Core's Strength's and Weaknesses?

[Dragrun]

What does core have for strengths and weaknesses?

[Roguenewb]

Um, casting is *really* good? Core only games tend to lack as many nova-ish instant combo kills/wins, but there are enough hilarious nasty spellcasting options that it makes little difference.

[The Glyphstone]

Strength: Simplicity. With only 1 book of feats/classes and 1 book of items, it's quick and easy to make a character.

Weaknesses: Gross imbalance. Nowhere in 3.5 is the potential divide between spellcasters and melee more pronounced, nor between specific classes. The PHB is the book that contains the Wizard, the Druid, the Paladin, and the Monk.

[Dragrun]

So most combos don't work in core but enough that it doesn't matter, wizards/druids/clerics still rape monks/fighters?

[The Glyphstone]

So most combos don't work in core but enough that it doesn't matter, wizards/druids/clerics still rape monks/fighters?

More to say that they easily outdo Monks/fighters. People forget that things like the Tier List aren't focusing on PvP, but what the class brings to the table - in Core, the full-casters can out-damage, out-defend, and out-utility the martial classes almost effortlessly.

[Dragrun]

ok thank you Playground for the help

[Gavinfoxx]

Pro: Within the Core books, the DM has pretty much all the tools you ever need for creating an evil Villain Wizard or Cleric with earth-shattering power for any campaign. Teleportation, scrying, being difficult to kill, creating huge castles, having tons of minions, planar or undead or whatever -- its all there.

Con: The player characters are presumed to have access to all this stuff too, for some reason.

[The Dark Fiddler]

It has most of the skills in the game.

That's, you know, kinda big.

[Particle_Man]

Core is in the SRD, so is freely available on the internet from now until there is no more internet.

Core is also the most familiar to people coming to the game from previous editions. They know about Fighter, Cleric from way back. They know about Wizard and Rogue from 2nd and by other names from earlier. If from 1st they know about Assassin, Monk and Barbarian. They know about the core 7 races from 1st (and the core 6 + a new one if from 2nd).

[Spuddles]

Caster/non-caster imbalance takes about 8 to 10 levels in core to show up, however. Outside of core it happens much faster, with elf generalists, divine metamagic, warbeast, domain wizard, versatile spellcaster, etc. etc.

[Eldan]

Caster/non-caster imbalance takes about 8 to 10 levels in core to show up, however. Outside of core it happens much faster, with elf generalists, divine metamagic, warbeast, domain wizard, versatile spellcaster, etc. etc.

Not necessarily. It just takes a bit of a different form.

The wizard is still the number one utility class, if used right. Scribe Scroll is immensely helpful from level one, and the wizard can put spells he would never memorize on his list from day one. Knock, Invisibility and Silence are available early and outclass the rogue easily, if just once per day, usually.

[Voyager_I]

Caster/non-caster imbalance takes about 8 to 10 levels in core to show up, however. Outside of core it happens much faster, with elf generalists, divine metamagic, warbeast, domain wizard, versatile spellcaster, etc. etc.

Everything gets more broken with splatbook support, but even in core-only, casters already have Gate, Shapechange, Wish, Genesis, and the like, and they're just a Candle of Invocation away from shattering any semblance of game balance. Fighters and other melee types, on the other hand, often rely on abilities from later supplements to really optimize effectively. A Core Fighter is basically going to be a tripper or a mounted charger, and they'll be lacking basic building blocks like Shock Trooper and Robilar's Gambit.

Sure, the classes that can already redefine existence have an easier time doing so if they want to abuse splatbooks, but those same sources are what let less-powerful archetypes scrape themselves up a tier or two with effective optimization.

[Flickerdart]

Caster/non-caster imbalance takes about 8 to 10 levels in core to show up, however. Outside of core it happens much faster, with elf generalists, divine metamagic, warbeast, domain wizard, versatile spellcaster, etc. etc.
Color Spray and Sleep and Entangle are all level 1 spells.

[Eldan]

Color Spray and Sleep and Entangle are all level 1 spells.

Don't forget Grease.

[Flickerdart]

Grease is forgettable at 1st level because of its short duration. It's not until level 2 that it actually starts to matter.

[Emperor Tippy]

Caster/non-caster imbalance takes about 8 to 10 levels in core to show up, however. Outside of core it happens much faster, with elf generalists, divine metamagic, warbeast, domain wizard, versatile spellcaster, etc. etc.
Not really, it exists from level 1 on. And much of the wizards power comes from core.

[Big Fau]

Grease is forgettable at 1st level because of its short duration. It's not until level 2 that it actually starts to matter.

The targeted version of Grease (disarming an enemy) is pretty useful against boss fights (where it effectively acts like an early Mass Snake's Swiftness).

[Spuddles]

Not necessarily. It just takes a bit of a different form.

The wizard is still the number one utility class, if used right. Scribe Scroll is immensely helpful from level one, and the wizard can put spells he would never memorize on his list from day one. Knock, Invisibility and Silence are available early and outclass the rogue easily, if just once per day, usually.

Knock is a huge waste of resources if their is a rogue in the party, and scribing scrolls takes time. Sure, there's a lot of utility there, but outside of core, some of the biggest limiting factors to a casters- spell slots- are easy to overcome.


Everything gets more broken with splatbook support, but even in core-only, casters already have Gate, Shapechange, Wish, Genesis, and the like, and they're just a Candle of Invocation away from shattering any semblance of game balance. Fighters and other melee types, on the other hand, often rely on abilities from later supplements to really optimize effectively. A Core Fighter is basically going to be a tripper or a mounted charger, and they'll be lacking basic building blocks like Shock Trooper and Robilar's Gambit.

Sure, the classes that can already redefine existence have an easier time doing so if they want to abuse splatbooks, but those same sources are what let less-powerful archetypes scrape themselves up a tier or two with effective optimization.

Um, outside of abuse of warmage mechanics, there's hardly anything outside of core that moves tier 4 and 5 above tiers 4 and 5. Maybe UMD optimization on a warlock. Shock trooper doesnt make anything more powerful, just a one trick pony's trick more powerful.

The spells you listed are all at the end of the game. When was the last you used any of those spells in a game? Outside of core, with DMM and free spell slots, lower level casters are two to three times more effective. People under estimate how much of clericZilla is dependent on DMM. Stacking a hundred buffs so you can be as martially competent as a fighter or barb takes half a dozen turns. Fight's over by then.

Outside of core material makes casters better by adding more of what makes casters broken- spells. Adding more weapon focus feats does nothing for lower tier classes. Maybe martial study?


Color Spray and Sleep and Entangle are all level 1 spells.

And I get to cast those 2 to 3 times as often outside of core, and with better save DCs.


Not really, it exists from level 1 on. And much of the wizards power comes from core.

I'm not saying core is magic balance land, but abrupt jaunt 8 times a day at level 1 is a hell of a lot better than virtually anything any other class gets at the same level. Wizards get so much more outside of core, from level one on, that they are immediately more broken. 2x as many spells is better than 2x as many feat. Maybe a fleshraker companion compares to abrupt jaunt. Which is, again, only possible with 2 non core books. On a tier 1 class.

[Eldan]

That said, the wizard isn't necessarily stronger than the other party members at low level. He just has more options. He becomes the dedicated problem solver very early.

If you go by combat, rogue and fighter will dominate the early levels, because there are fewer problematic enemies that need to be weakened first. In a fight against a handful of orcs or goblins, the wizard is useful, but wants to conserve his spells, since few of them will take out large numbers of them.

[Flickerdart]

And I get to cast those 2 to 3 times as often outside of core, and with better save DCs.

So? Your statement was: it takes until level 8-10 for casters to get ahead. These spells run counter to that statement. It doesn't matter that out of core, you can use them more and better, because you can still use them in core.

Abrupt Jaunt? Shadow Cloak does exactly the same thing as Abrupt Jaunt. Abrupt Jaunt isn't a big deal.

[Spuddles]

That said, the wizard isn't necessarily stronger than the other party members at low level. He just has more options. He becomes the dedicated problem solver very early.

If you go by combat, rogue and fighter will dominate the early levels, because there are fewer problematic enemies that need to be weakened first. In a fight against a handful of orcs or goblins, the wizard is useful, but wants to conserve his spells, since few of them will take out large numbers of them.

Typically, yes. But an elf generalist domain wizard has 5 1st level slots. A human wizard has precocious apprentice and fiery burst. Focused specialist conjurer has abrupt jaunt. Cleric has persisted one or two spells. Druid's companion has 6HD. Can you get 6 HD worth of fightin' on an ECL1 character? Nope, not even with tauric templat abuse. Maybe by using magic jar, but then, casting magic jar at level 1 is a non-core trick.

Fighters et al have the same limitations in virtually all situations. It took tome of battle to fix that, and even then, tome of battle mostly addressed in combat limitations. Caster limitations aren't a what can I do, it's how often can I do it. Outisde of core, they can do it 2 or 3 times as often.

Oh yeah, and let's not forget casting level 9 spells at level 1.

[Flickerdart]

Oh yeah, and let's not forget casting level 9 spells at level 1.
Which can be done with a Fighter. Look, balance!

[Darth Stabber]

1)Core is free (srd)
2)most GM's won't ban core material
3)it's the books you have to have to play (or the srd)


lots of people operate on the assumption that splat books upset balance, which is true of many games, but not so much 3.X D&D since it started out so drastically imbalanced. If you look at base classes, you can see that books released later into 3.5's run are more likely to hit the happy medium that is tier3. Look at core's tiering
Tier1=3(wizard, cleric, druid)
Tier2=1(sorcerer)
Tier3=1(bard)
Tier4=4(paladin, ranger, rogue, barbarian) (and without support material paladin and ranger are more likely 5, maybe even bringing barbarian with them)
Tier5=2(fighter, monk)
As you can see, there is very little middle ground, there are the have and the have nots (including have not muches), and the thing they have or don't is magic.

Look at ToB+PHB2+HoH+XPH:
Tier1=1(archivist)
Tier2=1(psion)
Tier3=8(warblade, crusader, swordsage, dreadnecro, beguiler, duskblade, psywar, wilder)
Tier4=2(dragon shaman, knight)
Tier5=1(soulknife)

[Spuddles]

So? Your statement was: it takes until level 8-10 for casters to get ahead. These spells run counter to that statement. It doesn't matter that out of core, you can use them more and better, because you can still use them in core.

I suppose of you completely disagree with the basic premise of D&D that frequency of uses creates balance between abilities, your statement makes sense.

But I play A LOT of low level casters, and getting double or triple the number of spells is a HUGE advantage. It's much much much more of an advantage than leap attack or whatever. DMM also totally breaks the action economy. Into tiny little pieces. Nothing in core reall comes close to that, until quite late in the game.


Abrupt Jaunt? Shadow Cloak does exactly the same thing as Abrupt Jaunt. Abrupt Jaunt isn't a big deal.

Abrupt Jaunt means level 1 wizards don't die. One of the few limiting factors of low level wizards- exteme squshiness and insufficient resources to both be offensively and defensively potent- is circumvented by gettin rid of your familiar. To use shadow cloak more than once a combat also requires you to five up a whole turn doin nothing.

[Spuddles]

Which can be done with a Fighter. Look, balance!

Why so hostile, bro? I never said core wasn't unbalanced, just that the rate at which imbalance appears is much greater outside of core.

[Endarire]

Core has the building blocks for the game. It has promises of power, potential, and imagination. You can use these to make your own material, and tweak things to make better material.

But if you aren't a caster, you're stuck with junk past level 6. Really. If I'm playing core-only, I'm hurtin' as to why anyone intimate with the game would play a non-caster past level 6. Dips into Barbarian, Rogue, Fighter, and Ranger are handy for Trapfinding and Eldritch Knight qualification, and so you can do something if you're saving spells or otherwise can't cast, but being a non-caster in core is boring! No maneuvers, no stances, no spells. Just auto-attack and the occaisonal bull rush or other combat technique.