prefer a world that feels like a world rather than a playground for the PCs. Makes for a better immersion, IMHO.

McSmack
2011-06-06, 08:28 PM
Spoilered because I started rambling in response to that. So now back to our feat breakdown of the Fighter.

As determined in my edit, the Fighter's BAB is actually valued 3 times higher than expected, due to working with various weapons. We also picked up 5 feats in armor proficiency, and 31 in weapon proficiencies.

BAB was previously valued as 12 feats, so we just added 60 feats in total to our evaluation of the fighter, making his total feat count 103. That is the equivalent of 206 spells. Yeah, no way the wizard keeps up with that.

Is this supposed to be in sarcasm font? Because I'm not sure. Who's idea was it to 'blah is equivalent to x spells'? It's like saying "I have 10 toenails, that's easily equivalent to 2 hairbrushes each." They're completely different things and not easily compared.

The fact is that at mid to high levels magic gets crazy powerful and quickly leaves non-magical things behind. Casters get options as they level up, they quickly gain the ability to solve just about any problem that presents itself. While mundane characters simply don't. Even the best melee character's options are basically limited to "I hit it, then I hit it more/harder."

At a certain point many casters have the ability to completely shut down a non-magical melee type with a single spell. At that point all of the fighter's feats, all the barbarian's rage, the rogue's sneak attack and all of the ranger's...whatever they do, is completely useless.

ToB tried to remedy this to some success.

Eldariel
2011-06-06, 08:36 PM
Is this supposed to be in sarcasm font?

Yes, yes it is. Extremely blunt, obvious sarcasm but sarcasm none the less.

Philistine
2011-06-06, 11:59 PM
The short answer: If you want a world where martial characters can punch out world-ending threats, and keep up with mystics who can bend reality to their will, look up the superhero genre.
The better answer: If you want a world where magic is very rare, and/or strictly limited in power and/or scope, and/or carries significant costs and/or risks in its casting, with the net effect being that magic is NOT always the answer to every problem and mundane characters are NOT all automatically obsolete, look up the great majority of published works from the entire fantasy genre.

Really, the whole idea of protagonists being "mystics who can bend reality to their will" mostly comes up in bad fanfiction... and D&D 3.X. (Antagonists are a different matter entirely.)


It is the DM's job to give everyone equal spotlight time. If the fighter player likes to trip, the DM is being a donkey-cavity if he continuously uses large flying four-legged creatures as foes. If the rogue went the weapon finesse short sword/rapier two-weapon figthing sneak attack quisinart route, the DM is being a donkey cavity if all the foes are undead plant construct earth elementals.
In addition to what Eldariel said, at some point in the CR ratings these things just stop working, even more so against opponents with spells or spell-like abilities of their own. If it takes a spellcaster to beat a spellcaster, then every character that isn't a spellcaster needs to prove they're not irrelevant.


As for out of combat, the fighter can use Spot and Search just like everyone else. The DM is being a donkey cavity if every foe maxes out Hide into the stratosphere. Let the wizard waste a wand charge to fly up a wall. The fighter can use his rope and grappling hook to utilize his Climb skill. The fighter can take the Track feat if he wants. Not every track DC needs to be 30 only the ranger can find and follow.
None of these suggestions really do much for the skill point-starved Fighter - especially when three of the four skills you recommend he use are cross-class for him! Meanwhile, the Wizard has unlimited spells known and skill points to burn thanks to Int-based casting.

KingofMadCows
2011-06-07, 02:02 AM
The advantage of playing a fighter class is that you have more freedom to customize your character and do what you want. It's your job to beat up the bad guys and protect your party. How you do that is up to you.

While casters have greater versatility, they also have more responsibilities. You need got to support your party with buffs, you need AoE spells to deal with masses of weak enemies, you need spells for social occasions, you need spells to transport people around, etc. That means more of the caster's choices are influenced by the party.

That's one of the advantages of allowing players to multi-class and have PrC's. Each character fills more roles, the responsibilities for helping the party in different situations gets spread out more, and everyone get more stuff to do.

Ossian
2011-06-07, 05:21 AM
I don t know much about gaming balance, but I do like the distintion and even the power gulf that eventually separates melee characters from pure spellcasters. It is one of my favourite tropes, the fact that you are "just a guy with a sword" and that no matter how good, strong, tough you become, you are confined to the realm of men, with frail human bodies etc... It is the fil rouge that connects all of "Berserk" episodes, for example. It does not have to be the only way to play. If you like a universe where spellcasters are universe reshapers by a certain level, yet a man with a sword, at the same lavel, can stand toe to toe with them, so be it. I just think that certain game systems represent better certain kinds of fantasy than others, hence my liking of 3.5 for most of my games.

As for what flavour you can give to a fighter, it helps the GM a lot more with the story. Frankly, coming up with an exciting story for a Wizard 20 (never mind if he does not have a Cleric 20, a Druid 20 and a Warblade 20 in the part) is a little too complicated.

Fighters, monks, melee combatants, the people who cannot fly, shoot laser beams from their eyes, deflect hails of arrows etc... give me the "Batman in the Justice League" feeling. You are there with your guts, muscles, wit, heart and spine. And that flat iron bar with sharp edges to help.

It opens so many opportunities. I just saw, for example, the youtube video of Kenshiro Vs Shin. Apart from the 70 feet long standing jumps, it is just two high level monks trading hundreds of blows. Still, it is also the climax of a story, the bitter end of a once great friendship. The corrupt age where the anime takes place taints the heart of a noble warrior, a woman becomes the focus of a long quest, there is the respect and the rivalry and the whole backstory which wraps itself up perfectly in the scene of ken, walking with his best friend's corpse in his arms, dust and ruins everywhere, ready to bury his past, his lost love.

Can t do that with Wizards beyond a certain level :) There is usually nothing left to bury!

Earthwalker
2011-06-07, 08:54 AM
What I find odd is the clear line that gets drawn in DnD, these people are casters, these are melee. I started role playing in the long long ago on Runequest 2e. In that everyone had magic, and everyone was a martial class (so to speak).
Same can be seen in Earthdawn (it has classes) but all classes use magic, just the Warriors and archers and so on, use magic to boost there combat prowess.
Shadowrun does have the disction between magic and non magic. You need to pay for magical characters up front. It also has a tax on using magic and at the end of the day, plenty of technology for defeating magic. Even a gun to the head works.
I find DnD a bit of an oddity in its approach to magic, more so at high levels. When it is indeed a game breaker. If you haven’t got magic you can’t compete.

SITB
2011-06-07, 08:56 AM
The advantage of playing a fighter class is that you have more freedom to customize your character and do what you want. It's your job to beat up the bad guys and protect your party. How you do that is up to you.

While casters have greater versatility, they also have more responsibilities. You need got to support your party with buffs, you need AoE spells to deal with masses of weak enemies, you need spells for social occasions, you need spells to transport people around, etc. That means more of the caster's choices are influenced by the party.

So the Fighter have more freedom to choose doing one particular thing? It's like that Ford quote, "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.".

Meanwhile the Wizard you describe sounds like he is limited to be doing any role that need to be done, which seems tautological.

dsmiles
2011-06-07, 09:11 AM
What I find odd is the clear line that gets drawn in DnD, these people are casters, these are melee. I started role playing in the long long ago on Runequest 2e. In that everyone had magic, and everyone was a martial class (so to speak).
Same can be seen in Earthdawn (it has classes) but all classes use magic, just the Warriors and archers and so on, use magic to boost there combat prowess.
Shadowrun does have the disction between magic and non magic. You need to pay for magical characters up front. It also has a tax on using magic and at the end of the day, plenty of technology for defeating magic. Even a gun to the head works.
I find DnD a bit of an oddity in its approach to magic, more so at high levels. When it is indeed a game breaker. If you haven’t got magic you can’t compete.I'd still prefer being "unable to compete" to a system where everyone uses magic.

Earthwalker
2011-06-07, 09:22 AM
I'd still prefer being "unable to compete" to a system where everyone uses magic.

For me I prefer the shadowrun model where none magic can compete.
If I had to choose to either a DnD situation where you can't do anything against magic if you have none, or a system where everyone gets some magic. I think I would prefer to have magic for all.

Odd what some people like and others hate.

Shadowknight12
2011-06-07, 09:27 AM
I'd still prefer being "unable to compete" to a system where everyone uses magic.

*shrug* I've taken the exact opposite approach. In the games I DM, pretty much every major NPC is capable of magic in some form. The people in the worlds I run are aware that magic is powerful and logically, if they strive to be powerful in turn, they turn to magic. Anyone who doesn't seek power (such as simple farmers, craftsmen and those who wish to lead uneventful lives) remain in classes such as fighter, monk, rogue, ranger, barbarian, maybe the NPC classes if they are meant to be truly weak.

Everyone who seeks power or leads a dangerous life is expected to pick up magic and do it soon. A couple of levels of non-magical classes are fine, but at the end of the day, you don't make it to the double-digit levels without some form of magic (and for simplicity's sake, I include ToB in the category of 'magic', purely because it's easier to say 'magic' and not 'magic and/or martial manoeuvres').

I know that this does literally nothing to solve the gap between magic and melee, but I find it's best to say that the mightiest barbarian in the world is actually a warblade 20 or a barbarian 3/cleric 17 rather than a barbarian 20. It helps maintain believability and internal consistency.

Seerow
2011-06-07, 09:58 AM
For me I prefer the shadowrun model where none magic can compete.
If I had to choose to either a DnD situation where you can't do anything against magic if you have none, or a system where everyone gets some magic. I think I would prefer to have magic for all.

Odd what some people like and others hate.

Honestly magic beats not magic in Shadowrun every time as well. Any build you can make, including very mundane things like hacking, can be made better with at the very least a splash of adept.

It's not as huge of a gulf as D&D, as casters in Shadowrun do have limitations, instead it's a more subtle distinction of "If you don't start your character with magic, you're gimping yourself in the long run because you run out of ways to spend your karma without branching out into other things. Magic users don't have that problem, so are going to beat you at your specialty 9 times out of 10"

The Big Dice
2011-06-07, 10:11 AM
I'd still prefer being "unable to compete" to a system where everyone uses magic.

RuneQuest doesn't handle it in a way where everyone is what D&D would consider a full caster. Instead, most people know a useful spell or two. And with the game not being class based, there's much more flexibility on hand than D&D allows. So sure, you could dedicate yourself to the study and practice of one of the various types of magic, or exclusively to training in martial prowess. But the vast majority of people find themselves a happy medium.

Earthwalker
2011-06-07, 10:15 AM
Honestly magic beats not magic in Shadowrun every time as well. Any build you can make, including very mundane things like hacking, can be made better with at the very least a splash of adept.

It's not as huge of a gulf as D&D, as casters in Shadowrun do have limitations, instead it's a more subtle distinction of "If you don't start your character with magic, you're gimping yourself in the long run because you run out of ways to spend your karma without branching out into other things. Magic users don't have that problem, so are going to beat you at your specialty 9 times out of 10"

I have to say I agree with this.
When I was saying you don't need magic to compete I did mean, if you play a rigger you will still feel given the chance you can take down a mage. It doesn't become a pointless exercise in shadowrun.
If you play fighter with bow in DnD you can come across a wizard that you just can't effect.
I would also say that in the long run magic will shine thru, at the start you can be better without magic and you can certainly be effective without magic.

dsmiles
2011-06-07, 10:17 AM
RuneQuest doesn't handle it in a way where everyone is what D&D would consider a full caster. Instead, most people know a useful spell or two. And with the game not being class based, there's much more flexibility on hand than D&D allows. So sure, you could dedicate yourself to the study and practice of one of the various types of magic, or exclusively to training in martial prowess. But the vast majority of people find themselves a happy medium.Yeah, about that. Can the non-casters compete with the casters on a level playing field, like in DnD 4e? Or is at least "some magic" required to compete? I prefer a system where they can compete on a level playing field, like 4e.

The Big Dice
2011-06-07, 10:36 AM
Yeah, about that. Can the non-casters compete with the casters on a level playing field, like in DnD 4e? Or is at least "some magic" required to compete? I prefer a system where they can compete on a level playing field, like 4e.
Well, other than RuneQuest and D&D 4e having about as much in common as Hungry Hungry Hippos and Monopoly, things are a lot more even than D&D 3.X lets things be.

Bear in mind that in RuneQuest, tough characters might have 12-15 hit points to soak up that 3d6 adjusted damage that the Broo with a great sword is doing. In that situation, knowing a Heal 3 spell is very useful. And it's very, very different from D&D.

dsmiles
2011-06-07, 11:03 AM
Well, other than RuneQuest and D&D 4e having about as much in common as Hungry Hungry Hippos and Monopoly, things are a lot more even than D&D 3.X lets things be.

Bear in mind that in RuneQuest, tough characters might have 12-15 hit points to soak up that 3d6 adjusted damage that the Broo with a great sword is doing. In that situation, knowing a Heal 3 spell is very useful. And it's very, very different from D&D.Not exactly what I'm asking. Are pure martial characters just as competitive as pure magic characters?

Eldan
2011-06-07, 11:47 AM
Odd what some people like and others hate.

I have found it works for me when I see it as, basically, two different sub-games. Games work best when everyone is at around the same level of power and versatility, i.e. Tier. So, you'd either have a caster game, or a non-caster game, most of the time. Or a Tier 3 game, with some limited casters and more versatile non-casters. Basically, before you start the game, you agree on what kind of game you want, then all play something in the same ballpark.
Or in other words: you have the option of playing a game without magic. If everyone had it, that option wouldn't be there.

Earthwalker
2011-06-07, 12:46 PM
Not exactly what I'm asking. Are pure martial characters just as competitive as pure magic characters?

Thats not really a question that can be answered.
Runequest, and I was talking back in 2e there was no such thing as a pure magic character or a pure martial character.
Everyone had magic.
The farmer had bless crops once a year he got from his goddess.
The crafter had a repair spells, and maybe some divine power as well.

Warriors had battle magic so something to improve thier sword skill or damage. Or they had a heal 3 or something similar.

I will say if you had low POW (the magic stat) you could end up with a 20% chance to cast a spell you might never use your magic power till you get better. I mean if you have a 80 % chance to hit with a sword why waste time and actions trying to cast a bladesharp.

oxybe
2011-06-07, 02:27 PM
the way D&D handles levels seems to assume, IMO, that any given Level X character should be able to handle more or less the same amount of situations another Level X character can.

while each should have their own niche, there should be some overlap in secondary skillsets allowing them to be useful outside their niche.

the caster types in pre-4th unceremoniously throw that assumption out the door, DJ Jazzy Jeff style. a 9th level fighter and a 9th level wizard in 3.5 will have a VERY large gap in power (note that to me "power" is the ability to handle a wide variety of situations), yet both are assumed to have the same amount of XP and wealth.

the fighter, by virtue of his class abilities, can hit stuff. he is limited almost entirely by the physical limitations of his weapon. if it can't be hit, tripped, disarmed or grappled, let's hope the fighter at least has some charisma so he can make a decent decoration.

the wizard is limited by what spells he's got prepared today and what scrolls he's got scribed. this can mean on one day all he's capable of is lighting stuff on fire. on the next day he's a giant, flying, invisible, man-eating millipede with a furnace for a stomach. on the day after that, he's doing stage magic at the local orphanarium and on the fourth he's in the cemetery raising an army made up of your long-dead ancestors.

so the wizard is limited by his spell selection while the fighter can... swing a sword? sure he can trip people or disarm them or simply hit them REALLY hard, but those options boil down to one thing: the fighter can fight and that's about it.

the first problem is that every character class in D&D can fight to some extent. it's not hard to make a D&D character that can hold his own. power in D&D is the ability to handle a wide variety of situations with some minor overlap. the fighter can fight and depending on how you make him he can fight in different ways, but he can still only fight. casters simply have options that allow them to handle a wide array of problems from various angles

the other problem is how the wizard's spells allow him to bypass the secondary system built into the game: the skills. fly or similar spells can easily bypass most terrain or movement based skills like balance, jump, climb, etc... and generally allow you work unhindered in 3 dimensions. divination spells are great for giving you information without leaving your study while some spells like knock exist only to auto-win on skills like open lock... or in the case of arcane lock, foil the skill.

either drop the power of magic to the point where a caster's options are roughly equal to the ones a non-caster has or make it so everyone happens to be a caster.

it's easy to make a super-caster bad guy in a system where casters & non-casters are on equal footing: use higher level bad guys

KingofMadCows
2011-06-07, 02:41 PM
So the Fighter have more freedom to choose doing one particular thing? It's like that Ford quote, "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.".

Meanwhile the Wizard you describe sounds like he is limited to be doing any role that need to be done, which seems tautological.

The point is that the fighter's more limited role means the other players dictate fewer of the fighter's actions. Fighters get to make more of their own, albeit limited, choices.

Casters on the other hand, have more responsibilities to the party so they have to do more of what the other players want. The wizard or the cleric can't just prepare whatever spells or get any feat they want. They have to have a certain portion of their spells reserved for the rest of the party and they often have to pick certain feats like Craft magical whatever for the party.

oxybe
2011-06-07, 03:00 PM
The point is that the fighter's more limited role means the other players dictate fewer of the fighter's actions. Fighters get to make more of their own, albeit limited, choices.

Casters on the other hand, have more responsibilities to the party so they have to do more of what the other players want. The wizard or the cleric can't just prepare whatever spells or get any feat they want. They have to have a certain portion of their spells reserved for the rest of the party and they often have to pick certain feats like Craft magical whatever for the party.

um. no.

seriously, if the party in any game ever told me because i'm playing a Y i have to play X way i would tell them where they can put their d4s.

a caster has no more responsibilities then a fighter. if the fighter can't pull his weight, tough cookies. i'm not going to hold his hand and baby him because he didn't want to play a wizard.

dsmiles
2011-06-07, 03:01 PM
um. no.

seriously, if the party in any game ever told me because i'm playing a Y i have to play X way i would tell them where they can put their d4s.

a caster has no more responsibilities then a fighter. if the fighter can't pull his weight, tough cookies. i'm not going to hold his hand and baby him because he didn't want to play a wizard.Ouch. d4s are pointy. :smalleek:

oxybe
2011-06-07, 03:21 PM
you should see some of the ones one my tablemates has; dude's in the military so he occasionally comes back from training with some dice from places he's been. his neater sets are die cast ones, a set of "precision dice" and a fistfull of onyx d6s

on topic: each character should be able to contributing to the group rather then relying on other characters to make them useful. if your fighter is requiring the help of the mage to be able to help the party out, you may want to ask the GM to let you retrain/tinker your fighter.

KingofMadCows
2011-06-07, 04:03 PM
um. no.

seriously, if the party in any game ever told me because i'm playing a Y i have to play X way i would tell them where they can put their d4s.

a caster has no more responsibilities then a fighter. if the fighter can't pull his weight, tough cookies. i'm not going to hold his hand and baby him because he didn't want to play a wizard.

Except it's not a matter of being told to do something, it's just something implicit in playing the class.

The cleric doesn't have to be the healer but how would you like it if you got poisoned, cursed, drained, etc., and the the only cleric in your party says, "tough luck, maybe you should have played a cleric."

The point is that the more versatile a class is, the more roles it often has to fill, which means more responsibilities to the party.

oxybe
2011-06-07, 04:23 PM
Except it's not a matter of being told to do something, it's just something implicit in playing the class.

The cleric doesn't have to be the healer but how would you like it if you got poisoned, cursed, drained, etc., and the the only cleric in your party says, "tough luck, maybe you should have played a cleric."

actually, yes, we do play like that.

we tend to buy to buy scrolls, potions and wands of such specifically so the cleric, druid and whatnot doesn't have to waste his spell slots on and actually do something interesting with his character's spell selection.

if they're playing a warpreist, a necromancer or whatnot that isn't Doc Bandaid, i'm not going to for them to pickup the Doc Bandaid spell list.

i've long since dropped the preconceived notions that Wizards must to X and Clerics must do Y. i'm a big proponent of being a team player... part of that means being able to at the very least pull your share of the weight without always having to be tied to other PCs for basic competence.

Class is nothing more then a metagame concept used to signify a specific skillset used based on the mechanical requirements of my character.

KingofMadCows
2011-06-07, 06:59 PM
actually, yes, we do play like that.

we tend to buy to buy scrolls, potions and wands of such specifically so the cleric, druid and whatnot doesn't have to waste his spell slots on and actually do something interesting with his character's spell selection.

if they're playing a warpreist, a necromancer or whatnot that isn't Doc Bandaid, i'm not going to for them to pickup the Doc Bandaid spell list.

i've long since dropped the preconceived notions that Wizards must to X and Clerics must do Y. i'm a big proponent of being a team player... part of that means being able to at the very least pull your share of the weight without always having to be tied to other PCs for basic competence.

Class is nothing more then a metagame concept used to signify a specific skillset used based on the mechanical requirements of my character.

And that's why I mentioned how multiclassing and PrC's can mitigate the burden on casters and let each character take on more responsibilities. A fighter who also has a couple levels of wizard and abjurant champion/spellsword can buff him/herself and fill in for the primary arcane caster's role in an emergency.

If you're going by the pure fighter and pure caster paradigm then the casters having more responsibilities is a necessity due to the restriction of resources or the limited ability of the fighter to use magical items in place of spells, especially at higher levels.

Curious
2011-06-07, 07:46 PM
And that's why I mentioned how multiclassing and PrC's can mitigate the burden on casters and let each character take on more responsibilities. A fighter who also has a couple levels of wizard and abjurant champion/spellsword can buff him/herself and fill in for the primary arcane caster's role in an emergency.

If you're going by the pure fighter and pure caster paradigm then the casters having more responsibilities is a necessity due to the restriction of resources or the limited ability of the fighter to use magical items in place of spells, especially at higher levels.

I'm sorry, but, what burden are you talking about? The burden of being the only one with the ability to meaningfully contribute to any situation? The burden of having the only relevant class features? Or maybe the burden of carrying your lackeys with swords along for the ride?

KingofMadCows
2011-06-07, 10:42 PM
I'm sorry, but, what burden are you talking about? The burden of being the only one with the ability to meaningfully contribute to any situation? The burden of having the only relevant class features? Or maybe the burden of carrying your lackeys with swords along for the ride?

It's a matter of what the player wants to do with the character. The fighter's abilities are more limited compared to casters but maybe that's the kind of character the person likes to play. A person who just wants to fight and kill monsters, and doesn't care about social situations, navigating through different dimensions, gathering intelligence about the enemy, etc., gets to do exactly what they want to do as a fighter.

While casters have more options, they're also expected to utilize more of their abilities. Maybe a cleric player just wants to kill monsters and doesn't care about anything outside of combat like the fighter player but because they're playing a cleric, they're going to have to use some of their utility spells even if that's not the kind of character they want to play.

Eldariel
2011-06-08, 12:07 AM
It's a matter of what the player wants to do with the character. The fighter's abilities are more limited compared to casters but maybe that's the kind of character the person likes to play. A person who just wants to fight and kill monsters, and doesn't care about social situations, navigating through different dimensions, gathering intelligence about the enemy, etc., gets to do exactly what they want to do as a fighter.

While casters have more options, they're also expected to utilize more of their abilities. Maybe a cleric player just wants to kill monsters and doesn't care about anything outside of combat like the fighter player but because they're playing a cleric, they're going to have to use some of their utility spells even if that's not the kind of character they want to play.

Umm, why exactly? I decide how I play my character; if I want to play Cleric who only lives for combat and only ever buffs himself, that's the Cleric I'm gonna play. Related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DFrnTKBwHg).

Radar
2011-06-08, 01:41 AM
It's a matter of what the player wants to do with the character. The fighter's abilities are more limited compared to casters but maybe that's the kind of character the person likes to play. A person who just wants to fight and kill monsters, and doesn't care about social situations, navigating through different dimensions, gathering intelligence about the enemy, etc., gets to do exactly what they want to do as a fighter.

While casters have more options, they're also expected to utilize more of their abilities. Maybe a cleric player just wants to kill monsters and doesn't care about anything outside of combat like the fighter player but because they're playing a cleric, they're going to have to use some of their utility spells even if that's not the kind of character they want to play.
Even if we assume a wizard or a cleric is supposed to win every encounter by himself, it leaves most of his resources intact. Most CR appropriate encounters can be finished in 1 or 2 spells (that immobilise or otherwise disable all opponents). At low levels it's a lot, but very soon it's nothing. A classic meele cleric will have all relevant buffs up for a whole day (thanks to DMM) and with about 4 spells he already hits harder then the fighter. Druids are sick meele machines out of the box with a free minion of considerable power.
Healing is not much of a problem either, if you have for example Persisted Mass Lesser Vigor - 1 spell per day.

Also relevant: let's say the party really needs a buffer. There are plenty of ways to build one - DMM Cleric, Incantatrix, Metamagic Song Sublime Chord, Initiate of the Seventfold Veil, Warweaver. Even if you have to serve a specific function, there is a lot of customisation space and your funciton still won't eat up all your daily resources.

Besides, this argumentation reminds me of this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0075.html). This doesn't change the fact, that a fighter has serious trouble to be useful in D&D 3.5.

KingofMadCows
2011-06-08, 03:53 AM
Umm, why exactly? I decide how I play my character; if I want to play Cleric who only lives for combat and only ever buffs himself, that's the Cleric I'm gonna play. Related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DFrnTKBwHg).

So if you're the only character who can heal and refuses to heal, other players will be perfectly fine with that?


Even if we assume a wizard or a cleric is supposed to win every encounter by himself, it leaves most of his resources intact. Most CR appropriate encounters can be finished in 1 or 2 spells (that immobilise or otherwise disable all opponents). At low levels it's a lot, but very soon it's nothing. A classic meele cleric will have all relevant buffs up for a whole day (thanks to DMM) and with about 4 spells he already hits harder then the fighter. Druids are sick meele machines out of the box with a free minion of considerable power.
Healing is not much of a problem either, if you have for example Persisted Mass Lesser Vigor - 1 spell per day.

Also relevant: let's say the party really needs a buffer. There are plenty of ways to build one - DMM Cleric, Incantatrix, Metamagic Song Sublime Chord, Initiate of the Seventfold Veil, Warweaver. Even if you have to serve a specific function, there is a lot of customisation space and your funciton still won't eat up all your daily resources.

Besides, this argumentation reminds me of this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0075.html). This doesn't change the fact, that a fighter has serious trouble to be useful in D&D 3.5.

Except I never said that casters are supposed to win every encounter for the party.

My point was that the more your character is able to do then the more you'll be expected to do those things.

Look at sports, the goalie has one job. He or she is only expected to do that job. Players in other positions, like midfielders in soccer, have a lot more responsibilities. You can't have a very effective team if players in positions that need to do more stuff only wants to fulfill one of those responsibilities.

Partysan
2011-06-08, 04:24 AM
It's a matter of what the player wants to do with the character. The fighter's abilities are more limited compared to casters but maybe that's the kind of character the person likes to play. A person who just wants to fight and kill monsters, and doesn't care about social situations, navigating through different dimensions, gathering intelligence about the enemy, etc., gets to do exactly what they want to do as a fighter.

While casters have more options, they're also expected to utilize more of their abilities. Maybe a cleric player just wants to kill monsters and doesn't care about anything outside of combat like the fighter player but because they're playing a cleric, they're going to have to use some of their utility spells even if that's not the kind of character they want to play.

But maybe someone wants to play a martial archetype that can actually do more than just bash heads with a slab of metal? All those things like gathering intelligence or social situations aren't magical, they're something every character should be part of. And no, having an ability does not mean that you are forced to use it in a certain way others expect of you.

Radar
2011-06-08, 08:27 AM
Except I never said that casters are supposed to win every encounter for the party.

My point was that the more your character is able to do then the more you'll be expected to do those things.

Look at sports, the goalie has one job. He or she is only expected to do that job. Players in other positions, like midfielders in soccer, have a lot more responsibilities. You can't have a very effective team if players in positions that need to do more stuff only wants to fulfill one of those responsibilities.
And I said "even if". I tried to say, that even after fulfilling all expected duties, full-casters have still a lot of free resources and it doesn't restrict character builds either. I also don't see, why is this relevant to the problem of martial characters in D&D. Ok, they aren't expected to do much, but if they want to contribute, they have to commit most of their build to one single goal - be it tripping, charging or archery. Even if their supposed responsibilities are smaller, they are bound by them to a much higher degree then casters are.

Football is not a good comparison: goalie might have a narrow role to fulfill, but he is the only person able to do the job properly. If that was the case in D&D, it would be fine. Problem is, neither martial character nor skillmonkies have any speciality, that isn't made obsolete by spellcasters. If in a given party casters didn't dominate all roles, it's either because they choose not to, or aren't aware of the potential their classes give them.

Also important: usualy people play D&D to be adventurers - to actualy do some heroic or vile deeds. The system should allow them to do so and to a degree show a way of measuring abilities of player characters. One doesn't need any system to roleplay (improvised drama is fun as well). Yet, it's convenient to have one, since it gives a common ground for how the game world works and gives straight answer to the most common question: "I shoot the BBEG during his monologue, did I kill him?"

sonofzeal
2011-06-08, 08:40 AM
So if you're the only character who can heal and refuses to heal, other players will be perfectly fine with that?
Yep. If the Ranger or Rogue or Druid has a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, or there's a few Belts of Healing around, it's not that big a deal.

In the D&D mmorpg, there used to be huge hate against melee clerics. "OMGWTF ur a healer y u no stay back n healz'?!!!one!" That faded over time though, as people realized just how valuable a melee cleric can be. At this point, it's pretty accepted that a properly built Cleric can be charging the enemy and dealing the pain, without it being an affront to the natural order of things.

Think of it this way - if the scrubs had their way, the guy playing the Melee Cleric would have rolled a Fighter instead. A Fighter can't heal even if he wants to. The Melee Cleric might be saving the bulk of his spells for combat buffs, but can still usually afford to patch you up in between fights, and can still lay down the big heals when it's really necessary. Unless your group is assigning roles before the game begins, a Melee Cleric is a totally valid choice as a front line fighter character. Someone else can fill the actual "healer" job, if they want to. Preferably the person bitching about it.

KingofMadCows
2011-06-08, 01:50 PM
But maybe someone wants to play a martial archetype that can actually do more than just bash heads with a slab of metal? All those things like gathering intelligence or social situations aren't magical, they're something every character should be part of. And no, having an ability does not mean that you are forced to use it in a certain way others expect of you.

But fighters don't have the skills for those things.


And I said "even if". I tried to say, that even after fulfilling all expected duties, full-casters have still a lot of free resources and it doesn't restrict character builds either. I also don't see, why is this relevant to the problem of martial characters in D&D. Ok, they aren't expected to do much, but if they want to contribute, they have to commit most of their build to one single goal - be it tripping, charging or archery. Even if their supposed responsibilities are smaller, they are bound by them to a much higher degree then casters are.

Football is not a good comparison: goalie might have a narrow role to fulfill, but he is the only person able to do the job properly. If that was the case in D&D, it would be fine. Problem is, neither martial character nor skillmonkies have any speciality, that isn't made obsolete by spellcasters. If in a given party casters didn't dominate all roles, it's either because they choose not to, or aren't aware of the potential their classes give them.

Also important: usualy people play D&D to be adventurers - to actualy do some heroic or vile deeds. The system should allow them to do so and to a degree show a way of measuring abilities of player characters. One doesn't need any system to roleplay (improvised drama is fun as well). Yet, it's convenient to have one, since it gives a common ground for how the game world works and gives straight answer to the most common question: "I shoot the BBEG during his monologue, did I kill him?"

As I mentioned before, it's a matter of what the player wants to do. Someone can be fully aware of the limitations of a pure fighter and still want to play a fighter. It's like someone buying Starcraft or Call of Duty MW and only playing single player.

As for casters being able to do everything that fighters can do, that depends on a ton of other factors like the level of the characters, the campaign setting, etc. There are many situations where the fighter is the goalie.


Yep. If the Ranger or Rogue or Druid has a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, or there's a few Belts of Healing around, it's not that big a deal.

In the D&D mmorpg, there used to be huge hate against melee clerics. "OMGWTF ur a healer y u no stay back n healz'?!!!one!" That faded over time though, as people realized just how valuable a melee cleric can be. At this point, it's pretty accepted that a properly built Cleric can be charging the enemy and dealing the pain, without it being an affront to the natural order of things.

Think of it this way - if the scrubs had their way, the guy playing the Melee Cleric would have rolled a Fighter instead. A Fighter can't heal even if he wants to. The Melee Cleric might be saving the bulk of his spells for combat buffs, but can still usually afford to patch you up in between fights, and can still lay down the big heals when it's really necessary. Unless your group is assigning roles before the game begins, a Melee Cleric is a totally valid choice as a front line fighter character. Someone else can fill the actual "healer" job, if they want to. Preferably the person bitching about it.

Except the cleric is always capable of healing. Other classes have to jump through a number of hoops to do fill the job of casters. Sure you can do it with magical items but you need to find a place to buy those items and you need the skills to be able to use certain items. Healing is just one example of something that the party needs casters to do. There are a ton of other stuff you need casters to do like teleportation, scrying, item creation, etc.

sonofzeal
2011-06-08, 02:06 PM
Except the cleric is always capable of healing. Other classes have to jump through a number of hoops to do fill the job of casters. Sure you can do it with magical items but you need to find a place to buy those items and you need the skills to be able to use certain items. Healing is just one example of something that the party needs casters to do. There are a ton of other stuff you need casters to do like teleportation, scrying, item creation, etc.
Again - unless you're forcing players to play certain characters, none of this applies. The guy who's playing a melee cleric isn't intending on being a glorified bandaid kit, he wants to smash face. If the group gives him a hard time about it, bitching at him every time he casts Divine Power instead of saving it for a Cure Critical later, he'll just play a Fighter next time. All your attitude will accomplish is limiting his options and his enjoyment of the game. It might be a bit selfish of him, but plenty of characters don't exist purely for the benefit of everyone else, and it's still better than being an overbearing prick.

The game is supposed to be a game, remember? It's supposed to be fun. Let people play the characters they want to play. If nobody's playing the bandaid kit, well, work with it or play it yourself.

And seriously, a lvl 1 wand is trivial. It can be used by an Adept, Archivist, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Healer, Paladin, Ranger, or Shujenja, automatically, with no special hoops to jump through. If you've got a Rogue or Artificer or Warlock or anyone else with UMD as a class skill, you can get Wands of Lesser Vigor which give great healing efficiency. Healing is not hard to come by.

I highly recommend reading this article:
A Player's Guide to Healing (And, why you will be Just Fine without a Cleric to heal) (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871786/A_Players_Guide_to_Healing_(And,_why_you_will_be_J ust_Fine_without_a_Cleric_to_heal))

Philistine
2011-06-08, 02:08 PM
But what does the caster need the party to do? Your entire argument is that martial characters aren't obligated to do anything for the party, while magical characters are required to provide unlimited support for their mundane companions - but if obligations flow in only one direction, then the only accomplishment the muggles can claim is leeching XP from the real heroes. That is not a healthy social dynamic, to say the least. No, obligation has to run both ways, or not at all. If martial characters cannot even achieve basic competency in their own roles without magical support, as is generally the case in 3.X, forcing casters into support niches is the worst possible solution to the problem - it's more likely to breed resentment from both sides than it is to improve anyone's teamwork.

Curious
2011-06-08, 02:13 PM
The flaw in your argument is the assumption that everybody is going to be okay sitting back and doing nothing while the caster solves all the problems. It isn't fun to be the only one not contributing to the development of the plot.

Edit: Ninja'd by much more eloquent speakers.

Frozen_Feet
2011-06-08, 02:21 PM
Obligation doesn't run just one way. It's just that a class capable of less has less obligations.

I don't think metagame concerns should even enter to it. At the end of the say, two casters and one fighter can do more than just two casters, no matter how slight the difference is. In that sort of a situation, it's the best interest of the casters to spend some of their resources to keep the fighter standing - and the fighter is doing his part by taking and dealing flak for them. People are a resource and you take care of them.

In-game, a party is supposed to be co-operating anyhow. It's been repeatedly pointed out that teams in real life do look after the weakest link. If nothing else, the weakest link can be thrown to the wolves to buy times for others to escape.

Seerow
2011-06-08, 02:25 PM
Obligation doesn't run just one way. It's just that a class capable of less has less obligations.

I don't think metagame concerns should even enter to it. At the end of the say, two casters and one fighter can do more than just two casters, no matter how slight the difference is. In that sort of a situation, it's the best interest of the casters to spend some of their resources to keep the fighter standing - and the fighter is doing his part by taking and dealing flak for them. People are a resource and you take care of them.

In-game, a party is supposed to be co-operating anyhow. It's been repeatedly pointed out that teams in real life do look after the weakest link. If nothing else, the weakest link can be thrown to the wolves to buy times for others to escape.

But why have 2 casters and 1 fighter when you can have 3 casters, with one of those casters filling the melee role?

tonberrian
2011-06-08, 02:28 PM
But why have 2 casters and 1 fighter when you can have 3 casters, with one of those casters filling the melee role?

Because while Alan and Barbara want to be sexy sorceress and devout holy-man respectively, Chuck wants to be an elven pansy fighter instead.

dsmiles
2011-06-08, 02:34 PM
But fighters don't have the skills for those things.But there are other classes that are considered 'martial' that do have those skills. Rogues are a prime 'core' example of this.

As I mentioned before, it's a matter of what the player wants to do. Someone can be fully aware of the limitations of a pure fighter and still want to play a fighter. It's like someone buying Starcraft or Call of Duty MW and only playing single player.

As for casters being able to do everything that fighters can do, that depends on a ton of other factors like the level of the characters, the campaign setting, etc. There are many situations where the fighter is the goalie.The fighter isn't the goalie, the fighter is the towel boy. No kidding. It was replaced by the warblade, just as the monk was replaced by the swordsage, and the paladin was pretty much replaced by the crusader.

Except the cleric is always capable of healing. Other classes have to jump through a number of hoops to do fill the job of casters. Sure you can do it with magical items but you need to find a place to buy those items and you need the skills to be able to use certain items. Healing is just one example of something that the party needs casters to do. There are a ton of other stuff you need casters to do like teleportation, scrying, item creation, etc.Not necessarily. Not every party uses those abilities. I've been in many parties, and ran games for many parties, where teleportation, scrying, and item creation never came up. The characters find enough items lying around in dungeons or treasure hoards, and/or receive them as quest rewards. Not everyone feels a need to create them. There are more useful feats to take. The wizard is never required to be the item creator, teleporter, or diviner. Hell, half the time I play a wizard, I don't bother to pen any divination spells into my spellbook beyond Detect Magic, Identify, Arcane Sight, and Analyze Dweomer

Seerow
2011-06-08, 02:35 PM
Because while Alan and Barbara want to be sexy sorceress and devout holy-man respectively, Chuck wants to be an elven pansy fighter instead.

And if Alan wanted to be a Holy Ass-kicker rather than a walking band-aid, his wants are immediately rendered null and void because Chuck wants to play a Fighter?

What if instead of a Cleric he decided to play a Paladin, would the group be disparaging him for playing a Paladin rather than a class that better benefits the group? Why not complain about the Fighter, who could have just as easily been a rogue with UMD, or a Gish himself?

You're expecting all of the sacrifice to come from whoever decides to play a full caster to give up their concept in favor of what the group needs. If the groups needs are not being met by the rest of the group (in this case because it's a small 3 person party), it to me seems far more selfish of one player to choose to be something as narrowly focused as the Fighter than it is for a Cleric to devote most of his resources towards being a competent fighter. Because the cleric can at least use group consumable resources like wands to take care of healing, while the player playing the fighter contributes nothing that the Cleric couldn't.

KingofMadCows
2011-06-08, 02:43 PM
Again - unless you're forcing players to play certain characters, none of this applies. The guy who's playing a melee cleric isn't intending on being a glorified bandaid kit, he wants to smash face. If the group gives him a hard time about it, bitching at him every time he casts Divine Power instead of saving it for a Cure Critical later, he'll just play a Fighter next time. All your attitude will accomplish is limiting his options and his enjoyment of the game. It might be a bit selfish of him, but plenty of characters don't exist purely for the benefit of everyone else, and it's still better than being an overbearing prick.

The game is supposed to be a game, remember? It's supposed to be fun. Let people play the characters they want to play. If nobody's playing the bandaid kit, well, work with it or play it yourself.

And seriously, a lvl 1 wand is trivial. It can be used by an Adept, Archivist, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Healer, Paladin, Ranger, or Shujenja, automatically, with no special hoops to jump through. If you've got a Rogue or Artificer or Warlock or anyone else with UMD as a class skill, you can get Wands of Lesser Vigor which give great healing efficiency. Healing is not hard to come by.

I highly recommend reading this article:
A Player's Guide to Healing (And, why you will be Just Fine without a Cleric to heal) (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871786/A_Players_Guide_to_Healing_(And,_why_you_will_be_J ust_Fine_without_a_Cleric_to_heal))

As I mentioned before, healing is just one example.

And I never said anything about forcing people to do something for the party. It's a matter of if there's only one character that can do a certain thing then when a situation arises when that specific thing needs to be done then that character will be called upon to do it.


But what does the caster need the party to do? Your entire argument is that martial characters aren't obligated to do anything for the party, while magical characters are required to provide unlimited support for their mundane companions - but if obligations flow in only one direction, then the only accomplishment the muggles can claim is leeching XP from the real heroes. That is not a healthy social dynamic, to say the least. No, obligation has to run both ways, or not at all. If martial characters cannot even achieve basic competency in their own roles without magical support, as is generally the case in 3.X, forcing casters into support niches is the worst possible solution to the problem - it's more likely to breed resentment from both sides than it is to improve anyone's teamwork.

Except that's not my argument at all.

My argument is that the players are aware of what their character is capable of and what their potential responsibilities will be when they decide what class they want to play. If a player plays a character that has a unique ability that other characters do not have then when they face a situation when that unique ability is needed then they will be called upon to use that ability.

Going back to the sports analogy, if a someone chooses to play a certain position then they have to deal with all the responsibilities of that position. If someone plays a goalie, then they have to accept the fact that it's their responsibility to do one specific thing and they can't just choose to go on the offensive. On the other hand, if someone plays a position that allows him to attack, defend, and support other players, then he shouldn't be surprised if he's called upon to perform all those actions.

tonberrian
2011-06-08, 02:47 PM
You're expecting all of the sacrifice to come from whoever decides to play a full caster to give up their concept in favor of what the group needs. If the groups needs are not being met by the rest of the group (in this case because it's a small 3 person party), it to me seems far more selfish of one player to choose to be something as narrowly focused as the Fighter than it is for a Cleric to devote most of his resources towards being a competent fighter. Because the cleric can at least use group consumable resources like wands to take care of healing, while the player playing the fighter contributes nothing that the Cleric couldn't.

Barbara's the holy man, not Alan. :smalltongue:

Why should any player have to sacrifice their concept, indeed?

Gnaeus
2011-06-08, 02:51 PM
So if you're the only character who can heal and refuses to heal, other players will be perfectly fine with that?

This was well answered by other people, but in my experience...

Context is Everything.

If I am building CoDzilla, and I don't plan on doing a lot of healing, I will tell people, early and often, starting at character creation. I will explain their in combat healing options to them, and if they don't like it, they can, as other people have mentioned, make their own healer. If I make a cleric, and they go into battle with the expectation that I am the healer, and they are wrong, they have a right to be upset.

If the day's adventuring is done, and I have spells left that I could use to heal them, and I refuse for petty reasons, they have a right to be upset (assuming that it is a typical team oriented game, not all games are).

If they demand that a cleric be a healer, they will just force me to play a thematically similar character without that option, like a neutral cleric who channels negative energy or a dread necro.

This applies to other classes as well. If I am playing an arcane caster with unusual limitations (like a blaster sorcerer, or a focused specialist with particular opposition schools), or a rogue with no trapfinding skills, etc, that is fine, but the team should know so that they can compensate or be prepared to do without.

The Glyphstone
2011-06-08, 02:51 PM
This is veering dangerously towards attacks on other people's playstyles - might want to watch that.

Hint, hint.

Frozen_Feet
2011-06-08, 02:54 PM
But why have 2 casters and 1 fighter when you can have 3 casters, with one of those casters filling the melee role?

This is exactly the kind of metagame concern that shouldn't come up. Out of game, people design their characters based on what they want. In game, they work together because they're friends, or because they're who's available. In game, there just might not be a third caster, rendering the argument moot.


And if Alan wanted to be a Holy Ass-kicker rather than a walking band-aid, his wants are immediately rendered null and void because Chuck wants to play a Fighter?

No. It means Alan, since he can, has to lend a helping hand to Chuck because they're partners, or otherwise he's just plain jerk. You are creating a much sharper dichtomy between playing what you want and doing what the group needs to be done. Alan can play his Holy Ass-kicker. He just can't forget about Chuck and leave him to rot.

Let's take another scenario, with two Sorcerers. All Sorcerer A wants is to kill people with fireballs, but he also has Dispel Magic, where as Sorcerer B doesn't have it. They come face-to-face with a plot obstacle that needs Dispel Magic to get over. Is it right for Sorcerer A to refuse to use Dispel Magic, even though he can and it's part of his character, just because he's playing a blaster? Does it help or harm the game?

(Sure, there might be proper in-character reasons for Sorcerer A to refuse. But "I didn't come here to do that, screw you" isn't so unless the character in question is a total *******.)


What if instead of a Cleric he decided to play a Paladin, would the group be disparaging him for playing a Paladin rather than a class that better benefits the group? Why not complain about the Fighter, who could have just as easily been a rogue with UMD, or a Gish himself?

No. They'd be complaining if the Paladin doesn't help them out even when he could.

You're once again taking an OOC concern and extrapolating it to IC, or vice versa. Out of game, people might create characters based on what they want, but in game it's assumed they have a good reason to be together.

Feriority
2011-06-08, 03:38 PM
Obligation doesn't run just one way. It's just that a class capable of less has less obligations.

I don't think metagame concerns should even enter to it. At the end of the say, two casters and one fighter can do more than just two casters, no matter how slight the difference is. In that sort of a situation, it's the best interest of the casters to spend some of their resources to keep the fighter standing - and the fighter is doing his part by taking and dealing flak for them. People are a resource and you take care of them.


That's not exactly accurate. Yes, two casters and a fighter can do slightly more than just two casters, but only if adding the fighter doesn't add new limits to what the casters can do. Supporting the fighter instead of doing what they would have done without the fighter might well be less efficient; in that case, while the two casters and the fighter *can* do more, they *won't* do more, because the addition of the fighter actually LIMITED the casters by making them play support. If, instead of dealing 5X damage a round, I'm spending my time keeping alive the guy who does X damage a round, our theoretical 6X damage doesn't change that we're only doing X damage.

That's not to say that I think the two wizards should just let the fighter rot, but if they have good wizard characters in mind who aren't about support, it's just as reasonable to ask the fighter to play a class that does fighter plus a bit to pull their own weight as it is to ask the wizards to change their wizardly build to support the fighter's choice. In either case, a player is in a position where they have to deviate from their ideal build; one involves limiting the player's build, and the other involves adding extra options to the build. The no-longer-fighter can still be a fighter in most circumstances, and even refluff their extra abilities if so desired.

navar100
2011-06-08, 06:00 PM
Warriors, and Fighters specifically, are quite capable of handling themselves in combat. Various feat combinations and class abilities combine for varying tactics of dealing with stuff. In some cases the warrior will utilize a magic item. If you just can't stand that, deal. The game assumes characters will have certain wealth to utilize as the player sees fit. If a fighter uses boots of flying so he can fight flying creatures more effectively, hooray for him. It's all well and good he can now fly; he's still needs to be a competent combatant to kill the monster, which he is. Spellcasters use magic items too. That non-spellcasters probably require more use of magic items just is. Absolutely hate that with a passion? 3E is just not the game for you. There are plenty of games where magic doesn't exist.

A spellcaster may, on paper, have a spell for every occasion, but he doesn't need to use a spell for every occasion. The rogue is right there. Let him pick the lock. You don't need to use a spell slot, scroll, or a wand charge of Knock. Knock is great to have if for some reason the rogue is not with you when you need a lock opened, but he's there. Why waste the magic? The barbarian could bash the lock open.

Fine, a spellcaster can do a hundred different things given a generous amount of time while non-spellcasters can only do 10. Let the non-spellcasters do their 10. That 10 is all they're going to need. For that 11th thing? That's what team work is all about.

Talakeal
2011-06-08, 06:19 PM
In the D&D mmorpg, there used to be huge hate against melee clerics. "OMGWTF ur a healer y u no stay back n healz'?!!!one!" That faded over time though, as people realized just how valuable a melee cleric can be. At this point, it's pretty accepted that a properly built Cleric can be charging the enemy and dealing the pain, without it being an affront to the natural order of things.
.

You know, this hatred isn't limited to tabletop RPGs or or D&D MMOs. I know in World of Warcraft there is a huge percentage of the population who hates "hybrid characters" that choose to deal damage instead of tank or heal, and feel that players should be gimped in their ability to do damage because of it.'
I don't know how many times people have bitched at me for being an arms warrior or a shadow priest instead of something "useful" and told me I was a waste of a group slot, and on the WoW forums you constantly see posts about people demanding an increased hybrid tax to gimp the damage of said classes to enourage them to stay in their "proper place".

Seerow
2011-06-08, 06:41 PM
You know, this hatred isn't limited to tabletop RPGs or or D&D MMOs. I know in World of Warcraft there is a huge percentage of the population who hates "hybrid characters" that choose to deal damage instead of tank or heal, and feel that players should be gimped in their ability to do damage because of it.'
I don't know how many times people have bitched at me for being an arms warrior or a shadow priest instead of something "useful" and told me I was a waste of a group slot, and on the WoW forums you constantly see posts about people demanding an increased hybrid tax to gimp the damage of said classes to enourage them to stay in their "proper place".

Large part of the reason I was finally able to tear myself off my WoW forum addiction and quit that game. Course, then I end up back on this forum. :(

The Glyphstone
2011-06-08, 07:41 PM
I don't know how many times people have bitched at me for being an arms warrior or a shadow priest instead of something "useful" and told me I was a waste of a group slot, and on the WoW forums you constantly see posts about people demanding an increased hybrid tax to gimp the damage of said classes to enourage them to stay in their "proper place".

True fact: The phrase "you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" only applies to Mos Eisley Spaceport because applying it to the WoW forums would be a grave insult to scum, villains, and hives.

KingofMadCows
2011-06-08, 08:15 PM
This was well answered by other people, but in my experience...

Context is Everything.

If I am building CoDzilla, and I don't plan on doing a lot of healing, I will tell people, early and often, starting at character creation. I will explain their in combat healing options to them, and if they don't like it, they can, as other people have mentioned, make their own healer. If I make a cleric, and they go into battle with the expectation that I am the healer, and they are wrong, they have a right to be upset.

If the day's adventuring is done, and I have spells left that I could use to heal them, and I refuse for petty reasons, they have a right to be upset (assuming that it is a typical team oriented game, not all games are).

If they demand that a cleric be a healer, they will just force me to play a thematically similar character without that option, like a neutral cleric who channels negative energy or a dread necro.

This applies to other classes as well. If I am playing an arcane caster with unusual limitations (like a blaster sorcerer, or a focused specialist with particular opposition schools), or a rogue with no trapfinding skills, etc, that is fine, but the team should know so that they can compensate or be prepared to do without.

It's not just a matter of context. It's a conflict between what the player want to do and what their character is able to do. If you choose to play a character that has a unique or rare ability then if a situation arises when that ability is needed, who will the party turn to?

Let's say that player 1 is playing a class with 3 unique abilities but he only wants to focus on two of those abilities and doesn't want to use the third ability. Player 2 on the other hand, has 10 unique abilities, he also focuses on two of them, and he doesn't want to use any of the other 8 abilities. Assuming the utility of the abilities are not too unbalanced, who do you think is going to be bothered more often to do something they don't want to do?

NNescio
2011-06-08, 08:28 PM
:durkon: Och, yeah, I've seen tha. Tier envy.
:vaarsuvius: As if it is OUR fault that they chose a class not capable of doing everything.

Philistine
2011-06-08, 08:48 PM
The advantage of playing a fighter class is that you have more freedom ...
While casters have greater versatility, they also have more responsibilities. You need got to support your party ... more of the caster's choices are influenced by the party.


... I never said anything about forcing people to do something for the party... that's not my argument at all.
What was that again? Your own words: fighter-types have more freedom, while caster-types "need got (sic) to support [the] party." And like I said earlier, this is a recipe for resentment once all parties involved realize that the mundanes are largely irrelevant, and living off the charity of the magic-users.


In-game, a party is supposed to be co-operating anyhow. It's been repeatedly pointed out that teams in real life do look after the weakest link.
And so they do... in the short term. Long enough to get Mr. Weak Link safely home to base, if that's possible. Adventuring is a high-risk occupation, though, and an individual who can't keep up with the team - an individual who never pulls his weight on the team - will be sidelined ASAP, voluntarily or otherwise, for his/her own good as well as for the good of the team. Because while teams in real life often do try to cover for their weak links, in the long term that sometimes means shunting people out of the line of fire when they can't hack the program.


bunch of stuff
Nobody is talking about "needing magic items to function." We're talking about forcing casters to play buff- and healbots for their Muggle friends - restricting the roles they're allowed to play as a way of punishing their players for choosing a versatile, powerful class. (Though if it comes down to it, casters are far better able to cope without their Christmas Trees - many of which simply replicate spells anyway - than martial characters are.)

And in D&D 3.x the Fighter class in particular actually can't hold its own in combat, items or no items. Even leaving aside the way monsters out-scale the Fighter on both offense and defense, as CR increases so does the number of opponents who can simply tell the Fighter "No" - in any of a number of ways, no matter what his schtick.

squeekenator
2011-06-08, 09:05 PM
Let's say that player 1 is playing a class with 3 unique abilities but he only wants to focus on two of those abilities and doesn't want to use the third ability. Player 2 on the other hand, has 10 unique abilities, he also focuses on two of them, and he doesn't want to use any of the other 8 abilities. Assuming the utility of the abilities are not too unbalanced, who do you think is going to be bothered more often to do something they don't want to do?

Neither of these apply to the situation, though. Fighters have one ability that isn't even unique which they use. Clerics have a hundred different unique abilities, one of which (in-combat healing) they don't use. The fighter demanding that the cleric use ability #100 or else he's going to be kicked out of the party is being completely unreasonable, especially considering the fighter is himself a drain on the party's resources that gives nothing back.

Talakeal
2011-06-08, 09:08 PM
A thought just occured to me. Don't most magic items require a magic user to create? And isn't it said magic items that allow the lower tiers to have even a chance of success?

What if all the casters in the world got together and decided they would no longer create magic items that could be used by non casters, and worked towards hunting down said items that already existed as well as 'scabs' who will make said magic items for money.


Neither of these apply to the situation, though. Fighters have one ability that isn't even unique which they use. Clerics have a hundred different unique abilities, one of which (in-combat healing) they don't use. The fighter demanding that the cleric use ability #100 or else he's going to be kicked out of the party is being completely unreasonable, especially considering the fighter is himself a drain on the party's resources that gives nothing back.

Don't clerics have the ability to swap out prepared spells for healing spells? I would consider that pretty despicable of the cleric, both in and out of character, when he refuses to heal a wounded ally because then he won't be able to cause as much havoc later.
Its like if your friend won't take you to the doctor after an accident because he would rather hang out at the arcade the spend the afternoon driving you around. When someone is hurt their friends should try and help them, even if it is an inconveniance. And if my PC died because the only person in the party who could help her refused, there is going to be some serious OOC conflict.

dsmiles
2011-06-08, 09:18 PM
Meh. Not everybody wants to play a caster. Learn to live with it, all you caster-elitists. :smalltongue:

Seerow
2011-06-08, 09:29 PM
Meh. Not everybody wants to play a caster. Learn to live with it, all you caster-elitists. :smalltongue:

Not wanting to play a caster is something I can respect. Expecting someone who does want to play a caster to prop you up because of your decision however is something I can't agree with.

Lurkmoar
2011-06-08, 09:33 PM
A thought just occured to me. Don't most magic items require a magic user to create? And isn't it said magic items that allow the lower tiers to have even a chance of success?

What if all the casters in the world got together and decided they would no longer create magic items that could be used by non casters, and worked towards hunting down said items that already existed as well as 'scabs' who will make said magic items for money.

Good luck putting that gennie back in the bottle. The biggest threat to other wizards aside from other worldly beings and dragons are.. other casters usually. And what would druids, clerics, necromancers, warlocks and all the rest decide?

I mean, I can barely convince five people that cheese pizza is acceptable. When I casually mention that I want pineapple on mine, I get murderous glares. Can't really expect thousands to agree to such a plan.

dsmiles
2011-06-08, 09:35 PM
Not wanting to play a caster is something I can respect. Expecting someone who does want to play a caster to prop you up because of your decision however is something I can't agree with.I'm used to playing with friends, so teamwork and cooperation are the core of our parties. If that means the cleric heals somebody during combat, or the wizard casts a buff on the martial guy, then so be it. We regularly support each other in our respective roles within the party. It's just the way it's done, by us. And it's the way I'm teaching my children to play. Teamwork and cooperation.

Philistine
2011-06-08, 09:47 PM
Meh. Not everybody wants to play a caster. Learn to live with it, all you caster-elitists. :smalltongue:

To be honest, I rarely play casters myself - I simply like other archetypes better. But I don't demand that people who prefer playing casters spend their resources and actions propping me up. Teamwork is great, but it's even better if the team really is a team, with all members able to contribute.

squeekenator
2011-06-08, 10:03 PM
Don't clerics have the ability to swap out prepared spells for healing spells? I would consider that pretty despicable of the cleric, both in and out of character, when he refuses to heal a wounded ally because then he won't be able to cause as much havoc later.
Its like if your friend won't take you to the doctor after an accident because he would rather hang out at the arcade the spend the afternoon driving you around. When someone is hurt their friends should try and help them, even if it is an inconveniance. And if my PC died because the only person in the party who could help her refused, there is going to be some serious OOC conflict.

In character? You're absolutely right, he's a total jerk. Out of character? You're hurting the party much more by picking a fighter than he is by refusing to heal you. If you want healing then buy him a wand of lesser vigour.

oxybe
2011-06-08, 10:03 PM
i'm as big a proponent for teamwork as they come, but i won't go about stocking my necromancer-debuff style wizard with bull's strength spells simply because the fighter wants me to buff him instead of actually playing my character.

actual teamwork involves using the abilities of your character in concert with the rest of the party's instead of going: "but i want you to buuuuff meeeee!"

out of curiosity if you were playing an archer-style fighter and the necromancer wizard, for some reason, decides to complain that you're wasting too much time in the back row and not enough time doing your job, IE: being in full-plate soaking up hits, would you drop your character's style and go waddle in the middle of it all? i mean, that's good teamwork, right?

i highly doubt it.

not all clerics are buffers or healbots. some of them, gasp, actually want to grab a big weapon, yell out "FOR THE GLORY OF KORD" grow an extra 6 feet tall and wade into the middle of it with nothing but a loincloth and zealous fury.

some of them want to sit in the back, command a legion of undead and drop debuffs on the enemy.

just because your fighter is about as useful by himself as a Daikatana NPC doesn't mean we have to babysit him. make your character useful and then we can start working as a team. the more resources we have to spend making your fighter capable, the less resources we have to actually work with.

Talakeal
2011-06-08, 10:18 PM
In character? You're absolutely right, he's a total jerk. Out of character? You're hurting the party much more by picking a fighter than he is by refusing to heal you. If you want healing then buy him a wand of lesser vigour.

Right, I'll be sure to use that wand while I am disabled from damage and don't have UMD on my skill list.

IMO telling me I am not allowed to play a low tier character because its unoptimal is a much bigger breech of my rights as a player than telling me I need to use my abilities to help the now and again in an emergency.


out of curiosity if you were playing an archer-style fighter and the necromancer wizard, for some reason, decides to complain that you're wasting too much time in the back row and not enough time doing your job, IE: being in full-plate soaking up hits, would you drop your character's style and go waddle in the middle of it all? i mean, that's good teamwork, right?

If we didn't have anyone else in the front lines and it was either get my archer fighter / ranger into close combat or have it smacking around the cloth wearing d4 HD casters your damn right I would.
Of course, I wouldn't play an archer in a party with no melee tanks, just like I wouldn't play a buffer cleric in a party without a healer.

I don't know if your post was directed at me, I was advocating using the abilities at your disposal to help your allies, not telling you to make a character that the party needed over what you wanted to play.

All in all your post seems very condescending towards anyone who wants to play the game as it was "intended", and that anyone who is playing a low tier class, blaster wizard, or healbot cleric is a detriment to the group. If thats the case why not just have all 4 people play pun-pun, the one who rolls best on initiative pulls it off, and the other three can sit around worshipping his awesome power gaming skills for the rest of the campaign.

Talakeal
2011-06-08, 10:46 PM
sorry double post.

squeekenator
2011-06-08, 11:01 PM
Right, I'll be sure to use that wand while I am disabled from damage and don't have UMD on my skill list.

Hence "buy him a wand of lesser vigour". Him being the cleric. That way he can give you healing without burning his own gold or spell slots. Though if you do want to do the healing yourself there are plenty of magic items you can buy that let you do that too, rather than asking your party members to babysit you.


IMO telling me I am not allowed to play a low tier character because its unoptimal is a much bigger breech of my rights as a player than telling me I need to use my abilities to help the now and again in an emergency.

I want to play a wizard with 8 Intelligence and an 18 in Wis and Cha because I think it would be a super-cool character. If my party members and DM somehow don't talk me out of it, I would have absolutely no right to tell the other PCs to waste their actions and spells keeping alive a character who I knew right from the start would be completely useless at everything. If you want to make a character who offers absolutely nothing to the party and the other players are fine with that then go right ahead, but don't expect them to spend their limited resources keeping you alive.

Talakeal
2011-06-08, 11:14 PM
If a character is contributing "absolutely nothing" to a group then there is something seriously wrong here, either one side is using TO to break the game or the other side is making characters who are intentionally gimped as some sort of joke or protest, like said 8 int wizard.

In either case, you don't have a real game, and the DM should have had a serious talk to people before letting them bring such characters to the table.

It is a role playing game first and formost, and a team game at that. You need to make a party that everyone can be happy with, and if you are letting your allies die for any reason there was a serious failure on someone's part before the game even began.

Frozen_Feet
2011-06-09, 06:54 AM
All these arguments of "if you don't buff the fighter, he can't pull his own weight" seem to often ignore the events when "buff the fighter, and he can pull your weight as well".

Of course that attacker is not going to score a goal if no-one ever pitches him the ball! Many spells don't just benefit a fighter, they benefit from a fighter. Let's take the low-level SoL Grease. If it's just the caster, he's slowed down his enemies for a while, but he's hardly won. His own action economy constrains the usefulness of the spell. But if there's an attacking character, such as a fighter, there, the boost he gets from grease makes both the wizard's and the fighter's actions much more effective. It's a classical "greater than sum of its parts" scenario.

I'm with Talakeal here, I find it a much larger breach of "player rights" to deny playing weaker tier characters due to metagame concerns, than expecting a character to use his existing abilities to help a comrade who doesn't have that ability. I find it really annoying in the context of a roleplaying game to be demanded or expected to always choose the option with greatest mechanical benefit.

Boci
2011-06-09, 08:31 AM
I'm with Talakeal here, I find it a much larger breach of "player rights" to deny playing weaker tier characters due to metagame concerns, than expecting a character to use his existing abilities to help a comrade who doesn't have that ability. I find it really annoying in the context of a roleplaying game to be demanded or expected to always choose the option with greatest mechanical benefit.

Yet the caster must buff the fighter? If you are playing a fighter, it is your responsibility to make sure you can work in the game. Talk to the DM or the other players/design a character to overcome this, but don't expect the caster to automatically make up got your shortfalls. Why do you think mirror image is so popular amougst casters? Its because they know the fighter won't always be able to stand between them and the monster.

tonberrian
2011-06-09, 09:57 AM
There's a reason why spells like haste are good choices to pick up regardless of what kind of caster you're playing. Sometimes the most efficient use of resources is, in fact, to buff up the fighter. Deliberately choosing not to buff the fighter is, often enough, selfish and hurting the survival of the group.

Boci
2011-06-09, 10:06 AM
There's a reason why spells like haste are good choices to pick up regardless of what kind of caster you're playing. Sometimes the most efficient use of resources is, in fact, to buff up the fighter. Deliberately choosing not to buff the fighter is, often enough, selfish and hurting the survival of the group.

Or it could just be that you didn't pick buffing spells.

SuperPanda
2011-06-09, 10:13 AM
Its the groups collective responsibility to make the group work. After not getting to play for a long time I've finally found a group in the city I'm in now (finding a DnD group, let alone an English speaking one in western China can be harder than it sounds).

We had a pretty large group and many new players, but there was a clear and present lack of "fighter" in our level 1 arsenal. We had 2 arcane casrters, 1 cleric, 2 rogues, and a ranger so I was asked to "please" play a big strong guy in plate. I chose a Paladin because I prefer the archetype to that of Barbarian (what some of the others were hoping for).

At first the party's behavior and actions lead to alliances forming in our group. The elven wizard, the cleric, and myself formed one "clique" The rogues and Ranger formed another. It took us some time in character to get things worked out and in that time our cleric left (She was having some trouble keeping up with the rest of us since English wasn't her first language) another fighter joined leaving us with no healer and a meager supply of potions to make up for it. Our sorcerer kept trying to take point, our second fighter avoided battle, our thieves were working out their own "what the Paladin doesn't know" looting system (which I was amused with) and all that. It ended with the two casters without any help in a big battle and the wizard dead.

This got working for us well after that and the group was reaching cohesion when a Boss + pit trap + CR 4 monster killed my level 2, wounded, paladin.

I've found a cool mechanics supported concept and class combination that I think will fill the party's role need (fighter/tankish) even though I really wanted to play a wizard in this group (he re rolled a druid so that we'd have healing) Pathfinder, Fighter/Monk (I can hear the optimizer's crying already).

Fights with a long spear (spear 10' reach, unarmed strike 5' reach end results threatens the whole area). Feats: Combat reflexes, Stand Still (Combat manuver to stop movement action that provokes attack of opportunity), Step up (5' step with adjacent enemies), Scorpion Style (if making a single unarmed strike as a standard action cause Fort saving through or reduce enemy's movement speed to 5' for Wisdom mod number of rounds)

Str 16, Dex 16, Con 13, Wis 14, Int 12, Cha 10 - rolled stats.
AC 18 w/ armor (cannot flurry), 15 unarmored (can Flurry), 19 unarmored with potion of Mage armor (can flurry).

Weakness - bad tank vs single big target bad guy, will rely on the rest of the party to kill it fast and/or to use controlling magics to hinder it.
Strength - battlefield control vs large enemy force. With a prominence of archers, casters, and rogues in the group this build was intended to lock down the battlefield so that those players could have a field day with their abilities. Also, it will be a royal pain for enemy archers and mages as it will be very difficult for them to escape me.
.

tonberrian
2011-06-09, 10:26 AM
Or it could just be that you didn't pick buffing spells.

Choosing to be incapable of buffing the fighter is, often enough, inefficient use of resources. Thus, claiming that it is always an inefficient use of resources to buff the fighter is wrong.

Boci
2011-06-09, 10:47 AM
Choosing to be incapable of buffing the fighter is, often enough, inefficient use of resources. Thus, claiming that it is always an inefficient use of resources to buff the fighter is wrong.

I'm not claiming that. I'm lcaiming that a wizard who doesn't buff the fighter is perfectly justified because he could be debiff/battlefield control focused. I'm disagreeing with the idea that a wizard has a duty to buff a fighter. There is nothing wrong with casting an AoE debuffing spell over a cluster of enemies on your first round instead of haste.

tonberrian
2011-06-09, 10:58 AM
I'm not claiming that. I'm lcaiming that a wizard who doesn't buff the fighter is perfectly justified because he could be debiff/battlefield control focused. I'm disagreeing with the idea that a wizard has a duty to buff a fighter. There is nothing wrong with casting an AoE debuffing spell over a cluster of enemies on your first round instead of haste.

I'm not particularly arguing with you, then. I'm not claiming that a wizard has a duty to buff the fighter. I'm pointing out that the argument that wizards buffing fighters is a poor use of resources is flawed.

Boci
2011-06-09, 12:33 PM
I'm not particularly arguing with you, then. I'm not claiming that a wizard has a duty to buff the fighter. I'm pointing out that the argument that wizards buffing fighters is a poor use of resources is flawed.

I think its stems from the statement that a cleric buffing a fighter is an inefficient use of resources, which is better backed up because most of the better buffing spells like righteous might are personal ranged.

Honest Tiefling
2011-06-09, 12:52 PM
I always prefer teams that work together. But if one player is outright telling another how to play their character and what they must prepare, it is not teamwork, it is one player whining and ruining things for others. I think a lot of people got a kneejerk reaction to that statement because it would mean some players don't really play a character.

Personally, I think arguing about the role of casters is a bit moot as it seems that party roles are more compromise and agreement that is unique to each group. What works for one won't work for others, and each group has players with a different idea of fun and a different idea of how far they wish to compromise and still want to play the game.

However, a situation where you have a fighter, a cleric and a wizard seems like the players didn't discuss things ahead of time. In that situation, you often get what you get. This is why I rather players and groups discuss ahead of time about group dynamics.

tonberrian
2011-06-09, 12:53 PM
I think its stems from the statement that a cleric buffing a fighter is an inefficient use of resources, which is better backed up because most of the better buffing spells like righteous might are personal ranged.

Have the fighter pick up a pair of those bracers that share spells in the DMG II, then. And there are a number of great buffs that are touch range.

Eric Tolle
2011-06-09, 01:02 PM
FWIW, in the battle my group was in the other day, if the healers had refused in-battle healing then there would have been a TPK. Likewise if the casters had decided they didn't need "Big Dumb Fighters" and tried to take on the mass of undead by themselves.

I've also never been in an actual game where spellcasters didn't need fighters and rogues (well, except for that one AD&D game where the magic-user player misread the rules to think he could continually just re-memorize Knock). So this whole debate just seems so weirdly abstract to me, because it has nothing to do with my actual in-game experience.

Boci
2011-06-09, 01:15 PM
Have the fighter pick up a pair of those bracers that share spells in the DMG II, then. And there are a number of great buffs that are touch range.

60k is a very big investment until the last quarter of the game. Even at level 14 its 40% of your WBL.

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 01:30 PM
I've also never been in an actual game where spellcasters didn't need fighters and rogues. So this whole debate just seems so weirdly abstract to me, because it has nothing to do with my actual in-game experience.Same here. I can't even imagine playing in a game like that. I'd absolutely hate an all-caster party.

randomhero00
2011-06-09, 01:35 PM
Same here. I can't even imagine playing in a game like that. I'd absolutely hate an all-caster party.

I think that'd be fun. But I also think an all rogue party would be fun. I just think they make more sense. If you're in the DnD world who are you more likely to team up with? Someone else just like you who has the same goals? Or someone completely different?

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 01:41 PM
I think that'd be fun. But I also think an all rogue party would be fun. I just think they make more sense. If you're in the DnD world who are you more likely to team up with? Someone else just like you who has the same goals? Or someone completely different?More than likely, someone who's skillset fills the gaps in mine. If I can't do something, I need to have someone close by who can do it.

Honest Tiefling
2011-06-09, 01:46 PM
Eh. Me and my friends don't all possess the same skill set. I'm not as strong, but I'm sometimes better at using my hands for tasks. Another friend of mine is better at the cooking.

I do not think that people in DnD would always define themselves by skillsets. Not every rogue wants to go around stealing everything, and sometimes the fighter buys a crowbar to make sure they get everything of value. Sure, in a few cases class X is way different, but I would assume all classes can have all sorts of different motivations.

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 01:52 PM
That's pretty much exactly what I said. If I'm the face, but playing a rogue, my skill set is that of a face, not a thief or a dungeon-delver. I still need someone who can find and disarm traps, sneak around, and do other "rogue-y" things. Hell, I probably need someone who can fight, and someone who can heal, and someone who can blast and/or buff/debuff, on top of that.

Roderick_BR
2011-06-09, 04:00 PM
(...)
You don't get such options from any other source with such little effort.
IMO, this is the problem with 3.x. Magic is incredible easy and cheap to use. You gain tons of potential options (an actual options) as you level up, and adventure, while non-casters are limited to a few class features that can become redundant when a caster can use 1/43 of his resources to mimic, most of the time without a chance of failure, that the non-caster have.

Basically, a fighter and a mage kill some big nasty monster and levels. The fighter gain the ability to hit stuff with a little more accuracy and hit points. The wizard gains the ability to fly, go invisible, paralyze enemies ... Same work for very unbalanced rewards.

Limited times/day? Who cares! You are kicking ass now. And you can overcome that limit in many cheap, easy ways. If the DM just try to throw more stuff at you, he's screwing up the fighter as well, as his "resource" (HP, and usable magic itens he needs to find/buy) will be depleted quickly.

Talakeal
2011-06-09, 05:54 PM
Let me sum up my point.


D&D is a team game, and if people design their characters and use their abilities to work together everyone will be more powerful. If you don't design your PCs (and everyone should be involved) with teamwork in mind you will be less successful than if you had. Likewise, if you don't work as a team during the encounters you will be less successful. You don't have to do either of these, but don't whine at the DM when you get TPKed as a result.

If you have an ability and you refuse to use it for selfish reasons, and as a result another PC dies you are being a jerk, both in and out of character. This includes a cleric refusing to use his spontaneous healing ability, or a melee type refusing to take hits for the more vulnerable party members.

The only time you don't need teamwork is if you are playing a high level game with some of the party tier 1 and the rest of the party tier 3 or below and the DM isn't doing anything to negate the cheese that can be pulled off with high level magic, and if that's the case someone needs to step back and drastically change their play style.

navar100
2011-06-09, 05:55 PM
And in D&D 3.x the Fighter class in particular actually can't hold its own in combat, items or no items. Even leaving aside the way monsters out-scale the Fighter on both offense and defense, as CR increases so does the number of opponents who can simply tell the Fighter "No" - in any of a number of ways, no matter what his schtick.

A fighter of appropriate level can single-handedly kill a minotaur, a hydra, even a balor. I don't know the particulars myself, but I've seen the builds on the WOTC Forums. Charging is involved but not the whole thing. It was assumed 25 point-buy and wealth by level.

There was a gauntlet thread, which had the minotaur and hydra, where a player would build a fighter and run a gauntlet of single combat against a monster of equal CR using 25 point buy and wealth by level. It was a test to see just how well a fighter could do. It was accepted the fighter didn't have to win each combat, just show he was competent enough on his own to do the job to prove he contributes to a party fight where teamwork would obviously make him fight even better. The fighters kicked butt. They laid waste to each monster, combats rarely lasting more than 5 rounds with the monster dead.

Another thread was started using those same fighter builds but this time each combat would have multiple opponents totaling the same CR. This was to show how well the fighter did with multiple opponents, natch, but also to see if the build used in the first gauntlet was just a one trick pony built for that particular combat or is actually a viable build capable of handling different fights. The fighters, those same fighters with the same build, still kicked butt. Some fighters fell in battle, but they were able to kill one or two opponents first. Some fights the fighter was victorious. The fighter proved his worth.

squeekenator
2011-06-09, 06:12 PM
With sufficient optimisation a commoner could do the same, that doesn't make it a good class.

Qwertystop
2011-06-09, 06:18 PM
What was the level? Also, what were the enemies? They might have (coincidentally or otherwise) picked monsters that fighters have less problems with. A big weakness of fighters (to my understanding) is that they have trouble breaking DR without spending lots of money on many different weapons, and another is that they cannot fly, while many if not most enemies can at the higher CRs. If the enemies had negligible DR and were landbound, that helps a lot.

balistafreak
2011-06-09, 06:20 PM
A fighter of appropriate level can single-handedly kill a minotaur, a hydra, even a balor.

I can see a minotaur, I can see a hydra, but I'm afraid I can't see the Balor. Seriously, at-will blasphemy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blasphemy.htm). I am extremely curious as to what measures the fighter is using against that, that aren't universal (gained through feats only, items only, etc.).

MeeposFire
2011-06-09, 06:36 PM
What was the level? Also, what were the enemies? They might have (coincidentally or otherwise) picked monsters that fighters have less problems with. A big weakness of fighters (to my understanding) is that they have trouble breaking DR without spending lots of money on many different weapons, and another is that they cannot fly, while many if not most enemies can at the higher CRs. If the enemies had negligible DR and were landbound, that helps a lot.

Actually I remember those threads and they tended to pick monsters that were accepted to be decent. Remember these were people that overall wanted the fighter to lose. I remember a low level creature that was a runehound or something and I remember that they put a lot of classes into the gauntlet sometimes with surprising results (though it really should not have been as the biggest benefits of Tier 1 and 2 classes are the options and the many ways they can end an encounter. A fighter can fight well but that is all he is and can only fight in a few ways which can be negated easily if the fighter player is not careful in buying the right gear).

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 06:51 PM
I'm confused. :smallconfused:
Why are we using fighters as the example, when there are way more martial classes out there? (They are definitely the least useful of the martial classes, I have to agree there.)

navar100
2011-06-09, 09:03 PM
With sufficient optimisation a commoner could do the same, that doesn't make it a good class.

Then I guess spellcasters aren't all that great if even a commoner can defeat his enemies. Way to move the goalposts.

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 09:16 PM
Then I guess spellcasters aren't all that great if even a commoner can defeat his enemies. Way to move the goalposts.I think I would have gone with "lower the bar." :smallwink:

mykelyk
2011-06-10, 12:00 AM
I can see a minotaur, I can see a hydra, but I'm afraid I can't see the Balor. Seriously, at-will blasphemy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blasphemy.htm). I am extremely curious as to what measures the fighter is using against that, that aren't universal (gained through feats only, items only, etc.).

Potion of Silence? Torch of Antimagic?

Radar
2011-06-10, 01:58 AM
Then I guess spellcasters aren't all that great if even a commoner can defeat his enemies. Way to move the goalposts.
More like Wealth By Level can defeat any CR-appropriate encounter regardles of the chosen class. Borderline example was The Cube (build using Stronghol Builders Guide).
Commoner also has Handle Animals as a class skill, which can be easily optimised to give you control over Battletitans, Cryohydras or other nasty creatures way before they are CR-appropriate.

balistafreak
2011-06-10, 02:05 AM
Potion of Silence? Torch of Antimagic?

... are items only solutions. :smalltongue: Off-topic, I'm not even sure a potion of silence is legal, as it's a spell that targets an area, not a... target. It might be, though.

Regardles, these are solutions a magic user, in whatever flavor you desire be it Wizard/Cleric/Psion/Sorcerer, could not use, because they definitely can be. Well, barring the Torch of Antimagic. If that items does what I think it does (creates an antimagic field) that Fighter is completely hopeless of taking down the Balor anyways.


More like Wealth By Level can defeat any CR-appropriate encounter regardles of the chosen class.

I think there's a quote about WBL being the strongest class feature. :smalltongue:

Eric Tolle
2011-06-10, 12:29 PM
Same here. I can't even imagine playing in a game like that. I'd absolutely hate an all-caster party.

I wonder how much of this debate is really based on actual game experience, and how much comes from internet BS like the optimization sites and online debates.

Like I said, this really doesn't represent my in-game experience. The only time I've heard of a class being declared useless was rogues back in the AD&D era, due to a really bad misreading of the spell memorization rules. And this was back when rogues were seriously given short shrift by the system.

Toofey
2011-06-10, 12:34 PM
HAhahah and even that was scandalous, I've always thought rogues were not at all useless especially when you considered their low topout on xp per level.

dsmiles
2011-06-10, 12:37 PM
And the fact that they got XP for GP value of treasure, while everybody else got half (IIRC). That was one high-level rogue, really quickly.

PairO'Dice Lost
2011-06-10, 01:24 PM
I wonder how much of this debate is really based on actual game experience, and how much comes from internet BS like the optimization sites and online debates.

I've been playing 3e since it came out, with four different groups over the years, and all of them have noted the martial vs. magic power/versatility disparity problems fairly quickly on their own (I'm the only one among them who frequents forums). I've told the story here before about one of my 2e players who read the 3.0 PHB when he first got it and by his second read-through noticed many of the common truisms we have here on the forums--when he got to the equipment chapter he immediately seized upon the spiked chain as being the only exotic weapon that was really worth a feat, he suggested that dipping 1-2 levels of ranger, fighter, barbarian, and rogue would probably be better than a straight level 8 any of them due to their front-loadedness and the newly-lax 3e multiclassing rules, and so on.

Granted, my experience might not be the norm, as my groups were fairly optimization heavy even in AD&D (as far as you can optimize in AD&D, anyway--yay, weapon specialization in darts!), but the idea that all of this is "just theory" or "useless number-crunching" and that no real 3e games play this way is pretty much all wrong. Heck, I go to a fairly nerdy college where many groups play RPGs of all kinds, and the half-dozen or so 3e groups I've run into have all figured all of this out on their own as well because they're just analytical sorts of people who are good with math. You don't need to get this sort of information from the internet, you just need to look at the game from the perspective of "How do the rules actually work?" rather than "How can I best build an AD&D style party?"--and in fact, since the latter is basically how WotC did their playtesting, if they had done things the former way we might not even be having this conversation. :smallwink:

Whether anyone in those groups adjusts their game styles to match these realizations or not I couldn't say from just swapping anecdotes and chatting about game design, but I can say that they do at least realize the disparities so they know exactly what they're getting into when they play melee types at high levels. Also, when I have heard them mention a party composition that basically fits the ol' standby of the fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric party every once in a while, they tend to go with the "new school" controller/buffer/tripper/sneak attacker party rather than the "old school" blaster/healbot/sword-and-board/stealth party, or more commonly switch things up to get a party like beguiler/favored soul/crusader/factotum, or wu jen/shugenja/OA samurai/unarmed swordsage, or warmage/shapeshift druid/barbarian/wildshape ranger, or some other party composition that brings the casters down and the noncasters up.

Z3ro
2011-06-10, 02:30 PM
snip

The problem is all this (and everyone else, too) is just our own experience. In my experience, I've had to deal with far more people that couldn't optimize a druid than those who broke the game.

PairO'Dice Lost
2011-06-10, 02:36 PM
The problem is all this (and everyone else, too) is just our own experience. In my experience, I've had to deal with far more people that couldn't optimize a druid than those who broke the game.

Again, I'm not saying my experience is typical at all. I'm just saying that those who dismiss game analysis and Tiers and all that as "internet BS" and "pure theorycraft" are just as wrong as those who say that you can't have fun playing fighters and that if you don't play CoDzillas and Batman wizards you're Doing It Wrong and all that.

Lord Raziere
2011-06-10, 03:20 PM
Again, I'm not saying my experience is typical at all. I'm just saying that those who dismiss game analysis and Tiers and all that as "internet BS" and "pure theorycraft" are just as wrong as those who say that you can't have fun playing fighters and that if you don't play CoDzillas and Batman wizards you're Doing It Wrong and all that.

In all honesty....I'd prefer the former. The former sits down and has a fun game, the latter sits down and breaks it to pieces.

I would much rather have a world where games WEREN'T analyzed to find the idiotic things that break it, just a world where people sat down and had fun with them, and if they find any flaws, fixed them so that they can't be exploited then move on.

Don't get me wrong...your right....but if I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose the guys who wouldn't break the game.

Seerow
2011-06-10, 03:31 PM
In all honesty....I'd prefer the former. The former sits down and has a fun game, the latter sits down and breaks it to pieces.

I would much rather have a world where games WEREN'T analyzed to find the idiotic things that break it, just a world where people sat down and had fun with them, and if they find any flaws, fixed them so that they can't be exploited then move on.

Don't get me wrong...your right....but if I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose the guys who wouldn't break the game.

Well it really depends on where you draw the line at a flaw that is exploited vs intended game mechanics.

My primary problem with melee types is their lack of versatility. Their mobility options are ****, and the few things that make them a little less crappy require so much investment nobody can afford them. And even those options can't compete with climb speeds, burrow speeds, flight, and teleportation. And none of the options they get can be used as swift/immediate actions.

They lack the ability to debuff/save or suck, which is particularly important in a low-op campaign where monsters take a few rounds to go down (as opposed to a high op game where you charge in, it dies, you find a new enemy, and debuffing is worthless).

They lack the ability to buff themselves, or any other meaningful access to the action economy (nothing to use swift/immediate actions on). So when that Druid casts Animal Growth on himself, his bear, and his 4 summoned bears, the Fighter sits there wondering why he can't do cool things like that.

They lack any unique utility. A wizard can cast invisibility to replicate hide, but a rogue can't use his daggers to cut open a portal to another plane.


All of these are issues that do present themselves even in a low op group with nobody trying to break the game, just using the abilities they have handy. This isn't abusing planar binding, gate, epic casting, infinite loops, or anything like that. Just looking at what most martial types have vs what all magic types have, and seeing the huge lacking there.



This is why ToB is typically seen as a great counterpoint to casters, because while it doesn't fix the out of combat utility so much, it does give melee types access to the action economy, and options in mobility, buffing/debuffing, and some better in combat utility. Because they don't break the game, but make the game far more interesting to play for anyone who doesn't like playing a spellcaster.

dsmiles
2011-06-10, 03:36 PM
I'm (sort of) in group #1, there. I can optimize the hell out of a character. I used to do it all the time. As time went on, my optimized characters started getting less and less exciting to play. All the wizards felt the same, all the druids felt the same, all the clerics felt the same, because in order to 'win,' there are really only a very few 'builds' for each class. It got boring.

So I stopped.

Now I run lo-op games, and play with people who either don't know how to optimize (beyond organizing their stat rolls), or who choose not to. I haven't had this much fun since before I learned how to optimize. As far as I'm concerned: Optimizing my character doesn't optimize my fun.
[/2¢]

navar100
2011-06-10, 06:19 PM
I wonder how much of this debate is really based on actual game experience, and how much comes from internet BS like the optimization sites and online debates.

Like I said, this really doesn't represent my in-game experience. The only time I've heard of a class being declared useless was rogues back in the AD&D era, due to a really bad misreading of the spell memorization rules. And this was back when rogues were seriously given short shrift by the system.

Indeed. My position comes from experience.

When I first joined my current group I played the cleric. I played him very well. I was CoDzilla. The sorcerer was doing well with her spells too. The rogue player was having a tough time. He was lamenting his lack of effectiveness in combat. Here we are casting spells doing all sorts of stuff, yet he does little.

The problem was not him being a rogue but of poor tactics. For one thing, he didn't flank enough for sneak attack. He relied mostly on flat-footedness. I encouraged him to flank with my cleric or the fighter. He didn't realize how powerful sneak attack was. He mostly did Use Magic Device for his wand of fireball. He really, really liked to use that wand. To get him to understand how powerful he could really be, when ever he would
get in his sneak attack, the DM would call him "Fireball on a stick". As he looked at his sneak attack dice rolling in comparison to his wand, the light bulb clicked. That campaign was almost over anyway, so there wasn't much more he could do. He had already gone into Dungeon Delver prestige class.

Next campaign, though, it was all different. He played a rogue again, this time taking more appropriate feats, with my help, such as two-weapon fighting and weapon finesse. He maxed out his Tumbling so he can get into flanking position easier. When he did his full attack sneak attacks and rolled all those d6s, "Fireball on a stick", he was elated. He was having a blast and was never concern again about his effectiveness in combat. He also learned by himself the limits of his sneak attack - creature immunity, not getting a full attack when moving more than 5ft. While obvious, what he learned was to compensate for it. He still liked and used Use Magic Device. He lumped not getting a full attack for one round, ready to do it the next. He applied tactics for doing stuff that helped having nothing to do with sneak attack. He learned to become a better player, and he never, ever had any problem whatsoever that I happened to be playing a Divine Metamagic Persistent Spell cleric, and this was way back when Persistent Spell was only +4 levels.

I was CoDzilla! Rogue didn't care. He had his spotlight time. Barbarian didn't care. He had his spotlight time. Fighter didn't care. He had his spotlight time. That is what matters, spotlight time, not the fact wizards can gate in Solars and command them to do their bidding or druids have a pet like the kobolds of Sunless Citadel.

AllisterH
2011-06-10, 07:35 PM
It's a combination of 3.x taking off many of the limits on magic (for example, simply implement the rules of pre 3.x spell acquisition and scroll creation with a 3.x wizard and the wizard will take a HUGE hit in power).

PLUS the fact that Western audiences have grown up with a tradition of magic being able to do anything and everything and being powerful (Eastern audiences From India to japan specifically have mythology and legends where martial characters do all types of crazy **** much morseo than western audiences)

Boci
2011-06-11, 01:19 AM
PLUS the fact that Western audiences have grown up with a tradition of magic being able to do anything and everything and being powerful

None of the Greek heroes were casters, ditto on the norse sagas and stories. Merlin's power was to move the plot forwards, he needed the knights to solve the problems. What stories are you thinking of?

MeeposFire
2011-06-11, 02:16 AM
None of the Greek heroes were casters, ditto on the norse sagas and stories. Merlin's power was to move the plot forwards, he needed the knights to solve the problems. What stories are you thinking of?

He is also ignoring the various impossible things that heroes from those stories would do that would make some eastern heroes jealous.

Honest Tiefling
2011-06-11, 02:35 AM
I would not classify Merlin as a hero, as he seemed more the wise old sage (Yoda) to Arther (Luke Skywalker). Merlin was also sometimes the son of the devil, so someone was getting into templates. Heracles was half god. Template! The other Greek Heroes were generally strong and honorable, with Odysseus being more crafty. They, however, were not Circe nor Centaurs.

I think I agree with the assumption that some important Westren Heroes were non-magical, but either had magical items or had a magical buddy or two. The main characters were not magical, but they sure as heck had a lot of magical buddies to help out in a pinch. The protagonist, however, is often the dude with the sword.

Philistine
2011-06-11, 06:52 AM
PLUS the fact that Western audiences have grown up with a tradition of magic being able to do anything and everything and being powerful (Eastern audiences From India to japan specifically have mythology and legends where martial characters do all types of crazy **** much morseo than western audiences)

+1 to the "What stories are YOU thinking of?" chorus. Many Western myths and legends don't feature magic at all; others include it only in a very limited sense (such as the presence in the story of various magical creatures or rare-but-powerful magical items - usually weapons), or include it but with severe limitations - on who can use it, what it can do, and so on. When "powered-up" magic does play a prominent role, it's more often found in the hands of the villains than on the heroes' side (in many such stories, magic is considered inherently evil).

Lycar
2011-06-11, 06:34 PM
actual teamwork involves using the abilities of your character in concert with the rest of the party's instead of going: "but i want you to buuuuff meeeee!"
Fixed that for you.

It is quite simple really: If you chose to play the class with the 1000 class features, you are responsible for using them effectively.

This can be battlefield control, this can be debuffing enemies, this can be buffing your allies. But a lot comes down to attitude. Either your Grease spell helps by making the fighter types' job easier, or your Grease spell is The Win Button that degrades the rest of the party to the mop-up team.

The caster types, wizrads in particular, are Enablers, they make things possible that otherwise won't be. One of these things is giving the non-casters the power boosts they need to hold their own against CR-appropriate foes.

A fighter can hold his own against a number of CR appropriate opponents, but gets easily defeated by thing targeting a will save for example. Guess who has the ability to negate the foe the use of those powers on the fighter types? That's right, the caster types.

Did it ever occour to yout that the game was designed under the assumption that, not only PCs would have WBL-appropriate gear, but also the benefit of the buff spells of the cater types? Did it ever occour to you that melee types are supposed to need these buffs, so that they don't overshadow the caster types?

If the fighter types could defeat everything by themselves, why would they want to carry around an XP-mooch in form of a spell-jockey of dubious usefulness?

This is (to some extend) the situation in AD&D. Fighter types, having the best saves in the game, were largely independent from the magical protection of others to stand toe-to-toe with most things. The non-fighter types, however, needed every Stoneskin spell they could muster, just to be adequate. A wizard losing a spell without a save to a random projectile striking him during casting time (remember that in AD&D, casting actually takes time and isn't instantaneous) is an unhappy camper.

In 3.x, melee got hit with the nerf-hammer. Hard. The idea was to empower the caster types by making the melee-types dependent on them. The idea was that both types should finally be co-dpendent. This, however, didn't work quite as well as the designers intended.

The sad fact is that in D&D 3.x, magic is the be-all, end-all of power. Without it, melee types can't withstand against magic. So unless their spell-casting party members protect them from being nullified by enemy magic, they are indeed rendered useless.

Sure, they can buy magical protection in form of magic items. But money spent on those is money not going into buying stuff that boosts their offensive power. Offensive power that the game designers intended the melee types to have.

So what it comes down to is this: If a caster types refuses to use his spell slots to help out the rest of the party is as much shirking his duty as the melee type who refuses to pull front line duty.

This doesn't have to mean that he must not prepare nothing but buffs obviously, because battlefield control is as much (if not more so) helping out the fighter types as a direct buff (or debuff on the enemy for that matter).

But it does mean that refusing to use your ability to help your party to actually do help your party members is nothing short of telling them 'you play the game wrong by not being an awesome caster like me'.

Qwertystop
2011-06-11, 07:02 PM
lots of stuff

So right. I don't see why people think that melee should be able to destroy encounters without help. The game is a team game, and melee is not underpowered for not being able to solo in a team game.
Just my 2¢.

Yukitsu
2011-06-11, 07:10 PM
That doesn't sound like much fun for the caster player, just being a caddy for the guy who intentionally nerfed himself. I think I could only play that as the snide guy who sarcastically jabs at the fighter and his inherent incompetence without his fun tools.

Talya
2011-06-11, 07:16 PM
Why do people somehow get the idea that a Martial character must have or use no magic? Or that Martial is anti-magical? Why is it so 'wrong' for a fighter to have a magic sword?


most should have magic swords.

And fighters can have magic. We call them gishes.

Thing is, some people don't WANT their characters to be magic. It is for these people that I suggest the warblade.

stainboy
2011-06-11, 08:49 PM
Like I said, this really doesn't represent my in-game experience. The only time I've heard of a class being declared useless was rogues back in the AD&D era, due to a really bad misreading of the spell memorization rules. And this was back when rogues were seriously given short shrift by the system.

I would contend that thieves were actually useless in AD&D.

DM: "You see a door. It is locked."
Thief: "I roll Find Traps, Disarm Traps, and Open Lock!" (Rolls) "Uh, failed all three. Was the door trapped?"
DM: "Yes. Save vs poison."
Thief: *dies*

Compare to a good class:

DM: "You see a door. It is locked."
Fighter: "I break the lock with my axe."

RebelRogue
2011-06-11, 08:53 PM
Agreed: thieves (what we call rogues today) pretty much sucked, pre-3rd...

Qwertystop
2011-06-11, 08:54 PM
I wonder how much of this debate is really based on actual game experience, and how much comes from internet BS like the optimization sites and online debates.

Like I said, this really doesn't represent my in-game experience. The only time I've heard of a class being declared useless was rogues back in the AD&D era, due to a really bad misreading of the spell memorization rules. And this was back when rogues were seriously given short shrift by the system.

What was the misreading?

dsmiles
2011-06-11, 09:14 PM
Agreed: thieves (what we call rogues today) pretty much sucked, pre-3rd...
OTOH, in 2e, you got to pick which thieving skills your points went into. Who else could pull a Ring of Blinking off a lich's finger in the middle of combat with a -50% penalty to their Pick Pockets skill?

Lycar
2011-06-11, 11:11 PM
That doesn't sound like much fun for the caster player, just being a caddy for the guy who intentionally nerfed himself. I think I could only play that as the snide guy who sarcastically jabs at the fighter and his inherent incompetence without his fun tools.
You mean this sounds just as much fun as the AD&D fighter having to babysit the caster types, because they would simply die without some big dumb stick-swinger physically blocking the mooks instead of, I dunno, going for the enemy leader?

Because the caster player couldn't be arsed to pick a class that actually can hold it's own in melee?

Okay, let us change to a slightly different genre of team based games: Online shooters. In many cases, you have infantry and armour fighting on the same battlefield. Now usually a tanker is pretty useless outside his can but can devastate infantry with virtual impunity.

What can the infantry put up against that? Anti-tank soldiers usually are the only ones (besides combat engineers or so) who can even graze a tank. But they are not very good against other infantry. So if someone takes the AT-Guy, he needs to be babysitted by the rest of the squad. Or else they whole team will suffer if they run into a tank.

Now, the At-Guy in this example is pretty much the AD&D spellcaster. He can defeat things the others can't, because he has spells. But he is vulnerable without others protecting him.

As for D&D 3.x? Ever played Battlefield Vietnam? The early version? Where the US AT-Guy not only had LAWs but also a machinegun that was about as accurate as any other rifle?

Guess what, after a short while US side was usually nothing but AT-Guys. Because, why bother with anything else? That is the 3.x spellcaster.

But now imagine, this super-soldier is fighting alongside someone who didn't pick the AT-Class but just a regular rifleman. Now imagine the rifleman gets suppressed by an armoured vehicle (goes prone in a ditch, hides, effectively he is out of the fight).

Now should the AT-Soldier:

A) Conserve his precious LAWs to shoot something that he wants gone
or
B) engage the tank to save his rifleman buddy?

Curious
2011-06-11, 11:18 PM
The problem that you continue to overlook, Lycar, is that if the melee characters chose to be casters they wouldn't need to be buffed up in order to contribute. Any action that a fighter or barbarian takes can be done more efficiently by a spell, and they don't even have the back-handed honor of being the only ones who can soak damage because wizards can't be hurt past a certain level. Simulacrums, projections, personal demi-planes and more simply mean that any wizard who cares to can render himself completely immune to damage of nearly any sort.

And before you can make the tired old argument of 'no sane DM would let that slide' let me cut you off. Inexperienced DM's, DM's who don't like to arbitrarily gimp their players, GM's who play by the rules, all of them can and will let wizards do this kind of thing.

Talakeal
2011-06-11, 11:31 PM
The problem that you continue to overlook, Lycar, is that if the melee characters chose to be casters they wouldn't need to be buffed up in order to contribute. Any action that a fighter or barbarian takes can be done more efficiently by a spell, and they don't even have the back-handed honor of being the only ones who can soak damage because wizards can't be hurt past a certain level. Simulacrums, projections, personal demi-planes and more simply mean that any wizard who cares to can render himself completely immune to damage of nearly any sort.

And before you can make the tired old argument of 'no sane DM would let that slide' let me cut you off. Inexperienced DM's, DM's who don't like to arbitrarily gimp their players, GM's who play by the rules, all of them can and will let wizards do this kind of thing.

Do you really have a game anymore? If you are abusing high end spells like that nothing can challenge the wizard accept a bigger wizard, and you then need to through out almost the entirey of the DMG and Monster Manual at that point as none of the adventures the game sets up will be relevant.

Besides, it takes some serious rules wrangling to break the game before the high end spells come online in the mid to high teens. Atleast 90% of games I have played in have stopped well before that point, so you shouldn't use high level games as a base point to be arguing from.

RPGuru1331
2011-06-11, 11:38 PM
Did it ever occour to yout that the game was designed under the assumption that, not only PCs would have WBL-appropriate gear, but also the benefit of the buff spells of the cater types? Did it ever occour to you that melee types are supposed to need these buffs, so that they don't overshadow the caster types?
Okay, at this I must comment.

No. No, that would not have occured to me. It would not have occured to me to make a class that was superior at nearly every task available, including buffing, while making people inferior to and dependent on those buffs. That is in fact NOT A THING that I would have expected.

I mean, it's wrong, as in, in factual error, anyway. It's pretty easy to see what they had at their playtesting sessions. It was blaster wizards, healbot clerics. But that's besides the point. Fighters in DnD are in no danger of overshadowing casters, as classes.



If the fighter types could defeat everything by themselves, why would they want to carry around an XP-mooch in form of a spell-jockey of dubious usefulness?

The situation is the opposite, and you've responded by rationalizing and claiming that the fighter just needs the wizard's buffs to catch up, when the wizard or priest can use those buffs on themselves to get greater effect (Not 'greater effect on themselves'. 'Greater net effect'). I'm not familiar with second ed casters, so I don't know. I also don't care. Let's take it for granted that casters were XP Mooches in 2nd. Fine, dump them. I mean, to the extent it's a permissible behavior in either edition, it'd be just fine in second ed to dump your casters because they were subpar. It makes no difference in 3rd edition, 4th edition, Lo5R, or anything else you might be playing.


And before you can make the tired old argument of 'no sane DM would let that slide' let me cut you off. Inexperienced DM's, DM's who don't like to arbitrarily gimp their players, GM's who play by the rules, all of them can and will let wizards do this kind of thing.
Making PCs manageable is not an 'arbitrary gimp'. I like how you frame people who do that as people who 'don't play by the rules' though. Very classy.

I'm going to be blunt to the OP: the reason you're seeing this is because you're looking at threads devoted primarily to DnD 3rd edition and its offshoots. In systems wherein magic and non-magic is not so horrendously segregated (EG Mutants and Masterminds, GURPS), you don't see this kind of acrimony. When magic plays by the same basic rules as everyone else, you just don't see this situation where the uber-casters or the wimpy-casters (Taking DnD 2nd and 3rd eds) have any reason to treat the non-magic folks differently. Where magic is indirect, limited in some fashion, or slow, (EG Exalted, Weapons of the Gods), they don't overlap at all, and again acrimony isn't generally seen (At least, OOC, in either case). But when magic can do everything, now, with no real cost to the player, and non-magic can only do.. what it does in the real world, you see real strife between players themselves. If magic can do everything, at least some players will see this as a challenge and attempt to operate without magic. It's not going to go well, in DnD 3rd ed.

Yukitsu
2011-06-11, 11:41 PM
It's a game. Whatever I happen to find more fun at the time. I'm there to play, not to be a part of a pro team.

Lycar
2011-06-12, 12:46 AM
No. No, that would not have occured to me. It would not have occured to me to make a class that was superior at nearly every task available, including buffing, while making people inferior to and dependent on those buffs. That is in fact NOT A THING that I would have expected.And neither did the creators of the game. But unfortunately, that is what it ended up to be.


I mean, it's wrong, as in, in factual error, anyway. It's pretty easy to see what they had at their playtesting sessions. It was blaster wizards, healbot clerics. But that's besides the point. Fighters in DnD are in no danger of overshadowing casters, as classes.That is certainly true. But that is the result of overcorrection of things that made fighters powerhouses in 2ed and casters... well, not really squishy but more vulnerable then was strickty necessary.



The situation is the opposite, and you've responded by rationalizing and claiming that the fighter just needs the wizard's buffs to catch up, when the wizard or priest can use those buffs on themselves to get greater effect (Not 'greater effect on themselves'. 'Greater net effect'). I'm not familiar with second ed casters, so I don't know. I also don't care. Let's take it for granted that casters were XP Mooches in 2nd. Fine, dump them. I mean, to the extent it's a permissible behavior in either edition, it'd be just fine in second ed to dump your casters because they were subpar. It makes no difference in 3rd edition, 4th edition, Lo5R, or anything else you might be playing.
Okay so in other words, you have no problem with a game that makes some of the player classes (vastly) inferior to the others? Again, this was not the intention of the designers, they just didn't see what their changes brought about.

Let's go back to healbot clerics for a moment: In 2ed, that was all clerics really could do because, hey, no heavy armour and no weapon proficiencies. So all the poor clerics could do was keep the others alive (by healing and buffing), they were, for the most part, not able to deal much damage to the enemies.

Spells like Divine Power et al make the cleric a fighter who hits just as hard as the Fighter. As long as this only happens a few times, no problem. But if DMM comes into play and the cleric suddenly is a Fighter + Spells all day long... yeah, there is a problem right there.

It is often said that the developers overestimated the value of BAB. This is certainly true. One aspect is that some feats are linked to certain BAB requirements. Fighting classes (full BAB) get to qualify for those feats earlier and thus are, in theory, more powerful by virtue of having early access to feats.

The problem being, of course, that feats are not nearly as powerful as most spells. The idea was that feats are 'always on' whereas spells are limited by spell slots. The fallacy being that once a caster has enough slots to last a day, he has all he ever needs. Effectively his 'can cast spells' feat is on all day too.

What melee needs are melee-only feats that allow them to become less dependent of the mercy of the spell slingers. If they no longer need to be buffed up to compete or deal with hostile magic, they will no longer need any teammates. And thus will be a fully playable class again. As are the big 5.

Whats this? 'But then they are no longer team players' you say? Gee, I dunno... sounds to me like casters refusing to play with their melee buddies, just because the rules are so crappy that they are more 'effective' if they don't help the others out aren't team players to begin with.

Remember people: The mechanics of the game may work out that way that melee can't stand on it's own legs. But it is you who decides if those same crappy rules make it impossible to play melee at your table.

Bottom line: If you believe that helping out others is beneath you, ban melee. There, problem solved.

Curious
2011-06-12, 12:47 AM
Making PCs manageable is not an 'arbitrary gimp'. I like how you frame people who do that as people who 'don't play by the rules' though. Very classy.



Sorry if it came off that way, what I meant was basically that the argument shouldn't be made because plenty of people are going to play by RAW anyways. I wholeheartedly support house-ruling and 'making PCs manageable', but not when it's sprung on a player in the middle of a game to prevent them from breaking everything.

Talakeal
2011-06-12, 01:11 AM
Let's go back to healbot clerics for a moment: In 2ed, that was all clerics really could do because, hey, no heavy armour and no weapon proficiencies. So all the poor clerics could do was keep the others alive (by healing and buffing), they were, for the most part, not able to deal much damage to the enemies.


I agree with your post overall, but I have to nitpick here, clerics have been able to wear armor for as long as I can remember, certainly all of second edition.

Drascin
2011-06-12, 04:44 AM
Same here. I can't even imagine playing in a game like that. I'd absolutely hate an all-caster party.

I have played in an almost all-caster (three casters, one Gish-by-design) party, that being Wizard, Druid, Beguiler, and Psywarrior, and it was quite the blast. Me and the Psywar went in and tore faces, the beguiler did battlefield control, and the wizard... mostly did Mirror Image, really, but hey, if the enemies are so fixated on the guy with the robe that they can barely hit instead of the magic bear and psychic half-giant charging them, be our guests :smalltongue:

Terraoblivion
2011-06-12, 05:30 AM
Not only that, clerics had proficiency with all blunt weapons ever since original D&D back in the 70s.

However, I don't find it very important that the developers intended for melee and magic to have parity if they failed to, or at least I don't see it as an excuse. It's simply plain poor design to make magic cheap, easy and accessible, while melee is highly restricted and archery is basically useless. Their belief in the parity of the classes just compounds this by trying to pretend that there is parity. As it is, we're looking at bad design that creates strange expectations of what different characters should obviously be able to do and which often gets applied even outside D&D. I once saw someone insist that the kung-fu in Weapons of the Gods was spellcasting because it's physically impossible in the real world despite how the book goes out of its way to declare that by the physics of the setting it's not even magic, much less based on mumbling and finger waggling.

Dark Kerman
2011-06-12, 07:17 AM
Might I suggest there are certain prcs to help for this issue? If anyone has Masters of the Wilds then the Forsaker might be an interesting choice. :smallwink:

Philistine
2011-06-12, 08:35 AM
...As it is, we're looking at bad design that creates strange expectations of what different characters should obviously be able to do and which often gets applied even outside D&D...

Indeed. Witness the numerous examples on these boards of people insisting that magic is supposed to be the be-all and the end-all, and that it's unrealistic to ever expect muggles to be able to keep up with a spellcaster (in any setting/system!) - even though that trope was virtually nonexistent prior to 3.X, and as such that attitude can only have arisen in the last decade.

RPGuru1331
2011-06-12, 10:57 AM
Okay so in other words, you have no problem with a game that makes some of the player classes (vastly) inferior to the others?
No, but your argument appears flawed in more ways than gandalf has colors in his title.

What bearing does it have on a discussion of third edition mechanics that things were different in second edition? If you're dealing with someone who would seriously, and with no mirth, suggest dumping a party member because they were useless, you're not dealing with someone who empathizes with the classes and the people who play them on any level. They're just trying to maximize their play experience. Why are you trying this doomed argument to begin with? If you think it's fine to dump melee because it sucks, it's highly improbable you feel a special affinity to mages; if it sucks, dump it. You don't see these folks defending Binders, do you?



Sorry if it came off that way, what I meant was basically that the argument shouldn't be made because plenty of people are going to play by RAW anyways. I wholeheartedly support house-ruling and 'making PCs manageable', but not when it's sprung on a player in the middle of a game to prevent them from breaking everything.
What, and lead to a shattered session and bored players because I won't rollback then and there? No, no, I think not. If it becomes readily apparent mid-session what's happening, do it then. Players as an aggregate have far more time to look for broken things than a GM. There's X of them, that's X times the potential workhours.


Indeed. Witness the numerous examples on these boards of people insisting that magic is supposed to be the be-all and the end-all, and that it's unrealistic to ever expect muggles to be able to keep up with a spellcaster (in any setting/system!) - even though that trope was virtually nonexistent prior to 3.X, and as such that attitude can only have arisen in the last decade.
Minor correction; it did arise prior tot he last decade. It's not exactly old, as it's not even as old as Pong (I'm pretty sure), but it does still predate 3.5 somewhat. There were books that had these kind of "do anything with no real cost" casters at least as early as the 80s.

AllisterH
2011-06-12, 12:26 PM
What bearing does it have on a discussion of third edition mechanics that things were different in second edition?
.

Because a lot of the issues with 3.x spellcasting arised from a very poor understanding of the pre 3.x mechanics...

Indeed, I don't think it is possible to "fix" 3.x spellcasting without understanding the rationale of pre 3.x spellcasters. This IMO was why spellcasting in 3.x just doesn't work right...

There are many examples that I and others can think of but I'll give an example...

In 3.x, there are multiple spell combinations which make regular spells much more powerful from the simple two spell combination (a simple forcefield plus stinking cloud) to 5-6 spells in combination which can wreck an entire adventure (the infamous scry-buff-teleport)...

This isn't an issue in pre 3.x since due to the spell acquisition rules, there was no way that a mage could really PLAN out what spells they were going to get. Indeed in 1e, IIRC, with the spells being in the DMG, there was no way even for a mage to know what spell existed.

Thus spells were designed to work independently of one another...change that paradigm and now you have to consider how "good" spells can be together.

Another one comes to mind..the effectiveness of non-combat magic. In 1e/2e, thanks to the spells per day and the hellish cost to even scribe a scroll (this was when scrolls could only be crated by 9th level and above mages plus you jumping through hoops to even scribe a simple Neutralize poison scroll which literally would take at LEAST a month), non-combat spells had to be incredibly good AND effective to compete for the precious spell slots (it's why non-combat spells generally don't have any chance of failure I figure)

Again, changing this underlying reason when DnD was updated for 3.x (scrolls and potions are cheap to create in terms of cost and time) screwed up the game and is why we have debates like "how much can you sell an Iron wall for?"

PairO'Dice Lost
2011-06-12, 01:22 PM
Indeed in 1e, IIRC, with the spells being in the DMG, there was no way even for a mage to know what spell existed.

Spells for magic-users and clerics were in the PHB; however, there were additional notes in the DMG regarding how spells worked underwater, how to adjudicate some more flexible spells and so forth. It's true that a given PC couldn't plan out what spells he got, and there was a limit on the number he could know, but the player would definitely have all of the actual spell descriptions.

Qwertystop
2011-06-12, 01:27 PM
I wonder how much of this debate is really based on actual game experience, and how much comes from internet BS like the optimization sites and online debates.

Like I said, this really doesn't represent my in-game experience. The only time I've heard of a class being declared useless was rogues back in the AD&D era, due to a really bad misreading of the spell memorization rules. And this was back when rogues were seriously given short shrift by the system.
How could the spell memorization rules ever affect rogues negatively?

RPGuru1331
2011-06-12, 02:01 PM
Because a lot of the issues with 3.x spellcasting arised from a very poor understanding of the pre 3.x mechanics...
Yeah, from what you're telling me, I'd say the understanding was crystal. Random spells doesn't strike me as a good balancing features. It's distinctly unfun, in fact. There are better ways, the ones that occur to me offhand involve enforcing specialization to a degree (Which fits pretty well with most depictions of magic to begin with..)

Edit: Regarding 'non combat magic', I really don't have a problem with its power. I have a problem with Magic's speed, breadth, and lack of a cost. If 'Magic', as a whole, could do anything, but any individual mage had specific specialities that were then actually enforced in game, then maybe you'd have something.

And don't say 'specialist wizard'. Specialist wizards still have access to 5 schools. 5. That's like, 2 more than I'd expect from a non-specialist deriving from most western fantasy.

stainboy
2011-06-12, 03:16 PM
Indeed. Witness the numerous examples on these boards of people insisting that magic is supposed to be the be-all and the end-all, and that it's unrealistic to ever expect muggles to be able to keep up with a spellcaster (in any setting/system!) - even though that trope was virtually nonexistent prior to 3.X, and as such that attitude can only have arisen in the last decade.

Let's make a distinction here between magic > mundane and wizards > fighters. Magic being able to do everything mundane effort can plus more is fine. That doesn't mean that every spellcaster has to have access to all the world's magic, or that an individual spellcaster has to be better than an individual exceptional non-caster. (By exceptional non-caster, I mean a PC. It's completely OK for a wizard to be better than Bob the standard-array orc warrior.)

The reasoning that magic can't ever be better than mundane leads to an uninteresting and arbitrarily hamstrung magic system. You can't fly by casting a spell because you can't fly by flapping your arms. You can't have the Move Earth spell because it wouldn't be fair to the world's ditch diggers.

navar100
2011-06-12, 07:01 PM
It was obvious from 3E Day One they overvalued attacking with a weapon and undervalued casting a spell. The proof is that two-weapon fighting required two feats including useless Ambidexterity and the 3rd level spell Haste allowing a spellcaster to cast two spells a round.

When 3.5 came around they rolled their eyes. They gave the two-weapon fighting whiners a bone by getting rid of Ambidexterity, changed Haste, and did some nerfing of other spells. However, they still insisted attacking with a weapon was OMG SO POWERFUL it must be controlled.

Players still complained. Finally they stopped rolling their eyes and actually began to listen. Player's Handbook II and Complete Warrior provided better feats for warrior classes to take. They admitted Hexblade was a failure because they thought combining combat with magic was too powerful so purposely kept Hexblade down and gave us Duskblade which is a decent gish warrior/magic user base class. Ignoring the 4E intentions, they finally gave us Tome of Battle, at last giving warrior-type characters the flexibility, self-helping, and somewhat comparable power for the level they've been lacking.

Given all the time in the world spellcasters can still destroy the universe. Literally, given time casting Genesis on the same plane. Some people just can't stand this possibility. In actual game play, that doesn't happen. Spellcasters aren't given all the time in the world. They don't always have the exact spell needed at the exact moment it's needed and no one makes a saving throw.

You can't take the DM out of the picture. A spell, a feat, a combination of spells and/or feats can still be broken. It's an oversight. It's a mistake. It's an unrealization by the autor. For actual game play, it's the DM's job to handle this. Some people can't stand a DM needs to do this.

For everyone else, we get to enjoy the game and have no issues whatsoever Bob is playing a Fighter while Frank is playing a Druid.

Ghost49X
2011-06-12, 07:17 PM
I'm sorry I couldn't read the whole 200+ post before writting my reply
here are my thoughts on the matter

Is a wizard stronger than a fighter?

In my opinion it's dependant on the DM more than anything else, that and the availble options for feat and spell choices

First is Resources
Wizards have spells and fighters have feats but that is not all their resources
for example alot of the higher end spells have a cost to them, expensive material components and xp costs serve as a back drop, sure your wizard could cast gate to summn a solar so he can heal the party after a tough fight however this will suck up alot of gold and the xp cost will eventually catch up to you as the other members of the party will get ahead of you level wise especially if you flaunt and spam these spells

but then again it's up to the DM, I know some DMs that don't play with spells cost xp or material components (so yeah they're favouring wizards and then probably complaining about fighters being weak)

Second is Time
I know a couple of players who favour wizards, who tend to blast away and flaunt their power killing groups of enemies in a couple rounds then expect to rest after every fight. If the DM lets 'em rest after every 2-3 fights he's favouring the spellcasters, After the 6th fight when the casters are low on spells and their long term buffs are about to run out, the fighter is still hacking away at the enemy like he just woke up. He might have lost some hitpoints or taken a long duration debuff but overall he tends to have longer lasting endurance resource wise

Third is content and suppliments
Depending how much access you have to additional books and what is allowed, it can make a huge difference. I played a game where only the core books, the complete Warrior and Complete adventurer were allowed, giving the martial classes vastly more attention and power than casters

Fourth is how the game is run
A good DM shouldn't focus on one character/player all the time, rather giving everyone a little bit of time to shine, I mean whats the point of playing a Fighter when most of your adversaries are immune to normal weapons, or playing a wizard when anti-magic fields are almost omnipresent?


Also as a foot note, I have yet to see a level 10 wizard deal an average of 125 damage per round on a single target, granted my friend's fighter can't do AoE but he only had 20str at that level and no buffs but he still out fought anything I could throw at him

The Glyphstone
2011-06-12, 07:33 PM
I'm sorry I couldn't read the whole 200+ post

First is Resources
Wizards have spells and fighters have feats but that is not all their resources
for example alot of the higher end spells have a cost to them, expensive material components and xp costs serve as a back drop, sure your wizard could cast gate to summn a solar so he can heal the party after a tough fight however this will suck up alot of gold and the xp cost will eventually catch up to you as the other members of the party will get ahead of you level wise especially if you flaunt and spam these spells

but then again it's up to the DM, I know some DMs that don't play with spells cost xp or material components (so yeah they're favouring wizards and then probably complaining about fighters being weak)


Even if you play with XP and material components (which of course you do), Gate Spam still wins, because it singlehandedly defeats encounters. At level 17, Gate can summon a CR34 monster. This includes things like Elder Titans (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/titanElder.htm) and Young Adult Prismatic Dragons (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/dragonEpic.htm#prismaticDragon). At ECL 17, that CR30-34 monster can effortlessly solo a CR20 enemy, giving a 4-man party a little under 4,000 XP each, and only spending 1,000 for Gate. So no, it's not just DMs who ignore costs, it's that Gate is stupidly powerful. So is Time Stop, which has no material component, or Shapechanger (which has only a one-time focus cost).



Second is Time
I know a couple of players who favour wizards, who tend to blast away and flaunt their power killing groups of enemies in a couple rounds then expect to rest after every fight. If the DM lets 'em rest after every 2-3 fights he's favouring the spellcasters, After the 6th fight when the casters are low on spells and their long term buffs are about to run out, the fighter is still hacking away at the enemy like he just woke up. He might have lost some hitpoints or taken a long duration debuff but overall he tends to have longer lasting endurance resource wise

A poorly played wizard, really, to be blasting...and remember that the game is balanced around 4 fights per day, not 6. If the wizards are running out of spells and buffs after 6 fights, that means they did the entire party's fighting work for a day and a half's worth of encounters first...about time the lazy meleer got off his butt and contributed.:smallbiggrin:



Third is content and suppliments
Depending how much access you have to additional books and what is allowed, it can make a huge difference. I played a game where only the core books, the complete Warrior and Complete adventurer were allowed, giving the martial classes vastly more attention and power than casters

Very true. Casters only need the core book to be overpowered. When you add in splatbooks, it get slightly more balanced (though you were implying that casters need splats to be broken, weren't you?).



Fourth is how the game is run
A good DM shouldn't focus on one character/player all the time, rather giving everyone a little bit of time to shine, I mean whats the point of playing a Fighter when most of your adversaries are immune to normal weapons, or playing a wizard when anti-magic fields are almost omnipresent?

Which is true - the Tier system is not meant to say 'don't play these, they're weak', so much as a warning for DMs to be careful what classes they allow side-by-side, and be prepared to compensate (preferably through better ways than 'lol entire dungeon is Antimagiced').



Also as a foot note, I have yet to see a level 10 wizard deal an average of 125 damage per round on a single target, granted my friend's fighter can't do AoE but he only had 20str at that level and no buffs but he still out fought anything I could throw at him

125 is trivial at level 10 with the right books, though it requires metamagic spell abuse for truly stupid amounts. Wizards aren't broken as blasters without metamagic cheese - they're broken for the nine million solutions they have to different problems...the fighter does damage, the wizard wins fights.

Lycar
2011-06-12, 07:46 PM
No, but your argument appears flawed in more ways than gandalf has colors in his title.
Argument? What argument are you talking about? I am talking about how the game should be, that is designed in a way that all classes are roughly equally useful in their area of expertise and all need each other to function at full efficiency.

That by RAW they aren't is a fact that has been discussed to death, reanimated, and flogged into a fine pulp over the last decade or so.


What bearing does it have on a discussion of third edition mechanics that things were different in second edition?
Simple: If the rules are so obviously flawed, how could the designers make such mistakes? I merely tried to educate people who are not aware of the situation as it was in 2ed. So that they can see what was before and where exactly the designers screwed up when porting to 3.x.

And I totally didn't remember that 2ed clerics could already wear heavy armour. Thanks for the correction Talakeal. :smallsmile:

If you're dealing with someone who would seriously, and with no mirth, suggest dumping a party member because they were useless, you're not dealing with someone who empathizes with the classes and the people who play them on any level. They're just trying to maximize their play experience.
If by 'maximize their play experience' you mean 'maximize their powertripping gamestyle at the expense of everybody else', then yes. This antisocial behavior has done more damage to the game then all the flaws in the rules ever could.

Just because something is brakable doesn't mean it has to break. It still takes someone who does the breaking...


Why are you trying this doomed argument to begin with? If you think it's fine to dump melee because it sucks, it's highly improbable you feel a special affinity to mages; if it sucks, dump it. You don't see these folks defending Binders, do you?
I think it is fine to to point out the flaws in a game. It is also fine to propose fixes to the problem. Some people are unhappy with the fluff of Warblades, but they do make a decent class for fighter types.

The druid variant in the PHB II is a total nerf but still very fun to play. Fighter and Druid in the same party tend to be at odds with one another, even if the druid player doesn't really mean to. Warblade and PHB II druid on the other hand can not only co-exist but also co-operate much better.

What is not okay is to write off an entire subset of the game (melee vs. magic for example) just because you can't be bothered to think about a fix and then demand that others play the game your way and none other.

Also Binders don't need to be defended, they work ok in their own right.

Talakeal
2011-06-12, 08:01 PM
Also Binders don't need to be defended, they work ok in their own right.

I assume he mispoke and meant truenamers, which most certainly do not.

Lycar
2011-06-12, 08:04 PM
Yeah, from what you're telling me, I'd say the understanding was crystal. Random spells doesn't strike me as a good balancing features. It's distinctly unfun, in fact. There are better ways, the ones that occur to me offhand involve enforcing specialization to a degree (Which fits pretty well with most depictions of magic to begin with..)

So you have a problem with random loot too? Can't sand the idea that you are not entitled to cherrypick your spells and gear?

See, this attitude is exactly the problem: The casters were never meant to overpower the melee types the way they do. It was an accident, shoddy design, whatever you call it, but it was not meant to be that way.

And if you insist to demolish the melee player's fun just because you can by RAW, you are playing the rules, not the game.

Bottom line: Bug-using is not 'clever playing'. It is, in essence, cheating.

If you consider it 'unfun' to have your power curtailed by a GM who tries to close the gap between casters and melee types to make the game fun for all player, why are you even trying to play a co-operative game to begin with? You are not supposed to play against the other people at the table. If you deny them the chance to play on at least roughly equal footing... then co-operative gameplay really isn't for you.

Oh and just for the record: Entitlement works both ways. If the caster insists on having access to all spells because RAW says so, then the melee player can also insist on the GM taking the necessary step to ensure that the fighter can compete.

Remember that WBL is a guideline, not a hard and fast rule and that the GM is not only entitled to, but encouraged to tailor loot to the needs of the players! If Fighter needs Food Magic Sword badly, then Fighter may as well find Magic Sword, and if Wizard is doing fine. well, then he simply won't find so many magical gizmos. This too, is RAW.

Curious
2011-06-12, 08:05 PM
I assume he mispoke and meant truenamers, which most certainly do not.

I believe what he was referring to was the fact that Binders work quite well and don't need to be defended. They are balanced, unlike Wizards and Fighters.

Lycar
2011-06-12, 08:23 PM
A poorly played wizard, really, to be blasting...and remember that the game is balanced around 4 fights per day, not 6. If the wizards are running out of spells and buffs after 6 fights, that means they did the entire party's fighting work for a day and a half's worth of encounters first...about time the lazy meleer got off his butt and contributed.:smallbiggrin:
Oh that one again...

Please take a look at DMG p. 49, lower right corner, table 3-2, Encounter Difficulty.

THIS is what the game is balanced around.

50 % 'challenging' encounters.

Since such an encounter is supposed to suck up around 20 % of party resources, the explanatory text on the next page mentions, AS A MERE EXAMPLE, that 4 such encounters would represent 80 % of the party resources and that a 5th encounter, approaching 100 % party resources could mean a wipe for the party.

Take table 3-2 into account, however, and the average distribution of encounter difficulties is more like:

50% CR-equal (challenging) encounters (20 % resources for 40% total)
10% Easy encounters (which the party is supposed to be able to handle a virtually unlimited number of!)
20% 'Easy if Handled Properly' - There is a winning strategy to this encounter (like having a cleric when facing undead) that makes the fight easy. Lack of the proper tools or tactics can make this one challenging or difficult. Try to fight ghouls without Remove Paralysis and start praying...
15 % Very Difficult encounters. The text itself states that a PC fatality is not entirely unlikely in such an encounter!
5 % Overpowering. Run or Die.

So in other words: The party can have a lot more then 4 encounters a day. And they ARE expected to BY RAW.

That whole 'balanced around 4 encounters a day' mythconception has caused so much grief for the game... :smallsigh:

RPGuru1331
2011-06-12, 11:22 PM
So you have a problem with random loot too? Can't sand the idea that you are not entitled to cherrypick your spells and gear?
If players care about it, then yes, I'm strongly inclined against randomly passing stuff out. It isn't interesting and screws with concept.

Of course, this is a fundamental disconnect between me and the mindset of dnD players to begin with. I hate loot systems in general. If it wasn't important enough to be worth selecting with care, it's not important enough for me to care about having it. I may tolerate them, but that doesn't make them interesting or desirable, in my book.



The casters were never meant to overpower the melee types the way they do. It was an accident, shoddy design, whatever you call it, but it was not meant to be that way.
Um, duh.


Bottom line: Bug-using is not 'clever playing'. It is, in essence, cheating.
Well, cheating successfully is clever, but it's not really my cuppa.


If you consider it 'unfun' to have your power curtailed by a GM who tries to close the gap between casters and melee types to make the game fun for all player, why are you even trying to play a co-operative game to begin with? You are not supposed to play against the other people at the table. If you deny them the chance to play on at least roughly equal footing... then co-operative gameplay really isn't for you.
I sincerely hope you're not talking to me. I rather specifically made it clear that I would hope a GM actually tries to keep the broken ludicrous out. I don't really care if it's 'permitted by the rules'.


Oh and just for the record: Entitlement works both ways. If the caster insists on having access to all spells because RAW says so, then the melee player can also insist on the GM taking the necessary step to ensure that the fighter can compete.
Well, the requirement for that is Deus Ex Machina on a grand scale and being kitted out with a number of artifacts that are custom made to close the gap, but sure, I don't mind.

I must ask, you do realize that not only am I not a DnD player by default, but that I hate DnD fandom's fixation with casters to boot, right? You just made poor arguments and offered poor solutions.


Remember that WBL is a guideline, not a hard and fast rule and that the GM is not only entitled to, but encouraged to tailor loot to the needs of the players! If Fighter needs Food Magic Sword badly, then Fighter may as well find Magic Sword, and if Wizard is doing fine. well, then he simply won't find so many magical gizmos. This too, is RAW.
I'm going to just point out the obvious problem of the story attention needed to draw off the kind of resources a fighter would need to remotely have a chance and catch up.


Simple: If the rules are so obviously flawed, how could the designers make such mistakes? I merely tried to educate people who are not aware of the situation as it was in 2ed. So that they can see what was before and where exactly the designers screwed up when porting to 3.x.
Who cares? The second ed solutions were stupid too. The problem is far more fundamental than these tiny facets you're targeting. It's that mages are permitted to do anything and melee isn't. The two best solutions are either deliberately limiting what an individual mage can do with magic (Magic, as an aggregate, can do anything. This mage can, in DnD terms, only do evocations and transmutations. This other mage can only cast Fire, or Water...), or to say "Screw it" and stop limiting your non-mages to the laws of physics. I don't really care what you pick, but establishing conceptual parity is a much better method than literally any other you can use as your baseline.

Seriously if you want to establish parity, don't look at a system that doesn't have it. 2nd ed just flips who's linear and who's quadratic. I suppose it COULD help to look at why, but in this case it's... not. The reasons were terrible and not useful to a solution.


If by 'maximize their play experience' you mean 'maximize their powertripping gamestyle at the expense of everybody else', then yes. This antisocial behavior has done more damage to the game then all the flaws in the rules ever could.
Indeed, but that's no reason not to understand their motives. Empathy is not a good channel for this. I don't know if there is one, with that kind of sociopathic self concern.

deuxhero
2011-06-13, 01:02 AM
This gets worse with every spell you look at. How do you defeat a wizard who never leaves his private plane, except by Astral Projection?

Don't the Gith have some special dohicky for that?

MeeposFire
2011-06-13, 01:07 AM
Don't the Gith have some special dohicky for that?

Are you talking about silver swords? If so that only works at cutting silver chords.

AllisterH
2011-06-13, 04:43 AM
If players care about it, then yes, I'm strongly inclined against randomly passing stuff out. It isn't interesting and screws with concept.

Of course, this is a fundamental disconnect between me and the mindset of dnD players to begin with. I hate loot systems in general. If it wasn't important enough to be worth selecting with care, it's not important enough for me to care about having it. I may tolerate them, but that doesn't make them interesting or desirable, in my book.
.

re: Randomness

I think the reason why there was so many "random variables" was that Gygax et al honestly believed it was 1) a good balancing feature, 2) most closely resembled the influences of DnD and 3) a good way to make individual DnD campaigns last longer.

The first reason has been debated to death but the third one in my older age I'm starting to appreciate more...there's something.

Pre 3.x, when we found a random treasure item/spell, we FOUND a way to make it useful somehow..and finding a way was usually memorable...I think we have lost something in that 3.x+ world of DnD

Ossian
2011-06-13, 05:17 AM
As I said earlier, I am ok with wizards being largely more powerful than fighters. What I don t get is how they become so powerful doing "unwizardly" stuff. Which means, in my book at least, that if the rules (RAW or RAI) break the game, then story must prevail. And if that fails, a bit of common sense will help.

For me, an Angel summoner , immortal gater, city nuker should not be part of a party of adventurers, no matter how epic their adventures are, or be its leader, and if everyone accepts that, we re all cool.

An idea is that past level 15 pure casters (druids, clerics, but above all wizards) should retire to NPC.

Another idea is to have a workd where killing stuff and winning fights is not the only thing you do. A wizard can perhaps re shape reality, but not the outlook on life and the values of a nation, and if politics, morals, ambition, success get in the way, a summoned Deva WILL help but won t fix the problem. Wizards are clever, it requires clever players, to me, to keep the game interesting and the party balance somehow sensible.

Yet another strategy is to differentiate situations, requiring that a wizard prepares for social situations, intelligence gathering, sudden fights, stealth actions and support at the same time.

My example is the party we have been running for a while. The human Monk 14 (well, a combo of Monk/Shintao/Paladin) is the one the story really revolves around, so much for MAD.

He is in a party with a human Rogue/Fighter 14 (10/4) who is an experienced guide of the wilderness, a frontier soldier and a plugged-in member of the guild with loads of political connections and, recently, the role of Ambassador

The elf duskblade 13 (who is also a native outsider) is a ball of unsolved mysteries from the past. Kills well. Casts well.

Ok, so, there IS a wizard. Player wanted to go Wiz 14, but I thought I d nerf/flavour it up a bit. He is a Rogue 2/Wizard 5 (evoker specialist)/Master Specialist 7 (Evoker). So he does blast, but can occasionally pull other tricks and is above all a con artist, a jack of all trades, an actor, a wondering storyteller, a duelist and an infiltrator.

This, and ther fact that he is a fugitive, hunted by powerful enemies (see pure casters) and trying to work his way up the social ladder, and suddendly what he COULD do were he to optimize his character is not so important anymore. So, yeah, there is the occasional fight when he just levels the ground and makes everyone feel a bit redundant, but it's cool :smallbiggrin:

Lycar
2011-06-13, 09:17 AM
If players care about it, then yes, I'm strongly inclined against randomly passing stuff out. It isn't interesting and screws with concept.
Heh, that just harkens back to 'old school' gaming. You rolled up your characters and if the stats were low, tough! Make it work! Same with loot. You get what you get, make the most out of it.

A lot of the challenge came from taking whatever hand fate dealt you and make do with that. Like in every (card)game except maybe those that allow you to pick your own deck. but those are a fairly recent invention.


Of course, this is a fundamental disconnect between me and the mindset of dnD players to begin with. I hate loot systems in general. If it wasn't important enough to be worth selecting with care, it's not important enough for me to care about having it. I may tolerate them, but that doesn't make them interesting or desirable, in my book.
A health attitude IMO, unfortunately, the game is designed in a way that the performance (at least combat-wise) of the PCs is at least (if not more so) dependent on their 'magical bling' then on any innate abilities.

What once were cool extras, nice to have but not vital, are now absolute must haves. :smallannoyed:


I sincerely hope you're not talking to me. I rather specifically made it clear that I would hope a GM actually tries to keep the broken ludicrous out. I don't really care if it's 'permitted by the rules'.Hum, you previous answers led me to believe otherwise but maybe I was just misreading.

However, if you are ok with game masters trying to fix the mess...

Well, the requirement for that is Deus Ex Machina on a grand scale and being kitted out with a number of artifacts that are custom made to close the gap, but sure, I don't mind.
+++
I'm going to just point out the obvious problem of the story attention needed to draw off the kind of resources a fighter would need to remotely have a chance and catch up.
Okay, let me see: The way D&D is set up requires either 'nerfing casters' (see below) or propping up the melee types. If you do not mind a GM handing out magical gizmos to those in need, then why should this have to come with a lot of focus shifting on the melee types attached?

RAW-wise, people will just acquire loot from vanquished foes as usual, it just may be so that the 'gp value' of the items dedicated to melee outstrips that of itmes useful for casters by a certain factor. This does not have in any way to detract from 'showtime' for spellcasters at all.

It it did, then of course the players of casters would have a very good reason to complain.

I must ask, you do realize that not only am I not a DnD player by default, but that I hate DnD fandom's fixation with casters to boot, right? You just made poor arguments and offered poor solutions.
+++
Who cares? The second ed solutions were stupid too. The problem is far more fundamental than these tiny facets you're targeting. It's that mages are permitted to do anything and melee isn't. The two best solutions are either deliberately limiting what an individual mage can do with magic (Magic, as an aggregate, can do anything.
First of all: Even a poor solution is better then none.

Second: People generally don't mind other people getting new toys, but they do mind having their own toys taken away.

The Tome of Battle classes were a way to give more power to sword slingers and for the most part, people approved. The other way around, classes like Warmages, Beguilers, Dread Necromancers etc. offer caster classes which still are very good at their chosen specialty but no longer overpower everything outside their core competency by default. Still, unless you outright ban Wizards, Druids, etc, you can't really force people to pick those classes over the standard Wizard.

And frankly, I am certain that those people who happily pick those classes never were difficult to play with as a melee type to begin with. because that type of player would usually also approve measures that would ease the lot of the fighter types.


Seriously if you want to establish parity, don't look at a system that doesn't have it. 2nd ed just flips who's linear and who's quadratic. I suppose it COULD help to look at why, but in this case it's... not. The reasons were terrible and not useful to a solution.
Yes but see: This is akin to answering 'don't play a Fighter' to someone who asks 'how can I make a Fighter work'.

It is generally regarded as not helpful. Some people want to play D&D, despite its many flaws, either out of nostalgia, or simply because D&D is like the Windows of the RPG world and they just can't find people to play other games with.

Therefore they like to hear about how some people managed to come to terms with the conundrum at their tables, hoping to find something that helps them out too.

Indeed, but that's no reason not to understand their motives. Empathy is not a good channel for this. I don't know if there is one, with that kind of sociopathic self concern.
The motive is basically 'being a **** because you can get away with it'. All people go through a phase like that, usually during childhood. Seriously, human beings need to learn to play well with others. Some do, some don't.

And when your problem sits not in the rules but at the table... well, even very good rules won't solve that.

RPGuru1331
2011-06-13, 09:44 AM
Heh, that just harkens back to 'old school' gaming. You rolled up your characters and if the stats were low, tough! Make it work! Same with loot. You get what you get, make the most out of it.

A lot of the challenge came from taking whatever hand fate dealt you and make do with that. Like in every (card)game except maybe those that allow you to pick your own deck. but those are a fairly recent invention.
Don't care.


Okay, let me see: The way D&D is set up requires either 'nerfing casters' (see below) or propping up the melee types. If you do not mind a GM handing out magical gizmos to those in need, then why should this have to come with a lot of focus shifting on the melee types attached?

Because they're artifacts. It's more or less part and parcel with the idea.


RAW-wise, people will just acquire loot from vanquished foes as usual, it just may be so that the 'gp value' of the items dedicated to melee outstrips that of itmes useful for casters by a certain factor. This does not have in any way to detract from 'showtime' for spellcasters at all.
Okay, if you're not going to just specifically hand stuff out to the melee, you're proposing a massive retool. If you're going to do this, you might as well attack the core problem and not apply bandaids that deal with symptoms.


First of all: Even a poor solution is better then none.
No. No not necessarily, actually. A poor solution could set you back, or leave you running in place. Use good ones. They're more effective. That's why they're good.


Second: People generally don't mind other people getting new toys, but they do mind having their own toys taken away.
It's not like you're tearing pages out of the PHB. Making casters owrk something like they do in non-DnD, non-Mary Sue fiction is a houserule, like any other, albeit a rather large set of them.


Still, unless you outright ban Wizards, Druids, etc, you can't really force people to pick those classes over the standard Wizard.
"No, no sorcerors, wizards, etc. Focused caster classes onry"

There, now they have to. Good lord.

I mean, my exact implementation, because damned if I don't hate reading through 40 books to find classes (BTW Beguiler isn't really that limited, it just doesn't get direct damage or summoning, IIRC) would be to fundamentally alter Wizard. The default wizard specializes. Like, really specializes. About half their spells from one school, and the other half from maybe 2 more. Non-specialist wizards can maybe dabble in a fourth. Or maybe it's just 2/3. And these are exceptional wizards. Most just learn 1/2. Or similar. Yeah it's a nerf but... oh well.


Yes but see: This is akin to answering 'don't play a Fighter' to someone who asks 'how can I make a Fighter work'.
Uh, no, it isn't. Unless your bandaid is amazingly simple and quick to carry out, you're going to have to make a big change. As it happens, you picked something complex and difficult. So it's perfectly valid to say "Look at how systems have successfully integrated mages and melee together in planning your changes". I mean, yeah, objectively you should look at DnD2e... but as a failure thereof, it's just a failure in the other direction. Failures are instructive, but it's not because you were supposed to mimic them.



The motive is basically 'being a **** because you can get away with it'.
Can be, but it's usually more selfish. The one here, in this thread, is "I don't care about them, it's all about me". That's a different monster from purposely trying to screw over someone else.

AllisterH
2011-06-13, 12:07 PM
Again, it should be noted that pre 3.x high level spellcasters weren't overpowering high level fighters..high level fighters thanks to their saves pretty much laugh in the face of direct magic.

Throw in how slow high level magic was and that conversely high level fighters with swords actually became significantly faster in their initiative cycle and I fundamentally disagree with the notion that DnD was setup for high level casters to rule all...

What being a high level spellcaster meant was the potential for a wide range of solutions but if you wanted to pound face, fighters et al were best..

re: Random loot

Actually, in 3.x, the treasure tables explictly were titled in favour of the non-spellcasters...Much more likely to randomly find a magic sword than a wand

MeeposFire
2011-06-13, 12:23 PM
Again, it should be noted that pre 3.x high level spellcasters weren't overpowering high level fighters..high level fighters thanks to their saves pretty much laugh in the face of direct magic.

Throw in how slow high level magic was and that conversely high level fighters with swords actually became significantly faster in their initiative cycle and I fundamentally disagree with the notion that DnD was setup for high level casters to rule all...

What being a high level spellcaster meant was the potential for a wide range of solutions but if you wanted to pound face, fighters et al were best..

re: Random loot

Actually, in 3.x, the treasure tables explictly were titled in favour of the non-spellcasters...Much more likely to randomly find a magic sword than a wand

Well the disparity was not as bad and warriors still had a decent niche at high levels in pre 3e but casters were still more powerful. The sheer number of ways they could "win" is just staggering. Now at least back then the warrior was much more useful and had a role to fill that was difficult for a straight wizard to cover (unlike in 3e which warriors are neither powerful nor truly necessary as a role).

MarkusWolfe
2011-06-13, 12:40 PM
Again, it should be noted that pre 3.x high level spellcasters weren't overpowering high level fighters..high level fighters thanks to their saves pretty much laugh in the face of direct magic.

Throw in how slow high level magic was and that conversely high level fighters with swords actually became significantly faster in their initiative cycle and I fundamentally disagree with the notion that DnD was setup for high level casters to rule all...

What being a high level spellcaster meant was the potential for a wide range of solutions but if you wanted to pound face, fighters et al were best..

re: Random loot

Actually, in 3.x, the treasure tables explictly were titled in favour of the non-spellcasters...Much more likely to randomly find a magic sword than a wand

Fighters might have good fort saves, maybe kind of good reflex saves, but they do not laugh in the face of magic.

While 3.5 was not deliberately set up for casters to rule, but that's how it turned out. Why? Because:
A) Low Optimization in play testing.
B) The ability of a class to embody a particular concept ended up overruling mechanical balance.

The truth of the matter is that martial classes and magic classes were built on entirely different mechanics and principles. Martial classes were made to hit things and hit them hard, sometimes giving their enemies negative status effects. Magic classes were made to do whatever they wanted with magic. If you gave the martial classes the ability to cast a damaging, save-or-die or debuff spell, it still wouldn't be balanced because casters still have all the utility spells.

You want balance in a d20 system? Look at 4e or Mutants and Masterminds(yes, it does do ye olde Conan the Barbarian type Swords and Sorcery as well as LOTR High Fantasy). While each have their own exploits, it is generally true that no matter what you want to be in either system you can do it while remaining roughly equal in power to your fellow players.

MeeposFire
2011-06-13, 12:53 PM
Fighters might have good fort saves, maybe kind of good reflex saves, but they do not laugh in the face of magic.

While 3.5 was not deliberately set up for casters to rule, but that's how it turned out. Why? Because:
A) Low Optimization in play testing.
B) The ability of a class to embody a particular concept ended up overruling mechanical balance.

The truth of the matter is that martial classes and magic classes were built on entirely different mechanics and principles. Martial classes were made to hit things and hit them hard, sometimes giving their enemies negative status effects. Magic classes were made to do whatever they wanted with magic. If you gave the martial classes the ability to cast a damaging, save-or-die or debuff spell, it still wouldn't be balanced because casters still have all the utility spells.

You want balance in a d20 system? Look at 4e or Mutants and Masterminds(yes, it does do ye olde Conan the Barbarian type Swords and Sorcery as well as LOTR High Fantasy). While each have their own exploits, it is generally true that no matter what you want to be in either system you can do it while remaining roughly equal in power to your fellow players.

He was talking about 2e and 1e (probably basic too) fighters which does not use fort, ref, and will saves. Back then the fighter had the best oeverall saves. It had either the best saves in a category, 2nd best in a few categories, and in most/all cases the fighter would only be 1 or 2 away from the best value from another class in any save category. In addition using splats fighters could even get magic resistance and they had a decent skill set. Add that to good potential for HP that no other classes had made fighters great for surviving.

MarkusWolfe
2011-06-13, 01:00 PM
He was talking about 2e and 1e (probably basic too) fighters which does not use fort, ref, and will saves. Back then the fighter had the best oeverall saves. It had either the best saves in a category, 2nd best in a few categories, and in most/all cases the fighter would only be 1 or 2 away from the best value from another class in any save category. In addition using splats fighters could even get magic resistance and they had a decent skill set. Add that to good potential for HP that no other classes had made fighters great for surviving.

Whoops. Me and my big mouth...

Lycar
2011-06-13, 01:19 PM
Don't care.
Willful ignorance is the worst kind. Just saying. :smallannoyed:


Because they're artifacts. It's more or less part and parcel with the idea.
Okay, since you are not a dedicated D&D player, this is an easy mistake to make. In D&D, only very powerful magic items are considered 'artifacts'. In most settings, coming into possession of a magic weapon is almost trivial.

Foes of a certain power lever are supposed to have magic gear of their own (at least if they are of the tool using persuasion and not just some kind of beast/aberration etc).

And after a certain point, people can basically pay their bills with obsolete magic items picked up from random encounters. [/hyperbole] :smallamused:


Okay, if you're not going to just specifically hand stuff out to the melee, you're proposing a massive retool. If you're going to do this, you might as well attack the core problem and not apply bandaids that deal with symptoms.

It's not like you're tearing pages out of the PHB. Making casters owrk something like they do in non-DnD, non-Mary Sue fiction is a houserule, like any other, albeit a rather large set of them.

I mean, my exact implementation, because damned if I don't hate reading through 40 books to find classes (BTW Beguiler isn't really that limited, it just doesn't get direct damage or summoning, IIRC) would be to fundamentally alter Wizard. The default wizard specializes. Like, really specializes. About half their spells from one school, and the other half from maybe 2 more. Non-specialist wizards can maybe dabble in a fourth. Or maybe it's just 2/3. And these are exceptional wizards. Most just learn 1/2. Or similar. Yeah it's a nerf but... oh well.

Uh, no, it isn't. Unless your bandaid is amazingly simple and quick to carry out, you're going to have to make a big change. As it happens, you picked something complex and difficult.
:smallconfused: Okay, explain to me how rewriting the wizard class is not a retool of the rules while using WBL guideline RAW to give the fighter types the tools they need is?



"No, no sorcerors, wizards, etc. Focused caster classes onry"

There, now they have to. Good lord.
No they don't have to. They can just say 'Take you lame-ass game and shove it, loser'. Although admittedly, maybe in such a situation not having a game may be better then playing with such players.

But the point is: You can not work against your players, only with them. And if you can't get caster players to play nice and police themselves, chances are you won't get them to accept nerfs.

Of course these will also bitch and moan if you give melee types a bigger share of loot, but at least here you can go and say 'sorry, those random loot tables just work that way'. RAW works both ways after all... :smallamused:


No. No not necessarily, actually. A poor solution could set you back, or leave you running in place. Use good ones. They're more effective. That's why they're good.
A 'solution' that sets you back is not a 'poor solution', it is no solution at all.

And if you have a good solution, please do tell. Sure, limiting casters is a way, and I would prefer that over boosting melee into the same stratospheric realms that casters usually occupy. But unless the caster players are cool with that you will have a hard time enforcing this.

One quick and easy dirty Fighter patch:

I didn't get to playtest it yet, but I am considering to give pure Fighters a boost this way:

At lv. 1, Fighters get to pick a single school from the Tome of Battle, except Devoted Spirit (and maybe Desert Sun and the Shadow one). On each odd level (1, 3, 5 etc) they can chose one martial maneuver or stance they qualify for (Fighter level counts as level prerequisite for that purpose, but many maneuvers and stances also require to have a minimum number of maneuvers from that school before you can take them).

They still can pick up extra maneuvers/stances with feats, but the usual restrictions for non-initiator classes still apply.

Those maneuvers that the Fighter picks up via his class feature however work just the way feats do. In other words, yes, the Fighter can spam them. But this isn't any different from an Übercharger or Chaingun Tripper for that matter.

But I didn't get to test this one yet. If any of you want to give it a try and report back your results this would be greatly appreciated. My own RL group isn't playing 3.x at the moment.


So it's perfectly valid to say "Look at how systems have successfully integrated mages and melee together in planning your changes". I mean, yeah, objectively you should look at DnD2e... but as a failure thereof, it's just a failure in the other direction. Failures are instructive, but it's not because you were supposed to mimic them.
I look at 2ed to see what made melee work there and what held the casters in check (see also your first quote above).

For melee, they were really good at it and no other class could surpass them. Match them occasionally but never surpass them.

Most importantly, they didn't have to beg the casters to protect them from hostile magic that would otherwise take them out on an easily failed save. (although it sure didn't hurt to get the odd protective spell vs. elemental damage).

But they could still not, for example, fly under their own power. Or breathe water. Or walk on water. Or teleport. This was the realm of the wizard, this was just what the spellcasters could do really, really well: Utility magic.

In combat however, wizards were limited by their vulnerability. They needed the fighter types to protect them while they cast their combat spells. And some combat spells were truly impressive. Nowadays a fireball is fairly ineffective because hitpoints went up for players and monsters alike but the damage of the spell didn't. In 2ed a fireball was a great way to take out a bunch of mooks that would otherwise take the fighters too long to cut down (they could do it eventually but sheer numbers meant they would score lucky hits and meanwhile the other sides' archers and casters could inflict damage with impunity).

Today this should mean that damage spells need to be worth a damn and that the usual win buttons need to either go or have some limitations and or drawbacks installed. But that is a lot of work. Plus people hate being told 'no'.

So it is better and easier to take what make fighters good in 2ed and try to reinstate that then trying to nerf casters into oblivion (although the balanced approach would be the best of course).


Can be, but it's usually more selfish. The one here, in this thread, is "I don't care about them, it's all about me". That's a different monster from purposely trying to screw over someone else.Pfft, thats about the difference between a goblin and a hobgoblin. :smalltongue:

MarkusWolfe
2011-06-13, 02:20 PM
Pfft, thats about the difference between a goblin and a hobgoblin. :smalltongue:

2 STR, 2 CON, 2 CHA, 1 size category, a change of favored class and 1 LA?

RPGuru1331
2011-06-13, 02:27 PM
Willful ignorance is the worst kind. Just saying.
Wat. I don't give a wooden nickel for your 'Oh the fun is in making things that suck useful' self-flagellation. Have at it, but it's not even in the most remote way connected to why I play RPGs.


Okay, explain to me how rewriting the wizard class is not a retool of the rules while using WBL guideline RAW to give the fighter types the tools they need is?
It is. But if you're going to do a retool, do a good one.

Retooling the entire magic item inventory is no small task. Your focus on the magic item inventory is to bring parity by giving fighters in-setting magic the hard way. This is itself a symptom of the problem. While I could see the utility in just handing artifacts off in the most low key ways possible, that was because it was an easy fix. If you don't want to expend effort, the symptoms are a fine target, and it's understandable that people would say "I don't want to work hard just to fight the system".

Now you're proposing putting forth serious effort to... ...attack the symptoms? For god's sake, why? It's not like your only option to buff the fighter is to deck their halls with bounties of magical items. As long as you're already proposing a massive retool, you might as well start by giving them more. More class skills, replace their name with "Warblade", add some more non-combat boosts with their own slots, I don't know or care. There are a myriad of other options, some which have inspiration taken from other systems, which you can look at and do more with.

And that's assuming you feel like leaving magic completely intact. Which is not what I'd be inclined to do for Dungeons and Dragons.


Okay, since you are not a dedicated D&D player, this is an easy mistake to make. In D&D, only very powerful magic items are considered 'artifacts'. In most settings, coming into possession of a magic weapon is almost trivial.
Deliberate choice after many years. It is extremely difficult to be ignorant of DnD. I misread while sleep addled at some point and thought you specifically said you were going to hand out artifacts. No game with an explicit magic mart considers it's ordinary magic items to be artifacts, I'm aware.


No they don't have to. They can just say 'Take you lame-ass game and shove it, loser'. Although admittedly, maybe in such a situation not having a game may be better then playing with such players.
You clearly care about the jerks more than I do.


But the point is: You can not work against your players, only with them. And if you can't get caster players to play nice and police themselves, chances are you won't get them to accept nerfs.
I'm not really changing it to police them. I can do that myself if they actually feel like being antagonistic, which isn't a thing the people I play with generally do. Nobody I play with is the kind to intentionaly show up others or pull that kind of crap. I'm changing it to restore conceptual parity and pull spellcasters back to their roots in fiction.

If I'm going to do it by buff, I have no reason to play DnD at all; I might as well just play Exalted if I want a bunch of demigods around. I'd actually prefer it anyway, but that's besides the point.



And if you have a good solution, please do tell. Sure, limiting casters is a way, and I would prefer that over boosting melee into the same stratospheric realms that casters usually occupy. But unless the caster players are cool with that you will have a hard time enforcing this.

Why you're tailoring this to jerks, I don't know. You can't make anyone go along with your plans, ever. It's for hte benefit of low-mid optimizers who nevertheless don't want to hold back on things they've already made. If someone's particularly good at optimizing, either they're on your side and deliberately do not prepare ludicrous spells, or they aren't, and aren't present.




So it is better and easier to take what make fighters good in 2ed and try to reinstate that then trying to nerf casters into oblivion (although the balanced approach would be the best of course).
Not really. My understanding of second ed fighters is that they were so boring parts of them were used to create the drills diamond companies use. Looking at hwat restricted the casters might still be useful, but...


Pfft, thats about the difference between a goblin and a hobgoblin.
Your attention to detail underwhelms me.

One specifically must unleash on a target.
The other doesn't care about collateral damage.

One is a /lot/ easier to deal with than the other.

Lycar
2011-06-13, 04:12 PM
Retooling the entire magic item inventory is no small task. Your focus on the magic item inventory is to bring parity by giving fighters in-setting magic the hard way. This is itself a symptom of the problem. While I could see the utility in just handing artifacts off in the most low key ways possible, that was because it was an easy fix. If you don't want to expend effort, the symptoms are a fine target, and it's understandable that people would say "I don't want to work hard just to fight the system".

Now you're proposing putting forth serious effort to... ...attack the symptoms? For god's sake, why? It's not like your only option to buff the fighter is to deck their halls with bounties of magical items.
I honestly do not understand what you are trying to say. Giving melee the means to play alongside casters by giving them magic item is a quick and dirty fix but it works, at least reasonably well. How is this 'serious effort'? :smallconfused:


As long as you're already proposing a massive retool, you might as well start by giving them more. More class skills, replace their name with "Warblade", add some more non-combat boosts with their own slots, I don't know or care. There are a myriad of other options, some which have inspiration taken from other systems, which you can look at and do more with.

And that's assuming you feel like leaving magic completely intact. Which is not what I'd be inclined to do for Dungeons and Dragons.
Using the Tome of Battle classes is also a quick and dirty fix that works reasonably well. But even those classes need their magic bling to stay alive if the caster types refuse to spare some of their mojo to protect them from hostile magics. It does work wonder for the 'lack of adequate damage' and 'lack of mobility' problems though.



You clearly care about the jerks more than I do.

I'm not really changing it to police them. I can do that myself if they actually feel like being antagonistic, which isn't a thing the people I play with generally do. Nobody I play with is the kind to intentionaly show up others or pull that kind of crap. I'm changing it to restore conceptual parity and pull spellcasters back to their roots in fiction.

If I'm going to do it by buff, I have no reason to play DnD at all; I might as well just play Exalted if I want a bunch of demigods around. I'd actually prefer it anyway, but that's besides the point.

Why you're tailoring this to jerks, I don't know. You can't make anyone go along with your plans, ever. It's for hte benefit of low-mid optimizers who nevertheless don't want to hold back on things they've already made. If someone's particularly good at optimizing, either they're on your side and deliberately do not prepare ludicrous spells, or they aren't, and aren't present.While it is fortunately not a problem for me personally, a lot of people have trouble finding other players to play with. So, either you take what you can get or you are out of a game. Now these people may have to put up with jerks but that doesn't mean that they should have to suffer from bad game design.

Unfortunately that means that any attempts to fix the issues with RAW have to get past the jerks too, or they won't do any good. This fixes that empower people are more likely to be accepted then those that take things away.

1) Magic is very powerful
2) Casters are very powerful because they have magic as a class feature
3) Non-Casters must buy magic to be able to stay relevant
4) Caster do not have to buy magic, see point 2
5) Giving people more gear helps the have-nots more then it does the haves, thus helps close the gap
6) Giving the have-nots more stuff then the haves closes the gap even further
7) People are more likely to accept others getting stuff then having stuff taken away from themselves.

Therefore: Handing out stuff, preferably to melee types, is a quick and dirty way to help the sword slingers out without drawing (too much) ire from the caster types.

You want an easy fix? It is just a band-aid but it works reasonably well.

But to 'fix' 3.x. yes that would take a lot of changing some of the fundamental mechanics of how magic works.

Unfortunately, 3.x was geared towards glossing over everything that detracts from killing things and taking their stuff. While a more detailed combat system, one where, for example, casting spells actually takes time and casters are vulnerable while casting might help, I fear that many people, even melee enthusiasts, would balk at adding another layer of complexity to D&D combat.

The sad part being that it is really only magic that makes stuff so damn hard. Melee is easy. :smallsigh:


Not really. My understanding of second ed fighters is that they were so boring parts of them were used to create the drills diamond companies use. Looking at hwat restricted the casters might still be useful, but...
Eh honestly, all they can do is fight stuff. That is why they are called fighters. Says so right on the tin. If you want to do something else, well, dual-classing did exist even in 2ed. Although it was... complicated.

As far as 3.x goes. As much as I would love to see martial types get more skillpoints in general, if you want skills, dip Rogue. That is what multiclassing is for people!

But the problem of the 3.x fighter is not so much that he is boring (that is another matter entirely), but that he can't fight too well unless he gets magical support.

I already mentioned that Fighters got pummeled with the nerf stick, so that they would no longer be one-man armies but required their team mates to function. They just manages to over-correct so much that the basic Fighter now absolutely requires all the help he can get to be merely adequate!

And if he doesn't get that help form his so-called 'teammates', well, then either the GM feeds him bling or the player eventually quits in disgust. And possibly plays a Druid with a Fleshraker animal companion out of spite. :smallannoyed:


Your attention to detail underwhelms me.

One specifically must unleash on a target.
The other doesn't care about collateral damage.

One is a /lot/ easier to deal with than the other.
Same difference for the one suffering from the problem player. As the saying goes 'Don't fear the bullet with your name on it. Be afraid of the bullet addressed to 'Resident' '.

Yeah, one player is best kicked out of the group, period. If that isn't an option, then what remains is dealing with what is causing the pain. In the case of caster-griefers, if you can't throw them out, nerfing magic is probably not going over too well. Because they will then just rage-quit and you are short a player too.

So you need to boost melee.

In the case of the guy who ruins other people's fun but, hey, it is okay because he doesn't do it intentionally... You say it is not his fault? Then you certainly don't wan to punish him for, I dunno, 'playing the game well'?

So you need to boost melee...


2 STR, 2 CON, 2 CHA, 1 size category, a change of favored class and 1 LA?
Pretty much because apparently the 'picking on others because you can' is more prevailing in younger players (who need to grow up), while 'collateral damage man' is usually a grown up (who just grew up to be a jerk. Or a manager. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference :smallamused:).

So while the preferred class for the former is usually 'munchkin', the latter prefers 'optimizer' or 'power gamer'.

Disclaimer:Note that not everybody who likes to optimize or power play does it without regard for his fellow players. A good player might also help less rules-savvy players optimize their characters and even tweak his own character to co-operate with (read: prop up) weaker characters.