*Should* melee be able to rival casters?

[danzibr]

I was reading another thread recently on what you have to take away from a caster to make them on par with, say, a Warblade. I got thinking last night... in the novels I've read with D&D-type magic, no melee would ever stand any chance against a caster. Well, unless they sneak up on the caster. Anyways, I think there are two reasonable answers:

1) No. Magic is *supposed* to be incredibly powerful. Trying to match it with feats of physical strength and skill just isn't going to happen.

1) Yes. I mean, it's a game, and games are supposed to be balanced. In WoW, for example, rogues can own casters.

What do you all think? Personally, I lean for the former as I'm a fluff over crunch person.

[Tyndmyr]

No. Not overall, anyway.

I mean, a caster is expected to break the laws of physics. A warrior is not.

They should, ideally, still play nice together in the same party, but they need not be rivals.

[Tiki Snakes]

The question is almost more important than the answer, really.

I think my standpoint these days is that I prefer it when it is allowed to. And that may mean allowing the melee types to bend or break the laws of physics too, or it may simply mean sticking to systems where magic is not that far in advance of mortal means.

But if you prefer magic to far outstrip melee, then sure, that's valid too. However, if you are talking about a level-based system then really it would be better to have melee and magic comparable when of equal level. If magic really can go that much in advance of melee, that should be represented by a higher level-cap or something.
Unless of course the system is designed so that parity and balance between characters is meaningless and irrelevant, of course. Theoretically, at least.

[Cookiemobsta]

Yes, every character type should be balanced. If mages are inherently more powerful than melee fighters, then players who prefer to play something other than a mage are penalized. It's not fun when the party mage demolishes every opponent and solves all the problems and the party fighter just kind of...sits around. All players should have an equal opportunity for fun, no matter what class they choose to play.

[mikau013]

I mean, a caster is expected to break the laws of physics. A warrior is not.


You would deny a warrior Ex. abilities? Ouch :smalleek:

[Tengu_temp]

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees. Also, Stormwind Fallacy.

[Tyndmyr]

Yes, every character type should be balanced. If mages are inherently more powerful than melee fighters, then players who prefer to play something other than a mage are penalized. It's not fun when the party mage demolishes every opponent and solves all the problems and the party fighter just kind of...sits around. All players should have an equal opportunity for fun, no matter what class they choose to play.

Equal opportunity for fun is somewhat different from balance.

Screentime is not allocated solely based on power.

[supermonkeyjoe]

yyyes and no, I think spellcasters should become more powerful than mundanes but I don't think they should be able to replace them completely for absolutely every single conceivable task.

[Yora]

If you want spellcasters to be more powerful than warriors, then make the spellcasters a higher level. But the idea that a mage and a warrior of the same level should have significant differences in power is just ludicrous. That's the purpose of levels: To determine how powerful two characters are in relation to each other.

There is nothing wrong with spellcasters being able to do most of the things they do (though there are still some spells that are just stupidly powerful). But just make it so that they get the spells at a level at which they are of comparable power to the warrior characters. And not a couple of levels earlier.

[Callyn]

Hell yes. Otherwise, why would anyone want to play a melee character? Casters and Sidekicks is not fun.

[onemorelurker]

Equal opportunity for fun is somewhat different from balance.

Screentime is not allocated solely based on power.

Sure, but if you have a Fighter and a Druid in the same party, the Fighter gets no mechanical opportunity to shine. The Druid can do everything he can do, only better and twice. Even if the Fighter's player is chiefly concerned with roleplay, most character concepts involve being good at something, and that part of the Fighter's characterization goes right out the window when not only the hippie mage, but the hippie mage's pet are better combatants.

The Fighter can still get screen time outside of combat, and have a ton of roleplaying opportunities, but in most D&D games, dice are gonna get rolled eventually, and when that happens, the Fighter is SOL when it comes to contributing.

[legomaster00156]

No, I think magic should be more powerful than melee. However, I do believe melee should not be completely useless. Skills that a Rogue takes years of experience to master should not be outdone by a level 3 Wizard. Wizards should not be capable of buffing themselves to out-fight the Fighter. And for crying out loud, they should not be so SAD!

[Doug Lampert]

I was reading another thread recently on what you have to take away from a caster to make them on par with, say, a Warblade. I got thinking last night... in the novels I've read with D&D-type magic, no melee would ever stand any chance against a caster. Well, unless they sneak up on the caster. Anyways, I think there are two reasonable answers:

1) No. Magic is *supposed* to be incredibly powerful. Trying to match it with feats of physical strength and skill just isn't going to happen.

1) Yes. I mean, it's a game, and games are supposed to be balanced. In WoW, for example, rogues can own casters.

What do you all think? Personally, I lean for the former as I'm a fluff over crunch person.
That's funny. The novels I'm aware of with D&D type magic not based directly on gaming are the Jack Vance novels they got the magic system FROM, and mundanes can compete quite effectively in them. Most notably Cudgel is a rogue type, and deals with several magicians.

If you go for the alleged sources you get Fafherd and the Grey Mouser, both able to deal with wizards on a more or less equal basis, and Conan, able to deal with wizards to his own favor fairly consistently.

I see no reason that caster's should be inherently more powerful. And if they are then that should be explicit in the system (see Ars Magica for a GOOD, WELL DESIGNED game where casters simply totally outclass mundanes).

[Psyren]

yyyes and no, I think spellcasters should become more powerful than mundanes but I don't think they should be able to replace them completely for absolutely every single conceivable task.

I'm actually fine with them being able to fill in for melee. But it shouldn't be easy, and they shouldn't be able to do it without giving up their other powers. Natural Spell was just a terrible idea from where I'm sitting.

[caden_varn]

No. Not overall, anyway.

I mean, a caster is expected to break the laws of physics. A warrior is not.



Personally, I disagree with this. They break the laws of physics in our
world, sure, but the laws would be different in a fantasy world, and magic still obeys laws - if it did not, you would not have spells always working in a predictable manner, and work the same for each caster, which they do in the D&Dverse.

The power of magic is really down tp personal choice - it can be incredibly weak or incredibly powerful or anything in between.

In a novel, you can have magic users be much more powerful than melee if you want (or vice versa), but in a game where melee and magic is expected to mix together like in D&D, they need to be in the same ballpark of power to work well together out of the box.

[Mystify]

If you are writing a story, melee and casters don't even have to be playing the same game. If you are designing a game, they need to coexist properly.

A basic point of balance in a game should be A=A(as legend put it). Any character of level A should be roughly as powerful as any other character of level A, given similar optimization. They may be better at different things, they may have different skills, but overall, they should be roughly equal.

Now, obviously high-end magic is far exceeding what a perfectly mundane person can do. This does not mean a level 20 wizard should be more powerful than a level 20 mundane fighter. What that might mean is that there is no such thing as a perfectly mundane character beyond level 10. That may be the absolute ceiling of human capacity.

Now you have a system where all classes are balanced at any given level, but casters have a higher ceiling. This may work well to represent various settings in literature. Wizards are more powerful, but they are more powerrful in a balanced way.

Now, this alone is obviously problematic for a game, but workable. It works fine for the adventuring party below level 10. It even allows for more powerful NPC casters, either as beneficiaries to the group, or as adversaries. It also says that a high level group of mages is viable. However, you can't
have a group of 15 level mages adventuring with a fighter. That fighter is capped at 10h level, and explicitly can't keep up, and is not suitable. If you want casters to be more powerful than melee, then this is fine. The system isn't trying to claim the fighter should be able to adventure at the same level.

This does raise the problem of what to do with the fighter who adventured with the casters since level 1, and now the casters are advancing beyond level 10. The simple answer is to retire the character and give them a mage as well.

If you do want the high levels to contain both melee and casters, then you have to let melee be decidedly superhuman. They need to break out of normal limits, and become powerful enough to stand next to the mages as equals. The fluff for this could range from "I am so highly trained I transcend mortal limits" to "I am effectively a gish, using magic to boost my capabilities", to "I am a conduit for my deities power" to "I AM a demigod". If that doesn't sit well with you, then keep the fighters capped at level 10, and acknowledge that they are not in the same league as the high level casters. Otherwise, let them be that awesome.

Whether or not you think melee should be able to rival casters, the system should be balanced. As such, if there is a discrepancy, it needs to be clear, and explicitly make that distinction.

[Manateee]

D&D is primarily a wargame. It even describes the rules by a battlegrid and illustrates its combat section with pictures of miniatures.

Disregarding character-based design motivations for a second, in a wargame, players should have equal influence on the game.
Otherwise, you're wasting the lesser-contributors' time.

If D&D's supposed to maintain a narrative cohesion and function as a wargame, there's one easy and satisfying solution I can see:
Nonmagical characters shouldn't be player characters.
They shouldn't be designed to keep up with player characters, anyway.

Achilles had the blessings of gods.
Galahad was powered by his devoutness and purity.
Even Conan had Crom.
The concept of divine magic is central to D&D tradition, and would aptly apply to many of the traditional nonmagical heroes.

[Curious]

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Nothing makes a caster more deserving of power than a martial character, nor should they be in a game system which pretends balance. If casters can create demiplanes and spit fireballs, I fully expect fighters to be able to lift up mountains and drink oceans.

[danzibr]

That's funny. The novels I'm aware of with D&D type magic not based directly on gaming are the Jack Vance novels they got the magic system FROM, and mundanes can compete quite effectively in them. Most notably Cudgel is a rogue type, and deals with several magicians.

If you go for the alleged sources you get Fafherd and the Grey Mouser, both able to deal with wizards on a more or less equal basis, and Conan, able to deal with wizards to his own favor fairly consistently.

I see no reason that caster's should be inherently more powerful. And if they are then that should be explicit in the system (see Ars Magica for a GOOD, WELL DESIGNED game where casters simply totally outclass mundanes).
Glad you found that funny.

I really meant novels where the magic isn't very subtle, or when it's not used often, like Lord of the Rings. Gandalf's a wizard but fights with a sword. The only time I remember him using his magic offensively was to make pinecone grenades.

Edit: just to make it clear, I probably shouldn't have used the phrase D&D-type magic.

[Qwertystop]

Maybe the best way to stop the problem is to make casters level more slowly. A mundane level 10 is equal to a magic level 5, say, but the magic-user would take as long to reach level 5 as the mundane takes to reach 10. Make different classes have different XP/level requirements.

[DarkEternal]

Depends really.

I think that inherently casters should be more powerful then melee characters. The things that they pull off are absurd and that makes them all the stronger. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't "heroes" of the martial caliber that should be able to rival casters, and that's what player characters are. That warrior whose will exceeds the charms of the sorcerer. That rogue that will manage to find a way to slip out of the force cage even if by rules it's impossible without teleportation. That barbarian that will shrug off the damage caused by the powerful wizard and bleed later on, his rage giving him strength to pummel through even the strongest of magical protections.

Basically, a yes and no scenario. But a definite yes to the part where casters can do melee stuff better then melee. That is just plain out stupid. To be able to bluff your way through countless things with a low level spell, a spell for whose counter a rogue should invest a whole crapload of levels and skill points to get to that rank, to have better to hit scores then fighters or be able to take more punishment then a knight and so on. That is stupid.

[dsmiles]

One of the biggest problems, for me, is that Vancian magic has no way to represent the physical strain that using magic should be putting on the caster's body.
Enter: BESM's Advanced d20 Magic.
Casting costs non-lethal damage. It also involves Fort saves and caster level checks. Magic has just become the most powerful and uncontrollable force in the game world.
I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.
Thank you, and goodnight!

[Suddo]

Yes and no. Yes they should be able to cotribute to the overall effectiveness of the group the same as a wizard. No because at some point they will break basic ideas.

I mean its like this comic (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0126.html). In the comic it shows that the whole starting age to character based on classes is silly. Yet that same scale is suppose to be the difficulty of mastery.

The problem arises less on the fact that magics beat melees and more on the leveling system itself. Look at other games where you spend your XP to gain class abilities. That type of system more closely allows balance of Wizards to Fighters as the fighter can get more features before the wizard gets enough to break everything. When you have a leveling system like d20 then the quadratic wizard happens because for the same XP, and thus time invested, the wizard will get more power.

Oh and to contribute in more of a rant style: Polymorph is broken, wild shape is broken. Both allow casters to lose very little and be able to squish puny fighters. Scry and die strategies, teleport in general, is too powerful. Now if you remove Conjuration and Transmutation from the list, and maybe a little from other schools, you'll quickly see a drop off of the power of wizards. This is more of your classical fantasy wizard.

[Socratov]

well, to be honest, magic beats mundane. However (even in literature) that doesn't mean the wizard absolutely must be able to do his own job, the fighter;s job and any job in the near vicinity. the whole problem with DnD is the fact that the wizard can get enough spells per day to equal the fighter in possible actions necessary for combat. On top of that having spells mimic the capabilities of fighters. It only get's worse when the wizard learns timestop or any other effect that effectively enables him to take 4 turns to the fighters 1.

(also applicable to clerics, sorcerors and druids)

even further, in literature the fighters do go superhuman. eventually they are super strong, super durable, act like lightning, cleave through armies etc. Even the fighters become super human. For rogues idem dito, they move like shadows undetected, there is no skill out there (be it lock picking, forgery, hiding, anything) they can't do, and when they do hit you either you won't because you are allready dead, or they leave you crippled unable to take any action.

personally I think it's sad mundanes get beaten at their own game by a mage after a few levels.

[Talionis]

If you are writing a story, melee and casters don't even have to be playing the same game. If you are designing a game, they need to coexist properly.

A basic point of balance in a game should be A=A(as legend put it). Any character of level A should be roughly as powerful as any other character of level A, given similar optimization. They may be better at different things, they may have different skills, but overall, they should be roughly equal.

Now, obviously high-end magic is far exceeding what a perfectly mundane person can do. This does not mean a level 20 wizard should be more powerful than a level 20 mundane fighter. What that might mean is that there is no such thing as a perfectly mundane character beyond level 10. That may be the absolute ceiling of human capacity.

Now you have a system where all classes are balanced at any given level, but casters have a higher ceiling. This may work well to represent various settings in literature. Wizards are more powerful, but they are more powerrful in a balanced way.

Now, this alone is obviously problematic for a game, but workable. It works fine for the adventuring party below level 10. It even allows for more powerful NPC casters, either as beneficiaries to the group, or as adversaries. It also says that a high level group of mages is viable. However, you can't
have a group of 15 level mages adventuring with a fighter. That fighter is capped at 10h level, and explicitly can't keep up, and is not suitable. If you want casters to be more powerful than melee, then this is fine. The system isn't trying to claim the fighter should be able to adventure at the same level.

This does raise the problem of what to do with the fighter who adventured with the casters since level 1, and now the casters are advancing beyond level 10. The simple answer is to retire the character and give them a mage as well.

If you do want the high levels to contain both melee and casters, then you have to let melee be decidedly superhuman. They need to break out of normal limits, and become powerful enough to stand next to the mages as equals. The fluff for this could range from "I am so highly trained I transcend mortal limits" to "I am effectively a gish, using magic to boost my capabilities", to "I am a conduit for my deities power" to "I AM a demigod". If that doesn't sit well with you, then keep the fighters capped at level 10, and acknowledge that they are not in the same league as the high level casters. Otherwise, let them be that awesome.

Whether or not you think melee should be able to rival casters, the system should be balanced. As such, if there is a discrepancy, it needs to be clear, and explicitly make that distinction.

Exceptionally well reasoned. This was a good question and a great answer.

[Tenno Seremel]

If casters will be equal to melee I hope there will be an Anti-Martial Field effect to even the field :}

[Tyndmyr]

I'm actually fine with them being able to fill in for melee. But it shouldn't be easy, and they shouldn't be able to do it without giving up their other powers. Natural Spell was just a terrible idea from where I'm sitting.

Agreed. I do not need them to have equal power, but I would prefer if they did not make the rest of the party irrelevant on accident merely by existing. I've got no problem with the gish concept, though.



Achilles had the blessings of gods.
Galahad was powered by his devoutness and purity.
Even Conan had Crom.
The concept of divine magic is central to D&D tradition, and would aptly apply to many of the traditional nonmagical heroes.

Yup. Note that even in the Conan tradition, melee is not really depicted as the equal of magic. Most magical types are vastly powerful, and even conan is not depicted as on an equal footing with them. He wins through a combo of luck, wits, and sheer grit, not through having comparable power.


Glad you found that funny.

I really meant novels where the magic isn't very subtle, or when it's not used often, like Lord of the Rings. Gandalf's a wizard but fights with a sword. The only time I remember him using his magic offensively was to make pinecone grenades.

Edit: just to make it clear, I probably shouldn't have used the phrase D&D-type magic.

LOTR has magic literally everywhere in it. Also, Gandalf is basically a demigod. Hell, his sword is a named magical sword(like all high elven blades).

As for offensive spells, you don't count killing a bunch of orcs with lightning magical? Summoning fire and electricity is straight up mage stuff.

[legomaster00156]

If casters will be equal to melee I hope there will be an Anti-Martial Field effect to even the field :}

You mean like a Forcecage?:smallconfused:

[MukkTB]

I'm a fan of the Linear Warriors - Quadratic Wizards thing.

It feels silly to have a high level warrior be on par with a high level magic user. Its gets really silly when you start trying to balance a mundane against someone who can raise the dead, fly, and eventually cast wishes. But at low levels it makes sense for a wizard to be relatively weak and useless. So as long as you balance it that the wizard overtakes the fighter at about the halfway mark you're fine. Unfortunately this kind of unravels when different groups play different levels.


The problem is that at low levels the fighter is not superior to spell casters. The wizard has serviceable save or suck spells at level 1. With things like abrupt jaunt, he is probably a nastier combatant than the fighter. The cleric has decent armor and HPs on top of his spellcasting from the start. And the druid gets a weak fighter pet at 1st level on top of a melee capable chases and full spellcasting. At level 1 spellcasters are set to kick mundane arse.

[Mystify]

Exceptionally well reasoned. This was a good question and a great answer.

Thanks. This is a matter I've given a lot of thought to.

[Tenno Seremel]

You mean like a Forcecage?:smallconfused:
You can initiate maneuvers in Forcecage and they work, I think (IHS, teleportation effects). Spells don't work when you are in Anti-Magic Field unless you cheat.

EDIT: I think everyone missed if condition in my statement.

[Menteith]

I'm going to make an assumption that melee = mundane for the sake of this discussion. Yes, in a game setting with technical aspects, every player should be technically comparable to all of the others. It is not fun, nor does it add to my gaming fun, when I trivialize or am trivialized because of an inherent game imbalance. It does not add to my roleplaying experience to enforce an arbitrary idea that assumes/causes an imbalance(like Linear Warriors/Quadratic Wizards) for the sake of flavor. Magic is about shaping the world in a consistent way, with its own rules, and it's not impossible to balance. D&D3.5 gave far too many power to casters that would be considered game breaking in most other settings - Teleport, Mind Control (Charm/Dominate X among others), Flight, Invisibility, this list goes on. Pick any given superhero, and there's a way to gain that power as a Wizard. Melee might not be underpowered as much as Magic was absurdly overpowered in both the strength of the various effects and the variety of them.

[DeltaEmil]

You mean like a Forcecage?:smallconfused:Or a bear. A wolf. A dog. A table hindering the martial dude's attempt to charge. Meanwhile, a martial dude can only rely on the mage slayer feat and hope the spellcaster dude is some kind of moron who has no pet bear/dog/horse/pony/mindthrall and who allowed the martial dude to end adjacent to him.

[paddyfool]

Yes, they should be balanced, and this can be done well. (See my sig; also, from what I've seen, see Legend as well).

[danzibr]

As for offensive spells, you don't count killing a bunch of orcs with lightning magical? Summoning fire and electricity is straight up mage stuff.
I'm going to be honest, I absolutely don't remember that.

[DoctorGlock]

I'm going to be honest, I absolutely don't remember that.

In "The Hobbit", Gandalf made the goblins' fire explode, chucked pine cone bombs at wolves. In "Fellowship" he fights nazgul with lightning on weathertop. Next to the bridge scene, purging of theoden, calling searing light from the heavens and resurrecting himself, i don't recall any of his other stuff.

[Drolyt]

I think the issue here is that D&D spellcasters are fairly high end, not generally at the level of superheroes or action anime, although some of their reality bending powers like Teleport, Dominate Person, Shapechange, and Wish can approach that level, but very powerful nonetheless. You can look at the problem two ways, in a story sense or a mechanics sense. In a story sense it makes no sense for a completely mundane character, no matter how skilled, to compete with such high powered characters. In a mechanics sense, it is almost impossible to balance characters who can Fly, Teleport, Polymorph, and shoot Fireballs with characters who cannot. That said, why does melee "need" to be mundane? Some melee classes, like Paladins and Monks, are explicitly supernatural to begin with, so why not just turn that up to eleven and give them the powers they need to compete? Others, like Fighters and Barbarians, are less explicitly supernatural, but why should that matter? D&D supernatural is only supernatural compared to the real world, in the context of the game magic is perfectly natural. Why shouldn't sufficiently skilled Fighters be able to do things that seem supernatural to us? I mean, check out some of the more ridiculous martial arts fiction sometime and see what fictional characters can do without anyone ever suggesting that they needed "magic" to do it. Fighters could be like that.

[gkathellar]

Here's the thing: in most fantasy-fiction where casters have lots of power, casters are special. They're rare, powerful people with rare, powerful abilities that set them apart from the norm. You can't take Joe Warrior and set him down next to Joe Wizard because there is no such thing as Joe Wizard. Wizards are special, unique snowflakes and they come in every flavor but typical. So instead, a wizard in this kind of fiction is named Shihan August the Vermillion, Disciple of the Twelve-Phoenix Arcane Society - feared by his countrymen, respected by his colleagues, and known to have bent the very forces of reality to his whim.

When people say warriors shouldn't be able to measure up to wizards, they're forgetting that comparing Joe Warrior to Shihan August the Vermillion (as D&D tried to) is stupid - because one of these guys is an ex-pig farmer, and the other one is special. The only fair comparison is to a warrior who is special, a warrior to whom Joe Warrior's flailing looks no more impressive than him waving his hands around and mumbling would look to Shihan August the Vermillion. That way, you're actually comparing someone who's special to someone else who's special. These characters do exist in fantasy and myth - and they are the like of Hector, or Galahad, or Li Mu Bai.

If you want to pedestrianize magic and still keep it powerful (as D&D does), then there's no reason warriors should continue to exist. Mages do the same thing but faster, harder and twice on Sunday. And if mages are, in fact, special and different and better (as they usually are) then as a game designer you get to make a decision as to whether there are or are not warriors who are special and different and better. If you say yes, hurrah! Quadratic warriors and quadratic wizards! Problem solved! And if you say no, then you just do quadratic wizards, sure, cool, problem solved.

But if you say no and pretend you said yes (as in D&D), if you tell people to play Shihan August the Vermillion next to Joe Warrior, then you have bad game design. Because either everyone should be playing special people, or everyone should be playing mundane people (or at the very least they should get to make an informed decision about it).

[Person_Man]

It's a false choice.

You can make magical and non-magical characters mechanically equal, while reserving the most powerful spells or rituals or king-fu techniques or whatever for when it's appropriate to the story. It a roleplaying game, not a video game or a magical physics simulator.

[Waddacku]

I must object somewhat to using Druid as a whole as an argument regarding casting vs non-casting in D&D. Wild Shape and Animal Companion aren't caster features. They are by default in the same class as a full casting progression, but they are discrete parts of the whole. The problem where a wild shaping Druid beats the Fighter at his own game is a problem with the Druid class, not with casting per se. However, casters without any combat features ALSO beat the Fighter. I'm not an expert on the Druid spell list, but I suspect it'd beat the Fighter up in a fight anyway, without transforming into a bear.

[Psyren]

It's a false choice.

You can make magical and non-magical characters mechanically equal, while reserving the most powerful spells or rituals or king-fu techniques or whatever for when it's appropriate to the story. It a roleplaying game, not a video game or a magical physics simulator.

4e tried that, bundling the more (for lack of a better term) "cinematic magic" into the Rituals subsystem.

YMMV on how well they did, but I don't think all of Pathfinder's success can necessarily be attributed to players (and DMs) who don't know what they're in for at later levels.

[The Glyphstone]

If casters will be equal to melee I hope there will be an Anti-Martial Field effect to even the field :}

It's called Solid Fog.:smallcool:

[Lord_Gareth]

YMMV on how well they did, but I don't think all of Pathfinder's success can necessarily be attributed to players (and DMs) who don't know what they're in for at later levels.

Most of Pathfinder's player base doesn't play much past tenth, eleventh level. At the lower levels, a lot of PF's apparent 'fixes' seem very attractive (and, certainly, the idea of giving classes without real class features access to some class features was a good one). This doesn't change the fact that PF's mechanical design ranges from well-intentioned mistakes (Combat Maneuver System) to extensive, catastrophic failure (almost all of their feats, almost no attempt to fix higher level spells, giving casters even more class features, nerfing melee's only Nice Things) to intentional creation of imbalance. Having fun with PF isn't impossible, no, and it works for folks that couldn't care less about design theory or game balance, but I say this again: the system itself has no merits of its own that it didn't steal from 3.5 and has several points to inform against it. It's successful only because WotC throttled 3.5 in its bed.

[gkathellar]

4e tried that, bundling the more (for lack of a better term) "cinematic magic" into the Rituals subsystem.

YMMV on how well they did, but I don't think all of Pathfinder's success can necessarily be attributed to players (and DMs) who don't know what they're in for at later levels.

4E indeed tried it and had some level of success, varying depending on who you ask. Arguably, it only implemented a tiny part of the equation by focusing too much on combat-utility. (I demand monks that can punch a guy so that he gets restoration cast on him! I demand fighters who can create walls of stone by tearing them out of the ground!)

A lot of Pathfinder's success, however, can be attributed to players who didn't play at a high enough op threshold to have encountered it, or who had encountered it but simply didn't care. Not everyone gets all self-righteous about dishonest and/or lazy game design the way I and other people on these boards occasionally do.

[pwykersotz]

Short answer? Yes.

Long answer? I think rival is a bad term to use for my concept of balance. I think each class should be unrivaled at their area of expertise. I think the amount of encroachment into the other classes territory should be limited. It's true that the 3.5 system doesn't inherently support this idea, but if you get like-minded players and GM together, you can do a lot toward this concept.

If you think about it from the terms of Superman vs Doctor Fate, neither diminishes the other. In combat, both would do different things. It's true, Superman is weak to magic, so Doctor Fate would straight up wreck him if Superman didn't land a finishing blow right up front, but it's also true that whoever controls Superman (through friendship/magic/other) usually wins. He's the most powerful thing in the DC Universe.

So yeah...my 2 copper.

[Psyren]

*snip*

You know, based on your posts here and elsewhere, I'm getting the nagging suspicion that you aren't crazy about Pathfinder :smalltongue:

All kidding aside, What does this hyperbole actually accomplish? "Extensive, catastrophic failure?" Really? "No merits that it didn't steal from 3.5?" Putting aside the difficulty of "stealing" Open Content (that keeps sounding like "stealing air" in my head), the system has plenty of merits that did not come from 3.5, and yes I include the combat maneuver system you so casually dismissed under that umbrella.

I'm not claiming that PF is perfectly balanced, but attempting to demonize it to this degree is almost comical.

[ahenobarbi]

1) No. Magic is *supposed* to be incredibly powerful. Trying to match it with feats of physical strength and skill just isn't going to happen.

Only it should be made obvious/explicitly stated (not pretending they have about the same power).

Like you don't see people complaining that guns are more powerful then bare fists (in modern setting). Because everybody knows that.

[Tyndmyr]

In "The Hobbit", Gandalf made the goblins' fire explode, chucked pine cone bombs at wolves. In "Fellowship" he fights nazgul with lightning on weathertop. Next to the bridge scene, purging of theoden, calling searing light from the heavens and resurrecting himself, i don't recall any of his other stuff.

Those are some excellent examples, yes. All of those are pretty magical, and we also have less overt stuff like calling to his horse and the eagles over distances that normal people cannot, or the ability to make his staff glow with light.

Gandalf also wields the Flame of Anor...how much of his fire magic is attributable to that magic item* is debatable, but if he felt it worthy to mention to the Balrog, it's presumably of some note.

And, while it's not covered in detail, it seems almost certain that Gandalf used magic heavily in the fight with the Balrog. I mean, I doubt he threw him into a mountain hard enough to break it without some sort of magic. It *is* explicit that both he and the balor have magic, as both use it in the pursuit of the party in Moria, and as they were already using magic against each other there, it would be odd to assume that they stopped doing so the instant the party left the screen.

*He's got the ring of fire, and some think that's what he's referring to in that speech. Either way, he's definitely talking about magical fire.

[mikau013]

Only it should be made obvious/explicitly stated (not pretending they have about the same power).

Like you don't see people complaining that guns are more powerful then bare fists (in modern setting). Because everybody knows that.

But I can catch bullets with my fists!

[ahenobarbi]

But I can catch bullets with my fists!

Even coming from automatic rifle :smallwink: ?

[Seerow]

I'm a fan of the Linear Warriors - Quadratic Wizards thing.

It feels silly to have a high level warrior be on par with a high level magic user. Its gets really silly when you start trying to balance a mundane against someone who can raise the dead, fly, and eventually cast wishes. But at low levels it makes sense for a wizard to be relatively weak and useless. So as long as you balance it that the wizard overtakes the fighter at about the halfway mark you're fine. Unfortunately this kind of unravels when different groups play different levels.


The problem is that at low levels the fighter is not superior to spell casters. The wizard has serviceable save or suck spells at level 1. With things like abrupt jaunt, he is probably a nastier combatant than the fighter. The cleric has decent armor and HPs on top of his spellcasting from the start. And the druid gets a weak fighter pet at 1st level on top of a melee capable chases and full spellcasting. At level 1 spellcasters are set to kick mundane arse.

The problem with this method of balance is that people don't play 1-20 campaigns. Most will play campaigns across a 5-6 level stretch, then make new characters. If Mundanes are strictly stronger from 1-6, and you're starting a campaign at level 1, then you just play a group of all mundanes and you're set. If the campaign does last longer than 6, then you retire your character or kill him off, or whatever, and bring in a Wizard that you didn't have to suffer through low levels with.

For a class and level system to work, there needs to be the assumption that character of level X is going to be power level X. You can't have a huge disparity in power, or the level system doesn't work.

If you want mages that are stronger than casters, you play in a setting where casters are all much higher level than anyone else. You don't make it so that someone who wants to play a Fighter can't compete at high level.

[Slipperychicken]

It's a false choice.

You can make magical and non-magical characters mechanically equal, while reserving the most powerful spells or rituals or king-fu techniques or whatever for when it's appropriate to the story. It a roleplaying game, not a video game or a magical physics simulator.

+1 to this. Magic in 3.5 is powerful, versatile, cheap, easy to use, and easy to abuse, while nonmagical characters are (with few exceptions) tightly bound to real-world human limits. Characters ought to be balanced in normal play, so each concept can do its thing(s) without being overshadowed.

[Tyndmyr]

The problem with this method of balance is that people don't play 1-20 campaigns. Most will play campaigns across a 5-6 level stretch, then make new characters. If Mundanes are strictly stronger from 1-6, and you're starting a campaign at level 1, then you just play a group of all mundanes and you're set. If the campaign does last longer than 6, then you retire your character or kill him off, or whatever, and bring in a Wizard that you didn't have to suffer through low levels with.

For a class and level system to work, there needs to be the assumption that character of level X is going to be power level X. You can't have a huge disparity in power, or the level system doesn't work.

If you want mages that are stronger than casters, you play in a setting where casters are all much higher level than anyone else. You don't make it so that someone who wants to play a Fighter can't compete at high level.

This assumes that people always want to be the most powerful at any given point in time. That's...certainly not true.

I mean, I'm well aware that a crusader crushes a wizard at level 1, but I've played a *lot* of level 1 wizards.

[Clawhound]

From an organized gaming point of view, once the players work out the most efficient path to power, the most powerful options will become the predominant options.

If spellcasters are more powerful, you can expect your organized game population to revolve around the most powerful options.

Does that sound boring? It does to me.

Look at the number of folks who think Tier 1 Or Nothing.

So, in order to have a viable game community, and interesting play, you must aim for equalish.

The history of gishing-up the fighter goes straight back to the Helm of Brilliance and Flaming Swords. That's been in the system a long time.

[Drolyt]

4e is fine for what it is. Like all tabletop RPGs it can be used for a variety of play styles, but I think it shines most in small scale tactical combat, where it works very much better than 3.5, having better balance and more tactical decision making. That said I don't think it offers the versatility of 3.5 and I personally am not fond of some of the mechanics. Your mileage may vary. Regardless it doesn't solve the magic/melee issue, instead it depowers mages significantly. Magic/melee balance isn't hard when the magic isn't earth shattering. In this the game is more in line with most fantasy literature, which tends to be lower powered, but this isn't to everyone's tastes.

Pathfinder has some good ideas, among them the elimination of dead levels and adding more options for noncasters, but it is only barely more balanced. Some may prefer it to vanilla 3.5 (I don't see Pathfinder so much as a game of its own as an expansion pack for D&D 3.5), your mileage may vary, but it doesn't really solve the core problem of this thread.

Moving on to the Lord of Rings discussion... actually I think I missed that post, why are we talking about that? At any rate that is an excellent example of the problem. Despite never showing magic much stronger than what a 5th level D&D Wizard can do* (albeit he was didn't appear to be restricted by spells slots or points or anything like that) Gandalf was by far the strongest member of the fellowship and Tolkien had to get rid of him for a while in both the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings so he wouldn't just solve everything himself.

* Exactly how powerful magic is in Middle Earth is up to debate. Nothing that amazing is ever seen directly, and most fights even in the Silmarilion (sp?) is done with weapons, but some things hint at a high level of magic. Personally I think that the magic is quite powerful, but with very little of the flashy fireball type magic of D&D.

[ahenobarbi]

For a class and level system to work, there needs to be the assumption that character of level X is going to be power level X. You can't have a huge disparity in power, or the level system doesn't work.

Or you could explicitly state that some classes are stronger some are weaker. So DM needs to adjust challenges. And be careful when trying to mix the two. Or make stronger classes get levels slower. But of course improving mundanes wouldn't hurt.

[Curmudgeon]

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: You've limited this to melee (close quarters) combatants on one side, with no limitations on spellcasters on the other. If the game had no ranged spells (more: no concept of ranged spells, so it would never be possible to have a spell that wasn't personal or touch range) then you'd be looking at an even comparison. In that case, my answer would be yes.

[LikeAD6]

I would say that it depends on the setting; stronger magic is more appropriate in some than others. If I choose to run a setting in which magic is more powerful, however, I should know that my players may well all choose to play casters.

[paurpg]

I like this topic so I'll say my own two cents too. I like some of the replies here, like Mystifies for example. I agree with him that a same-level character should be of roughly equivalent power. I would add that since melee characters are specialized in melee they should correspondingly be the best at .... melee. (For one thing, story wise any fighting school that teaches their fighters how to be weaker than non specialized fighters seems sort of silly and pointless.)
What I would do is have high level melee characters to be able to do seemingly suprahuman feats with their body. (But I have to admit that I am a fan of dragon ball, blade of the immortal and martial arts, so other people might not imagine a fighter being able to do certain things.) I think it might work for a melee character to not only be able to deal huge damage, but to easily dodge spells, move up to the wizard before he realizes what happened, avoid being seen or targeted, use ranged attacks to distract the wizard whenever he is about to cast a spell... for example. He could also be able to phisically "see invisible" somehow, and potentially have incredible mobility. I mean there are lot of ways that I can imagine a physically based fighter to interfere with magical ability, of course this would need careful balancing...etc. I sort of imagine it being sort of like the situation often seen in movies where some kind of martial artist can defeat gun-wielding enemies because he is much faster, mobile and able to disable them with one hit. If the classes aren't balanced, than yeah I think you are hurting the game-play. I guess another option would be to make learning magic alot more difficult and slow, perhaps requiring alot more concentration to cast spells, having to choose only one school... etc. but no one likes making characters less powerful ; )
Honestly if I were to rebalance the system I would probably do both: make wizards less battle able and melee characters more powerful.

[ahenobarbi]

It's this way (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DzcOCyHDqc). And it's ok as long as players know how things are. Problem is that people feel that mundanes can do as good as casters (and are disappointed when it turns out they can't).

Story-wise being fighter is ok. Because if you were born strong but dumb you will be better fighter (or barbarian) than caster.

[Treblain]

Magic-users should be able to do things that other people can't do.

The thing is, 3.5 went way beyond that, to the point that it got to be needlessly spiteful to noncasters. Magic locks can't be picked, ever. Magic walls of force can't be broken, ever. Mind control lasts days while barely requiring mental concentration. Spells and magic items give massive bonuses to combat and skills that eclipse other means of boosting them. Attacks by casters ignore HP, the normal measure of health in combat. Spellcasters have ways to act outside the move/attack action turn everyone else gets.

In fiction, when wizards overpower mundanes, the authors at least do a good job of disguising it. In D&D, spells override the rules. Other characters attack and use skills, and determine the result by rolling a die with a chance of success or failure. When you have classes that can act outside the framework of those rules, it's inevitable that you have an imbalance. That's the fault of the design of the caster classes and spells, not any inherent rules in fantasy or gaming.

[Seerow]

Or you could explicitly state that some classes are stronger some are weaker. So DM needs to adjust challenges. And be careful when trying to mix the two. Or make stronger classes get levels slower. But of course improving mundanes wouldn't hurt.

This really doesn't help much either though. Saying "This class is weaker, adjust the challenges DM" doesn't help that Joe fighter feels like he's just a side show to the Wizard. The Fighter gaining levels faster just gives him bigger numbers, he still has no tricks to compete with a Wizard.



I don't necessarily think Melee needs to hit tier 1. But I don't think casters should be there either. What Wizards can currently do (access every spell ever and change them on a whim) is something I feel should be restricted to deities. Normal characters should not have that much flexibility and power at once. Once you tone down Wizard flexibility/power a bit, you can bring up mundanes to meet in the middle.

The other alternative (which I don't particularly like, but it is there) is making it so Mundane classes simply don't exist past level 6. After that you're forced to prestige into some form of magic hybrid that grants you special powers. Probably still keeping your role as Melee or Archery or whatever, but mixing it with some other power source in a way that lets you believably smash that SU barrier.

[Cor1]

---snip---
He's got the ring of fire, and some think that's what he's referring to in that speech. Either way, he's definitely talking about magical fire.

Flame of Anor, the Secret Fire is the name of the Second Ring of the Elves. Galadriel had the First, Gandalf the second, can't remember where the third was.


About the rest of the thread : Fighters should be much better than casters at fighting. When you have to build a King Of Smack just to be relevant besides the unoptimized, core-only Wizard, you know how wrong the system has been built.

I want a high-level fighter to be able to cut a mountain in half with a sword. A Wizard can do, the Fighter should be able to do it too.

Now for teleporting armies, well, the Wizard can do it, but the Fighter knows how to use them.

[Curious]

The other alternative (which I don't particularly like, but it is there) is making it so Mundane classes simply don't exist past level 6. After that you're forced to prestige into some form of magic hybrid that grants you special powers. Probably still keeping your role as Melee or Archery or whatever, but mixing it with some other power source in a way that lets you believably smash that SU barrier.

Here's a question; why exactly is magic more believable than simply being really freaking good with your sword/bow/murder implement of choice? If a setting contains wizards who can easily summon extraplanar creatures to battle for them, or cast fireballs, or create castles out of thin air, I would expect that the high level warriors would be able to do similarly insane things.

[erikun]

No, because the point is not to 'rival' anything. If the wizard is flying around and tossing out Walls of Stone each round, asking the fighter to be capable of flying around and building walls in a round will produce a very funky character.

Rather, you want characters that are good at some things but not others. The fact that wizards can do things that fighters cannot is not a problem. The fact that wizards can do everything that the fighter can do, and do it better, and do things that make what the fighter can do irrelevant, and still do everything the fighter can't do, and have enough resources to do it all at the same time... that is the problem.


Maybe the best way to stop the problem is to make casters level more slowly. A mundane level 10 is equal to a magic level 5, say, but the magic-user would take as long to reach level 5 as the mundane takes to reach 10. Make different classes have different XP/level requirements.
I prefer it the other way around: Wizard abilities are delayed until the appropriate level. If a wizard's Fireball or Fly or Haste is equal to what a fighter gets at 10th level, then 3rd-level wizard spells should be delayed until 10th level.

[mikau013]

Here's a question; why exactly is magic more believable than simply being really freaking good with your sword/bow/murder implement of choice? If a setting contains wizards who can easily summon extraplanar creatures to battle for them, or cast fireballs, or create castles out of thin air, I would expect that the high level warriors would be able to do similarly insane things.

Because level 1 fighters are really good with a sword. Level 5 fighters are even better with it. Level 10 fighters are even better with one. etc.

While the wizard is actually doing new and better things.

[Lord_Gareth]

All kidding aside, What does this hyperbole actually accomplish? "Extensive, catastrophic failure?" Really? "No merits that it didn't steal from 3.5?" Putting aside the difficulty of "stealing" Open Content (that keeps sounding like "stealing air" in my head), the system has plenty of merits that did not come from 3.5, and yes I include the combat maneuver system you so casually dismissed under that umbrella.

'Stolen' in the sense that Paizo didn't design those merits. The combat maneuver system is simplified, yes (which is a plus - simple is good) but A. the defense scales much faster than the ability to use the maneuvers and B. they broke apart all the feats that relate to said maneuvers, making them suffer literally double the opportunity cost for the same return. They filled the game with so many trap feats, especially for non-casters, that new players have a high probability of blundering into builds that aren't so much low-op as they are totally useless. They tried to fix the Paladin and the Monk and failed to even begin to address their core problems; they tried to add more options for melee but ended up with a net decrease both in options and effectiveness (since by splitting up so many feats they've made feats less valuable, not more). They did nothing to address the disparity between the capabilities of your average monster at any given CR and the capabilities of the party (Erinyes remains my favorite example).

Good points: the maneuver system is salvageable (and its simplification makes it MUCH easier on new players) and the skill consolidations were superb.

Bad Points: they took everything about 3.5 that was bad and actively made it worse, actually succeeding at weakening melee and mundanes.

Tell me, aside from the undeniable merits of A. Damn sexy artwork (I want to have this game's art-babies) and B. Actually still being published, what are Pathfinder's independent merits?

[Curious]

Because level 1 fighters are really good with a sword. Level 5 fighters are even better with it. Level 10 fighters are even better with one. etc.

While the wizard is actually doing new and better things.

That's. . . Not what I was talking about at all. What I was saying was that in any game setting that includes such powerful spellcasters, and pretends that they are balanced against martial characters, martial characters should then be able to do things just as impossible as those wizards. I'm not talking about how it is now.

[ahenobarbi]

This really doesn't help much either though. Saying "This class is weaker, adjust the challenges DM" doesn't help that Joe fighter feels like he's just a side show to the Wizard. The Fighter gaining levels faster just gives him bigger numbers, he still has no tricks to compete with a Wizard.


Note that's why "don't mix strong with weak". I think it's good that system supports both very weak and very strong characters. So I could play a campaign in which commoners struggle against orc tribe or a campaign in which 1st-tier characters kill a few dragons a day.

The real problem is when people are disappointed because characters don't work like they thought. When I first saw monk I thought it was totally awesome. Because it really is... if you compere it to your regular human. The thing is wizard can do (almost) all monk can with low-level spells, which will be disappointing if you find it out during game...



I don't necessarily think Melee needs to hit tier 1. But I don't think casters should be there either. What Wizards can currently do (access every spell ever and change them on a whim) is something I feel should be restricted to deities. Normal characters should not have that much flexibility and power at once. Once you tone down Wizard flexibility/power a bit, you can bring up mundanes to meet in the middle.

Providing some nice option for semi-mundanes would be good.
For example give them some self-bufs (like barbarians or frenzied berserkers and ability to overcome at least some magical effects would be good too).

Removing some most broken spells wouldn't hurt.

[Drolyt]

Flame of Anor, the Secret Fire is the name of the Second Ring of the Elves. Galadriel had the First, Gandalf the second, can't remember where the third was.
Elrond. Also, Cirdan originally had Gandalf's ring but gave it to him to help on his journey.

Note that's why "don't mix strong with weak". I think it's good that system supports both very weak and very strong characters. So I could play a campaign in which commoners struggle against orc tribe or a campaign in which 1st-tier characters kill a few dragons a day.
Isn't that what levels are for?

[Othesemo]

I believe that, ideally, the powers of the two niches would be incomparable. I don't want a fighter who can fly and make fireballs- neither do I want a wizard who can pick up a few levels of Abjurant Champion and a greatsword and pwn the fighter in melee. The problem is not so much that 'the wizard can break physics' so much as 'the wizard can break physics and beat the crap out of people with a stick.' It should be comparing apples to oranges- instead, it's comparing an apple to a fruit salad.

[Person_Man]

4e tried that, bundling the more (for lack of a better term) "cinematic magic" into the Rituals subsystem.

YMMV on how well they did, but I don't think all of Pathfinder's success can necessarily be attributed to players (and DMs) who don't know what they're in for at later levels.

Point well taken.

But I think their heart was in the right place on 4E, but they botched the PR, killed the wildly popular OGL, and made the Powers and Feats too boring and granular.

Imagine if 4E was written as Tome of Battle + Star Wars Saga Edition instead of World of Warcraft + Heroclix. It's possible to achieve balance and awesomeness at the same time. It's just difficult.

[hamishspence]

Flame of Anor, the Secret Fire is the name of the Second Ring of the Elves. Galadriel had the First, Gandalf the second, can't remember where the third was.

With Elrond ("Vilya, chief of the Three") whereas Galadriel's was "Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, mightiest of the Three".

EDIT: Swordsaged.

Gandalf's was "Narya, the Red Ring, the Ring of Fire".

Anor, means "Sun" in one Elven language: "Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun" "Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon"

So the "flame of Anor" may be "flame of the Sun".

The "Secret Fire" may be "the Flame Imperishable" which Iluvatar uses to create things. At the beginning of The Silmarillion, in the description of what will happen after the end of days:


Never have the Ainur made any music like to this music, though it has been said that a greater still shall be made before Iluvatar by the choirs of the Ainur and the Children of Iluvatar after the end of days. Then the themes of Iluvatar shall be played aright, and take Being in the moment of utterance, for all shall then understand fully his intent in their part, and each shall know the comprehension of each, and Iluvatar shall give to their thoughts the secret fire, being well pleased.

"Servant of the Secret Fire"- Servant of the Creative Force- that is- Iluvatar's power.

[Mystify]

Note that's why "don't mix strong with weak". I think it's good that system supports both very weak and very strong characters. So I could play a campaign in which commoners struggle against orc tribe or a campaign in which 1st-tier characters kill a few dragons a day.

The real problem is when people are disappointed because characters don't work like they thought. When I first saw monk I thought it was totally awesome. Because it really is... if you compere it to your regular human. The thing is wizard can do (almost) all monk can with low-level spells, which will be disappointing if you find it out during game...

If a level= a level, then there is no strong or weak to mix. The martial and casters can adventure in harmony because their level is a measure of their actual power, not their progression along their own, unrelated power curves. If you want weak characters, play level 1. If you want strong characters, play level 10. There shouldn't be tiers in the first place. You should control the power level of the campaign via a single attribute, the characters level, not some matric involving each characters class and their level.

[ahenobarbi]

Isn't that what levels are for?

So you wold like to have balanced commoners too :smallamused:

I think levels measure character progress on chosen path. But power depends not only how far character went on that path, but what path it chose.

You (and apparently some other people in this thread) think differently,which is fine... I just believe it's very hard to make it happen with a big system. Also having class-less system helps (but it wouldn't be d&d anymore..).

[Mystify]

So you wold like to have balanced commoners too :smallamused:

I think levels measure character progress on chosen path. But power depends not only how far character went on that path, but what path it chose.

You (and apparently some other people in this thread) think differently,which is fine... I just believe it's very hard to make it happen with a big system. Also having class-less system helps (but it wouldn't be d&d anymore..).

What is the point of having a level system if a level isn't comparable to other levels?

[Clawhound]

The problem with fighters is figuring out what kind of AWESOME that the player community and DMs will accept.

What do mundanes do at that higher level? That's a fricking hard question to answer. In comparison, figuring out how to scale back the spellcasters is far easier.

In 3E, it seems like the combat designers worked in one room, the spell designers worked in another, and then they produced two separate games, then smashed them together and called it good.

Just re-leveling the spells based on actual effectiveness would be a good start.

[Psyren]

I don't necessarily think Melee needs to hit tier 1. But I don't think casters should be there either. What Wizards can currently do (access every spell ever and change them on a whim) is something I feel should be restricted to deities. Normal characters should not have that much flexibility and power at once. Once you tone down Wizard flexibility/power a bit, you can bring up mundanes to meet in the middle.

I tend to agree. I've long favored "Wizard" as being too broad a concept, and could easily be broken down into T3 subdivisions: "Evoker, Necromancer, Enchanter," etc., all named "Wizard" by the common folk.


The other alternative (which I don't particularly like, but it is there) is making it so Mundane classes simply don't exist past level 6. After that you're forced to prestige into some form of magic hybrid that grants you special powers. Probably still keeping your role as Melee or Archery or whatever, but mixing it with some other power source in a way that lets you believably smash that SU barrier.

I honestly don't see the problem with this. Even outside ToB - Whether its awakening psionic potential via War Mind, or melding arcane secrets with bladeskill like a Suel, or even just learning some supernatural techniques that don't fit into a truly magic mold like Hellbreaker - I don't see how anyone could spend as much focus on warfare and force-of-arms as a fighter 20 without getting anything out of it. And sure, Fighter 20 doesn't actually give you any of that stuff, but the system itself does. Even somethng as simple as Incarnum Blade would be a slight improvement.

But my preferred solution is merely to replace Fighter with Warblade, or better yet roll them into one, as well as bringing in the other ToB-ers while abolishing T5 and T6 entirely.


Point well taken.

But I think their heart was in the right place on 4E, but they botched the PR, killed the wildly popular OGL, and made the Powers and Feats too boring and granular.

Imagine if 4E was written as Tome of Battle + Star Wars Saga Edition instead of World of Warcraft + Heroclix. It's possible to achieve balance and awesomeness at the same time. It's just difficult.

I agree totally. But I think the acceptance of ToB is a bit overstated on gaming forums. I love the system to death and think it's exactly what melee needed, but for every one of us that sings its praises there are many tables damning it for being "too anime," whatever in the nine hells that even means. Even WotC acknowledged (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/frcc/20070911) (and attempted to rail against) the feedback.

I'm not sure there's one right answer to a conundrum like that.

[ahenobarbi]

If a level= a level, then there is no strong or weak to mix. The martial and casters can adventure in harmony because their level is a measure of their actual power, not their progression along their own, unrelated power curves. If you want weak characters, play level 1. If you want strong characters, play level 10. There shouldn't be tiers in the first place. You should control the power level of the campaign via a single attribute, the characters level, not some matric involving each characters class and their level.

So if I want to play low-power campaign I don't get to progress at all? I'd prefer to have my commoner make it from level 1 to 10 during campaign then have my berserker stay whole time around level 3...

Measuring party power by single, easy to calculate number would be useful sometimes but I don't think I know RPG where it could actually work (for example because the same character could be rather weak when played by unexperienced player or very powerful if played by experienced).

[navar100]

Yes, they should. The problem is how.

1) Raise warriors to the level of spellcasters.
2) Lower spellcasters to the level of warriors.
3) Raise warriors somewhat, lower spellcasters somewhat.

The devil is in the details. Tome of Battle took approach 1). 4E took approach 2). Pathfinder took approach 3). Success or failure of their methods is of one's personal view, but it's still the approaches they took. I prefer 1) or 3).

[Grim Reader]

To me, it is appropriate that melee and magic diverge in power. The mightiest wizard of the age should be superior to even great warriors. When Conan defeats a wizard, it is an accomplishment.

But the two diverge too early. The mightiest wizard of the age should be pretty much past PC territory anyway. I'd be fine with wizards outstripping melee around level 17, when they wield the most powerful spells known. How may games go past level 17 anyway?

What melee lack, to my mind, is: Scaling feats and good high-level PrCs.

[Seerow]

I tend to agree. I've long favored "Wizard" as being too broad a concept, and could easily be broken down into T3 subdivisions: "Evoker, Necromancer, Enchanter," etc., all named "Wizard" by the common folk.


I don't even really mind the idea of a generalist Wizard. But instead of the way it currently is, a generalist wizard would be restricted to lower level spells with a slower progression (a la a bard). I'd probably also restrict them from having as many spells, something closer to a maximum of the 2 spells per level they gain for free now, as opposed to a minimum of that. When you consider tier 2-3 characters typically have about 10-20 powers, I would be inclined to call that a good baseline. The Wizard who is inherently flexible, but weaker, I would say could double that.


I honestly don't see the problem with this. Even outside ToB - Whether its awakening psionic potential via War Mind, or melding arcane secrets with bladeskill like a Suel, or even just learning some supernatural techniques that don't fit into a truly magic mold like Hellbreaker - I don't see how anyone could spend as much focus on warfare and force-of-arms as a fighter 20 without getting anything out of it. And sure, Fighter 20 doesn't actually give you any of that stuff, but the system itself does. Even somethng as simple as Incarnum Blade would be a slight improvement.

But my preferred solution is merely to replace Fighter with Warblade, or better yet roll them into one, as well as bringing in the other ToB-ers while abolishing T5 and T6 entirely.


Well I was speaking from the perspective of a potential but not released system, given the OP's question ("Should mundanes match casters?"). Because if you're asking if they do in any given system, the answer is pretty obvious.

But yes, if you cut Fighters off at level 6, and have a series of classes of which it is mandatory to pick one of (similar to 4e paragon paths), and have it grant powers, that can work, as long as you balance them appropriately. As you point out the Warmind, Suel Arachwhatever etc are good examples of how this could be implemented. I could also see the Ranger and Paladin being paths like this (as a fighter develops into nature or divinity respectively) Similar paths could be introduced for Incarnum, Binding, etc.


While I do like Tome of Battle for its mechanics, it is a different approach to what I had described, and is probably closer to how I would handle things personally. As opposed to after a certain level getting access to a new power source that augments your fighting ability (basically turning every fighter into a gish), you just continue to be a mundane that does badass things.

[Drolyt]

I tend to agree. I've long favored "Wizard" as being too broad a concept, and could easily be broken down into T3 subdivisions: "Evoker, Necromancer, Enchanter," etc., all named "Wizard" by the common folk.
Except we don't want to limit concepts like that. The Wizard probably shouldn't be as versatile as it is, but at least the current system allows the freedom to make a Wizard with limitless different concepts. Making everything fit into more restrictive concepts like "Evoker" or "Necromancer" is too limiting. One of the reasons I prefer 3.5 to 4e is that I feel it offers more versatility.

[Seerow]

So if I want to play low-power campaign I don't get to progress at all? I'd prefer to have my commoner make it from level 1 to 10 during campaign then have my berserker stay whole time around level 3...

Measuring party power by single, easy to calculate number would be useful sometimes but I don't think I know RPG where it could actually work (for example because the same character could be rather weak when played by unexperienced player or very powerful if played by experienced).

If a commoner has survived enough stuff to actually make it to level 10, he's no longer a commoner. Level is a measure of your characters power. If you are level 10, you are expected to have the power of a 10th level character, regardless of class. There's a number of ways you can handle this, but pretty much all of them end with "If you want to play a low power campaign, you need to play at low levels".

Please note that power is not equivalent to optimization. You can play a level 17 campaign with terribly optimized characters who don't take full advantage of their abilities. But the power is still there

[Person_Man]

I'm not sure there's one right answer to a conundrum like that.

Make more then one game. Then play what you enjoy.

D&D isn't, and does not need to be, the One Ring that rules all others. There's enough room in the world for 3.X and 4E and PF and Old School and whatever WotC does with 5E and hundreds of other games. That is the beauty of the internet age we live in.

[Chronos]

Think of it this way: Consider Hagrid and Harry Potter when they first met (or heck, after he'd been in school for a few semesters). If, for some reason, they had gotten into a fight, who would have won? Hagrid, easily. Clearly, brute force melee can beat casters. Obviously, that's because Harry was a really low level spellcaster, and Hagrid was high level (including his presumed racial LA and whatever).

Logically, then, there's some level of spellcaster where that spellcaster vs. Hagrid would be a fair fight. A spellcaster who's at that power level, then, we define as being the same level as Hagrid is. And, sure, there are spellcasters for whom Hagrid is no match-- They're higher level than he is. But then, we could imagine Hagrid with more levels (presumably of ranger), too.

As soon as you admit that it's possible for a given spellcaster to be the same power as a given non-caster, the whole argument of "magic is just inherently better" falls apart.

[Drolyt]

Make more then one game. Then play what you enjoy.

D&D isn't, and does not need to be, the One Ring that rules all others. There's enough room in the world for 3.X and 4E and PF and Old School and whatever WotC does with 5E and hundreds of other games. That is the beauty of the internet age we live in.
Not sure what the internet has to do with it, there has been choice in the RPG business for decades. I personally like HERO quite a bit. Still, my favorite game is D&D, but there are some issues with it that aren't solved by any D&D edition, Pathfinder, or any other game. I think a lot of people feel that way.

[Libertad]

In the context of D&D games, I believe that melee characters should be able to take on casters of the same level.

In an ideal game, a 15th level Fighter has just as many options and clever tricks and neat abilities as a 15th level Rogue or a 15th level Wizard, or enough abilities to make him good at his role.

What I do not like is role overlap. When a Druid can out-melee the melee fighter and can do a bunch of other stuff, then that's a problem. When a class is utterly overshadowed by another class in role it's supposed to be the best at, then it makes you wonder "why bother playing a Fighter in the first place?"

Additionally, melee characters and noncasters need ways of being versatile and useful in combat at high levels. Sometimes in the dungeon, the spellcaster PCs die or run out of spells, and all you've got left is the Fighter and Rogue. Noncasters need to be independent enough so they're not totally defenseless without the spellcasters.

Possible solutions for games:

Everybody has some kind of magical ability: This is most appropriate for campaign settings where the very essence of magic permeates the land, such as Forgotten Realms. By mid-high levels, noncasters should be getting neat supernatural abilities, kind of like Bards and Paladins.

More options: Spellcasters have easy access to area of effect spells, ways of countering invisible and incorporeal opponents, and ranged attacks against flying opponents. Noncasters should get equivalent abilities to help (like "hearing the air" with Blindsight, or showering a rain of arrows like an area of effect attack).

Feats and Skills can replicate magical abilities: I got this idea from Scaling Feats and Skill Feats from the Frank and K Tomes (http://code.google.com/p/awesometome/downloads/list). You're such an expert weaponsmith that your creations radiate magic. You're such an adept acrobat that you can "ride the air." Feat and skill-focused classes should have enough abilities to do things that spellcasters can do. The Monk's Slow Fall isn't very impressive when a Wizard can use Feather Fall at a much lower level and without the need for a wall.

[Psyren]

What is the point of having a level system if a level isn't comparable to other levels?

I think a level system should represent "A party at Level X can overcome challenge Y." Or in a D&D-specific sense, "A party at Level X can overcome combat challenge Y."

T4 and up can do this, with varying degrees of ease. There aren't nearly as many classes below T4 in PF as there were in 3.5, and with archetypes that number has shrunk even further.

But just because the members of a party at level X can overcome challenge Y doesn't mean they need to do it in the same way or even with the same degree of effectiveness, at least in my opinion.


*snip*

Tell me, aside from the undeniable merits of A. Damn sexy artwork (I want to have this game's art-babies) and B. Actually still being published, what are Pathfinder's independent merits?

Well, you already supported the simpler maneuver system and skill consolidation before I could. I'll add to that list the following:

- Less binary mechanics: Save-or-Dies now aren't and fewer immunities now are. Monsters with SoD-like abilities either have ways out, or are high enough that you should have the solutions yourself.
- More feats: This leads to more nuanced builds, and I can tell we're divided on the concept of trap feats too, I can tell. I like a system that rewards mastery, which by necessity means that some options are worse than others. I include "feat-likes" in this total, i.e. class abilities that you assemble from a pool, like Witch Hexes, Barbarian Rage Powers, or Alchemist Discoveries, that have an opportunity cost associated.
- Better racials: Now choosing a race is less about power and more about concept. And while humans are still best at most things, the gap is much smaller now.
- Harder defensive casting: the abolition of Concentration means casting in melee is for emergencies only. This adds strategy to the game, as now the casters really have to play keep-away, and if they get too comfortable doing this by one method the DM can shake them up by countering it. Or they can rely on the party to help shield them (as they should)
- Removed XP costs: It's much easier for DM's to monitor (and thus tweak) one party revenue stream than two. XP as a resource was a double-edged sword due to XP being a river; but gold income can be kept standardized regardless of what PCs choose to spend it on.

And finally - I know you said "aside from the fact that it's being published" but that's really the biggest selling-point for me and many others. I can find PF games in my area. I know (mostly) how the rules work, because they're not all that different. The ones I don't know, I can look up, for free.

Stuff like Legend are great and all, but not being played in my area. (Plus it doesn't seem to have psionics - I know, I can be petty, but still.) So I'll be sticking with Pathfinder for now, and so will many others, warts and all.


Except we don't want to limit concepts like that. The Wizard probably shouldn't be as versatile as it is, but at least the current system allows the freedom to make a Wizard with limitless different concepts. Making everything fit into more restrictive concepts like "Evoker" or "Necromancer" is too limiting. One of the reasons I prefer 3.5 to 4e is that I feel it offers more versatility.

Perhaps I misspoke. I don't want to remove the Wizard entirely: I'd just like official T3 variants so that I can safely ban Wizard when my campaign warrants.

Yes, I know, homebrew exists, but not nearly enough critics read it.

[gomipile]

I think that the standard balance of 3.5 with ToB classes representing melee alongside the tier 1 and 2 casters is pretty fun.

If you want to do classic swords and sorcery, then Warblade vs tier 3 casters is a fairly good balance point.

[Mystify]

So if I want to play low-power campaign I don't get to progress at all? I'd prefer to have my commoner make it from level 1 to 10 during campaign then have my berserker stay whole time around level 3...

Measuring party power by single, easy to calculate number would be useful sometimes but I don't think I know RPG where it could actually work (for example because the same character could be rather weak when played by unexperienced player or very powerful if played by experienced).

You have to define your power scale. If 1-5 is utterly mundande, then you should stay there for your low-power campaign. Sayign that one group of classes should be low-power from 1-10 while a different group should be high-power from 1-10 means you are creating 2 systems. Challenges appropriate for one are not appropriate for the other. Mixing the two in one group is not going to yield good results.
If 1-5 is not enough progression for you, then it is a problem with the scale of the system. I think you should be able to have low power group with fighters and wizards in it. Saying that wizards are a higher tier and hence should be a higher power level would be counter to that as well. The classes should be balanced against each other. At all levels.
If you want mundanes to stay mundane, ban them from levels 10+. People don't hesitate to ban mages if they think its innapropriate for their setting. If you think that level of mundane ability doesn't fit, and only mages should populate the high levels, then make that your camapaign. By the system itself should support whatever options you see fit.

[ahenobarbi]

As I wrote: we think about character levels differently. You think it should be measure of character power.

I think it's a resource. A resource I can use effectively or not (go wizard or commoner). Like gold pieces (have someone cast magic weapon on your arrows or buy +5 arrows). Like stats (high str, low int wizard...).

[Mystify]

As I wrote: we think about character levels differently. You think it should be measure of character power.

I think it's a resource. A resource I can use effectively or not (go wizard or commoner). Like gold pieces (have someone cast magic weapon on your arrows or buy +5 arrows). Like stats (high str, low int wizard...).

Why do you think balance is a bad thing?

[MukkTB]

I tend to agree. I've long favored "Wizard" as being too broad a concept, and could easily be broken down into T3 subdivisions: "Evoker, Necromancer, Enchanter," etc., all named "Wizard" by the common folk.

This is what 3.5 should have done.


The problem with this method of balance is that people don't play 1-20 campaigns. Most will play campaigns across a 5-6 level stretch, then make new characters. If Mundanes are strictly stronger from 1-6, and you're starting a campaign at level 1, then you just play a group of all mundanes and you're set. If the campaign does last longer than 6, then you retire your character or kill him off, or whatever, and bring in a Wizard that you didn't have to suffer through low levels with.

Well in my post I did say that linear warriors - quadratic wizards doesn't work because people play at different levels.

And as far as the metagaming goes. My group starts characters at level 1 and if you die you start at level 1 again. If you want a powerful wizard you have to start from scratch. I would agree however that most people don't play this way.

Its much easier to just balance everything to be tier 3 or 4 than to do anthing else.

[Psyren]

Why do you think balance is a bad thing?

It's not.
But it's just one design goal. I consider balance a worthy sacrifice for variation, because imbalance is an easier fix (for me at least) than, say, slogging into 4e and finding ways to mechanically differentiate a Warlock and an Invoker.

[ahenobarbi]

Why do you think balance is a bad thing?

Never said that. I said I enjoy unbalanced game Because I can play "d&d commoner version", "d&d rogue version", "d&d wizard version".

[Doug Lampert]

The problem with this method of balance is that people don't play 1-20 campaigns. Most will play campaigns across a 5-6 level stretch, then make new characters. If Mundanes are strictly stronger from 1-6, and you're starting a campaign at level 1, then you just play a group of all mundanes and you're set. If the campaign does last longer than 6, then you retire your character or kill him off, or whatever, and bring in a Wizard that you didn't have to suffer through low levels with.

Even if that doesn't happen: A is unballanced weak at level 1-4 and B is unballanced weak at level 6+ means that in a game with A and B both at the table SOMEONE is unballanced weak at every level but 5.

This is bad. It doesn't matter that sometimes it's A and sometimes B, everyone should be able to contribute more or less every session. I don't go to a game to be overshadowed at ANY level.

Even if it weren't the case that most of the best melee builds in 3.x are casters, and even if the casters were weak at low levels relative to mundanes, it would still be bad game design.

[Seerow]

It's not.
But it's just one design goal. I consider balance a worthy sacrifice for variation, because imbalance is an easier fix (for me at least) than, say, slogging into 4e and finding ways to mechanically differentiate a Warlock and an Invoker.

He was responding to the guy saying that levels are a resource, not a measure of power, not you. What you want is something that can be done with balance, or at least enough of it to make a playable game. What ahenobarbi is advocating is a game that has no intrinsic power curve, and wants you to have trap options that are strictly worse than the 'real' classes.

[Doug Lampert]

Never said that. I said I enjoy unbalanced game Because I can play "d&d commoner version", "d&d rogue version", "d&d wizard version".

Now make D&D ballanced version where your commoner is level 1-10, rogue is level 6-15, and wizard is level 11-20, AND YOU STILL CAN! And what's more, anyone who makes a party of same level characters has a good chance of having them at the same scale and power.

You DON'T NEED unballanced classes to have different game scales!

[ahenobarbi]

What ahenobarbi is advocating is a game that has no intrinsic power curve, and wants you to have trap options that are strictly worse than the 'real' classes.

Yes, as long as everybody knows that.

[Mystify]

It's not.
But it's just one design goal. I consider balance a worthy sacrifice for variation, because imbalance is an easier fix (for me at least) than, say, slogging into 4e and finding ways to mechanically differentiate a Warlock and an Invoker.
And its not something you have to sacrifice to get variation. Look at legend (www.ruleofcool.com). Its balanced explicitly around the idea that any character should be at the same level of power at the same level. It also has a ton of variation, both in fluff and crunch. Things utilize vastly different mechanics. Spellcasting stands against martial skill as equally viable options.

[Coidzor]

More relevant question, probably been ninja'd, should game designers actively lie to and try to deceive their target audience?

[Drolyt]

Perhaps I misspoke. I don't want to remove the Wizard entirely: I'd just like official T3 variants so that I can safely ban Wizard when my campaign warrants.

Yes, I know, homebrew exists, but not nearly enough critics read it.
Ah. Well, the proposal to replace Wizards with more restrictive spellcasters is a common one, so I thought that was what you were saying. If I were to propose my own solution, I'd like a Wizard class that was basically a template for a more limited tier 3 class. I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself properly, but every Wizard should be different, one might be a Necromancer, another an Evoker, one a Fire Wizard, another a mixture of Enchanter/Illusionist. There should be a trade off between versatility and specialization. Not sure how to do that though.

[Laniius]

Perhaps not. But casters shouldn't be able to do melee better than melee can.

[SilverSavio]

How much xp does it take for a fighter to reach level 5? Now how much xp does it take for the wizard to reach level 5? If you answered the same in 3.5 then they should be equals in this game system.

[Psyren]

And its not something you have to sacrifice to get variation. Look at legend (www.ruleofcool.com). Its balanced explicitly around the idea that any character should be at the same level of power at the same level. It also has a ton of variation, both in fluff and crunch. Things utilize vastly different mechanics. Spellcasting stands against martial skill as equally viable options.

I have looked at Legend. It seems a solid system, but does not mesh with my preferences stylistically. The existing tracks are also not very appealing to me, so I'm holding out for future supplements before I get invested.

And I confess a fair amount of hype aversion when it gets trotted out in every single thread that contains the words "Pathfinder" and "balance."

[ahenobarbi]

Now make D&D ballanced version where your commoner is level 1-10, rogue is level 6-15, and wizard is level 11-20, AND YOU STILL CAN! And what's more, anyone who makes a party of same level characters has a good chance of having them at the same scale and power.

You DON'T NEED unballanced classes to have different game scales!


And its not something you have to sacrifice to get variation. Look at legend (www.ruleofcool.com). Its balanced explicitly around the idea that any character should be at the same level of power at the same level. It also has a ton of variation, both in fluff and crunch. Things utilize vastly different mechanics. Spellcasting stands against martial skill as equally viable options.

I agree. I never meant that balance is bad thing. I'm just saying I'm ok with unbalanced game (if everybody knows how unbalanced it is). (note: I don't know about Legend)


More relevant question, probably been ninja'd, should game designers actively lie to and try to deceive their target audience?

No. And that is the problem (I have) with d&d 3.5. I'm playing with folks who think that two weapon fighting ranger is awesome, effective and all good.


Perhaps not. But casters shouldn't be able to do melee better than melee can.

They aren't :smallamused:
Caster who just grabs weapon & armor is worse at melee then decent melee class representative. Because non-caster is good at playing melee game. The thing is while non-caster was getting good at game caster got good at changing game rules. So when it comes to actual fight caster sets new rules "I'm hydra", "Archery doesn't work", "Your attacks can't hurt me", "Just have to stand there and wait for me to cut your throat", ...

[Mystify]

I agree. I never meant that balance is bad thing. I'm just saying I'm ok with unbalanced game (if everybody knows how unbalanced it is). (note: I don't know about Legend)

But if you are imbalanced, you are forcing people to compensate, or else invite ruin. Even if you explicitly state the tier of each class and make it clear the system is imbalanced, all that does is force the DM to list a goal tier(s), so people can take options that are balanced against each other, then adjust the encounters to match. The final result of what you bring to the table needs to be balanced to avoid problems. Being explicitly unbalanced just forces that balancing act onto the players and DM, instead of just being there as part of the system.

[Seerow]

They aren't
Caster who just grabs weapon & armor is worse at melee then decent melee class representative. Because non-caster is good at playing melee game. The thing is while non-caster was getting good at game caster got good at changing game rules. So when it comes to actual fight caster sets new rules "I'm hydra", "Archery doesn't work", "Your attacks can't hurt me", "Just have to stand there and wait for me to cut your throat", ...

Um... casters ARE the best martial builds. Take and Cleric, Druid, Psiwar, or any Gish Build ever. Tome of Battle might be able to out melee some of them, but a standard Fighter or Barbarian can't hope to keep up with any of them.

[Chronos]

Yeah, that's what he said. A caster who tries to play by the rules of melee will suck... But a caster can excel at melee by changing the rules.

[Talionis]

I think comics can be an analogy. In DC comics they have to go to extra ordinary lengths to have Batman be on the same battlefield as Superman. Their is no question that Superman has the more powerful powers, but Batman is often the one to save the day. Batman is smarter, uses what he has better, but Batman has the most variety of powers in his utility belt. In their world, Batman has more options and less pure power. In our world the character with more options also has more power. Increasingly as you level, you can say no sane mundane would be adventuring and there is no real need for them to be there, it's just not safe and the casters can't protect them. The mundanes become sidekicks.

[Seerow]

Yeah, that's what he said. A caster who tries to play by the rules of melee will suck... But a caster can excel at melee by changing the rules.

But the examples I pointed out aren't casters playing by the rules of melee. They're casters using their abilities to make themselves better at melee. I'm not talking about a Wizard polymorphing into a Hydra, I'm talking about a Wizard who maintains 16+ BAB via prestige classes, and uses his spells to buff himself beyond what a Fighter could hope for. I'm talking about a Cleric who takes Zen Archery and uses buff spells, destroying what just about any other character could hope to do with ranged combat.

Unless you're saying simply using abilities that aren't feats is changing the rules... in which case what kind of point is that?

[ahenobarbi]

But if you are imbalanced, you are forcing people to compensate, or else invite ruin. Even if you explicitly state the tier of each class and make it clear the system is imbalanced, all that does is force the DM to list a goal tier(s), so people can take options that are balanced against each other, then adjust the encounters to match. The final result of what you bring to the table needs to be balanced to avoid problems. Being explicitly unbalanced just forces that balancing act onto the players and DM, instead of just being there as part of the system.

Yes. I'm just saying I don't mind that (and I know some people might mind that).


Um... casters ARE the best martial builds. Take and Cleric, Druid, Psiwar, or any Gish Build ever. Tome of Battle might be able to out melee some of them, but a standard Fighter or Barbarian can't hope to keep up with any of them.

Get one of those builds and have it fight against some pure martial without using spelss/powers. Most likely martial class will win. Because it's better at pure martial fight.

Of course "Cleric, Druid, Psiwar, or any Gish Build" will not fight without using casting/powers in any real fight. Those builds sacrificed a bit of pure martial effectiveness (bab, feats, maybe stats) to get something more efficient (casting/powers).

Fluff-wise it makes sense. It's like (again) that (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DzcOCyHDqc) guy with sword is clearly better at melee. But guy with gun can set rule "No sword fighting".

Game-design wise... well I guess it depends what king of game you want. Unbalanced games can be fun but I know why some people prefer balanced games.

[Seerow]

Yes. I'm just saying I don't mind that (and I know some people might mind that).



Get one of those builds and have it fight against some pure martial without using spelss/powers. Most likely martial class will win. Because it's better at pure martial fight.

Of course "Cleric, Druid, Psiwar, or any Gish Build" will not fight without using casting/powers in any real fight. Those builds sacrificed a bit of pure martial effectiveness (bab, feats, maybe stats) to get something more efficient (casting/powers).

Fluff-wise it makes sense. It's like (again) that (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DzcOCyHDqc) guy with sword is clearly better at melee. But guy with gun can set rule "No sword fighting".

Game-design wise... well I guess it depends what king of game you want. Unbalanced games can be fun but I know why some people prefer balanced games.

So you want to take a class using none of its features, and put it up against a class using all of its features.

If a spell casting class can use its spells to be better at fighting in melee than a fighter, you have a problem. This is not changing the rules, this is pretty simple common sense.

I can understand not wanting to count a level 1 wizard using color spray and Coup De Gracing opponents as being better in melee than a fighter, but when you have a level 20 fighter vs level 20 Gish, and the Gish has better hit/AC/HP/damage, better mobility, and more other options besides, that is a very serious problem. Handwaving it as "Those guys used spells so they cheated" doesn't work.

[ahenobarbi]

Unless you're saying simply using abilities that aren't feats is changing the rules... in which case what kind of point is that?

Well yes. Mundanes play by rules "you get +1 BAB/level", "You get 1 attribute increase/4 levels", "You can buy some magic items to increase your stats". Casters sacrifice a bit of raw melee power to get something better.

Definitely not balanced. Makes sense to me fluff-wise. I see no point in arguing any further (I think we just understand some words a bit differently).

'night (http://thinkmoult.com/ugt.html)

EDIT:



So you want to take a class using none of its features, and put it up against a class using all of its features.

Nope, just illustrating that gish sacrificed some features for a way better features. Like guy with gun sacrificed melee skills for gun skills (a way better).



Handwaving it as "Those guys used spells so they cheated" doesn't work.

Nope. "This guys sacrificed a bit of ok stuff for a lot of very good stuff".

[Venusaur]

If casters will be equal to melee I hope there will be an Anti-Martial Field effect to even the field :}

Yes, but only other melee people can use it.

[erikun]

Actually, if you want to get technical, melee doesn't even have that. A spellcaster could chaos shuffle for every feat the fighter could get and then some, including Toughness a dozen times for more HP. They could abuse Fabricate and/or Wish for vastly more wealth, purchasing equipment that vastly outperforms the fighter's items and stats.

Beyond that, I see a bit of goalpost-shifting. "Excel at melee by changing the rules," in most cases, means changing things so that good melee options are no longer optimal. Flight, invisibility, Solid Fog, and miss chances all make the normally good melee options (charging, tripping) impossible or irrelevant. As such, a wizard floating around through Solid Fog fields with several layers of displacement with a large number of summons can excel at melee, but does so by making it impossible to hit them and limiting what opponents can do.

A wizard that just has +20 BAB, high AC, high HP, all the feats, and 20 attacks a round is not "changing the rules." They're playing by the rules. They just have more than what the fighters could hope to acquire.

[SilverClawShift]

Even if the Fighter's player is chiefly concerned with roleplay, most character concepts involve being good at something, and that part of the Fighter's characterization goes right out the window when not only the hippie mage, but the hippie mage's pet are better combatants.

I know I'm skipping an entire thread while quoting something from the first page. Shame on me. For real.

But this post makes me want to play a surly straight-laced fighter in a tippyverse style world. Desperately trying to carve out a useful nitch in a world where magic power is considered a basic.
I mean, I could be a forsaker or something, but they end up with powers. I'm gonna work on a slam/crash fighter and just try to make myself useful...

[Seerow]

Yes, but only other melee people can use it.

And they can choose to spend a feat to ignore it.




@ahenobarbi The problem is both the Fighter and the Wizard are described by the developers to be on the same power scale. Those 11 feats and extra BAB are supposed to be equal to 9th level spells. The fact that they aren't, and that a caster can sacrifice very little to beat Fighters at their own game is part of the problem with having mundane not being able to compete with magic.

[Kaeso]

Depends on how you define "Rival"

Should melee be able to do the exact same as casters?
No

Should melee be able to defeat casters in single combat?
Not per se

Should melee be useful enough not to be replaced by anything the caster can cast?
YES

Seriously, the main problem with the standard fighter-rogue-cleric-wizard party isn't that the cleric and wizard are stronger, but that the fighter and rogue are redundant. Let's see what your average "kill the boss and grab the phat lewt" dungeon crawl looks like with this party.

The door to the dungeon is locked:
Rogue: I grab my thieves tools, use my maxed ranked open lock check an-
Wizard: I use my wand of knock *door opens*

The first room might be trapped:
Rogue: I u-
Cleric: I summon a celestial monkey to disarm all the traps
The trap springs, but resets:
Rogue: HA! See! Of course you'll need my expert-
Cleric: I use shatter on the trap
Rogue: :(

First round of combat against a troll or something:
Rogue: Sweet, initiative! I move forward, make one attack and... aww dang, I can't flank so no sneak attack for me :(
Fighter: I move forward and bash my pointy metal stick
Wizard: I use one of my spells to lock the troll in his place
Cleric: I used my overbuffed body to beat the trolls face in SO HARD the entire dungeon can hear it
Fighter: :(
Rogue: :(

Second round of combat against a flying opponent:
Fighter: Aww man, I can't use my melee feats now :( *plinks away with his bow*
Rogue: :( That's waaay beyond my sneak attack range *plinks away with his crossbow*
Cleric: Oh, this is totally within the range of my spells
Wizard: Do you want me to cast fly on you?
Cleric: No, no, save your spell slots. I have options, you know.
Wizard: But I insist!
Cleric: No, you're too kind. Even if I wanted to bash his face in, I have air walk
Wizard: Very well then, old friend. I'll just wait here if you need me
Cleric: *Empowered maximized totally extreme to the max light of lunia*

Big bad villain:
Lord Keal'zhus the flame lord: Ah, fools. Don't you kn-HRRRGH!
Cleric: Hold person
Wizard: Cloudkill
Cleric + Wizard: *high five*
Fighter + Rogue: :(

Phat lewt time:
Fighter: Ha! I maxed out my strength and have +STR items, surely I'm useful here!
Wizard: You mean more useful than this pack horse I just summoned?
Cleric: More useful than these undead I just created?
Fighter + Rogue: :(
Cleric: Don't worry, have a snack *create food and water*
Wizard: *prestidigation*
Fighter + Rogue: :( *depression induced binge eating spree*

Fighter dies after overeating:
Cleric: You know, I could use one of my spell slots to revive him
Wizard: :smallfurious:
Cleric: Could :smallamused:
Cleric + Wizard: :smallbiggrin: *chuckle*
Rogue: :smalleek:

[ScrambledBrains]

I think I'll throw my 2cp into this discussion as well.

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer: Yes, for the love of Pelor, yes! I want my melee(I refuse to use the term mundane on the grounds of the Christmas Tree problem.) to be just as good within their field as a Wizard, Cleric, or Druid is in theirs. I want my Rogues and Rogue-type characters to be able to pool themselves into shadows, take an opponent out in one slash or arrow launch, wield poison(And I mean good poisons, not the low DC, expensive crap.) like it's going out of style, take apart magical AND regular methods of locking things, etc. I want my Fighters and Fighter-type characters to be capable of enduring punishment that would fell a man of lesser training, using any weapon they happen upon without needing a butt-load of feats to be compenent, fighting through magical effects through sheer force, and taking apart multiple lesser-trained men in the blink of an eye...etc, etc.

...Of course, the only problem with this approach is that I dunno how to do it in 3.5 without severe houserules and nerfs/buffs of classes and features...maybe(hopefully) 5th Ed. will be better.

ScrambledB.

[Prime32]

I know I'm skipping an entire thread while quoting something from the first page. Shame on me. For real.

But this post makes me want to play a surly straight-laced fighter in a tippyverse style world. Desperately trying to carve out a useful nitch in a world where magic power is considered a basic.
I mean, I could be a forsaker or something, but they end up with powers. I'm gonna work on a slam/crash fighter and just try to make myself useful...I've seen a few stories like this. Either they can't use magic because they're immune to it, or being nonmagical allows them to wield weapons that kill/cripple any magic-user who touches them.

[Curmudgeon]

I've fixed this for you.

Kaeso wrote:
Let's see what your average "kill the boss and grab the phat lewt" dungeon crawl looks like with this party.

The door to the dungeon is locked:
Rogue: I grab my thieves tools, use my maxed ranked open lock check an-
Wizard: I use my wand of Knock *door opens* *nothing happens*
Fighter: I pull on the door. *door opens*
(Knock can only remove two impediments. If the door is locked and barred, and also stuck, Knock will handle two of these. The wimpy Wizard can't muscle the stuck door open.)

The first room might be trapped:
Rogue: I u-
Cleric: I summon a celestial monkey to disarm all the traps
The trap springs, but resets:
Rogue: HA! See! Of course you'll need my expert-
Cleric: I use Shatter on the trap.
DM: Which trap, exactly, is that? You only saw the monkey die. Make your Search check if you want to locate the trap mechanisms.
Rogue: I already made my Search check, so I'll just disable that for you.

First round of combat against a troll or something:
Rogue: Sweet, initiative! I move forward, make one attack and... aww dang, I can't flank so no sneak attack for me :( I Delay until the Fighter provides flanking support.
Fighter: I move forward and bash my pointy metal stick, getting a full attack at the end of my charge and Power Attacking for mucho damage.
Rogue: Now I move forward and sneak attack.
DM: The Troll drops.
Wizard: I use one of my spells to lock the troll in his place.
DM: Being unconscious already does that, I think.
Cleric: I used my overbuffed body to beat the trolls face in SO HARD the entire dungeon can hear it.
DM: As I said, it was already unconscious.
Fighter: I pour oil on the body.
Rogue: I whip out my handy tindertwig and set it ablaze.

Second round of combat against a flying opponent:
Fighter: Aww man, I can't use my melee feats now :( *plinks away with his bow* until I close. Good thing I got that Feathered Wings graft.
Rogue: :( That's waaay beyond my sneak attack range *plinks away with his crossbow*
DM: One of your shots was a critical, so double your bolt damage, add sneak attack once for Telling Blow, and double your Craven bonus.
Cleric: Oh, this is totally within the range of my spells
Wizard: Do you want me to cast fly on you?
Cleric: No, no, save your spell slots. I have options, you know.
Wizard: But I insist!
Cleric: No, you're too kind. Even if I wanted to bash his face in, I have air walk
Wizard: Very well then, old friend. I'll just wait here if you need me.
DM: OK, you guys have spent your round having this conversation. Next!
Fighter: I pounce at the end of my aerial charge. Since the opponent has only light armor, I Power Attack for full.
Rogue: Another full attack with my quick loading crossbow and bolts I used my wand of Keen Edge on.
DM: No critical hits this time, but you managed to bring it down to negative HP anyway. It drops; the fall will bring it past -10.
Cleric: *Empowered maximized totally extreme to the max light of lunia*
DM: Huh?

Big bad villain:
Lord Keal'zhus the flame lord: Ah, fools. Don't you kn-HRRRGH!
Cleric: Hold Person
DM: Nothing happens. The right Knowledge check would have told you why. Too bad that one's cross-class for you and you didn't train it.
Wizard: Cloudkill
DM: Doesn't appear to do much. Some creatures are immune to poison, you know. Lord Keal'zhus is laughing too hard for you to make out what he's saying.
Cleric + Wizard: *high five* Yikes!
Fighter: Do you need some help there, guys? ;-)
Rogue: Don't mind me. I'm checking through this vault other room in case there are gems enemies hidden in it.

Phat lewt time:
Fighter: Ha! I maxed out my strength and have +STR items, surely I'm useful here!
Wizard: You mean more useful than this pack horse I just summoned?
Cleric: More useful than these undead I just created?
Cleric: Don't worry, have a snack *create food and water*
Wizard: *prestidigation*
Rogue: Too bad there was only a handful of low-value gems in the vault. But thanks for the snack. I'm so tired, it feels like my pack just gained a *lot* of weight. ;-)

Fighter dies collapses after overeating:
Cleric: You know, I could use one of my spell slots to revive him
Wizard: :smallfurious:
Cleric: Could :smallamused:
Cleric + Wizard: :smallbiggrin: *chuckle*
Rogue: Guys, he's just sleeping it off. Didn't you put any ranks in perception skills?

[danzibr]

*snip*
Much too long to quote, but hilarious. The original was good too.

[Lord_Gareth]

Well, you already supported the simpler maneuver system and skill consolidation before I could. I'll add to that list the following:

- Less binary mechanics: Save-or-Dies now aren't and fewer immunities now are. Monsters with SoD-like abilities either have ways out, or are high enough that you should have the solutions yourself.

Debatable, but I'll hand it to you - it's a gray area.


- More feats: This leads to more nuanced builds, and I can tell we're divided on the concept of trap feats too, I can tell. I like a system that rewards mastery, which by necessity means that some options are worse than others. I include "feat-likes" in this total, i.e. class abilities that you assemble from a pool, like Witch Hexes, Barbarian Rage Powers, or Alchemist Discoveries, that have an opportunity cost associated.

But a system can reward mastery without punishing inexperience. You can create combinations of powers that form better options while maintaining a baseline competence level that ensures no one ends up useless. Trap feats aren't a method of rewarding mastery - they're a method of punishing new players, which causes them to get frustrated and not have fun with the game. Since the goal is to have fun, this is always a Bad Thing (Patent Pending).


- Better racials: Now choosing a race is less about power and more about concept. And while humans are still best at most things, the gap is much smaller now.

This one I won't hand you. I see no significant difference in the balance point of the Pathfinder races in its SRD vs. the balance point of the races in the 3.5 SRD. I'd put this one down in, "Changed it without true effect."


- Harder defensive casting: the abolition of Concentration means casting in melee is for emergencies only. This adds strategy to the game, as now the casters really have to play keep-away, and if they get too comfortable doing this by one method the DM can shake them up by countering it. Or they can rely on the party to help shield them (as they should)

As far as I'm aware, the Munchkin Moonwalk is still a thing. So is flight, teleportation, quickened spells, various hand spells, walls, solid fog and the like. Even if, by some miracle, I failed to notice all of those things getting fixed, Pathfinder has no aggro system, just like 3.5, which means any creature with the appropriate Knowledge check or experience with spellcasters is still going to ignore the useless, loot-drinking mundanes and murdalize the spell-slinger as fast as possible.


- Removed XP costs: It's much easier for DM's to monitor (and thus tweak) one party revenue stream than two. XP as a resource was a double-edged sword due to XP being a river; but gold income can be kept standardized regardless of what PCs choose to spend it on.

You know, after some thought, I'll hand this to you - as long as the DM is concerned about the paradigm presented. Leaving things at just a gold cost, though, can lead to some problems down the road with crafting magical items, especially if you have a ready method of creating gold.



Stuff like Legend are great and all, but not being played in my area. (Plus it doesn't seem to have psionics - I know, I can be petty, but still.) So I'll be sticking with Pathfinder for now, and so will many others, warts and all.

This I can hand you. However, if you want Legend psionics, refluff an existing class for what you want (may I suggest Sage?). If no one's playing, than no one's playing - ain't no changing that.

[huttj509]

Would you gladly play BMX bandit next to Angel Summoner?

Would you gladly play Angel Summoner next to BMX bandit?

Would everyone you play with answer yes to both?

How about other groups?

Should the two be portrayed as being played together at the same table? If the answer to any of the above is "no," the answer to this probably should be as well.

Even in a relatively balanced system, if you want to play an underpowered character...you CAN! Reduce his stats, remove abilities, reduce level. Want to be significantly more powerful than the other players? Increase level, increase stats, add powers. Deliberately changing power to significantly below/above normal is easy. Deliberately balancing things so nobody feels left out in the prototypical fighter/rogue/mage/cleric party is much less so.

[Feralventas]

In terms of game-balance, if such is desired, yes each class should be able to fulfill its role in the game and in tandem with the rest of the party. The Fighter should be able to Fight, the Wizard should be able to Cast, the Thief should be able to Steal, and the Cleric better be able to shout at his deity to keep them self in business. If you want a single class to out-play the rest, it doesn't matter what class it is. If the fighter is an unstoppable superman that can cleave buildings and intimidate armies, then it will be just as inappropriate as a wizard wrecking things left and right while the party stands by.

From a storytelling perspective, one might argue that a reality-warping wizard ought to out-pace the fighter with ease, but I think that this neglects the tendency for individuals to game a system. If the wizards are the people who warp and twist the rules to their benefit, there will undoubtedly be people who work within the system and gain effects and results that are able to keep up or surpass those that step outside those bounds. Wizards are potent on a number-crunch perspective where all of the options taken into account result in a very powerful, optimal character with a tool for every situation, but they are able to do so by disregarding the rules and laws of the setting's physical properties. An individual who learns those properties and games the system in their favor instead of disregarding them should be able to make it work in their favor just as well if not better.

A wizard is limited by his imagination, but an engineer can simply crunch out numbers and get a more potent result than the wizard had thought of. If a fighter is willing to take the time to educate himself, there is plenty to be done to take down a 'caster, even within the context of 3.5. Rogue would be a better selection since it has the skill points and options to make it happen a lot more easily, but I digress.

[paurpg]

Never said that. I said I enjoy unbalanced game Because I can play "d&d commoner version", "d&d rogue version", "d&d wizard version".

I think alot of people would agree that they would like to be able to play a fighter who is not just a "commoner", even though if someone wants to play a weaker class, that is fine. You could could have a class called commoner, common brute, common soldier or something along those lines. Atleast the way I imagine it, in a world where a fighter class can out-melee a wizard, most thugs, soldiers and brawlers would not have that ability or potential without special training perhaps.

[Tenno Seremel]

Yes, but only other melee people can use it.
Casters will be able to buy it as item though. The post wasn't really about that but the fact that making mundanes equal to spellcasters means they are ahead of them because you will not be able to block them, there is no martial resistance, they will not provoke, etc. Martials will become new spellcasters.

Alternatively you can drop it and save your time by replacing martials with various spellcasters :}

[ahenobarbi]

Actually, if you want to get technical, melee doesn't even have that. A spellcaster could chaos shuffle for every feat the fighter could get and then some, including Toughness a dozen times for more HP. They could abuse Fabricate and/or Wish for vastly more wealth, purchasing equipment that vastly outperforms the fighter's items and stats.

Beyond that, I see a bit of goalpost-shifting. "Excel at melee by changing the rules," in most cases, means changing things so that good melee options are no longer optimal. Flight, invisibility, Solid Fog, and miss chances all make the normally good melee options (charging, tripping) impossible or irrelevant. As such, a wizard floating around through Solid Fog fields with several layers of displacement with a large number of summons can excel at melee, but does so by making it impossible to hit them and limiting what opponents can do.

A wizard that just has +20 BAB, high AC, high HP, all the feats, and 20 attacks a round is not "changing the rules." They're playing by the rules. They just have more than what the fighters could hope to acquire.


@ahenobarbi The problem is both the Fighter and the Wizard are described by the developers to be on the same power scale. Those 11 feats and extra BAB are supposed to be equal to 9th level spells.

Yes, as I wrote problem is that things don't work as advertised. Some ("mundanes") are a lot weaker than advertised. Some (full "casters") are a lot more powerful.

Now, I don't mind "imbalance" inside game (in fact I enjoy playing system[s] with explicit, built in power inequality). I do mind fact that game creators lead players to believe that clearly imbalanced choices are balanced (because it leads to disappointment).

So if they wrote class descriptions like we have in warrior.

"Fighters dedicated life to martial training, they excel at fighting. Sadly with no supernatural powers they are no match for those who can use spell casting or SU/EX abilities."

And add more some more powerful semi-mundanes (ToB? GISH class "by sacrificing some time to meddle with magic they are much more powerful than fighters", give them spell-like abilities (less flexibility but you don't need casting stat)).

Again I understand why people might want balanced game. I don't think it's worth effort (or possible).

I don't see people claiming Commoner or Warrior is under powered (and breaks balance). Or that gestalt is overpowered (and breaks balance). Because it's obvious and explicitly stated.


Would you gladly play BMX bandit next to Angel Summoner?

Would you gladly play Angel Summoner next to BMX bandit?

Would everyone you play with answer yes to both?

How about other groups?

No(x4), but I like system that allows both.


... making mundanes equal to spellcasters means they are ahead of them because you will not be able to block them, there is no martial resistance, they will not provoke, etc.

martial resistance is called armor class :smallamused:

[sonofzeal]

Yes, as I wrote problem is that things don't work as advertised. Some ("mundanes") are a lot weaker than advertised. Some (full "casters") are a lot more powerful.

Now, I don't mind "imbalance" inside game (in fact I enjoy playing system[s] with explicit, built in power inequality). I do mind fact that game creators lead players to believe that clearly imbalanced choices are balanced (because it leads to disappointment).

So if they wrote class descriptions like we have in warrior.

"Fighters dedicated life to martial training, they excel at fighting. Sadly with no supernatural powers they are no match for those who can use spell casting or SU/EX abilities."

And add more some more powerful semi-mundanes (ToB? GISH class "by sacrificing some time to meddle with magic they are much more powerful than fighters", give them spell-like abilities (less flexibility but you don't need casting stat)).

Again I understand why people might want balanced game. I don't think it's worth effort (or possible).

I don't see people claiming Commoner or Warrior is under powered (and breaks balance). Or that gestalt is overpowered (and breaks balance). Because it's obvious and explicitly stated.

There's some truth here. I think it could go further though. I'd enjoy a game with the following options:

Common Priest, Common Warrior, Common Expert, Common Mage
Heroic Priest, Heroic Warrior, Heroic Expert, Heroic Mage
Paragon Priest, Paragon Warrior, Paragon Expert, Paragon Mage

There's no reason mages have to be powerful. They break the laws of physics, sure, but even cantrips do that, and if the only spells were heavily metamagic'd Cantrips then I'm pretty sure your average Wizard wouldn't be pulling their weight among equally-optimized peers.

By allowing explicit tiering of classes, you allow each the chance to progress withing their paradigm without necessarily breaking it. The "Common Warrior" is probably aggressively mundane just like the Fighter is, but he can still progress and become a better swordsman. The "Heroic" or "Paragon" Warriors might be more like Warblades, shrugging off magic through sheer force of will and effortlessly pulling off feats of martial prowess that would be completely implausible in the real world.

By providing those as separate options, you allow people to choose their own comfort zone, and allow DMs more control over what kind of story it's going to be, without trapping your game in certain level ranges.

[Kaeso]

*snip*

.......:smallamused: genius!

[Tenno Seremel]

martial resistance is called armor class :smallamused:
Last time I checked people were saying it does not even work…

[Coidzor]

First round of combat against a troll or something:
Rogue: Sweet, initiative! I move forward, make one attack and... aww dang, I can't flank so no sneak attack for me :( I Delay until the Fighter provides flanking support.
Fighter: I move forward and bash my pointy metal stick, getting a full attack at the end of my charge and Power Attacking for mucho damage.
Rogue: Now I move forward and sneak attack.
DM: The Troll drops.
Wizard: I use one of my spells to lock the troll in his place.
DM: Being unconscious already does that, I think.
Cleric: I used my overbuffed body to beat the trolls face in SO HARD the entire dungeon can hear it.
DM: As I said, it was already unconscious.
Fighter: I pour oil on the body.
Rogue: I whip out my handy tindertwig and set it ablaze.

What, do you play with AD&D's everyone declares their actions at the start of the round and it all plays out simultaneously rules?

[Seerow]

Last time I checked people were saying it does not even work…

Funnily enough, spell resistance doesn't either.

[Kalmageddon]

Not really, no.

Magic by its own definition is a superior power that bends reality, you can't bend reality no matter how many times you hit it with a stick.

However I certanly think that melee should be more fun to play. In 3.5 most of the attack options are linked to feats, and feats are very limited.

[Treblain]

In terms of game-balance, if such is desired, yes each class should be able to fulfill its role in the game and in tandem with the rest of the party. The Fighter should be able to Fight, the Wizard should be able to Cast, the Thief should be able to Steal, and the Cleric better be able to shout at his deity to keep them self in business.

But 'Cast' and 'Shout at deity' aren't party roles. Those are such vaguely defined roles that it's no surprise that they can't be balanced with other characters.

[INoKnowNames]

I was reading another thread recently on what you have to take away from a caster to make them on par with, say, a Warblade. I got thinking last night... in the novels I've read with D&D-type magic, no melee would ever stand any chance against a caster. Well, unless they sneak up on the caster. Anyways, I think there are two reasonable answers:

1) No. Magic is *supposed* to be incredibly powerful. Trying to match it with feats of physical strength and skill just isn't going to happen.

1) Yes. I mean, it's a game, and games are supposed to be balanced. In WoW, for example, rogues can own casters.

What do you all think? Personally, I lean for the former as I'm a fluff over crunch person.

As the progenitor of the possible thread in question, I feel like I have a right to comment, too.

I'm used to all sorts of Tv Shows and such involving a mundane Hero managing to either outwit or (with the help of special items) outright defeat casters. I'm also used to video games in which spell casting only amounts to a bit more bonus damage against a certain element, with other affects not being nearly as affective in combat, and absolutely nothing doing anything outside of combat that the plot didn't okay. And I kinda like that too (despite the inherent problems that come with it. Stupid wooden fence that goes up to my knees yet blocks my way. Why can't I burn you down?).

I'm not completely used to it being the way it is in D&D, in which spell casters are gods and mundane people are monkeys. I'm fine with it like this, and in the grandscheme of things I can see why it is like this, but I just don't prefer stories in which the only reason the Warrior succeeded is because he was allowed to, that the Mage let him win.

So I'm in the middle. I understand and respect that Mages are capable of bending the fabric of reality with their minds, and as such get to be first in line in the school cafeteria for it. But I still don't think they should be able to completely invalidate the mundane for it.

[Seerow]

Not really, no.

Magic by its own definition is a superior power that bends reality, you can't bend reality no matter how many times you hit it with a stick.

However I certanly think that melee should be more fun to play. In 3.5 most of the attack options are linked to feats, and feats are very limited.

As someone else pointed out: You can bend reality without breaking the game. Cantrips bend reality, but if you had a caster who could only make cantrips nobody would call them overpowered, they'd be weaker than anyone else.

The issue isn't so much with bending reality, as it is with having no limits. Breaking the laws of physics and altering reality is not something that needs to automatically translate to no limits and supreme ultimate power.


But 'Cast' and 'Shout at deity' aren't party roles. Those are such vaguely defined roles that it's no surprise that they can't be balanced with other characters.

Exactly this. 'Cast' can mean literally anything if further limits are imposed. On a similar note, if the Fighter is the only class that can 'Fight' everyone else is going to be bored in combat. So of course the designers gave everyone things to do in combat... but then left the Fighter as the worst at it. Some amount of role overlap is necessary to keep everyone interested in all aspects of the game rather than leaving the room to make a sandwich when the part they can't contribute to comes up.

[Tyndmyr]

Except we don't want to limit concepts like that. The Wizard probably shouldn't be as versatile as it is, but at least the current system allows the freedom to make a Wizard with limitless different concepts. Making everything fit into more restrictive concepts like "Evoker" or "Necromancer" is too limiting. One of the reasons I prefer 3.5 to 4e is that I feel it offers more versatility.

Perhaps...and I like the sheer versatility of wizard in supporting wildly different concepts. That said, a spells known limitation such as sorcerer has is fairly efficient in avoiding displacement of party members. Wasting a precious spell known on Knock is a poor strategy when there's a rogue in the party.


If a commoner has survived enough stuff to actually make it to level 10, he's no longer a commoner. Level is a measure of your characters power. If you are level 10, you are expected to have the power of a 10th level character, regardless of class. There's a number of ways you can handle this, but pretty much all of them end with "If you want to play a low power campaign, you need to play at low levels".

Please note that power is not equivalent to optimization. You can play a level 17 campaign with terribly optimized characters who don't take full advantage of their abilities. But the power is still there

If the guy has five levels of commoner, then starts taking levels in something else, he still sucks compared to someone taking straight PC classes. Commoner was never intended to be good, or even balanced.

Incidentally, what you say is not correct by RAW. Core city generation rules will routinely generate fairly high level commoners.

[Tenno Seremel]

Funnily enough, spell resistance doesn't either.
That depends. As is its problem is not so much spell resistance itself (although it is very binary) but other things that reduce spell resistance greatly or boosts caster levels through the roof (which shouldn't even be possible IMO). AC is… I'm not sure how you even supposed to increase that [without magic].

[Menteith]

snip

Yeah, I get that it was intended to be humorous, but in literally every example, the decent classes are either being played really, really badly compared to the mundanes, or are LITERALLY TAKING NO ACTIONS. Even a Monk looks good if the Wizard is being told "NOPE TALKING ISN'T A FREE ACTION TURN OVER".

Here are just a few more cases worth considering;

A terrible fire is approaching the city. Stop it, and find out who's behind this!

The Scepter of Plot was lost ages ago when the ship carrying it was lost at sea. Find it and bring it back to save the world!

You've been cast into a Gate to the Abyss, all alone. Get back to the material plane!

One of Acheron's great iron cubes has appeared in the sky. It has no gaps in the great iron walls, and there is no visible way of entering it. All that falls under its shadow die, and rise again as Wights. You must shut down this dread juggernaut before it swallows the world.

This is all just random stuff off the top of my head. Mundanes really can't contribute much in any of these cases.

[Curmudgeon]

.......:smallamused: genius!
Glad you liked my rework. :smallsmile:


Yeah, I get that it was intended to be humorous, but in literally every example, the decent classes are either being played really, really badly compared to the mundanes, or are LITERALLY TAKING NO ACTIONS. Even a Monk looks good if the Wizard is being told "NOPE TALKING ISN'T A FREE ACTION TURN OVER".
You can thank Kaeso for the "After you, Alphonse" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_and_Gaston) sort of humor, actually. I thought there was some unmined comic potential in his take on typical encounters, purposely slanted to show the "decent classes" having all the answers ─ and being insufferably smug about that. So I came up with a revision purposely slanted the other way: where the other classes were played more intelligently, the DM wasn't asleep at the gaming table, and the "decent classes" didn't have all the answers.

What makes the revised version work was that (1) I didn't change the actions of the spellcasting classes from Kaeso's original ─ just the consequences; and (2) I stuck to the rules, including some that a tired DM might overlook. For instance, this one:

Free actions consume a very small amount of time and effort. You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally. However, there are reasonable limits on what you can really do for free. Kaeso had the two spellcasters spouting 6 lines of dialog. My wide-awake DM said that was a round's worth. How much of a conversation do you think you can have in 6 seconds, anyway?

[Menteith]

No, I get that, I I actually did chuckle a bit, I just wanted to say that in literally every one of those situations the Rogue/Fighter's job could have been done without them being there.

[Doug Lampert]

Depends on how you define "Rival"

Should melee be able to do the exact same as casters?
No

Should melee be able to defeat casters in single combat?
Not per se

Should melee be useful enough not to be replaced by anything the caster can cast?
YES

Agreed, the classes don't need to "rival" in the sense that they do the same things with the same ability.

Instead, it needs to be CLEAR that Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric is at least as strong a party as Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Cleric. Rather than it being blatant that the second party is flatly better.

I'll also repeat, ballance isn't actually neccessary at all if you're up front about the lack and build around it. Ars Magica works fine with characters who are roughly equivalent to having Superman and Aquaman and an ordinary policeman on the same team, because everyone gets multiple characters and it turns out that the Superman equivalent is best off spending the time undisturbed in his lab and sending Aquaman and the mundanes out to deal with the problems so the powergamers voluntarily TRY to avoid using superman. Once you admit to imballance you can deal with it. It's D&D's insistance that things are ballanced when they blatantly are not that makes it seem like imballanced is inherently bad.

[Rossebay]

I've always viewed it like this: Casters should do the Crowd Control damage. Why, I remember my first dungeon ever. I was a level 6 sorcerer, traveling with a Duskblade, a Rogue, and a Paladin. We waltzed through the Dungeon, and I was one of the main DPS's, but the Duskblade easily held his own.

Getting to the point, we walked into a room full of Shocker Lizards. Their combined attack had cut down the duskblade, the Rogue was hiding, and the Paladin's heavy armor made him move mighty slowly. I knew Fireball, and I used it. They died, all except 1.

Another example, from the same campaign. We were level 9 at the time. I was flying high above the city with my Wings of Flying, and fighting a succubus. The rest of the party didn't know what was happening. Anyway, I used my ring of Telekinesis (WBL is wrong)* to break the Succubus' wings. Before I could send it plummeting to the ground, it summoned a Vrock. The succubus then died, unable to teleport away before I Tele-Thrusted it down.

So, it was a Sorcerer vs. a Vrock. Now, we've dealt with Vrocks before, and I knew there was no way I was going to kill it. So, I flew down, the Vrock following me closely. After clever maneuvering and enough time, I reached the Duskblade. He had some Spellsword and a weapon of Spell-Storing, and threw 3 Shocking Grasps and a full Power Attack into the Vrock all in one attack, and it fried immediately. He had very high strength, that one.

As is pretty well shown from the example, there was no way that any of those melee characters were going to take down those Shocker Lizards without being KOed, but there was no way that I was going to take down a Vrock alone. Not with my spell selection.

*The reason WBL was wrong is that the Duskblade and I (great friends) were in a party that had 8 floating players in it, and the Duskblade was the party bank. That means, in a party of normally 4, sometimes 5, we had the WBL of 8 on one character. So, he tossed a good 130k at me and told me to buy myself something nice. He didn't buy himself much, but the party really didn't notice. Also, we were in a zone where spells not from magic items or channeled through magic items only worked 25% of the time (interesting, but annoying), the rest of the time backfiring on me. So, without that ring and that cloak, I was useless.
tl;dr: We stole from the party, and we always joke and feel bad about it now.


Next Example

Playing with the same group, but in a different campaign, we were dungeon-delving again. I was a Warforged Paladin 7/Fighter 2, and Power Attack and my Greatspear were my two best friends. I also loved Smite Evil. Charging Smite, of course. (Shorten Grip or whatever, the works.) Then we had the Human Warmage. I took down Bebeliths like they were candy by readying against charges, and the Warmage took down the hoardes of evil dwarves and lesser demons with his blasties. The Monk was useless, as usual.


So, I feel that, with minor tweaking, the mages focus on Multi-Target damage and battlefield control, and the mundanes focus on huge single-target damage.

And, I've played to games that ran to level 14 where that was the case.

[Mystify]

There's some truth here. I think it could go further though. I'd enjoy a game with the following options:

Common Priest, Common Warrior, Common Expert, Common Mage
Heroic Priest, Heroic Warrior, Heroic Expert, Heroic Mage
Paragon Priest, Paragon Warrior, Paragon Expert, Paragon Mage

There's no reason mages have to be powerful. They break the laws of physics, sure, but even cantrips do that, and if the only spells were heavily metamagic'd Cantrips then I'm pretty sure your average Wizard wouldn't be pulling their weight among equally-optimized peers.

By allowing explicit tiering of classes, you allow each the chance to progress withing their paradigm without necessarily breaking it. The "Common Warrior" is probably aggressively mundane just like the Fighter is, but he can still progress and become a better swordsman. The "Heroic" or "Paragon" Warriors might be more like Warblades, shrugging off magic through sheer force of will and effortlessly pulling off feats of martial prowess that would be completely implausible in the real world.

By providing those as separate options, you allow people to choose their own comfort zone, and allow DMs more control over what kind of story it's going to be, without trapping your game in certain level ranges.

Why do you need to tier the classes in order to get different power levels at the same levels? More to the point, why do they need to be at the same level range? a level 5 common party and a level 5 paragon party are clearly at 2 different power levels, and hence 2 different sets of challenges would be appropriate. So why should they both be "level 5"? Leveling already gives a progression of power, why do you need power from leveling and power from tier?

If you want to run games at different power levels, just run them at different levels. If everything is balanced, that should work out fine.


Agreed, the classes don't need to "rival" in the sense that they do the same things with the same ability.

Instead, it needs to be CLEAR that Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric is at least as strong a party as Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Cleric. Rather than it being blatant that the second party is flatly better.

I'll also repeat, ballance isn't actually neccessary at all if you're up front about the lack and build around it. Ars Magica works fine with characters who are roughly equivalent to having Superman and Aquaman and an ordinary policeman on the same team, because everyone gets multiple characters and it turns out that the Superman equivalent is best off spending the time undisturbed in his lab and sending Aquaman and the mundanes out to deal with the problems so the powergamers voluntarily TRY to avoid using superman. Once you admit to imballance you can deal with it. It's D&D's insistance that things are ballanced when they blatantly are not that makes it seem like imballanced is inherently bad.
So, they deal with the imbalance by taking the powerful characters and removing them from combat? So now all the people who go out and dothings together are balanced?


Once you admit to imballance you can deal with it.

Thats what really grates me. You shouldn't have to deal with imbalance. Yes, its better to admit the imbalance is there than to deny it, but its even better if its not there in the first place. Imbalance is a flaw. You may be willing to accept the flaw, and there are ways to correct for it, but in an ideal game, there is no imbalance. When talking about how things should work, the discussion shouldn't be "How many flaws are acceptable and managable", it should be "If we can make everything work perfectly, what does it look like?" If you simply accept the flaws, then you can't strive to overcome them. Your ideal goal no longer includes surpassing those limitations of the old systems. You simply accept it because it is what you are used to. When it comes down to making a practical implementation of the ideal situation, being flawless is likely impossible. You have to decide which flaws are necessary, and which ones will lead to the most desirable properties of the system in other realms. It is best to admit that those flaws exist, yes, but they should never be taken as a given.

It is fully, 100% honest to god possible to have spellcasters that completely outshine mundane characters and still have the system be balanced. You can do this without having mundanes do anything that would cause your physics teacher to raise an eyebrow. However, the system must explicitly come in and state "At this point, magic and mundanes have a fundamental divergence in power, and are not balanced to go adventuring together". At every point when they overlap, they should be balanced, and if the casters exceed their capacity, then it should be a clean break.

This yields a game with 2 halves. The first half is the pseudo-realistic, "we have magic but are not superhuman" game. All classes can co-exist in harmony and balance, they all can do very different things in very different ways, and don't outclass each other. Once you reach the limit of human capacity, you move into the second phase.

The second phase is where the abilities of magic strip away from the mundane ability to keep up. This can unfold in 2 ways, both can be compatible in the same system, but some choice(probably the DMs) decided which kind of world they are in. The first is that magic is special. Magic exceeds the limits of what a mundane person can do. The arcane study has paid off, and you have transcended the limits of mortals. You will now take on tasks that mere mortals cannot hope to accomplish, and you will seek aid from similarly powerful individuals like yourself.
The second way is that casters are still that powerful, but the "mundanes" are no longer mundane at all, and are distinctly superhuman. The cleanest way to do this would be to have something like a prestige class. Fighter only goes 1-10. To go to level 11, you enter a "superhuman" class prestige class, which gives you abilities to keep you viable alongside casters. There are dozens of ways to do this.

So, if you think that melee should not be able to rival casters, because it is that type of world and wizards are all-powerful, then you remove the superhuman prestige classes, and leave mundanes in the 1-10 level range. A system should have allowances for any character type to exist at any level, or the system has a flaw, but allowing it to adapt that to your specific setting and preferences for how the world works lets the balanced system satisfy the people who like the idea of superhuman fighters standing up against almighty wizards and those who think wizards should be qualitatively more powerful than mundane people.

[Clawhound]

This is all just random stuff off the top of my head. Mundanes really can't contribute much in any of these cases.

If the DM creates a situation where the mundanes can't be effective, that is a DM problem, not a character problem.

Likewise, we assume that the mundane characters would be ineffective in such situations. The DM can easily design an adventure where this is not true.

DM: Wizard, your research tells you that the cube is made of iron. The only known way through it is by hacking in with an adamantine weapon.
Fighter: Yay, I'm being coddled.

DM: Wizard, you need a rare spell to take that thing down once you are inside.
Wizard: I don't have that spell.
Rogue: I can find it with my streetwise. Yay, I'm being coddled.

DM: Everyone, only the wizard can do this. He has the exact spell.
Wizard: Of course. And I'm not being coddled. Magic is supposed to bypass all challenges.

[Tyndmyr]

Thats what really grates me. You shouldn't have to deal with imbalance. Yes, its better to admit the imbalance is there than to deny it, but its even better if its not there in the first place. Imbalance is a flaw. You may be willing to accept the flaw, and there are ways to correct for it, but in an ideal game, there is no imbalance.

Not everyone has the same ideal game. I've known people who gleefully take choices they are well aware are sub-optimal, solely for the extra challenge. Heck, sometimes I am that person.

Not everyone wants balance. Sometimes, people deliberately want imbalance. This does not make either balance or imbalance paramount...it makes accuracy in labeling balance paramount.

If a player wants to play a monk in a T1 group because he's aware it's a challenge, kudos to him. Rock on.

If a players wants to play a monk in a T1 group because he counted all the abilities, and concluded that "monk is best", he should probably be warned, since that path leads to disappointment and unhappiness.

[Mystify]

Not everyone has the same ideal game. I've known people who gleefully take choices they are well aware are sub-optimal, solely for the extra challenge. Heck, sometimes I am that person.

Not everyone wants balance. Sometimes, people deliberately want imbalance. This does not make either balance or imbalance paramount...it makes accuracy in labeling balance paramount.

If a player wants to play a monk in a T1 group because he's aware it's a challenge, kudos to him. Rock on.

If a players wants to play a monk in a T1 group because he counted all the abilities, and concluded that "monk is best", he should probably be warned, since that path leads to disappointment and unhappiness.
And a balanced game does not preculude you from taking clearly suboptimal abilities for the challenge. All labeled imbalance does is shift the responsibility of balancing things onto every individual group. If the default is balanced, then you can go in without paying much attention and have a balanced group, without having to coordinate with everyone to make sure you don't accidentally end u with wizard cleric druid monk. You can then deviate from balance intentionally, but that does not mean you need to build in the imbalanced options. You could give your character a crippling flaw, like being blind, and then use that as your challenge. Being balanced is in no way, shape, or form, a drawback. Being balanced does not mean that every character is automatically at the exact same power level no matter what you do. Being balanced means that you are at the same power level given the same level of optimization, and that the base level of optimization that does not require system mastery results in adequate characters.

[JackRackham]

What are we talking about here? Are we asking if melee shiulkd be equal to casters? I say not necessariy. If they are, fine, whatever. But really, I'm fine with more general competitiveness. Wizard (or sorcerer), factotum (or swordsage or gish), warblade (or crusader or gish), cleric (or druid or favored soul, etc) would be just fine. Everyone should be enjoying themselves in that party, unless the players are DBs (in which case any game's ruined).

[Mystify]

If the DM creates a situation where the mundanes can't be effective, that is a DM problem, not a character problem.

Likewise, we assume that the mundane characters would be ineffective in such situations. The DM can easily design an adventure where this is not true.

DM: Wizard, your research tells you that the cube is made of iron. The only known way through it is by hacking in with an adamantine weapon.
Fighter: Yay, I'm being coddled.

DM: Wizard, you need a rare spell to take that thing down once you are inside.
Wizard: I don't have that spell.
Rogue: I can find it with my streetwise. Yay, I'm being coddled.

DM: Everyone, only the wizard can do this. He has the exact spell.
Wizard: Of course. And I'm not being coddled. Magic is supposed to bypass all challenges.
You shouldn't need to coddle your players. That is just correcting for a flaw that shouldn't be there in the first place.

[kyoryu]

Not everyone has the same ideal game. I've known people who gleefully take choices they are well aware are sub-optimal, solely for the extra challenge. Heck, sometimes I am that person.

Not everyone wants balance. Sometimes, people deliberately want imbalance. This does not make either balance or imbalance paramount...it makes accuracy in labeling balance paramount.


There's also two other things.

1) Level of balance. It usually doesn't matter if everyone is precisely equally balanced and contributes exactly the same amount. Some imbalance is tolerable in just about any situation. It's the *amount* of imbalance that becomes an issue. Tier 3 classes aren't "equal." They can vary in power. Even looking at Tiers 2-4 is probably tolerable in most games. It's only when you get to Tiers 1-5 or 6 that the difference gets that huge.

2) Inability to play certain concepts. It's nice to say "pick your level of power," but if you want to play a warrior in a fantasy roleplaying game, that seems like something that you should be able to do, and be effective at. You shouldn't have the only choice at that point to be incredibly suboptimal. If you want the greater challenge, make suboptimal warrior choices.

[Kemper Boyd]

The basic problem that I see is the concept of magic in D&D. It doesn't really match anything else in fiction, so it's hard to actually even find yardsticks for it. What the kitchen sink approach to magical effects in D&D causes is that magic can do nearly anything. And if the magic-user can do everything, why play any other class?

Personally, I think if fightywoman and skillman can't contribute on a roughly equal basis, the game is kinda broken. A simple solution is to redo magic to be more limited in purview: have magical specialists, not magical generalists.

[Snowbluff]

I don't see why not.

[Kalirren]

Gonna go with "Yes, duh" here.

This isn't a physics engine, or even a fantasy arcano-physics engine. If I wanted one of those, if I wanted to feel like an arcane god, I'd go play Skyrim.

The point of an RPG system is to provide a system language that allows for all players to participate meaningfully in session. D&D tries to do this with levels, but fails. (Why are there levels when you can't even trust PCs of equal level to be balanced in power?) Good DM'ing can compensate for this failure to some extent, but why rely on it?

If you're going to make and market a system to a gamer population, some of whom will want to swing swords, some of whom will want to cast spells, and all of whom will want to play with each other, you may as well do it right and keep different character concepts balanced.

[Lans]

I think they should be about equal. Like in a 2-4, or 3&4 tier range, which is easily doable.

[Drolyt]

I think they should be about equal. Like in a 2-4, or 3&4 tier range, which is easily doable.
This may be overly pedantic of me, but if all the classes are roughly equal, wouldn't it be meaningless to talk about what "tier" they are in? Unless of course you create new tiers for the much smaller differences that will no doubt exist no matter how hard you try to keep them balanced. But the old tiers would be meaningless.

[Lans]

This may be overly pedantic of me, but if all the classes are roughly equal, wouldn't it be meaningless to talk about what "tier" they are in? Unless of course you create new tiers for the much smaller differences that will no doubt exist no matter how hard you try to keep them balanced. But the old tiers would be meaningless.
No, because they are not equal, just equaler, and the old tiers gives a reference point. Whether they're called tier 2-4 or or 1-3 doesn't make much of a difference, out side of said reference point

[Spekari]

Melee should definitely be able to rival casters. After all, we're talking about a game here, and it's typically not very fun for the guy who wants to play a big, burly Barbarian to be outclassed in every conceivable way by the party Wizard in a few levels.

Every player should be able to contribute meaningfully to the game, and if an enemy caster could just Save-or-Die the party Fighter out of existance while the other casters go for an epic mage duel, there's something wrong.

Of course, this would mean that the casters would need to be brought down. Either they need to become MUCH more specialized or they need to become actual Jacks of All Trades. Or preferably have the ability to be one or the other.

[demigodus]

I'm going to go with a "of course they should".

To me, I don't see the DnD fighter as just a regular shmuck with a sword, traveling the world while pissing his pants, and trying to compete with gentlemen in robes that make physics their whipping boy. If casters utterly shatter reality with their abilities, melee should as well, just differently. After all, melee characters at high levels already consider being smashed in the face by a giant sized axe by said giant to be a mere inconvenience. Since they clearly break the rules of biology anyways, I think we should be more blatant about it.

So, unlike most suggestions here, balance shouldn't be achieved by focusing on nerfing the casters. Maybe nerf them down to tier 2 or such, or whatever corresponds to no longer being able to out-skill the rogue, and out-melee the warrior, while still being versatile, and powerful.

Rather, I think balance could be achieved by buffing up the melee classes. Like, say, removing the fighter class and applying its abilities to every non-caster. So now the rogue has high BAB, d10 hit dice, and gets a feat every even level (that can be fighter or skill monkey feats). Barbarians just get extra feats. etc. Possibly make every non-caster classes's movement speed scale with level drastically. Whatever is necessary to put the non-casters on par with the casters (would obviously vary by game)

[Cor1]

What Meleeers don't have in d&d is class features.

So, make necessary fighter feats class features. Like Power Attack, Improved Unarmed Strike, Grapple, Bull rush and Overrun. By later levels, automatic Cleave and later Great Cleave. So the melee guys get improved combat rules because they're melee guys. The stupidly impossible penalties you get without those feats are meant for non-fighters. Of COURSE a wizard trying to wield a pair of weapons gets LOLNO penalty to-hit! But why does the fighty type have the SAME penalty?

Also, Features Packages. You'd get one every four levels, and they scale every two levels. So the first you select will scale far, like getting Improved Rapidstrike 12 levels after selecting the Multi-weapon package, but only Superior TWF if they only have 6 levels in it. (Or something.) Also, Mounted Package, Heavily-armored package, Mobile package.

So they'd have options, and more interesting ones than those idiot vidya-derived Tome Of Battle maneuvers that don't scale. I mean, Blah Mountain Hammer? That ignores DR and such, and also does some supplementary damage - okay, good idea in itself, and then SIX variants that ONLY bump the damage?
What sort of moronic design is that? Learn Mountain Hammer, bypass resistances, and get (1/2 Initiator Level +1)d6 bonus damage. Boom, you learn it ONCE and you get MORE options later, instead of "okay now half I know is useless. Where can I find a Psion that will reformat the choices I made that are now invalid?"
Same goes for Sorcerers, naturally. The day Reserves of Strength (that feat that removes "max 10d6" on Fireballs and such) is a Sorcerer Class Feature is the day I'll stop considering the whole class as a bad joke. (Swap one spell every four levels? {{self-scrubbed}} )

Wizards, not. They can always prepare level-appropriate spells.

[Hyde]

My biggest problem with the idea of "melee and casters should be equal" is that the extreme conclusion of that is 4th edition. Everyone gets the same amount of powers, period, and they all do similar things, to the point where all you're doing halfway through is seeing which side stunlocks the other for longest.

No, it doesn't have to be that way, but that's what Wizards response to the idea was. It pretty much sucked.

Pathfinder evened up things a bit, but their answers to the polymorph and wild shape problems just strikes me as silly.

you can't use them to impersonate a specific person or entity
You don't get any physical attributes
Anything you can conceivably get from polymorph, etc, can be gotten from lower level spells (Why take the form of a bat when you can just cast fly?)

Sure, there's the flavor of it, but if it's going to be useless, (or where you have to spend a feat to make it useful) what's the point of keeping it around.

My father is of the opinion that the melee exist to protect the squishy casters at low levels so that they can steamroll things at higher levels. Which works, if that's the way you want to play it, if every game started at level one and ended at level 20.

Hell, Gygax more or less gave the finger to the idea that melee should even be able to lick the wizards boots after a certain point.



I think Fighters and melee classes get more mileage out of treasure than casters do, though. If your wizard can cast fly, wings of flying aren't going to do him much good (since they take a standard action to activate, though you could just leave them always on). It isn't really much in the way of "balance", though. Since being able to cast the spells would also mean they could artificially "double up" on item slots, if you know what I mean. Though if the casters put everything to wands or scrolls, effectively eliminating their only real weakness (you can run out of spells, but not your swinging arm)... yeah, maybe not.


I think that if a class is more powerful, it should also be more difficult to play, as a mitigating factor. I'm not certain how to make something more difficult to play, though. It's not like any of this requires much skill beyond being able to read and do simple math.

I am effectively ranting, though.

[Mystify]

I think that if a class is more powerful, it should also be more difficult to play, as a mitigating factor. I'm not certain how to make something more difficult to play, though. It's not like any of this requires much skill beyond being able to read and do simple math.
Wizards are already harder to play effectively. You give a starting player a fighter or a wizard, and they will do much better with the fighter. They either have to put in a lot of time learning what all these spells do and somehow figuring out which ones work in practice, and end up throwing weak fireballs at things. It is harder to use phenomical cosmic power than a sword, but once you figure it out, the game is still unbalanced.

[Gettles]

Of course. A game where the response to "The Fighter feels worthless past level X" is "Well that's his fault for not being a Wizard" is fundamentally flawed.

I think part of the problem is that the Fighter (and melee in general) is built with the idea of "What can a person conceivably do" while the Wizard is built to be any spellcaster ever shown in fiction.

Treating the fighter like he is still a normal human should be done away with. By level 6 he should start becoming a low level superhuman. Lets say getting doing away with maximum movement speed in armor around here(with a boost to speed) carrying capacity should start growing, small things like that. And at level 10, any delusion that the character is still a regular person should be gone. From 10 to 20 it should be possible to choke slam giants, cause localized earthquakes by striking the ground, cleave the tops off of mountains, and handle flyers by throwing houses at them. A high level fighter, in my mind should be able to move 100 feet have about 10 attacks and be able to move and use all of them in one turn however he feels like (i.e. move 20 feet hit target 3 times, move 35 feet use 2 more attacks, move 15 feet use one attack, move the last 30 feet and attack 4 more times)

Would it fix everything? No, spellcasters would still be better, but at least that type of mindset would be a step in the right direction.

[Mystify]

I think part of the problem is that the Fighter (and melee in general) is built with the idea of "What can a person conceivably do" while the Wizard is built to be any spellcaster ever shown in fiction.
Not only is the wizard every spellcaster ever shown in fiction, but he is able to be all of them at the same time. This is why the beguiler and similar classes are tier 3 and relatively balanced. They are using the same spells, and actually have more spells available at any time, but their scope is constrained. Even a sorcerer will learn a lot of vastly different spells and have a similar breadth as a wizard, even if the wizard ultimately has more breadth overall.
Sure, if you want to hit all of the classical magical abilities, spellcasters need to turn invisible, fly, teleport, open locked doors, create passages through walls, turn ethereal, haunt your dreams, throw fireballs and shoot lightning, telekinetically move objects around, control minds, raise armies of undead, enchant weapons, create magical barriers, leave magic traps, polymoprh into creatures, turn enemies into frogs, control weather, summon demons, make potions, wield staffs, wave waves, etc. etc. etc.
The problem with D&D spellcasting is that can all be the same spellcaster. How many fictional spellcasters actually do all of those? Very few. They have some subset of them. You have enchantresses and necromancers. People fear the wizard because he does X, not X,Y,Z, β, ϰ, φ.
By restricting the scope of any individual caster, you can get more flavorful, interesting spellcasters, yet have spellcasting as a whole keep all of tis abilities. Saying "I am a transmuter" means that you will have a lot of transmutation spells, not 1 extra spell slot that must be used on transmutation. Transmuter would be distinct from polymorpher. You can have abilities that don't run so strictly along school lines, like a witch, or a weather mage.
The spellcaster should have a toolbox, not a machine shop. And the mundane characters should have their own, different toolboxes. There can be overlap, both between caster types and mundane, but not redundancy. "Magical trickster" may be a valid caster archetype, and it may bear similarity to a rogue, but the rogue should not be made redundant by it. They may fulfill a similar role in the party, but the arcane trickster would not be superior to the rogue at rogue stuff, and would have magical tricks to use instead. For instance, an open lock spell might allow you to use your lockpick skill at a distance, but give a penalty to it. Rogues get bonuses to lockpick. Lockpick also takes more time, and being better makes you faster. So, for any given lock, a rogue has an easier time opening it, and does it faster. They can open locks the arcane trickster can't, but the arcane tricker could do it at range. The rogue may have bluff and diplomacy, but the trickster has suggestion. The key difference there is the rogue can genuinely convince people of things, whilst the trickster gives them a temporary compulsion that they will shortly recover from and realize their error. Combatively, the rogue could focus on maneuverability and sneak attacks, whilst the tricker focuses on, well, tricking the enemies.
A shapeshifter may be a more directly combative school, more like a druid with wildshape than anything else.They are expected to be directly combative, but they should do so in a way that does not duplicate or negate the fighter. The fighter should fight better than any of he shapeshifters forms. The shapeshifter gets to utilize cool abilities of its forms, and has more utilitarian uses. Concrete limits on it means you can't turn into a will'o wisp for magic immunity or similar shenigans.
I like the idea that mages are less directly powerful for the most part, but instead rely on tactical superiority. Such abilities work best as part of a team.

[Lans]

My biggest problem with the idea of "melee and casters should be equal" is that the extreme conclusion of that is 4th edition. Everyone gets the same amount of powers, period, and they all do similar things, to the point where all you're doing halfway through is seeing which side stunlocks the other for longest.

This is why I'm just going for equaler, its easy to do and classes can keep their identity. With a quick starting fix of giving tier 5 classes 4sp/lvl, and 2 skills as class skills, swapping the ranger and druid companion, soulknife/soulborn become 1 class that gets to invest essentia into the mindblade. Shift quarter casters casting to start at 1st, add 5th and 0th level spells. etc

I have some ideas for limiting the tier 1s, but I'm not really committed to them yet. Clerics i had the idea of restricting spell access to primarily Healer list+ domains, with the healer being a modification to the base cleric.

[DoctorGlock]

I have some ideas for limiting the tier 1s, but I'm not really committed to them yet. Clerics i had the idea of restricting spell access to primarily Healer list+ domains, with the healer being a modification to the base cleric.

Doesn't this create the same problem as 2e had regarding clerics? As in they end up as nothing more than band aid boxes and the player gets bored being a support character?

[Gwendol]

The problems from my point of view are two-fold: one is the lack of development of martial classes outside of ToB. Progressing BAB and gaining feats just isn't enough. The other are the changes made to casting classes when going from 2-3rd edition (and 3.5). Since action economy is King, casters have the upper hand. Always.

So to answer the question: yes, but in their own way, and I'd like to throw in ranged fighters with melee as well.

[Mystify]

Yes, "healer" should not be a character description. At least, it should not be your primary actions. Its not interesting. That was one thing 4e did better, was make it so you could heal without devoting all your time to it.

[Lans]

Doesn't this create the same problem as 2e had regarding clerics? As in they end up as nothing more than band aid boxes and the player gets bored being a support character?
I was also giving an additional domain every 5 levels or so.

So it would be healers spell list+2 domains at 1st. Compare that to what a sorcerer gets spell wise. Though, I would have to add 0th level spells to the domains.
The healer variant would lose turn undead, and have one of the domains be autoset to healing.

[Kesnit]

Doesn't this create the same problem as 2e had regarding clerics? As in they end up as nothing more than band aid boxes and the player gets bored being a support character?

Depends on how it is done and what the player enjoys. It could be similar to the way Controlled and Leaders play in 4e. (Buff, debuff, CC, healing). Just because you aren't personally doing anything (or anything significant) to the enemy doesn't mean you aren't doing anything at all.

[Mystify]

Depends on how it is done and what the player enjoys. It could be similar to the way Controlled and Leaders play in 4e. (Buff, debuff, CC, healing). Just because you aren't personally doing anything (or anything significant) to the enemy doesn't mean you aren't doing anything at all.
In 4e, leaders get to heal with their minor, and then throw cool stuff around with their other actions. Healing is generally one of the least interesting things you can do. Having that be the only thing you are doing encounter in and encounter out is generally unsatisfying. Some people are willing to do it, but it is very rare to see someone who is genuinely excited about doing it. Buffing, Debuffing, control, they are all interesting things to do. healing generally isn't.

[Psyren]

Yes, "healer" should not be a character description. At least, it should not be your primary actions. Its not interesting. That was one thing 4e did better, was make it so you could heal without devoting all your time to it.

Pathfinder did great at this too. There are healer clerics, healer druids, healer paladins, healer alchemists, healer witches, healer bards etc., all of which can do much more than simply heal.

[Tyndmyr]

There's also two other things.

1) Level of balance. It usually doesn't matter if everyone is precisely equally balanced and contributes exactly the same amount. Some imbalance is tolerable in just about any situation. It's the *amount* of imbalance that becomes an issue. Tier 3 classes aren't "equal." They can vary in power. Even looking at Tiers 2-4 is probably tolerable in most games. It's only when you get to Tiers 1-5 or 6 that the difference gets that huge.

Granted. I have no problem with a tier 1 and a tier 3 in the same group. But a wizard and a commoner in the same group would get some heavy warnings from me. I'd make sure the commoner player knew exactly what he was in for, and make sure that was what he really wanted.

That said, having tier or similar listed in the actual books would be really good for that.


2) Inability to play certain concepts. It's nice to say "pick your level of power," but if you want to play a warrior in a fantasy roleplaying game, that seems like something that you should be able to do, and be effective at. You shouldn't have the only choice at that point to be incredibly suboptimal. If you want the greater challenge, make suboptimal warrior choices.

ToB is the thing I'd point to for this. There's a LOT of classes in 3.5, and you can in fact have a group in which casters and melee are more or less equal. Or one in which they're not equal at all. Both options are supported. I'm pretty ok with this.

Note, additionally, that this idea that melee people are worthless at high level is entirely overblown. Melee people remain useful solidly into epic*. A LOT of things gain anti-caster defenses as CR climbs. SR becomes basically standard, for instance, which reduces the effectiveness of many tricks. Look at the CR 20 creatures in the SRD. Every single one has caster defenses. However, a charger to the face tends to work pretty solidly. By the time you're fighting things from say, Elder Evils, buffing the charger and ensuring he gets in to get his attack off is usually your best means of taking down the really terrible things.

Yes, the caster is essential, probably more so than the melee, but the melee dude is STILL quite useful.

*Assuming that atrocity, epic spellcasting, is not available.

[Kesnit]

In 4e, leaders get to heal with their minor, and then throw cool stuff around with their other actions. Healing is generally one of the least interesting things you can do. Having that be the only thing you are doing encounter in and encounter out is generally unsatisfying. Some people are willing to do it, but it is very rare to see someone who is genuinely excited about doing it. Buffing, Debuffing, control, they are all interesting things to do. healing generally isn't.

Which is what I said. The post I was commenting on gave the Cleric more options that just heal-botting. (They got more and more domains as they leveled, with the spells that go with those domains.) I did also say it depends on how it was done. If the Cleric starts out ONLY with the Healing Domain, that is very different that "start with X domains, one of which must be healing."

[jindra34]

Honestly melee and mundanes shouldn't be able to rival casters, however casters also shouldn't rival or render them useless in their specialties. This may go against the concept of magic bending reality but does it make any sense that spells can impart knowledge and capability that a caster lacks?

[Lord_Gareth]

Pathfinder did great at this too. There are healer clerics, healer druids, healer paladins, healer alchemists, healer witches, healer bards etc., all of which can do much more than simply heal.

I replied to your earlier post, by the by.

[Tvtyrant]

I think there are two real issues here:

1. Caster Power
2. Power Variety (or the "step on everyone's toes" syndrome.

The ability of casters to use SoDs, SoSs, and divination makes them extremely powerful. "What's that? Only one opponent? :smallamused:" I believe that this is one of the major problems, because it means that casters play on a different level than everyone else.

However, casters also have tremendous variety in what they can do, which leads to spells like knock, Divine Power, etc. This also follows the conventions of storytelling, and is exacerbated by the D20 systems assumptions about power spikes. In a system where 2 level 10s could fight a level 20 you could easily fix this by making the casters spells only make them half so good at something as a class that performs that task. Knock is like a half-skill Rogue, Divine Power makes you half a fighter, etc. However in a D20 system it takes more like 10 level 10s to stand a chance against a level 20, which removes the effectiveness of the strategy.

[Tyndmyr]

The ability of casters to use SoDs, SoSs, and divination makes them extremely powerful. "What's that? Only one opponent? :smallamused:" I believe that this is one of the major problems, because it means that casters play on a different level than everyone else.

I'd entirely remove SoDs and divination from that list.

Anyone can plaster a single opponent if they want. That's what uberchargers DO, and they're low tier.

Divination would be among the most banned schools if allowed. It's weak at lower levels. Detect Magic would be annoying to lose, but seriously, that's easily fixed. And if you have detect magic, you can inexpensively bypass identify. It mostly exists as a counter to magical tricks to begin with. It's suggested use of CoP, etc is mostly limited to TO, not actual play.

[Doug Lampert]

So, they deal with the imbalance by taking the powerful characters and removing them from combat? So now all the people who go out and dothings together are balanced?


Nope, there's almost always at least one magus on any adventure, the game is ABOUT the maguses, and if there's no hook that will get one out then it's not worth playing the adventure out.

But, who plays the magus varies from session to session since they ALL want to dodge being the guy who goes and deals with the garbage (both in character and from a powergaming POV). And the Magus doesn't ever try to do melee's job, if you have a magus who's doing melee then why didn't he just send a melee character and stay home like a sensible mage?

In D&D the question is "why have a fighter when you could have a druid?"

In Ars Magica the question is "why drag an extra caster along to do melee's job?"

The ideal team is ONE caster, who stays well in the back because if he bites it then so does the whole team since no one else has a chance in straight combat with anything that gaks the wizard if they don't have support, and everyone else who does all the other stuff. Which includes investigation, social interaction, and front line combat. It works fine.

Because NO ONE pretends its ballanced. That lets it work. I've been roleplaying since 1976, I've been complaining about ballance in D&D since 1979 or so, I've never had ballance problems in Ars Magica and I've played quite a bit of it and the party is ALWAYS mixed with drastically different power levels, it's an entirely different style of play once you admit that there's a difference and give people sufficiently different goals that the powerful characters don't just do everything.

DougL

[Mystify]

Nope, there's almost always at least one magus on any adventure, the game is ABOUT the maguses, and if there's no hook that will get one out then it's not worth playing the adventure out.

But, who plays the magus varies from session to session since they ALL want to dodge being the guy who goes and deals with the garbage (both in character and from a powergaming POV). And the Magus doesn't ever try to do melee's job, if you have a magus who's doing melee then why didn't he just send a melee character and stay home like a sensible mage?

In D&D the question is "why have a fighter when you could have a druid?"

In Ars Magica the question is "why drag an extra caster along to do melee's job?"

The ideal team is ONE caster, who stays well in the back because if he bites it then so does the whole team since no one else has a chance in straight combat with anything that gaks the wizard if they don't have support, and everyone else who does all the other stuff. Which includes investigation, social interaction, and front line combat. It works fine.

Because NO ONE pretends its ballanced. That lets it work. I've been roleplaying since 1976, I've been complaining about ballance in D&D since 1979 or so, I've never had ballance problems in Ars Magica and I've played quite a bit of it and the party is ALWAYS mixed with drastically different power levels, it's an entirely different style of play once you admit that there's a difference and give people sufficiently different goals that the powerful characters don't just do everything.

DougL
There is obviously some balance there, its just not on the class level. I haven't played that system so I can't comment further.

[Tvtyrant]

I'd entirely remove SoDs and divination from that list.

Anyone can plaster a single opponent if they want. That's what uberchargers DO, and they're low tier.

Divination would be among the most banned schools if allowed. It's weak at lower levels. Detect Magic would be annoying to lose, but seriously, that's easily fixed. And if you have detect magic, you can inexpensively bypass identify. It mostly exists as a counter to magical tricks to begin with. It's suggested use of CoP, etc is mostly limited to TO, not actual play.

Uberchargers are low tier because all they can do is charge, and they are easy to stop. Boosting CL takes less feats/effort than charging, and cannot be stopped by things like miss chances, rough terrain, etc. Moreover I think you are attacking the example instead of the point, which is that casters have incredible amounts of power.

[Clawhound]

You shouldn't need to coddle your players. That is just correcting for a flaw that shouldn't be there in the first place.

All RPG games are flawed in this way as the DM creates the situation. There is no way to design your way out of that. Thus, it is incumbent upon the DM to ensure that no character type gets marginalized. It's not realistic, but that is one of the long-standing tropes of the genre.

[ahenobarbi]

Nope, there's almost always at least one magus on any adventure, the game is ABOUT the maguses, and if there's no hook that will get one out then it's not worth playing the adventure out.

But, who plays the magus varies from session to session since they ALL want to dodge being the guy who goes and deals with the garbage (both in character and from a powergaming POV). And the Magus doesn't ever try to do melee's job, if you have a magus who's doing melee then why didn't he just send a melee character and stay home like a sensible mage?

In D&D the question is "why have a fighter when you could have a druid?"

In Ars Magica the question is "why drag an extra caster along to do melee's job?"

The ideal team is ONE caster, who stays well in the back because if he bites it then so does the whole team since no one else has a chance in straight combat with anything that gaks the wizard if they don't have support, and everyone else who does all the other stuff. Which includes investigation, social interaction, and front line combat. It works fine.

Because NO ONE pretends its ballanced. That lets it work. I've been roleplaying since 1976, I've been complaining about ballance in D&D since 1979 or so, I've never had ballance problems in Ars Magica and I've played quite a bit of it and the party is ALWAYS mixed with drastically different power levels, it's an entirely different style of play once you admit that there's a difference and give people sufficiently different goals that the powerful characters don't just do everything.

Like most 20lvl wizards still use commoners to make food for them and wash their clothes (while they could create food and clean clothes with prestidigitation....).

So you get rogue or fighter to do some unpleasant stuff. Even if you could do it better it's less pain to have others do trap finding, messing with mechanical devices and slashing.

Like "I could kill the <monster> on my own. Or I could go with <another PC>. Sure <another PC> will take some treasure and be less effective than me but on the other hand [s]he will get all the wounds. And if it turns out <monster> is to strong I'll know when <another PC> dies, not when I die. Yeah, I'm not going alone"

Problem is when you think meta-game "Well if <player> plays druid instead of fighter we will have more powerful party".

[Tyndmyr]

Uberchargers are low tier because all they can do is charge, and they are easy to stop. Boosting CL takes less feats/effort than charging, and cannot be stopped by things like miss chances, rough terrain, etc. Moreover I think you are attacking the example instead of the point, which is that casters have incredible amounts of power.

At the level at which magic wildly outclasses melee, and things like elder evils are on the table as enemies, the ubercharger has some reliable means of flight and illusions(and with that, most miss chances) have been rendered useless by true seeing.

None of those things are relevant any longer.

The few miss chances that DO still exist, like Blink, also suck for someone tossing out a CL boosted spell. Perfectly fair.

[Tvtyrant]

At the level at which magic wildly outclasses melee, and things like elder evils are on the table as enemies, the ubercharger has some reliable means of flight and illusions(and with that, most miss chances) have been rendered useless by true seeing.

None of those things are relevant any longer.

The few miss chances that DO still exist, like Blink, also suck for someone tossing out a CL boosted spell. Perfectly fair.

At what point do you find that casters completely outclass melee? I usually find it happens at level 8, when the caster gets Polymorph, Greater Invisibility, and Enervation, but your experience may be different.

[Mystify]

All RPG games are flawed in this way as the DM creates the situation. There is no way to design your way out of that. Thus, it is incumbent upon the DM to ensure that no character type gets marginalized. It's not realistic, but that is one of the long-standing tropes of the genre.
Just because its a long standing trope does not mean it is a good thing. a DM should never have to create contrived situations. Sure, a DM can create circumstances that negate characters. But he generally shouldn't be doing that. He can also create circumstances designed to cater to a player. He shouldn't need to do that. The characters should be able to handle whatever circumstances would normally arise, assuming the DM is not trying to foil them.
If you go so far as "This is immune to everything by the fighter", then it has gone horribly wrong. The fighter shouldn't need the DM to step in and give him the lock that he is the key to. The fighter should be able to take whatever arbitrary situation the party finds themselves in, and find a solution to it. It can be, and probably should be, a completely different solution from the caster's solution, but they should be able to do it.
Even when you give them the wall that only their adamantine axe can hack through, thats not solving anything. Sure, the character is useful, but the player isn't doing anything. They didn't have to come up with a clever approach to the problem, they are just told to start hacking.

[ahenobarbi]

Just because its a long standing trope does not mean it is a good thing. a DM should never have to create contrived situations. (...)

Even when you give them the wall that only their adamantine axe can hack through, thats not solving anything. Sure, the character is useful, but the player isn't doing anything. They didn't have to come up with a clever approach to the problem, they are just told to start hacking.

Then give them something to solve in ways other than pure game-mechanics power. Also explain that having a fighter in party is less powerful than having a druid in party. But having a fighter is more powerful than not having a fighter. If you have a resource (fighter) use it.

Like if you had a wand of cure light wounds you will use it, not throw it away because wand of (lesser) vigor would be better.

Edit: Grama fix.

[Mystify]

Then give them something to solve in ways other than pure game-mechanics power. Also explain that having a fighter in party is less powerful than having a druid in party. But having a fighter is more powerful than not having a fighter. If you have a resource (fighter) use it.

Like if you had a wand of cure light wounds you will use it, not throw it away because wand of (lesser) vigor would be better.

Edit: Grama fix.
Ideally, it wouldn't be an issue in the first place, but since it is, the best course is to steer them away from it unless the rest of the party will be operating on that level(not necessarily tier; If the other person is playing a team-friendly wizard it can be fine).

As for your wand analogy, its not finding a wand of cure light wounds and throwing it away because tis not a wand of lesser vigor. Its going to the store, seeing the wand of cure light wounds and wand of lesser vigor next to each other on the sheild, and getting the cure light wounds.

But a lot of the problem is that most classes get a toolkit. A wizard has a machine shop with every tool imaginable, and quite a few you have never heard of. A rogue has a nice workbench with a selection of tools for various jobs. And the fighter has a hammer. Anything he can accomplish through role playing, any other character can do as well.If they are lucky, they may have a mallet as well(intimidate).

[kyoryu]

Hell, Gygax more or less gave the finger to the idea that melee should even be able to lick the wizards boots after a certain point.


And that's fine in a truly old-school game where you likely have multiple characters, and character death is uncommon. It's also pretty much okay in 1e where you've got rules for fighters picking up followers, and eventually building keeps, etc. Wizards got earth-shattering spells, Fighters got *armies*.

Also, casting *was* harder back then, and had more pitfalls than it does now. Casting times, easier interruptions, components, etc.

But most importantly, the "metagame" of D&D is very different now than it was then. The old assumptions are no longer true. The "big story" game didn't really come along until the 80s. The idea of plot armor didn't come in until then. The idea of one player = one character, period, wasn't really an assumption until then. Pointing out that LFQW worked in 1e doesn't really hold water, unless you're suggesting that the entire game system and metagame goes back to the 1e timeframe.

It's basically the same reason that association rules and even things like Paladin falling need to be looked over again. They just don't make sense with the "modern" (as in, mid-80s and up) playstyle.

[ahenobarbi]

As for your wand analogy, its not finding a wand of cure light wounds and throwing it away because tis not a wand of lesser vigor. Its going to the store, seeing the wand of cure light wounds and wand of lesser vigor next to each other on the sheild, and getting the cure light wounds.

Nah, you get to choose what you buy. But you don't get to choose what others play (or what you find).

[Silus]

From a mechanics standpoint, I'd say that without giving melee all the gimmicks that casters have that casters will always have the advantage over the melee.

However, in playing and roleplaying aspects, I wanna say the melee have more potential.

While a caster has MUCH more flexibility than a melee, the melee are usually forced to come up with something to equal the caster's actions and, IMO, more worthy of a story/retelling.

Running away from some baddies and need to jump down a cliff?

Caster casts "Feather Fall" and floats down.

Melee makes a Use Rope check while running, ranged touch attack to toss the rope onto a suitable anchor, then fast ropes/rappels down the cliff. Bit more effort, but a far better story and visual, which, IMO, is all that matters.

[Mystify]

Nah, you get to choose what you buy. But you don't get to choose what others play (or what you find).
But the person who chose to play a fighter is the one who got the cure wand instead of the vigor wand. If that is their choice, that is fine, but it should be made with their eyes open. The system has gross imbalances, which currently operate as stealth traps for the uninitiated. They should all be viable choices.

[ahenobarbi]

But the person who chose to play a fighter is the one who got the cure wand instead of the vigor wand. If that is their choice, that is fine, but it should be made with their eyes open. The system has gross imbalances, which currently operate as stealth traps for the uninitiated. They should all be viable choices.

I agree on the "If that is their choice, that is fine, but it should be made with their eyes open" (game creators pretending that fighters and wizards have the same power is wrong).

About "They should all be viable choices." part though... yeah I already discussed that wit you and came to understanding, so no point in repeating this in te same thread :smallbiggrin:

[mikau013]

Running away from some baddies and need to jump down a cliff?

Caster casts "Feather Fall" and floats down.

Melee makes a Use Rope check while running, ranged touch attack to toss the rope onto a suitable anchor, then fast ropes/rappels down the cliff. Bit more effort, but a far better story and visual, which, IMO, is all that matters.

So in other words, casters auto succeed. Melee get multiple chances to fail? Yeah sounds better.

[Flickerdart]

From a mechanics standpoint, I'd say that without giving melee all the gimmicks that casters have that casters will always have the advantage over the melee.

However, in playing and roleplaying aspects, I wanna say the melee have more potential.

While a caster has MUCH more flexibility than a melee, the melee are usually forced to come up with something to equal the caster's actions and, IMO, more worthy of a story/retelling.

Running away from some baddies and need to jump down a cliff?

Caster casts "Feather Fall" and floats down.

Melee makes a Use Rope check while running, ranged touch attack to toss the rope onto a suitable anchor, then fast ropes/rappels down the cliff. Bit more effort, but a far better story and visual, which, IMO, is all that matters.
Caster's opportunity cost: 1 immediate action, 1 low level spell slot.
Melee's opportunity cost: 2 trained skills, move action to draw the rope, standard action to secure it (better hope there's something to secure it to) and then multiple move actions to climb down. Meanwhile, the enemies have probably caught up to the party, and are shooting the melee as it climbs down. Or have cut their rope. Bye bye, melee.

[paurpg]

It seems to me that the fact that spellcasters have limited spell-uses was suposed to be their main weakness. So that if a group of adventurers need to break into an evil kings heavily guarded castle and save a princess before nightfall. The wizard, for example, would run out of spells if he didn't have some melee character with him and in any case would have to have spells prepared for all types of different situations just in case. And then, if they were captured, the wizard without his spellbook the next day when they wake in the castle dungeon will be of barely any use.

[mikau013]

Problem is, a pc who auto wins x amount of times and then can't do anything useful the rest of the time is boring as heck

[Civil War Man]

For me, the attitude of putting the responsibility of fixing LFQW on the DM is a pet peeve. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the customer to fix a product that was sold to them broken. And the attitude that the DM should either develop house rules to balance the game themselves or play with the unbalanced mechanics is a detriment. If the DM wants to house rule, that's fine. But they shouldn't be forced to in order to make the system work as intended.

I see a lot of the same attitude with video games that don't receive regular support patches the way many MMOs do. Companies like Bethesda and Bioware release a game, and the modding community will sometimes need to expend a lot of time and effort just fixing the bugs that shipped with the game. More time spent fixing the game means less time creating mods that add to it.

Developing a game is not an easy task, and it's unreasonable to expect the developers to foresee every possible loophole or bug. But when the loophole or bug is discovered, it's equally unreasonable to say that it the sole responsibility of the customer to fix it.

If the DM has to spend a lot of time creating house rules to balance the classes or creating contrived situations to make underpowered characters useful to the story, it hamstrings them. Because it means they have to create a contrived situation every single time someone plays that type of underpowered character, and teach those house rules to every new player they have.

[Clawhound]

Just because its a long standing trope does not mean it is a good thing. a DM should never have to create contrived situations. Sure, a DM can create circumstances that negate characters. But he generally shouldn't be doing that. He can also create circumstances designed to cater to a player. He shouldn't need to do that. The characters should be able to handle whatever circumstances would normally arise, assuming the DM is not trying to foil them.
If you go so far as "This is immune to everything by the fighter", then it has gone horribly wrong. The fighter shouldn't need the DM to step in and give him the lock that he is the key to. The fighter should be able to take whatever arbitrary situation the party finds themselves in, and find a solution to it. It can be, and probably should be, a completely different solution from the caster's solution, but they should be able to do it.
Even when you give them the wall that only their adamantine axe can hack through, thats not solving anything. Sure, the character is useful, but the player isn't doing anything. They didn't have to come up with a clever approach to the problem, they are just told to start hacking.

Yet, you still have the basic fact that the DM creates the situation. The bias of the DM affects the way that challenges are created. They are inseparable. That's why you need a DM to be mindful.

I think that your approach is correct. We agree. No character should have all the solutions all the time, and no character should be excluded from solutions all of the time.

In my observations, the best challenges are those laid out neutrally, and then the players work out the solution. Even better are solutions that can't be spellcasted away.

[Talakeal]

Yes, "healer" should not be a character description. At least, it should not be your primary actions. Its not interesting. That was one thing 4e did better, was make it so you could heal without devoting all your time to it.

Maybe I am just wierd, but I really like playing a healer. One of the things that turned me off of 4th ed was it seemed like none of the classes had any healing spells which were not also attack spells.

[Eldest]

I am going to say that they should not rival the casters in their area of expertise, magic. But I also think that the casters should be divided up into various groups, so that an Evoker can throw around fire and lightning, but has problems with single targets or locked doors. Sure, he could burn through the door with a spell or six, but so could the fighter, and the thief can just pick it. And a necromancer or an enchanter would have a different area of ability. So I would argue that magic should be split up, with a jack-of-all-trades caster as well that has far reduced casting (I'm thinking Bard casting) but can cast spells from anybody's school. And the melee should be stronger, as well. More skills, more options of what to do in combat. I have no idea what to do with divine magic, though.

[Daisuke1133]

On the subject of Divine Magic: A revival of the old Sphere of Influence system from the AD&D days would be nice.

Then again, I think a large amount of the Mundane/Caster Disparity problems would be solved if design ideas from AD&D were used in 3.X.

[demigodus]

Maybe I am just wierd, but I really like playing a healer. One of the things that turned me off of 4th ed was it seemed like none of the classes had any healing spells which were not also attack spells.

What about the pacific healer cleric? Boost to your healing abilities, you can spend all combat just healing, buffing, and debuffing.

[Doug Lampert]

Like most 20lvl wizards still use commoners to make food for them and wash their clothes (while they could create food and clean clothes with prestidigitation....).

So you get rogue or fighter to do some unpleasant stuff. Even if you could do it better it's less pain to have others do trap finding, messing with mechanical devices and slashing.

Like "I could kill the <monster> on my own. Or I could go with <another PC>. Sure <another PC> will take some treasure and be less effective than me but on the other hand [s]he will get all the wounds. And if it turns out <monster> is to strong I'll know when <another PC> dies, not when I die. Yeah, I'm not going alone"

Problem is when you think meta-game "Well if <player> plays druid instead of fighter we will have more powerful party".

So? I think meta game. The covenant has 20 casters, a mix of PCs and NPCs who work together toward common goals. And EVERY TIME a caster goes on an adventure the covenant is both long and short term WEAKER than it would be if he had stayed home.

I'm worse off sending more than the minimum casters, both meta game and in game. So why do it more than I need to?

The most profitable use of a caster's time is not adventuring. That's part of how the system works with unballanced concepts. Sending extra casters is BAD in terms of maximizing outcomes. Casters advance faster by staying home and studying, he gets more loot by staying home and making stuff. Meanwhile the mundanes advance faster by adventuring, they want to go on adventures. (Note: even on an adventure the caster gets more XP than the mundane, just not as much more as when they stay home).

[ahenobarbi]

Caster's opportunity cost: 1 immediate action, 1 low level spell slot.
Melee's opportunity cost: 2 trained skills, move action to draw the rope, standard action to secure it (better hope there's something to secure it to) and then multiple move actions to climb down. Meanwhile, the enemies have probably caught up to the party, and are shooting the melee as it climbs down. Or have cut their rope. Bye bye, melee.

Silus was pointing that while caster can do something easily fighter can handle the same situation in less effective but more spectacular way (partially because it's a challenge for fighter).

Now if you play d&d to kill powerful things caster way is better (more power!). But if you enjoy doing cool stuff fighter may be way to go (more challenge!).

[ahenobarbi]

So? I think meta game. The covenant has 20 casters, a mix of PCs and NPCs who work together toward common goals. And EVERY TIME a caster goes on an adventure the covenant is both long and short term WEAKER than it would be if he had stayed home.

Actually that could be very reasonable in-game thinking. I was referring to a specific meta-game reasoning that makes people think no one should play non-caster.

[Karoht]

1) No. Magic is *supposed* to be incredibly powerful. Trying to match it with feats of physical strength and skill just isn't going to happen.Magic in this context is literally warping reality. And that's just the low end stuff. The high end stuff begins to basically rewrite reality. A caster of 9th level spells can stop time, create pocket dimensions, and reach through other dimensions and planes of existance to call other powerful beings to their side.



1) Yes. I mean, it's a game, and games are supposed to be balanced. In WoW, for example, rogues can own casters.And in that same context, the mage can own the rogue. It boils down much more closely to player skill, and mostly because this is what the game was built around. DnD was not largely built around player VS player combat, for example. Or at least, this is a common arguement when comparing DnD to X.

[Psyren]

I replied to your earlier post, by the by.

Very well:



But a system can reward mastery without punishing inexperience. You can create combinations of powers that form better options while maintaining a baseline competence level that ensures no one ends up useless. Trap feats aren't a method of rewarding mastery - they're a method of punishing new players, which causes them to get frustrated and not have fun with the game. Since the goal is to have fun, this is always a Bad Thing (Patent Pending).

Whenever you find yourself saying "always" you should really take a step back and examine your argument. Picking subpar options can be fun for the same reason that Dan Hibiki is a popular character in Street Fighter: i.e. the challenge. I'm fine with a system that has both good and bad options, as long as there are enough of the former that there isn't "one build to rule them all" as there is with Truenamer.

Which is not to say there can't be one "most powerful" build - just that there are several viable ones. The Sacred Servant PF Paladin is clearly the most powerful archetype, but the other ones are plenty playable. So yes, I'm happy with PF so far.


This one I won't hand you. I see no significant difference in the balance point of the Pathfinder races in its SRD vs. the balance point of the races in the 3.5 SRD. I'd put this one down in, "Changed it without true effect."

Half-Orc Paladins everywhere disagree with you.


As far as I'm aware, the Munchkin Moonwalk is still a thing. So is flight, teleportation, quickened spells, various hand spells, walls, solid fog and the like. Even if, by some miracle, I failed to notice all of those things getting fixed, Pathfinder has no aggro system, just like 3.5, which means any creature with the appropriate Knowledge check or experience with spellcasters is still going to ignore the useless, loot-drinking mundanes and murdalize the spell-slinger as fast as possible.

I assume that by "munchkin moonwalk" you mean a 5-foot step; and yes, PF did address that (with a feat.)

Everything else you mentioned is a feature to me, not a bug. If melee wants to keep up, they have to use those things too. Plenty of monsters already have them, and for those that don't (or nonmonstrous enemies) there are buffs, consumables and gear to let them do everything the PCs can do.

Yeah, the guy standing on the ground waving a stick can't stop me from raining fire from above. That's his problem for not investing in an item that lets him fly up to me, or in a bow that can pierce my protective bubble while I'm up there.


This I can hand you. However, if you want Legend psionics, refluff an existing class for what you want (may I suggest Sage?). If no one's playing, than no one's playing - ain't no changing that.

Look, I have nothing against Legend. I'm ecstatic that a homegrown system has achieved such success, and I hear rave reviews about its balance all the time.

I'm not after a perfectly balanced system, nor even a superbly balanced system. You probably wouldn't believe (or agree with) how low a priority that is for me. As long as I can have 5 people in the same party have fun, the fact that one has more potential than the others doesn't even factor in for me. I'm willing to take that risk for much more openness in terms of what is possible, like a village full of commoners taking on a wyrmling dragon, to invoke another thread on the front page here.

With that existing barrier to entry, very little things can turn me off - such as meme-tastic feat names, "Miracles" that are barely worthy of the name, 3/4 BAB being "poor", lack of concrete XP progression, "classes" that are little more than bundles of talent trees tracks, level and attunement limits on items etc. All of that stuff appeals to you and that's great. But for the love of Ilsensine, you're wasting your time trying to sell me on it personally.

So no, I'm not going to invest the time to make my "Tactician" feel more like a Psywar, not when I'm perfectly happy with Pathfinder and DSP's take. I know it's petty, and I can live with that just fine.

[Talakeal]

What about the pacific healer cleric? Boost to your healing abilities, you can spend all combat just healing, buffing, and debuffing.

Was that an option when the game first came out? If so I couldn't find it, and I haven't been purchasing many books since the initial release. Last summer when I was invited to play in a game none of the other players suggested it when I asked if it was possible.

Anyway, my point was not to trash 4E, just saying that some people actually prefer pacifist characters, I have played several enchanters, necromancers, bards, and healers with no ability to deal direct damage.

[Seerow]

And in that same context, the mage can own the rogue. It boils down much more closely to player skill, and mostly because this is what the game was built around. DnD was not largely built around player VS player combat, for example. Or at least, this is a common arguement when comparing DnD to X.

Well in D&D you will frequently run into NPCs with character classes. In 3.5 PvP actually does matter because you are expected to have the same amount of difficulty dealing with a level 10 Fighter as a level 10 Wizard. However one of these challenges will be stomped over, and the other will be a potential TPK.

But even ignoring that, and pretending like we're looking at a more PvE oriented system, where a classed NPC acts more like a 4e enemy where they get a few abilities of that class, but are otherwise statted out like any other monster (Incidentally I've seen some success doing this in 3.5. For example one night after a particularly hard encounter vs a swordsman, the DM revealed to us he had taken the stats straight out of a chimera or something along those lines and just refluffed it to a human warrior, and it worked fine!).

In such a situation you instead compare to other PvE games. So rather than looking at a Rogue vs Mage in WoW, look at its PVE content. In WoW the Mage has the best crowd control options, but you don't stack your group with nothing but mages. Other classes have some crowd control as well. There's a bunch of different buffs that various classes/specs bring to the raid, and you want each one to show up at least once for optimum efficiency. Some classes who lack control options have a bit higher damage. The classes have various mechanics that make them perform better on some types of fights as opposed to others (for example one class might be much stronger in a straight up tank and spank, but on a fight with a lot of movement another class might pull ahead. Or an encounter might have a special mechanic that increases certain types of damage causing a different class to pull ahead). One encounter might favor ranged over melee. Another encounter might require an extra tank or two.

In the end all of the classes have a good reason to be included in their DPS role, even before looking at tank and healing specs. While the intricacy of mechanics possible within an MMO that has a computer doing all of the calculations on the fly isn't really feasible, the context of the argument is you have an example of mage vs mundane where the mundanes remain completely competitive at least in combat, which is the main point I think he was trying to get across. That balance goes flying out the window when only one group of classes can use crowd control, and that same group can point at the boss and make him drop dead instantly, without any help from the others.

[Silus]

So in other words, casters auto succeed. Melee get multiple chances to fail? Yeah sounds better.

It's the risk that makes it worth it IMO.

[Bobikus]

Melee PC classes absolutely should be on par with casters. Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards is maybe the worst thing about 3.x dnd.

[Hyde]

Personally, I'm just trying to find a solution where "no" isn't the answer. Maybe make spells take longer?

Or maybe just hide in a hole and hope my players never realize the actual difference in power.

[sonofzeal]

Personally, I'm just trying to find a solution where "no" isn't the answer. Maybe make spells take longer?

Or maybe just hide in a hole and hope my players never realize the actual difference in power.
Making it take longer is a common fix. You can also check my sig for a take on a different direction; I've playtested it up to lvl 12 and it worked really well for me.

[Lord_Gareth]

Whenever you find yourself saying "always" you should really take a step back and examine your argument. Picking subpar options can be fun for the same reason that Dan Hibiki is a popular character in Street Fighter: i.e. the challenge. I'm fine with a system that has both good and bad options, as long as there are enough of the former that there isn't "one build to rule them all" as there is with Truenamer.

Which is not to say there can't be one "most powerful" build - just that there are several viable ones. The Sacred Servant PF Paladin is clearly the most powerful archetype, but the other ones are plenty playable. So yes, I'm happy with PF so far.

I believe you missed the essence of my point - there can be less viable builds without necessitating the existence of soul-crushingly useless builds. If you want to be significantly weaker than everyone else, start at a lower level, or with lower stats, or swear a vow of poverty or something. You don't need to force entire character archetypes to press their faces into the floor and choke on the dirt to get a 'more challenging' build available.


Half-Orc Paladins everywhere disagree with you.

Elves, half-elves, halflings and everyone else that didn't get a pity bone thrown at them don't, though.


Everything else you mentioned is a feature to me, not a bug. If melee wants to keep up, they have to use those things too. Plenty of monsters already have them, and for those that don't (or nonmonstrous enemies) there are buffs, consumables and gear to let them do everything the PCs can do.

Yeah, the guy standing on the ground waving a stick can't stop me from raining fire from above. That's his problem for not investing in an item that lets him fly up to me, or in a bow that can pierce my protective bubble while I'm up there.

Wait for it, your previous post is coming up with a quote box!


- Harder defensive casting: the abolition of Concentration means casting in melee is for emergencies only. This adds strategy to the game, as now the casters really have to play keep-away, and if they get too comfortable doing this by one method the DM can shake them up by countering it. Or they can rely on the party to help shield them (as they should)

So in one post you say casters should have to be shielded by the party, and in another you say that the fact that casters need no shield is a feature and not a bug. Which way do you want it? Either casters can't do everything themselves, meaning that melee gets bumped up to be comparable to them, or you get to have your 'casters are gods and non-casters should feel grateful to be able to eat the wet mud off of their gore-splattered boots' game. You can't argue both - pick one.

[demigodus]

Was that an option when the game first came out? If so I couldn't find it, and I haven't been purchasing many books since the initial release. Last summer when I was invited to play in a game none of the other players suggested it when I asked if it was possible.

Anyway, my point was not to trash 4E, just saying that some people actually prefer pacifist characters, I have played several enchanters, necromancers, bards, and healers with no ability to deal direct damage.

Sorry, typo, supposed to be pacifist healer. It is a feat you take, that increases your healing abilities, but stuns you for a round (if I remember right) if you dare deal damage to someone that is bloodied. I know you weren't trashing 4E, just saying that the option does kinda exist. Of course, it isn't considered optimal, because being a heal-bot is never considered optimal in DnD (though it can be a lot of fun).

Anyways, I first encountered it September~October of 2010 (when I started playing 4E, and table tops in general), and the earliest I can see from a quick google search of someone using the term "pacifist cleric" is around August of 2010, which, as far as I can tell is about 2 years after 4e first came out.

That said, personally, I prefer that "healer" not be a class description. Character description, I'm okay with, so long as people aren't pushed into the position. Class description, definitely not. Would prefer casters to have a tad bit more options then that.

[Drolyt]

I think some people are missing what the real problem with imbalance is. The fact is, most players build their characters around roleplaying. So four players create characters. One is a fan of Conan the Barbarian and plays a Human Barbarian with a high intelligence score, purchasing the abilities to read and write, speak several additional languages, and decipher script (all abilities Conan has), while giving him a sword and shield and tactical feats that work well in a military context, plus leadership (Conan was a general and a king for God's sake). The second thinks Sorcerer fluff is cool and decides to take it a step further by playing a Half Gold Dragon Sorcerer with Draconic Heritage feats and a spell selection geared towards emulating a True Dragon. The third really likes Durkon from The Order of the Stick and makes an essentially identical character. The fourth likes the fluff of the Incantatrix ("manipulating raw magical energy"), makes a Human Wizard/Incantatrix and takes several metamagic feats and feats that improve metamagic.

Got all that? The first three, despite making arguably interesting characters, are decidedly unoptimized. The fourth ends up way over optimized even for most high tier games despite never even trying to. The problem isn't that imbalance exists so much as it is almost impossible to prevent unless your group (or at least your DM) is very experienced and it punishes you for playing interesting characters.

[Cor1]

I am going to say that they should not rival the casters in their area of expertise, magic. But I also think that the casters should be divided up into various groups, so that an Evoker can throw around fire and lightning, but has problems with single targets or locked doors. Sure, he could burn through the door with a spell or six, but so could the fighter, and the thief can just pick it. And a necromancer or an enchanter would have a different area of ability. So I would argue that magic should be split up, with a jack-of-all-trades caster as well that has far reduced casting (I'm thinking Bard casting) but can cast spells from anybody's school. And the melee should be stronger, as well. More skills, more options of what to do in combat. I have no idea what to do with divine magic, though.

Exchanging versatility for raw power is what every optimizer does already.

Yeah, Elven Generalist - woo-hoo, all of one additional known spell per level instead of up to three specialist slots per spell level? Of course I'll take Focused High Master Specialist of <School> over that every time. And Incantatrix, which makes for FOUR barred schools in total. (Disclaimer : I LOVE pushing Aburation to Godmode.)

Or Blast-only, so-many-spell-slots, Warmage / Focused Specialist High Master of Conjuration / Ultimate Magus. It's nowhere near Tier 1, as all it can do is blast and a little utility (there's a reason I typed Conjuration instead of Evocation.)

So yeah, an I'MAGOD wizard usually has a little over half the generalist options, and are much better at their half of magic.

A really effective Wizard only counts on no-save, no-SR use clauses in his spells. Or takes Arcane Reabsorption, so he can be useful that time in four hundred when he Nat20s his SR check and the monster Nat1s its save. That means buffing party members and altering the landscape, not ending encounters all alone.

About Save-or-Dies : I don't use them. First, they're absolutely useless in the (admittedly high-level) campaigns I play, because spell resistance and bulls*t monster saves. Second, they're dull. Why end encounters in one round when it's so much more FUN to buff the BSF to GODMODE and watch him slaughter it from afar?

On that same idea, I can't remember last time I encountered a monster that my character's spells could possibly affect directly (more than one time in four hundreds). But I distinctly remember that time I buffed our Frenzied Berzerker with a personal selective antimagic field to go kill a God.


So, for melee, wat do? Well, what I said that eceryone ignored: SCALING feats (and maneuvers). Example : Two-Weapon Fighting should automatically progress to Improved Rapidstrike, one feat at a time, every two levels after you take TWF. And free maneuvers feats : Power Attack, Shock Trooper, Improved [Grapple / Unarmed Strike / Overrun / Bull rush / whatever] as class features at FIRST level. Otherwise, the martial training that martial characters are supposed to have followed means NOTHING.

I'd even make Shock Trooper and Power Attack both basic rules. By this logic, taking Power Attack as a feat would improve it automatically every, say, five levels, so that when you take it, the ratio becomes 1:2 and five levels later, 1:3, and five levels later, 1:4.



I think some people are missing what the real problem with imbalance is. The fact is, most players build their characters around roleplaying. So four players create characters. One is a fan of Conan the Barbarian and plays a Human Barbarian with a high intelligence score, purchasing the abilities to read and write, speak several additional languages, and decipher script (all abilities Conan has), while giving him a sword and shield and tactical feats that work well in a military context, plus leadership (Conan was a general and a king for God's sake). The second thinks Sorcerer fluff is cool and decides to take it a step further by playing a Half Gold Dragon Sorcerer with Draconic Heritage feats and a spell selection geared towards emulating a True Dragon. The third really likes Durkon from The Order of the Stick and makes an essentially identical character. The fourth likes the fluff of the Incantatrix ("manipulating raw magical energy"), makes a Human Wizard/Incantatrix and takes several metamagic feats and feats that improve metamagic.

Got all that? The first three, despite making arguably interesting characters, are decidedly unoptimized. The fourth ends up way over optimized even for most high tier games despite never even trying to. The problem isn't that imbalance exists so much as it is almost impossible to prevent unless your group (or at least your DM) is very experienced and it punishes you for playing interesting characters.

That's an interesting party. The Barbarian just has to take Frenzied Berzerker to never say die, the Sorc will get Shapechange by lvl 17 and BE a Dragon, the Durkon clone can pull off a decent ClericZilla and the Incantatrix will make the buffs last all day long.

That party is not an über-munchkinized one, but it could be very effective. The Sorc will probably be the Face when AlterSelfed to human form, the Barb will kill things dead, the Cleric will keep them alive and the Incantatrix, well with two other casters you can certainly use one.

What's the problem again? That is a good, effective party, with nice synergies and well-defined roles. Barbs can't fly? A Frenzied Berzerker on a Gold Dragon, can. And that's awesome, too.

So if the problem is that the Incantatrix could do everything better than all the others, yeah, no. MAD means she'lll never be the Face unless she burns her spell slots on Enchantment, limited spells/day means she can't kill things dead as reliably as an unkillable berzerker, and she can't heal unless she takes unoptimal options just to do that.

The optimal choice is a good synergy of capabilities in the group. An Incantatrix all alone is useless compared to a Master Specialist. I know, I tried. It's the best option that exists if you have an OTHER caster in the party. An Incantatrix is the best at augmenting arcane power, that's true, but gets exponentially better when augmenting the others' arcane power.

[Drolyt]

That's an interesting party. The Barbarian just has to take Frenzied Berzerker to never say die, the Sorc will get Shapechange by lvl 17 and BE a Dragon, the Durkon clone can pull off a decent ClericZilla and the Incantatrix will make the buffs last all day long.

That party is not an über-munchkinized one, but it could be very effective. The Sorc will probably be the Face when AlterSelfed to human form, the Barb will kill things dead, the Cleric will keep them alive and the Incantatrix, well with two other casters you can certainly use one.

What's the problem again? That is a good, effective party, with nice synergies and well-defined roles. Barbs can't fly? A Frenzied Berzerker on a Gold Dragon, can. And that's awesome, too.

So if the problem is that the Incantatrix could do everything better than all the others, yeah, no. MAD means she'lll never be the Face unless she burns her spell slots on Enchantment, limited spells/day means she can't kill things dead as reliably as an unkillable berzerker, and she can't heal unless she takes unoptimal options just to do that.

The optimal choice is a good synergy of capabilities in the group. An Incantatrix all alone is useless compared to a Master Specialist. I know, I tried. It's the best option that exists if you have an OTHER caster in the party. An Incantatrix is the best at augmenting arcane power, that's true, but gets exponentially better when augmenting the others' arcane power.
Okay, my example wasn't the best. I wanted an unbalanced party, and I succeeded, but you are right that it would probably play okay. On the other hand, while Clerics are fairly effective out of the box, the Barbarian still needs some optimization to work, and the Half-Dragon Sorcerer is going to have problems because of the Level Adjustment no matter what he does, though he could still contribute if played right. In both cases you need experienced players, and you shouldn't need to know the system inside and out to make a concept playable.

[Gwendol]

Switch your Conan to a gnome/elf monk and you got something close to useless.

But yes, Cor1 has it right: the feats don't scale with level which makes playing a warrior/rogue/monk type character essentially an E6 in a full level progression game.

[Eldest]

Exchanging versatility for raw power is what every optimizer does already.

Yeah, Elven Generalist - woo-hoo, all of one additional known spell per level instead of up to three specialist slots per spell level? Of course I'll take Focused High Master Specialist of <School> over that every time. And Incantatrix, which makes for FOUR barred schools in total. (Disclaimer : I LOVE pushing Aburation to Godmode.)

Or Blast-only, so-many-spell-slots, Warmage / Focused Specialist High Master of Conjuration / Ultimate Magus. It's nowhere near Tier 1, as all it can do is blast and a little utility (there's a reason I typed Conjuration instead of Evocation.)

So yeah, an I'MAGOD wizard usually has a little over half the generalist options, and are much better at their half of magic.

A really effective Wizard only counts on no-save, no-SR use clauses in his spells. Or takes Arcane Reabsorption, so he can be useful that time in four hundred when he Nat20s his SR check and the monster Nat1s its save. That means buffing party members and altering the landscape, not ending encounters all alone.

I fail to see the point of the Elven Generalist point: I was suggesting new classes, on the order of the Dread Necromancer, Warmage (buffed a bit), and Beguiler. So have a class that specializes in Enchanting and Illusions, but can't cast outside of that, one that specializes in Evoking and Abjuaration, a Conjurer, a Necromancer, a Transmuter. And since all of these would be spontanious with large lists, you can make sure that none of the spells they get are "I win" buttons. Then, for people who want to have a generalist character, make a class with the spell progression of a bard, but the mechanics of a wizard. For the melee, I would suggest more scaling feats, as some people have suggested, and more skill points and uses of skills. And just better quality feats in general.

[Cor1]

Okay, my example wasn't the best. I wanted an unbalanced party, and I succeeded, but you are right that it would probably play okay. On the other hand, while Clerics are fairly effective out of the box, the Barbarian still needs some optimization to work, and the Half-Dragon Sorcerer is going to have problems because of the Level Adjustment no matter what he does, though he could still contribute if played right. In both cases you need experienced players, and you shouldn't need to know the system inside and out to make a concept playable.

The thing is, D&D is a team game. You're not supposed to solve every problem with magic, because that's just inefficient, as you have limited spell slots. (Until Persistent Time Stop, yeah, I know. I used to do that, myself; not to solo encounters, but to refresh the capabilities I had to make the party win them.)

Spring Pouncing Power Attack works any number of times a day. Spells are more precious. Fireball works once (until Spell Resistance, then it stops working at all), but a raging Barbarian, immunized to poison by the Cleric, in a Forcecage filled with Cloudkill by the Wizard, having found the way in the first place by using the Half-Dragon Sorc's Enchantments on NPCs, that's good teamplay that efficiently kills things dead, with three spells instead of however many you'd waste doing it by pure arcane power.


So, theoretical power levels and optimization are one thing (okay, two things), but efficient teamplay is something completely different, and much more satisfying for every player, character and DM.



I fail to see the point of the Elven Generalist point: I was suggesting new classes, on the order of the Dread Necromancer, Warmage (buffed a bit), and Beguiler. So have a class that specializes in Enchanting and Illusions, but can't cast outside of that, one that specializes in Evoking and Abjuaration, a Conjurer, a Necromancer, a Transmuter. And since all of these would be spontanious with large lists, you can make sure that none of the spells they get are "I win" buttons. Then, for people who want to have a generalist character, make a class with the spell progression of a bard, but the mechanics of a wizard. For the melee, I would suggest more scaling feats, as some people have suggested, and more skill points and uses of skills. And just better quality feats in general.

The point of the Elven Generalist point is that compared to specialists, they suck.

But Beguilers/Warmages/DreadNecs suck so much more it's not even remotely funny. I want to be able to do a little bit of everything, and one thing very very well, if only for verisimilitude.
As for the "everyone caster is spontaneous", it kills the concept of the meticulously prepared wizard. Psions do that, yes, and better than the clunky Vancian system would ever allow. Know what's the first thing I do to Psion character sheets? Include methods to 1. recharge psi points and 2. change known powers as needed. One power and a half per level? Never.

For the "I win button" problem, well, a it's a bad idea for a Wizard to be using them in the first place. With so few spell slots per day, and all of *one effect* in each, it's much better to prepare to buff the party in all the various ways that are pertinent for the day, and prepare to alter the landscape with left over slots, than "twin split repeat empowered Energy Drain kills the boss... oh woe, resisted... second one? saved... I'm now useless."

[mcv]

I haven't read the entire thread yet, but I'd like to add this:

Comparing fighters and wizards is (or should be) comparing apples and oranges. A fighter is never going to open a portal to different planes (or is he? more on that later). Wizards bend reality, fighters hit stuff. But when wizards can outfight fighters, it's a problem. Melee should be the fighter's domain. If the wizard kills all enemies before the fighter can get close, there's something wrong. If the wizard always ends up taking out the big bad, while the fighter just wards of mooks, that's not much fun either. The fighter has the right to shine in combat. He has to do more damage, and be harder to stop.

Of course being all martial does have some benefits. At lower levels, a Vancian D&D wizard is pretty limited by his number of spells per day, whereas a fighter can just keep fighting (as long as he has healing available). At higher levels, however, a wizard has enough spells to last him all day, whereas a fighter kinda stops getting cooler.

Let's compare fighters to some of the greatest fighters from mythology. Hercules did some really amazing deeds that were as far beyond mundane as what any wizard could do. Granted, he was a half-god, but at epic levels, that's what PCs are. And maybe martial characters can't open portals to other planes, but Orpheus did go to Hades and returned.

Some Keltic heroes (I forget their names) could also do some truly outlandish stuff. One could throw a spear at someone, leap onto the spear as it flew towards its target, jump off and decapitate the target just before the spear hit. Amazingly, reality-defying cool. Not terribly useful in an adventuring context, since the guy was going to be dead either way, but idea of amazing martial-but-reality-defying feats could be a way to make fighters better.

I'm afraid I don't know as much about Conan as I should, but my impression is that he is basically unstoppable. His saving throws might be through the roof. You might slow him down, but he will get there. Perhaps high level fighters should just have insanely high saving throws. If a powerful spell disables the party, the fighter is going to be the first to resist it. Perhaps he'll be able to shrug off spells, maybe he gets damage reduction against spell damage.

In Earthdawn, and RPG where everything is magical, Warriors eventually learn the ability to strike into and through Astral Space, making it easier for them to fight non-corporeal creatures, or bypass certain defenses. Their blows will connect, no matter what your defenses are.

On the other hand, perhaps you really prefer fighters to remain regular guys, and don't want them to have earth-shattering abilities. That's fine, but then you shouldn't give them to wizards either. Limit the super powerful spells. Perhaps high-level spells should really cost the wizard something more than just that daily spell slot.

Finally, I'd like to share something from a session two days ago. We're in a dungeon, already had a major fight against who we assumed was the main villain of the campaign. But there's a lot more dungeon left, and we know there's at least one important baddie in there (because he fled earlier and we haven't found him yet). We're already badly hut, took enormous amounts of Wisdom damage, used up many of our high level spells, our single fighter had just been retired (replaced with a second cleric), and our combat-oriented rogue is absent. But if we rest, our enemies get reinforcements, and we lose our strategic advantage. So we press on. Next room, filled with people who seem to be aware we're coming, my level 7 Druid uses his last lvl 4 spell to summon Dire Wolves just as someone else opens the door. 2 Dire wolves storm in, and kill everybody. Every turn, 2 baddies die. The entire party is running just to keep up. I also had my last lvl 3 spell (Call Lightning) active. I'm not a D&D veteran, so I hadn't really seen a single character overshadow the entire rest of the party like that. With just two spells. One baddie fled into the next room where we encountered a demon, and the Dire Wolves still did most of that battle too. Once the Dire Wolves poofed out of existence, we fled.

On the one hand it was really convenient that a single spell could do so much, but on the other, I now understand what people mean when they talk about Druids being too powerful. Had we still had a fighter in the group, he couldn't have contributed anything useful, being slower and less powerful than the Dire Wolves. Against the demon, though, a fighter with a cold iron weapon would have helped a lot. But we don't have any cold iron.

[Eldest]

The point of the Elven Generalist point is that compared to specialists, they suck.

But Beguilers/Warmages/DreadNecs suck so much more it's not even remotely funny. I want to be able to do a little bit of everything, and one thing very very well, if only for verisimilitude.
As for the "everyone caster is spontaneous", it kills the concept of the meticulously prepared wizard. Psions do that, yes, and better than the clunky Vancian system would ever allow. Know what's the first thing I do to Psion character sheets? Include methods to 1. recharge psi points and 2. change known powers as needed. One power and a half per level? Never.

For the "I win button" problem, well, a it's a bad idea for a Wizard to be using them in the first place. With so few spell slots per day, and all of *one effect* in each, it's much better to prepare to buff the party in all the various ways that are pertinent for the day, and prepare to alter the landscape with left over slots, than "twin split repeat empowered Energy Drain kills the boss... oh woe, resisted... second one? saved... I'm now useless."

Of course the lesser casters are less powerful and versatile than the Wizard: there is little that is more powerful or versatile. And that is what I would like changed. The three I named are thought of as where the best-made melee classes are, and I think that is a good balance point. But there is where we are going to disagree then. One think I will clarify, though, is that the "I win" button that I meant is not a save-or-die. It's a spell that has no way of preventing it from working, and will hinder the enemy enough to be change the balance of the encounter. Solid Fog would be my best example of this. Another possible one would be Grease.

[Cor1]

On the other hand, perhaps you really prefer fighters to remain regular guys, and don't want them to have earth-shattering abilities. That's fine, but then you shouldn't give them to wizards either. Limit the super powerful spells. Perhaps high-level spells should really cost the wizard something more than just that daily spell slot. --snip--


Yes, that's called E6 rules. I've heard people enjoy that. (I don't, but I'm not even saying that it's badwrongfun -I keep that one for 4e- it's just not my type of game.)


--snip--
On the one hand it was really convenient that a single spell could do so much, but on the other, I now understand what people mean when they talk about Druids being too powerful. Had we still had a fighter in the group, he couldn't have contributed anything useful, being slower and less powerful than the Dire Wolves. Against the demon, though, a fighter with a cold iron weapon would have helped a lot. But we don't have any cold iron.

The Fighter who's less powerful than the equivalent-level Druid's summons must have been built dead wrong. Less powerful than a Wilshaped druid? Then the Fighter was seriously lacking in magic items. How comes an animal could do more damage than the trained melee guy? DM won't let PCs have nice things, like the tools of their trade?

For the Cold Iron thing, that's the reason I always make sure that my characters can create stuff from spell slots or psi points, so when someone needs something, they can craft it. As in, "No weapon? Well, <wall of X> <creation> <fabricate> problem solved <dismiss wall>".


Also, I think you underestimate the implication of the spells/day limit. Wizards cut themelves off every other spell for every spell that they prepare. They're versatile, that's true, but they're not flexible. They can face any situation whatever... IF they have prepared for it. Especially at high levels, when there are so many more options than available spell slots. (Also, Spell Resistance. It's there to remind Wizards exactly why they still need fighty types.)



Of course the lesser casters are less powerful and versatile than the Wizard: there is little that is more powerful or versatile. And that is what I would like changed. The three I named are thought of as where the best-made melee classes are, and I think that is a good balance point. But there is where we are going to disagree then.

I'm agreeing to disagree on that point. I meant to say, it's ineffective to be able to cast every spell in the game, or even on your class list, because it prevents casting only half of them, but efficiently, instead. Like Master Specialist Evokers have ways to flat-out ignore SR and immunities at high level, and without that ability, Evocation spells are useless past lvl15.


One think I will clarify, though, is that the "I win" button that I meant is not a save-or-die. It's a spell that has no way of preventing it from working, and will hinder the enemy enough to be change the balance of the encounter. Solid Fog would be my best example of this. Another possible one would be Grease.

Aw yes, Solid Fog, spell I love to use, so that I can Mastery-of-form it to make a tunnel in which my BSF will charge the nearly-immobile enemy. That's what I'm talking about with "No save, no SR, makes the rest of the party win the encounter."

And that is, IMO, a Good Thing (TM). But, I find that a Wizard who Solid Fogs the enemy and then summons a swarm of incorporeal undead to kill it dead, is both a bad team player and a stupid wizard who wasted a spell on doing the fighty-type's job.

Edit : partially ninja'd. Oh well that means y ideas must be solid enough for several people to have them then :-)

[Psyren]

@ Lord_Gareth:


I believe you missed the essence of my point - there can be less viable builds without necessitating the existence of soul-crushingly useless builds. If you want to be significantly weaker than everyone else, start at a lower level, or with lower stats, or swear a vow of poverty or something. You don't need to force entire character archetypes to press their faces into the floor and choke on the dirt to get a 'more challenging' build available.

"Significantly weaker than everyone else" depends on the archetypes everyone else is using, doesn't it? Just because I'm a Hospitaler Paladin, say, doesn't mean I'm the weakest link - you can't make that determination in a vacuum.

You're still being hyperbolic. "Choke on the dirt?" "Soul-crushingly useless?" This isn't going to happen unless your players are actively trying to overshadow one another, in which case your table has problems that blaming on the system won't help.


Elves, half-elves, halflings and everyone else that didn't get a pity bone thrown at them don't, though.

Those three races don't also have net +2 stats? News to me :smallconfused:


So in one post you say casters should have to be shielded by the party, and in another you say that the fact that casters need no shield is a feature and not a bug. Which way do you want it? Either casters can't do everything themselves, meaning that melee gets bumped up to be comparable to them, or you get to have your 'casters are gods and non-casters should feel grateful to be able to eat the wet mud off of their gore-splattered boots' game. You can't argue both - pick one.

This is a false dichotomy. To not need a meatshield's help, casters have to expend resources on defense (spell slots and items spent on flight, incorporeality, AC, miss chance etc.) - and even then, their buffs can be dispelled or countered (e.g. the enemy is also flying, incorporeal etc.) Not to mention, the actions required to put those buffs into place when a fight starts.

Getting the meatshield to cover you, meanwhile, takes no spells and no actions - you can put those resources into other areas. And this is important, because every action you take has an opportunity cost, whether you're a wizard or a commoner. Yeah you have the power to take over the rogue's job if necessary (via a Knock spell), but that's one less Alter Self or Mirror Image prepared when you might need it.

The fun of the game comes from meaningful choice, and casters (by design) have the most choices. Do I concentrate more on offense, and rely on the other party members' protection? Do I concentrate more on defense, and use the party to mop up? Or do I try to focus on a mix of both, leaving myself vulnerable if events don't match my expectations?

Lower-tier classes have less choice, and that is attractive to some players. Analysis paralysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis) is a thing, and having a few classes that get away from that is very helpful to ease players into a system, or even just for players that want to keep things simple. Once they achieve a higher level of system mastery, they can move on to higher-tier classes with more options.

Also, what Cor1 said regarding teamwork.
Just because the casters can do anyone's job, doesn't mean they should. The system allows for it because it makes for a richer fantasy world, but the game also assumes a baseline maturity level among the players. Groups that lack it are better off playing a video game.

[Mystify]

Also, what Cor1 said regarding teamwork.
Just because the casters can do anyone's job, doesn't mean they should. The system allows for it because it makes for a richer fantasy world, but the game also assumes a baseline maturity level among the players. Groups that lack it are better off playing a video game.
It can happen accidentally. And just because people can correct for the issue, doesn't mean its not a problem. Having to correct for it proves that there is a problem.Lots of people have fun by making a character as powerful as they can. Telling them "Woah, slow down there buddy. Your animal companion is outshining the fighter as a mere side effect of what you are doing" means that the player has to limit their fun and what they are trying to do in order to correct a problem with the system. If the person wants to make a druid that wild shapes and buffs themselves, and in doing so passes on powerful buffs to their animal companion, the problem is not in the druid's playstyle, it is that the fighter can't keep up by himself. The only way for the player to correct that is to throw the buffs on the fighter instead of himself, and now the druid is playing a buffer instead of the raging bear they wanted to. Not to mention that this is a qualitatively weaker choice, as now only 1 person is benefiting from the buff instead of 2, and since they aren't the more powerful self-buffs, they are weaker effects.
That is a problem with the system, not the player's maturity.

[Clawhound]

Aye.

In most games I've played in, players give each other their niches.

"The rogue already can pick locks, so I really don't need knock except for emergencies, so I'll put that on a scroll for a rainy day." The wizard then optimizes for a different area. You see, knock may be strictly better than pick locks, or smash the chest, but there's always opportunity costs in choosing spells, so most wizards choose spell areas where they are most needed.

The same is true of money. A wand of knock might be cheap, but what other wands are competing for that money? Is the party truly hampered without it, or just inconvenienced?

There's also an arms race. Any time the party gets too efficient at solving problems, the DM invents new types of problems. If locks become trivial, the DM will invent new types of locks, or just stop bothering with locks.

[Mystify]

Aye.

In most games I've played in, players give each other their niches.

"The rogue already can pick locks, so I really don't need knock except for emergencies, so I'll put that on a scroll for a rainy day." The wizard then optimizes for a different area. You see, knock may be strictly better than pick locks, or smash the chest, but there's always opportunity costs in choosing spells, so most wizards choose spell areas where they are most needed.

The same is true of money. A wand of knock might be cheap, but what other wands are competing for that money? Is the party truly hampered without it, or just inconvenienced?

There's also an arms race. Any time the party gets too efficient at solving problems, the DM invents new types of problems. If locks become trivial, the DM will invent new types of locks, or just stop bothering with locks.
The opportunity costs may be relevant at low levels, but it quickly become irrelevant. And if you stop running into that kind of obstacle altogether, then the person who put character build into it is rendered irrelveant.

and it is very skill that a 4.5k item renders that entire aspect of the rogue irrelevant. People will spend more on a useful skill than it takes to make open lock pointless. That is a fundamental system flaw right there.

[Psyren]

It can happen accidentally.

The chances of which are vastly overstated on gaming forums. Real actual groups, that really actually care about each other's fun? Not nearly so much.

And before you quote it again, I'm aware of Oberoni. I'm not saying the system isn't flawed, I'm saying the flaws really don't matter in the grand scheme; certainly they don't matter as much as CharOp would have you believe they do.


Telling them "Woah, slow down there buddy. Your animal companion is outshining the fighter as a mere side effect of what you are doing" means that the player has to limit their fun and what they are trying to do in order to correct a problem with the system.

That is most definitely a player problem. If one player's fun is dependent on outshining the others', and not doing so is so prohibitively "limiting" to them, then I reiterate there are plenty of videogames that person can play instead.


If the person wants to make a druid that wild shapes and buffs themselves, and in doing so passes on powerful buffs to their animal companion, the problem is not in the druid's playstyle, it is that the fighter can't keep up by himself. The only way for the player to correct that is to throw the buffs on the fighter instead of himself, and now the druid is playing a buffer instead of the raging bear they wanted to. Not to mention that this is a qualitatively weaker choice, as now only 1 person is benefiting from the buff instead of 2, and since they aren't the more powerful self-buffs, they are weaker effects. That is a problem with the system, not the player's maturity.

First off, you're right; Fighters can't keep up with Druids. And yes, Druids being team players rather than gods is a weaker option.

To which I ask you - why is personal power your primary concern in a team game?

The Druid using and even buffing his animal companion does not mean putting the fighter out of a job, unless the Druid doesn't care about his participation in the game. It can aid, it can flank, it can grapple, it can trip. And so can the raging bear, should the Druid go that route. Again, active malice/immaturity is required. And even if the accident happens once, how many times will it happen in a reasonable and mature group?

If CharOp were the reality, nobody would enjoy PF; somehow, it has not only achieved popularity, it is actually beating the much more balanced 4e in sales. And it's free. Clearly there is significant disconnect between theory and practice going on.

[Cor1]

--snip--
The only way for the player to correct that is to throw the buffs on the fighter instead of himself, and now the druid is playing a buffer instead of the raging bear they wanted to. Not to mention that this is a qualitatively weaker choice, as now only 1 person is benefiting from the buff instead of 2, and since they aren't the more powerful self-buffs, they are weaker effects.
That is a problem with the system, not the player's maturity.

Yeah, I'm still wondering why the Personal buffs are THAT much more better than Touch ones. And so very, very few options (like, say, the -retardedly limited- Spellguard) to plop them on the characters who actually need them...

Shapechanged Fighter is efficient Fighter : a Solar with PC-level items and feat chains is suddenly relevant in combat, I'd wager.

[Eldest]

I'm agreeing to disagree on that point. I meant to say, it's ineffective to be able to cast every spell in the game, or even on your class list, because it prevents casting only half of them, but efficiently, instead. Like Master Specialist Evokers have ways to flat-out ignore SR and immunities at high level, and without that ability, Evocation spells are useless past lvl15.

Did you mean by the bolded part the same as below?


Also, I think you underestimate the implication of the spells/day limit. Wizards cut themelves off every other spell for every spell that they prepare. They're versatile, that's true, but they're not flexible. They can face any situation whatever... IF they have prepared for it. Especially at high levels, when there are so many more options than available spell slots. (Also, Spell Resistance. It's there to remind Wizards exactly why they still need fighty types.)

In addition, yes, as part of splitting up the wizard into various school based classes, they whould have class features that make the weaker schools better. Like ways for Evokers to swap energy type and blast through some spell resistance.

[nightwyrm]

Yeah, I'm still wondering why the Personal buffs are THAT much more better than Touch ones.

Because range personal is less versatile compared to range touch and thus a drawback. If two buff spells does exactly the same thing but one is personal and the other is touch, the touch spell is gonna be a higher level spell.

[Clawhound]

The opportunity costs may be relevant at low levels, but it quickly become irrelevant. And if you stop running into that kind of obstacle altogether, then the person who put character build into it is rendered irrelveant.

and it is very skill that a 4.5k item renders that entire aspect of the rogue irrelevant. People will spend more on a useful skill than it takes to make open lock pointless. That is a fundamental system flaw right there.

I never said that the system isn't flawed. As has been repeated by many folks, spells that let you make another character irrelevant are big problems. There are far too many spells that simply bypass the problems.

A spell should improve your chances in a d20 system, not replace those chances. A character with a skill should always be the best target for a spell that helps a skill. Just removing or rewriting the spells that bypass challenges eliminates a huge swath of problems. Alternately, moving them up in level also helps.

For example, at what level should a rogue get "open any door automatically"? That's sounds level 10+, but a wizard gets that at level 3. Do you see that issue? A wizard also gets "absolute hide in plain sight" called "invisibility." Again, the level is far too low. "Absolute Climb" is "levitation" or "fly." That's been a challenge killer since 1st edition. "+2 actions per round" is "Summon Monster." The list goes on and on.

In this case, much of the system actually works well enough. The problem is that the spells are mispriced.

[Karoht]

One proposal I saw to attempt to reconcile the differences between casters and melee, was make one the more reliable option and make the other a lot less.

Wizards. If they're flinging around the Save or Sucks and Battlefield Control like they are supposed to, then there is a lot of potential dice rolling for Saves and DC's and whatnot. If those DC's were lower, the Wizard casting something like Baleful Polymorph becomes much more of a risky prospect. If it's easier to Reflex save from a Fireball, odds are less damage will be dealt overall. If the damage is less reliable, if the debuffs are less reliable, that is considerable. And if things like Spell Resistance are more important as well, magic just becomes much less likely to have an effect. Heck, one could use Spellcraft checks to make magic harder to cast, to the point where casting a 9th level spell could still be a tricky proposition. Or make the casting time longer for many spells. Then there are limitations to schools of magic.

Meanwhile a Melee needs to be much MORE reliable than they are now. It's like Han Solo's opinion of the force, 'fancy tricks are no match for a good blaster.' Or as the meme goes, "Force schmorce, I got me a Wookie."
The reliable and capable fighter who trusts in his Steel and his Muscle to get the job done. But as it has been said in other threads, you have to really drag melee uphill to bring it up to what the casters can do. No matter how much we nerf the casters from the above list or other suggestions, it won't change the fact that at the end of the day the caster is still able to bend reality in ways that the melee probably can't touch, and I sincerely doubt that items could make up the gap or bring it much closer.


@MMO's
As much as I am a fan of these games, I really do think that there just isn't a comparison. They are designed from the onset these days to have all classes relatively equal. One can not say the same of most of the tabletop RPG's, particularly those as long in the tooth as DnD. Heck, I'm pretty sure that DDO, the Dungeons and Dragons MMO was balanced fairly, rather than having Wizards who would push one button to cast one spell and trivialize an encounter. Though, I could point to other types of video game and say 'look, the magic totally trumps anything the melee could ever do' but again I feel that there isn't a whole lot of point in comparing video games to tabletop.
I'm not sure why pen and paper/tabletop RPG's are so different in this respect, other than just a design philosophy to center the world around magic, and thus make magic a very important factor in combat as well.

[Mystify]

The chances of which are vastly overstated on gaming forums. Real actual groups, that really actually care about each other's fun? Not nearly so much.

Yeah, I am talking about real groups. I have seen it happen several times.



And before you quote it again, I'm aware of Oberoni. I'm not saying the system isn't flawed, I'm saying the flaws really don't matter in the grand scheme; certainly they don't matter as much as CharOp would have you believe they do.

And again, I see these flaws in practice. I've seen games where they weren't an issue, but you can't just dismiss them as a mostly theoretical occurrence


That is most definitely a player problem. If one player's fun is dependent on outshining the others', and not doing so is so prohibitively "limiting" to them, then I reiterate there are plenty of videogames that person can play instead.

Its not about outshining anybody. Its about playing the character they want to play. They want to play a guy who turns into a bear and kills things. He can be perfectly happy with the fighter alongside him kicking just as much behind as him. But he doesn't want to be the one ensuring that he does. The fighter should be able to do it on his own merits.



First off, you're right; Fighters can't keep up with Druids. And yes, Druids being team players rather than gods is a weaker option.

To which I ask you - why is personal power your primary concern in a team game?

Because a lot of people find it funner to directly go up and rip things to shreds? Why doing that instead of buffing people the wrong way to play? And if the team's power is the concern, then the fighter should bow to the stronger team option that the druid buffs himself+companion. The issue is that the fighter is not contributing. Everyone else has to weaken themselves, and the overall team, to help the fighter. They have to do things that are less fun to hep the fighter have fun. That is the problem.


The Druid using and even buffing his animal companion does not mean putting the fighter out of a job, unless the Druid doesn't care about his participation in the game. It can aid, it can flank, it can grapple, it can trip. And so can the raging bear, should the Druid go that route. Again, active malice/immaturity is required. And even if the accident happens once, how many times will it happen in a reasonable and mature group?
Yes, I am going to put effort into being a reaving bear of destruction, and then spend my turn aiding the fighter. Thats a satisfying solution.
You are pretty much saying that the druid shouldn't be able to play his character to its fullest because the fighter is not as good at his job, and are pinning the issue on the druid. The guy playing the druid has not done anything wrong. Not wanting to hold yourself back so the other people are not overshone is not immaturity. That it is even an issue is a deep problem with the system. The druid should not be punished for choosing a character concept that the system made mechanically stronger. doubly so if the reason he chose that option had nothing to do with the mechanical advantage.
I often find myself in that situation. I take a character concept,ignoring any mechanical advantage or disadvantage for it, build it, and end up outclassing the rest of the party. I didn't intend to outclass everyone, and outclassing everyone is not part of my fun. But playing my character properly is. If I have to play my character poorly so I'm not outclassing everybody, then I'm not having fun. I might as well stop at character creation, since leveraging the character effectively is part of the game.
Its like playing a chess against a little kid. You can't actually play the game; beating him isn't challenging or rewarding. You just toss out cards and let him win. Spending time with the kid might be fun, but the game itself won't be. You should be playing against someone of equal skill. If there is a lineup of potential opponents, and there is a little kid and a well-matched opponent, then you should be given the well-matched opponent. D&D is just as likely to give you the kid.
You are saying that because the system made my character mechanically superior, that I should stop playing the game, and spend my time coddling the other player so he feels useful. I want to take my set of abilities, and figure out the best tactics to use to bring them to bear, and how to work with my team to maximum effect.
The best thing I can do is give myself some crippling disability, like being blind, and work to overcome that obstacle, just to keep in line with the others. Then I can still have something to work against and my actual power level is held in check. But I shouldn't have to hold myself back to make up for the flaws in the other characters. It should not be that unreasonable to expect the other characters to be able to operate on the same level, and work together with me for good teamwork. Its fun to combo your ability with someone else's to great effect. Its great when you can high-five your teammate due to well-executed teamwork. Its not fun to outshine everyone, or to be outshone, so the system should be designed so that is not so easy to do. The game works much better when everyone is balanced. That should not require acrobatics and trying to coordinate between everyone to make sure you have similar tiers and everything. It should just happen because that is how the game was designed.


If CharOp were the reality, nobody would enjoy PF; somehow, it has not only achieved popularity, it is actually beating the much more balanced 4e in sales. And it's free. Clearly there is significant disconnect between theory and practice going on.
I like pathfinder FOR the charop. I look at all the new options and see lots of cool things I can do with it. Summoner looks like a blast, partly because there is lots of room to optimize with it. I don't think your theory holds up. The problem is that 4e achieves balance by sacrificing other aspects of the game that people care about more. For instance, character flexibility. It is very hard to customize, or optimize, a character in 4e. You pretty much take one of their per-sanctioned options, and thats it. Balance is not the only aspect of the game that is important; pinning the entire success or failure of the game on that one aspect is fallacious at best.

[Clawhound]

If CharOp were the reality, nobody would enjoy PF; somehow, it has not only achieved popularity, it is actually beating the much more balanced 4e in sales. And it's free. Clearly there is significant disconnect between theory and practice going on.

In addition to CharOp, we should throw in StoryOp or FunOp, or some other type of Op. The thing is, not all players optimize for the same things.

For a CharOp, if you can do something well, you should.

For a TeamOp, letting other characters shine their most is their thing, even if you could easily do better than them.

Neither is "right or wrong." This is a difference in play style or group style. CharOp is just one style amid the others. If we were to count all the CharOp players in the game, I doubt that we would break 10% of the playing population. If we were to count folks who op for story or escapism, we would hit 50%+.

Maybe we need to ask, "Where and how does each class fit inside the story?" That's some that the mentioned Ars Magica answered. That's something that D&D needs to mind, as that's their majority.

[Tyndmyr]

Okay, my example wasn't the best. I wanted an unbalanced party, and I succeeded, but you are right that it would probably play okay. On the other hand, while Clerics are fairly effective out of the box, the Barbarian still needs some optimization to work, and the Half-Dragon Sorcerer is going to have problems because of the Level Adjustment no matter what he does, though he could still contribute if played right. In both cases you need experienced players, and you shouldn't need to know the system inside and out to make a concept playable.

That actually looks like many parties I've been in.

Also, LA buyoff is great. Half Dragon is a decent gish template as well. He could totally make a solid char with that.

Yes, it's not perfectly balanced, but as a party, it works, and everyone can gleefully contribute. That's fine in my eyes.

[mcv]

The Fighter who's less powerful than the equivalent-level Druid's summons must have been built dead wrong. Less powerful than a Wilshaped druid? Then the Fighter was seriously lacking in magic items. How comes an animal could do more damage than the trained melee guy? DM won't let PCs have nice things, like the tools of their trade?
Is it that trivial for a level 7 fighter to get +13 to hit and +12 damage? That's what summoned dire wolves have, and that's what we needed to overcome the demon's high AC and damage reduction. In fact, a druid can summon dire wolves at level 5, so a level 5 fighter would have to be stronger than that. Is he? I'm no expert at fighter optimization, so maybe it's easier than I think. I don't know the stats of our ex-fighter, but I believe that player was pretty experienced with D&D.


For the Cold Iron thing, that's the reason I always make sure that my characters can create stuff from spell slots or psi points, so when someone needs something, they can craft it. As in, "No weapon? Well, <wall of X> <creation> <fabricate> problem solved <dismiss wall>".
How does that work? Can you really just create a Cold Iron weapon on the fly, in the middle of combat? How does that work?


Also, I think you underestimate the implication of the spells/day limit. Wizards cut themelves off every other spell for every spell that they prepare. They're versatile, that's true, but they're not flexible. They can face any situation whatever... IF they have prepared for it. Especially at high levels, when there are so many more options than available spell slots.
It can always happen that you don't have the exact spell you need prepared, but for a druid, any useless spell can be turned into a Summon Nature's Ally. Don't need Air Walk? Summon a couple of dire wolves. What really limits spell casters is simply the limit to the total number of spells they can cast. At some point, you're out, and if you still need to keep going, you've got a problem. That's the only situation where martial characters can continue to shine. But having spell casters drop from insanely powerful to completely useless isn't much fun either. It would be nice if they could hang somewhere in the middle.


(Also, Spell Resistance. It's there to remind Wizards exactly why they still need fighty types.)
I think our demon had spell resistance. Still, spells usually succeeded, and tended to be a lot more effective than simple melee attacks.

[Psyren]

@ Mystify

Yeah, I am talking about real groups. I have seen it happen several times.
...
And again, I see these flaws in practice. I've seen games where they weren't an issue, but you can't just dismiss them as a mostly theoretical occurrence

Whereas I haven't, except in very niche cases.
We can trade anecdotes all day, but the numbers don't lie; these issues, glaringly obvious as they may be on internet forums, are clearly not problematic enough in practice to hurt the game's playability.


Its not about outshining anybody. Its about playing the character they want to play. They want to play a guy who turns into a bear and kills things. He can be perfectly happy with the fighter alongside him kicking just as much behind as him. But he doesn't want to be the one ensuring that he does. The fighter should be able to do it on his own merits.

You're thoroughly mistaken about the fighter. His problem isn't that he can't kick ass - his problem is that's all he can do.

Which means one thing - if that's all his player wants to do too, then there is no problem.
And when the player finally wants to do more, there are other classes for that (like Magus or Binder.)

As far as "ensuring he does" - why are buffs the druid's sole responsibility? Are we talking about a 2-man game, where the other man is a raging bear druid? Seems to me that would be a foolish scenario to be a fighter in regardless.


Because a lot of people find it funner to directly go up and rip things to shreds? Why doing that instead of buffing people the wrong way to play?

Nobody is saying the Druid can't melee if he wants to. But he can do that without putting the fighter out of a job, unless the Druid and the DM are actively working to marginalize him.

It would take a lot of insensitivity and/or obliviousness to repeatedly overshadow a fellow player by accident.


And if the team's power is the concern, then the fighter should bow to the stronger team option that the druid buffs himself+companion. The issue is that the fighter is not contributing. Everyone else has to weaken themselves, and the overall team, to help the fighter. They have to do things that are less fun to hep the fighter have fun. That is the problem.
...
You are pretty much saying that the druid shouldn't be able to play his character to its fullest because the fighter is not as good at his job, and are pinning the issue on the druid. The guy playing the druid has not done anything wrong. Not wanting to hold yourself back so the other people are not overshone is not immaturity. That it is even an issue is a deep problem with the system. The druid should not be punished for choosing a character concept that the system made mechanically stronger. doubly so if the reason he chose that option had nothing to do with the mechanical advantage.

If "Playing your character to your fullest" is all the Druid wants to do, why not go all the way to Pun-pun? Anything less is not playing his character to its fullest.

Nobody is punishing the druid for being mechanically strong. Requesting that he be a team player instead of hogging the glory is only "punishment" is his player has no interest in cooperative play.

And he doesn't have to be buff-bot to achieve that goal either. All the contributions I mentioned for the animal companion (flanking, grappling, tripping etc.) apply equally well to the raging bear. Unless he wants all the enemies for himself (which goes back to the maturity point) then they should have no problem dividing and conquering so that everyone has fun and still gets to do what they want.


I often find myself in that situation. I take a character concept,ignoring any mechanical advantage or disadvantage for it, build it, and end up outclassing the rest of the party. I didn't intend to outclass everyone, and outclassing everyone is not part of my fun. But playing my character properly is. If I have to play my character poorly so I'm not outclassing everybody, then I'm not having fun. I might as well stop at character creation, since leveraging the character effectively is part of the game.
Its like playing a chess against a little kid. You can't actually play the game; beating him isn't challenging or rewarding. You just toss out cards and let him win. Spending time with the kid might be fun, but the game itself won't be. You should be playing against someone of equal skill. If there is a lineup of potential opponents, and there is a little kid and a well-matched opponent, then you should be given the well-matched opponent. D&D is just as likely to give you the kid.

Great analogy - your group (the kid) is the problem here, not the game (chess.) If the other players can't keep up with you and lowering yourself to their level isn't fun for you, you need a higher-Op group. Every group has an optimization baseline, and yours is clearly far above that of the other players at your table.


Balance is not the only aspect of the game that is important; pinning the entire success or failure of the game on that one aspect is fallacious at best.

It sounds like we agree totally on this last bit :smallconfused:

[Tyndmyr]

Is it that trivial for a level 7 fighter to get +13 to hit and +12 damage? That's what summoned dire wolves have, and that's what we needed to overcome the demon's high AC and damage reduction. In fact, a druid can summon dire wolves at level 5, so a level 5 fighter would have to be stronger than that. Is he? I'm no expert at fighter optimization, so maybe it's easier than I think. I don't know the stats of our ex-fighter, but I believe that player was pretty experienced with D&D.

Well, let's consider here. He's going to have +7 from BaB. He can't avoid that. I'd assume another +4 for 17 or 18 starting str, so he's rocking about a +11 to hit and +6 to damage with no feats or class features. Assume a greatsword since it's core, and he's looking at 2d6+6 dmg.

On the flip side, from the Dire wolf entry of the SRD:
Full Attack: Bite +11 melee (1d8+10)

So yeah, with no optimization at all, he's got the exact same attack bonus and very similar damage. When he full attacks, he's also got an iterative, so he's flat out beating the dire wolf in melee ability. Of course, spend those feats, pick him out a fun PrC or dips, and he gets significantly better yet.


How does that work? Can you really just create a Cold Iron weapon on the fly, in the middle of combat? How does that work?

There actually are a number of feats or class abilities that let you emulate this. I don't know precisely what he's doing, but yes, there are ways to do this.

[Clawhound]

Off the top of my head, a few advantages of the fighter over animal companions.


Uses stock/found weapons (no need for buffs)
Uses stock/found armor (no need for buffs)
Uses ranged weapons
Golfbag of weapons to deal with all the DR combinations
Can easily trade AC for Power (shield vs two-handed weapons)
Can multiclass/dip
Can PrC
Thumbs allow potions/use-activated items
Language allows command word items
Easily access to human-scale buildings
Can pick feats appropriate to the challenges of a campaign


In the average game, I find these advantages compelling enough that an animal companion is not a true replacement for a player character, even a lowly fighter.

[Drolyt]

To those who say "just because the Wizard can do everything doesn't mean he should", I agree to a point. Balance issues have never completely ruined a game for me, although it has lead to strange situations like a party of four where my Sorcerer could easily defeat the other three with his hand tied behind his back, and that was one of my first games before I knew how to really optimize. The fact that nonspellcasters can be useful is besides the point. The fact is that the only reason the spellcasters aren't solving all the problems is because it is more efficient to let other characters help. Martial characters and skillmonkeys can help, yes, but they are never better than having another spellcaster. I don't think this ruins the game, but I think it is something that should be fixed.

[Bovine Colonel]

Off the top of my head, a few advantages of the fighter over animal companions.


Uses stock/found weapons (no need for buffs)
Uses stock/found armor (no need for buffs)
Uses ranged weapons
Golfbag of weapons to deal with all the DR combinations
Can easily trade AC for Power (shield vs two-handed weapons)
Can multiclass/dip
Can PrC
Thumbs allow potions/use-activated items
Language allows command word items
Easily access to human-scale buildings
Can pick feats appropriate to the challenges of a campaign


In the average game, I find these advantages compelling enough that an animal companion is not a true replacement for a player character, even a lowly fighter.

On the other hand, you know there's a problem when you're comparing a class feature to another entire class.

[Qwertystop]

There actually are a number of feats or class abilities that let you emulate this. I don't know precisely what he's doing, but yes, there are ways to do this.

In this case, he's making a wall of a material (or Major Creationing it), then Fabricating it into whatever is needed.

[Venusaur]

Well, let's consider here. He's going to have +7 from BaB. He can't avoid that. I'd assume another +4 for 17 or 18 starting str, so he's rocking about a +11 to hit and +6 to damage with no feats or class features. Assume a greatsword since it's core, and he's looking at 2d6+6 dmg.

On the flip side, from the Dire wolf entry of the SRD:
Full Attack: Bite +11 melee (1d8+10)

So yeah, with no optimization at all, he's got the exact same attack bonus and very similar damage. When he full attacks, he's also got an iterative, so he's flat out beating the dire wolf in melee ability. Of course, spend those feats, pick him out a fun PrC or dips, and he gets significantly better yet.

However, the wolf gets free trip attempts on any attack, and is only a small part of what the druid can do. Even if the wolf is being summoned, the druid's animal companion can still attack.

[Mystify]

@Psyren


@ Mystify

Whereas I haven't, except in very niche cases.
We can trade anecdotes all day, but the numbers don't lie; these issues, glaringly obvious as they may be on internet forums, are clearly not problematic enough in practice to hurt the game's playability.

It hurts the playability, I don't see how you can deny that. It doesn't destroy it, but it has a clear detrimental effect.



You're thoroughly mistaken about the fighter. His problem isn't that he can't kick ass - his problem is that's all he can do.

Which means one thing - if that's all his player wants to do too, then there is no problem.
And when the player finally wants to do more, there are other classes for that (like Magus or Binder.)

But then other classes kick more ass. If you pick the fighter because you want to kick ass, and then the other character is not only outclassing you at it, but is doing two dozen other things in addition, it gets annoying.


As far as "ensuring he does" - why are buffs the druid's sole responsibility? Are we talking about a 2-man game, where the other man is a raging bear druid? Seems to me that would be a foolish scenario to be a fighter in regardless.

Why should he need buffs from anybody? Why does there need to be this amorphous third person to buff the fighter to competence next to the druid? What if the rest of the party doesn't happen to have any buffers?


Nobody is saying the Druid can't melee if he wants to. But he can do that without putting the fighter out of a job, unless the Druid and the DM are actively working to marginalize him.

It would take a lot of insensitivity and/or obliviousness to repeatedly overshadow a fellow player by accident.

When the druid has more AC, more attacks, more damage, and an animal companion comparable to the fighter, operating under a few self-buffs, it is quite easy to marginalize the fighter without trying to. If you are going into combat, you marginalize him. Sure, you can flank with him and try to trip enemies, but that doesn't really change anything. Flanking with him is part of good teamwork anyways, but unless that +2 is magically going to springboard him to the same league as the druid, it doesn't really matter. He runs up and charges something, the druid is a dinosaur and pounces on it with 4 different attacks, and then kills the enemies friend as an afterthought.



If "Playing your character to your fullest" is all the Druid wants to do, why not go all the way to Pun-pun? Anything less is not playing his character to its fullest.
Playing pun pun is not playing your character to its fulllest, it is playing a completely different character that is made out of concentrated exploit. You can optimize without exploiting. Playing a character to the fullest is not about breaking the game, or winning in character creation. It is about assembling a coherent set of abilities to fulfill a concept, then utilizing them in the game to full effect. Its finding the weakness in the enemy strategy and attacking it, instead of sitting around twiddling your thumbs. Its about finding the solution to your problem given your abilities. If someone else has a better solution, you can go with theirs, but you shouldn't be afraid to use your solution because it will make somebody else look bad.



Nobody is punishing the druid for being mechanically strong. Requesting that he be a team player instead of hogging the glory is only "punishment" is his player has no interest in cooperative play.

I don't understand what you mean. The druid can be a perfectly fine team player. He can give out buffs to the fighter when they have prep time, he can maneuver to help aid the fighter. He's not jumping in and preventing the fighter from getting into combat, he's not stealing his sword so he has to look for it while the druid fights. All he has to do is be next to the fighter, and his superiority is so obvious it overshadows him.
The only way to avoid that is for the druid to not play at his potential. And if you can't play at your potential, you are being punished.



And he doesn't have to be buff-bot to achieve that goal either. All the contributions I mentioned for the animal companion (flanking, grappling, tripping etc.) apply equally well to the raging bear. Unless he wants all the enemies for himself (which goes back to the maturity point) then they should have no problem dividing and conquering so that everyone has fun and still gets to do what they want.

So they go into combat, fight alongside each other, maneuver to help each other, and the druid ends up with 8 kills and the fighter has 2 because the druid is simply that much stronger in combat. Its not because the druid is somehow hogging combat, or trying to steal the glory. Its because the fighter
is not strong enough to keep up.


Great analogy - your group (the kid) is the problem here, not the game (chess.) If the other players can't keep up with you and lowering yourself to their level isn't fun for you, you need a higher-Op group. Every group has an optimization baseline, and yours is clearly far above that of the other players at your table.

The problem is that the game has no natural balance. If the game was balanced, sure, the high op character will outperform the low-op characters. But it wouldn't be to the point where they need to vastly different levels of enemies to be challenged. Look at legend. There is clearly lots of room for optimization. But unless you actively counter-optimize, the high op character and low-op character can coexist in the same group and and participate in the same battles without issue. There is a sufficient baseline of power that you can operate alongside a power gamer without needing massive system mastery. And even then, most of the bad choices are obviouly bad, like "These abilities don't stack, don't take both", or "Make sure you have an offensive track so you can actually attack decently", or "Use your good stats for your abilities". Unlike D&D. where perfectly reasonable looking decisions like "I wand to use a sheild and a sword" are very poor, or even "I want to play the a monk, one of the basic classes".
In a balanced system, all of the basic choices are equal. No class is going to be better than the others just because its that class. All options are balanced according to their optimal use, which is fairly apparent, and so you can't combine 4 abilities to deal hundreds of times the damage. There is lots of room to customize and optimize, but optimized does not make unoptimized completely irrelevant. Legend specifies its intended bounds on optimization: You can shift about 1 level in either direction. That is well withing reasonable bounds. You can get a distinct advantage out of it, but its not so much that it invalidates everything else. Unlike D&D, where a shift of 5 levels up or down is fairly tame.




It sounds like we agree totally on this last bit :smallconfused:

Balance is not the only aspect of a game, but it is still an important aspect. All else being equal, the balanced game will be far superior to the unbalanced game.

[Psyren]

On the other hand, you know there's a problem when you're comparing a class feature to another entire class.

No one is denying that there is a balance issue; the question is how much it really matters. If the fighter's player is having fun, who cares what the wolf can do?

And if he's not, there are other classes for him to play.

Yes, Druids are more powerful than fighters. That's what I'd expect in a universe where anyone can pick up a pointy stick, but not anyone can channel power from the forces of nature.