Why Balance?

[FreakyCheeseMan]

So much of what gets talked about here is "Balance", and the places in the game where it breaks down. Personally, I hold a somewhat unusual theory:

Balance Doesn't Matter.

I've put a positively unhealthy amount of thought into this, so I'm gonna break it down topic by topic.

Balance Is Relative
This one's more a definition than an actual argument, but here goes: Balance is Relative. All that "Balance" refers to is the power and versatility of one set of options relative to another; so, some things are problems, not because they're unbalanced, but simply because they're bad.

Example: Teleport. A lot of DMs dislike Teleport, for a very good reason - it drastically limits the types of challenges, problems and plots that are significant to players. I fully agree that this is an issue - it is not, however, a balance issue. Imagine if every character could teleport - it would still be a problem, but you couldn't say it wasn't "Balanced."

Overpowered Classes Don't Matter
I've seen a lot of attempts on these forums to "Reign In" the higher-tiered classes: Everything from banning Tier One outright to punitive point-buy systems to risky arcane failure chances on every spell. All of this follows from the same basic thought: These classes are more powerful than others, so we should make them less powerful.

To this I respond, as always: ...why?

Powerful characters are only a bad thing if they make the game less fun for the other players. D&D isn't a competitive game; it doesn't have to be fair to be fun. I mean, it's not like players don't get to choose what class they play; if a player is tired of being overshadowed by powerful characters, it's not like he can't play a more powerful class himself, next time.

The only way this would actually be a problem, would be if it truly left nothing for the other characters to do... but I don't usually see that being the case. A well-built martial class can still contribute alongside a wizard; they may not be as important, but they can still have their fun and rack up their kills.

Besides which - according to my experience, and 90% of what I've read on these forums, the best thing a Tier 1 class can do is battlefield control - which, often, amounts to enabling their allies. So, if the optimized characters are actually played optimally, they're making it so there's *more* for their allies to do, not less; they're making sure that their less-powerful friends are fighting at their best. How many fighters are actually going to have less fun if there's a wizard behind them making them 12 feet tall and flying while preventing their enemies from turning invisible?


Underpowered Classes Matter, Barely
The counterargument I hear a lot is "Well, it isn't very fun playing a character that has no way to contribute." This is true; it's also not a balance issue, but simply a failure of the class. Would it be any more fun facing those same situations, if your allies were just as helpless as you?

Issues like "Melee warriors are helpless against flying enemies," "Mundane classes have no way to contribute against incorporeal/invisible enemies" and "Fighters can't damage high-DR opponents without help" aren't solved by removing or limiting the high-tier classes; doing so only limits the variety of play, which is an inherently bad thing.

So, how do you fix a weak class? Easy: you don't. Think about how awful the Truenamer is: very - it's class features would be weak even if they worked. Now think about how many games it's ruined: very few - no one wants to play one. In mathematical game theory, the presence of bad options is irrelevant, because players will instead take the good ones.

Now, with D&D it's a little more complicated, because players (particularly new ones) will try the bad classes by not knowing any better. However, it doesn't require any complicated home brew to fix that problem - in fact, home brew is almost useless as a fix, because the players exposed to home brew are the ones who already know the weaknesses of those classes. Not saying home brew isn't a wonderful thing - anything that adds to the variety of the game is good - but, it's unlikely to "Fix" any of the problems that result from poorly designed classes.



It Isn't About Levels Of Power, It's About Levels Of Play
I've spent the last few days rather obsessively designing a set of optimized characters - the kind of characters that even I would balk at, were I to be the one DMing them.

It's a lot of work.

I've made notes. I've made charts. I've spent a downright embarrassing amount of time looking over spell lists and deciding what I want and what I can't afford. In play, it's still gonna be a lot of work; there's book keeping to take care of, I have to adjust spell lists between fights, consider the wider ramifications of different spells, remember casting times, spell ranges, durations, you name it.

Right now, that's great. I've got a lot of time on my hands, and I like this kind of intensive work - but that isn't always the case. Sometimes, I want to kick back with a more mechanically simple character that isn't quite as crucial to the game, and really focus on the role play and socialization elements of the game.

Sometimes, I'd be frustrated and overworked if I had to play a T1 character; sometimes, I'd be bored and underwhelmed if I had to play a simpler, more limited class. That's why it's a good thing that I never "have" to do either of those - D&D's lack of balance means there's space for people who want to play at different levels, and that is a very, very good thing. For a social game, it's almost a necessity - think how much tabletop gaming would suffer if there wasn't a simple entry point for new players, or a set of more complex, more powerful options to retain the interest of experienced players.

[Waker]

Powerful characters are only a bad thing if they make the game less fun for the other players. D&D isn't a competitive game; it doesn't have to be fair to be fun. I mean, it's not like players don't get to choose what class they play; if a player is tired of being overshadowed by powerful characters, it's not like he can't play a more powerful class himself, next time.

The only way this would actually be a problem, would be if it truly left nothing for the other characters to do... but I don't usually see that being the case. A well-built martial class can still contribute alongside a wizard; they may not be as important, but they can still have their fun and rack up their kills.
Powerful characters can be viewed as a nuisance for several reasons. One is the issue of finding an encounter that is balanced enough where people over a varied power level can still contribute. It is a fine balancing act sometimes where you have the PCs face a challenge that can engage the Druid or Wizard while not completely annihilating the Fighter and Paladin in the process.
As for characters being overshadowed choosing to play the more powerful class themselves, that is an option, but not one that I would necessarily engage in. Personally, I find the idea of playing as a Wizard to be a somewhat unpleasant experience. While I know others may love the class, I would take a Bard any day of the week over it. Others might do the same because it simply isn't the kind of character they want to play.
BFC is certainly one thing that many higher tier classes can do well and that can help the lower tier character contribute. But not all Tier 1 characters do that. Sometimes they decide to rely on minionmancy or transform themselves into a giant monster that can outperform the Fighter physically and cast spells. Or whatever.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to play as a mundane character, but D&D has a very bad spread as far as the power levels go.



Underpowered Classes Matter, Barely
The counterargument I hear a lot is "Well, it isn't very fun playing a character that has no way to contribute." This is true; it's also not a balance issue, but simply a failure of the class. Would it be any more fun facing those same situations, if your allies were just as helpless as you?

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Are you claiming that a class can be balanced, yet broken? Balance is how we determine whether or not something is broken by comparing it to others in the same field.
The underpowered classes unfortunately contain many of the fantasy hero archetypes that people want to play unfortunately. Want to play as a hulking savage? A wise martial artist? The master archer? Dashing thief? Well, unfortunately for you, the wizard happened to prepare the spells today that mimic or obviates all of your class features. But he'll be nice and let you knock out the bad monsters that he tied up.
And to make this annoying from a fluff perspective is that in very few works of fiction outside of anime contain the insanely powerful stuff that T1 can do. The only series that readily comes to mind is some of the channelers in Wheel of time.
On top of that, you've got the poorly wrought combat forms. Archery is a waste of time beyond the first few levels, shields won't do much good since they take away from your offense too much and of course Two-Weapon fighting damage is piteous unless you have precision damage (though even then it isn't great.)
I digress. I don't think that many players want their allies to be as helpless as them, rather I think they would want a class that delivers what it promises.

[ArcturusV]

Well... I think part of the issue that people latch onto when talking about Balance is due to two things that are 3rd edition based, but not necessarily DnD based.

1) The idea of starting the game at high levels, and with equal levels.

Now, this is kind of a new idea that only really popped up in 3rd edition. Playing DnD earlier than that, if someone walked up to you (in my experience), and said something like "We're starting at level 12" you'd look at them like they were mad. Just was never really done. Not only that, in older editions it'd be more like "because classes level at different rates you'd have a level 15 thief, and a level 9 Wizard, and a level 12 Fighter". Which is something people are loathe to do anymore. Even though I think it could help the situation where some people feel as if they are superfluous to the game. And really no player should feel superfluous to the game.

2) The Lack of Changing Gears/Trading Tiers.

Where in earlier editions, low levels were always played out, and at low levels who dominated? Fighters and Clerics. Clerics not because of spellcasting so much as because of their innate abilities and heavy armor. As the game progressed, you had a trade off, where Thieves and Wizards became much more powerful, the Fighters dropped off in importance, and the Clerics were kinda just there. Which I've heard people say is really bad design. But... you never felt like it was bad at the time. I don't recall playing and thinking "Geeze, the wizard finally got to level 10 and I'm completely pointless" or the like with a Fighter. Because I know the only reason the Wizard got to that point was because I carried him. And when the **** really hits the fan, I'll still be there to help out. And as a first level wizard, I never was complaining I didn't have anything to do. I knew I could shut down ONE encounter/enemy per day. And this was a trade off, waiting until I came online. Having to be smart with my spells and play wisely. My eventual power was a result of being a cunning, ruthless figure who knew how to pick good friends.

And I think somewhere along the way, that idea got lost. I've heard people who play 3rd a lot say that an idea like that would be stupid. That they wouldn't want to play a first level wizard who only had ONE spell, no matter what, etc.

But... it would be neat. I mean as is, the Fighter types and the Wizard types are basically on par at level 1. It's scary, people may say I'm crazy, but I've seen it happen enough. And it just gets worse from that point on. So the Fighter type never really gets his moment in the sun.

And you can put up with a lot of things as long as you feel like, at SOME point, you did have your moment.

[Man on Fire]

Yeah, that line of thinking is simply ignoring many factors.

First of all, it's about teamwork. Heavily optimized wizard doesn't need help of magic items or other classes, he has solution to every problem. Heavily optimized fighter still needs help from wizard or magic items. It's a cooperative team game, and it's just simply wrong for one player to be able to solve the problems himself.

Second, this game promises players to be able to create any type of fantasy adventure, in spirit of our favorite books, movies and comics. Yet, when it comes to works like Conan The Barbarian, The Black Company or Berserk the game utterly fails to deliver. Conan Beats wizards by combination of strength and determination. Black Company defeats all-powerful magicians by outsmarting them and using strategy. Guts beats demons and wizards because he simply. Never. Gives. Up. Yet, in D&D none of those is possible, because the characters would be represented by clases that are good only if they drop down on their knees and give wizard oral service.

Third, Mutants & Masterminds promises you to have fun playing a superhero. Scion and Exalted promise you to hav fun playing a god. D&D promises you to have fun playing fighter and then reveals you can only have fun playing a wizard. If the game lies to me, I don't wont to play it.

Fourth, there shouldn't only one godo way to play a game. If the ony way to have fun playing D&D is to play a specific class, then the game needs to return back to the drawing board.

Fifth, the fact that martial classe are simpler isn't an excuse to make them weaker, they should have gain more cool stuff. Wizard as he advances can make his own demiplane, become immortal, do dozens of things. Fighter can hit stuff and hit stuff more.

Sixth, mechanics fails to reflect how fantasy warriors should be. The don't just punch stuff, they use strategy fight dirty, can inspire their allies, learn weak points of the opponents, plan ahead. But according to D&D, they just run at the opponent with a sword and power attack and that's it, they have little options.

[Kaeso]

I'm surprised nobody has posted this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw) yet.

As the vid explains, balance becomes a problem when overpowered and underpowered classes are in the same party. You say that underpowered classes "barely" matter because nobody plays a truenamer, but let's take the monk, a core class, instead. It's a newbie death trap because everybody wants to play the cool shaolin monk that punches people into oblivion.

Let's put him in the same party as say, the druid. The druid gets an animal companion, usually a wolf because let's face it: wolves are flippin' awesome! This wolf is not only better at melee combat, it is also better at tripping enemies than the monk and can have better feats slapped on it. It also isn't hindered too much by armor/barding. Congratulations, your monk has been surpassed by a druids class feature. Keep in mind that I haven't even touched the spells and wildshape that make the druid what it is.

Of course the druid can ''play nice'' and let the monk have his fun, but you'll find that this scenario highly represents the last scenario Angel Summoner and BMX bandit find themselves in: the druid will be able to finish the encounter with a snap of his fingers but chooses to severely restrict himself so he won't hurt the monks fragile ego.

Now if this druid were paired up with, say, a cleric or a warblade, things would be different. Clerics are just as versatile as the druid so they can simply choose to assume certain roles without getting in eachothers way. If the cleric chooses to specialise in blasty spells and picks feats and domains corresponding to this goal, the druid can go all out with his wild shape and animal companion and pick a few buffs/debuffs as his spells. Meanwhile, when paired with a warblade the animal companion is still a useful ally in melee, but not to the point where he overshadows the warblade. The warblade is a freakin' buzz saw in melee and will give any wolf, no matter how badass, a run for his money.

So in the above scenario's the problem is always that the monk is too weak and the druid too strong. The only way to solve the scenario is to force the monk player to pick something else. This is why tiers exist, to create balance in a party. It allows the party to choose whether they want to be near god-like masters of the elements fighting hordes of demons or a bumbling pair of pugilists in an action-comedy adventure trying to figure out how to make their gosh darned contradictory class features work in harmony, or anything in between.

[Spuddles]

"they may not be as important, but they can still have their fun and rack up their kills."

That's the problem. If I am playing rogue-y mcbackstab, T4, I get to choose roughly 1.5 of the following to be good at:
social encounters
exploration encounters
combat encounters

If you're a sorcerer, you get to be EXCELLENT at the following:
social encounters
exploration encounters
combat encounters

Playing alongside party members that can trivialize or solve problems, all of them, better than you, means that the problems will get harder. Eventually, you will wonder why you are in the party in the first place, when it's "let the rogue try so we don't need a spell slot, but I still have a spell slot in case the rogue can't do it."

That's the problem of an unbalanced system.

[CaladanMoonblad]

Balance is also a prime virtue of Western Civilization. The Ancient Greeks had a popular philosophy (often derided as simple by the likes of Aristotle) such that "Know Thyself" and "Nothing in Excess" were maxims to live by. Think of it as cultural bias, and the fact that injustice is generally viewed as power acting without balance. Hence, a democratic system of government is one of checks and balances, just as a role playing game is a set of checks and saves.

Just because you build an Intimidator does not mean you get to tell Darth Vader off and live to tell about it.

[Theprettiestorc]

I think everyone's missing the point of the game, though, like it's been stated. D&D is meant to be fun, all around.

A rogue is at their best when they're sneaking onto an enemy. Nobody else is as good at sneaking.

A fighter can pick up a weapon, and a shield, and armor, and slay things. Fighters are literal tanks. When the enemy isn't focused on the wizard(thankfully), it's probably because a fighter is stepping on their toes. And they're feat-crunchers, able to do cool maneuvers.

Monks are DPS. They do a lot of damage, and they're quick and versatile around the battlefield. They're also the guys you want to parkour across a pit with one end of a rope.

A wizard, or a sorcerer, both have lots of skills, but they're book-readers. And both are as varied as they come.

Druids are hippies, nature-lovers - I don't think their companions can wear barding that's metal, either.

Paladins and clerics are both battle characters, the latter being able to lead from the back lines better and the former being right up there with the fighter. Your holy classes are for banishing the forces of evil, people!

If you look at certain aspects? Yeah, some classes can look better than others. But when it comes down to it, no matter what class you play, you can have fun with it. If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong!

(And on that note, it's up to the DM to create varied encounters for their players. I'm hard-pressed to prep for everything accordingly, with my wizard!)

[Kaeso]

I think everyone's missing the point of the game, though, like it's been stated. D&D is meant to be fun, all around.

Good point. However, the system fails to deliver.


A rogue is at their best when they're sneaking onto an enemy. Nobody else is as good at sneaking.

There are many classes equally good or better at sneaking. From the top of my head the wizard, cleric, sorcerer, favored soul, beguiler, swordsage and factotum all fit the bill. All of these are able to do other things besides this, making them strictly superior to the rogue.


A fighter can pick up a weapon, and a shield, and armor, and slay things. Fighters are literal tanks. When the enemy isn't focused on the wizard(thankfully), it's probably because a fighter is stepping on their toes. And they're feat-crunchers, able to do cool maneuvers.

When I think cool maneuvers I'm more inclined to think warblade or even barbarian. The problem is that feats aren't a decent replacement for good class features. A warblades maneuvers keep improving as he levels. Meanwhile, a fighter who has finished a certain feat chain at, say, level 7 will only have the option of picking another feat chain. By level 14 he has two cool tricks that are equivalent to level 7, or a single level 14 trick.


Monks are DPS. They do a lot of damage, and they're quick and versatile around the battlefield. They're also the guys you want to parkour across a pit with one end of a rope.

I''m sorry but no, they're not. They're fast, but that's all they got. Their damage output is laughable, ESPECIALLy when compared to a dedicated blaster or cleric archer.


A wizard, or a sorcerer, both have lots of skills, but they're book-readers. And both are as varied as they come.


They're both varied and versatile, which is their strength. With proper spells, even a sorcerer can cover most of his bases.


Druids are hippies, nature-lovers - I don't think their companions can wear barding that's metal, either.

Ignoring the ways around that, they can still wear leather barding and often have natural armor, making them strictly superior to a monk of equivalent level in DPS, staying power and overall utility.


Paladins and clerics are both battle characters, the latter being able to lead from the back lines better and the former being right up there with the fighter. Your holy classes are for banishing the forces of evil, people!

Clerics, when properly built, can lead from the front lines better than any paladin could ever hope, and is just as versatile as the aforementioned wizard.

I do not wish to insult you or anything like that, but I think the problem is that you're not describing the game as it is right now, but as it should be. This is what the designers should have done and technically that is how the game can be played, but if we look at hwo the classes are designed right now we can see that the classes aren't merely different, but that some are objectively superior to others, in more than marginal ways. If one class has a class feature that makes another class completely obsolete (animal companions and monks), you know somethings horribly wrong.

[Zombimode]

Powerful characters can be viewed as a nuisance for several reasons. One is the issue of finding an encounter that is balanced enough where people over a varied power level can still contribute. It is a fine balancing act sometimes where you have the PCs face a challenge that can engage the Druid or Wizard while not completely annihilating the Fighter and Paladin in the process.

I ask you to be honest on this one: is this really your personal experience, or do you just repeat what others have said?
Because I just don't see it. I'm DMing 3.5 for two and a half years now and it doesn't match my experience. Like, at all.
Your statements seems to imply that the resilience of a character is directly correlated to his overall "power". Which is completely bonkers. Monks are quite good at surviving a lot of things. While Druids, especially wildshaped, have AC issues. Wizards, Sorcerers, Psions and similar classes have to put some thought into their defense against physical attacks and AoE damage attacks, because if their defense fails, they're dead (because of their low hit-point total).

Like FreakyCheeseMan has pointed out, the existence of a full-caster in the group makes everyone better due to buffs, debuffs and battlefield control. Saying that often ecounters that will "challenge" full-casters will "annihilate" lower tier characters seems like an untruthful and misinformed exaggeration.
An encounter that would destroy a group without a full caster will often be in fact just fine thanks to the full-caster.

To put it in other words:
A group composed of a samurai, a rogue, a paladin and a marshal might be problematic for encounter design. A group composed of a psion, a wizard, an archivist and a sorcerer might also be problematic for encounter design. But a group composed of a rogue, a paladin, a marshal and a cleric is actually just fine. It would be my preferred group of the three.

[Spuddles]

I think everyone's missing the point of the game, though, like it's been stated. D&D is meant to be fun, all around.

A rogue is at their best when they're sneaking onto an enemy. Nobody else is as good at sneaking.

A fighter can pick up a weapon, and a shield, and armor, and slay things. Fighters are literal tanks. When the enemy isn't focused on the wizard(thankfully), it's probably because a fighter is stepping on their toes. And they're feat-crunchers, able to do cool maneuvers.

Monks are DPS. They do a lot of damage, and they're quick and versatile around the battlefield. They're also the guys you want to parkour across a pit with one end of a rope.

A wizard, or a sorcerer, both have lots of skills, but they're book-readers. And both are as varied as they come.

Druids are hippies, nature-lovers - I don't think their companions can wear barding that's metal, either.

Paladins and clerics are both battle characters, the latter being able to lead from the back lines better and the former being right up there with the fighter. Your holy classes are for banishing the forces of evil, people!

If you look at certain aspects? Yeah, some classes can look better than others. But when it comes down to it, no matter what class you play, you can have fun with it. If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong!

(And on that note, it's up to the DM to create varied encounters for their players. I'm hard-pressed to prep for everything accordingly, with my wizard!)

This is what you'd think if you only read the fluff section of each class in the PHB, but unfortunately, some classes succeed at making other ones entirely superfluous with little effort.

Some people don't enjoy being superfluous, you know?

[lord_khaine]

I think everyone's missing the point of the game, though, like it's been stated. D&D is meant to be fun, all around.

The problem is unfortunately that the game is poorly balanced, so that you very well might end up getting completely overshadowed in your chosen area of expertise, simply because you chose the wrong class for it.

And even though its a problem thats usualy overstated by the boards here, then it still does exist.


A rogue is at their best when they're sneaking onto an enemy. Nobody else is as good at sneaking.

A fighter can pick up a weapon, and a shield, and armor, and slay things. Fighters are literal tanks. When the enemy isn't focused on the wizard(thankfully), it's probably because a fighter is stepping on their toes. And they're feat-crunchers, able to do cool maneuvers.

Monks are DPS. They do a lot of damage, and they're quick and versatile around the battlefield. They're also the guys you want to parkour across a pit with one end of a rope.

A wizard, or a sorcerer, both have lots of skills, but they're book-readers. And both are as varied as they come.

Druids are hippies, nature-lovers - I don't think their companions can wear barding that's metal, either.

Paladins and clerics are both battle characters, the latter being able to lead from the back lines better and the former being right up there with the fighter. Your holy classes are for banishing the forces of evil, people!

And yeah, this was more or less what the game designers were aiming for as well, when they made the game, the problem is just then that you dont have to get very high up in levels before clerics, druids and wizards can beat the other classes at their own game if they want to.
(also, druid animal companions can wear metal barding, and monk damage is unfortunately kinda low by default, due to design problems)


If you look at certain aspects? Yeah, some classes can look better than others. But when it comes down to it, no matter what class you play, you can have fun with it. If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong!


It is very hard to continue having fun when you are the fifth wheel of the party however.


(And on that note, it's up to the DM to create varied encounters for their players. I'm hard-pressed to prep for everything accordingly, with my wizard!)

And yes, a really good GM can continue to let everyone shine, though it does get exponentially harder as the party rise in levels.
And this is the design flaws we are discussing atm, because the GM should not be forced to work twice as hard on the campaign, just because he has a mix of casters and noncasters in the party.

edit.


I ask you to be honest on this one: is this really your personal experience, or do you just repeat what others have said?
Because I just don't see it. I'm DMing 3.5 for two and a half years now and it doesn't match my experience. Like, at all.
Your statements seems to imply that the resilience of a character is directly correlated to his overall "power". Which is completely bonkers. Monks are quite good at surviving a lot of things. While Druids, especially wildshaped, have AC issues. Wizards, Sorcerers, Psions and similar classes have to put some thought into their defense against physical attacks and AoE damage attacks, because if their defense fails, they're dead (because of their low hit-point total).


I totaly agree with this, you have to get pretty high up in either levels or optimisation, before something as simple as a couple of guys with longbows isnt an annoyance for arcane casters.


Ignoring the ways around that, they can still wear leather barding and often have natural armor, making them strictly superior to a monk of equivalent level in DPS, staying power and overall utility.


This is blatantly false however, unless the druid spend most of his spells just buffing the companion.

And even then it would proberly not beat the monk at all 3 points.

[CaladanMoonblad]

Kaeso- most of your assertions are correct at a level 20 game... but at levels 1-5? Or levels 6-10? If the game is played from 1 to 20, then the game starts with relative balance and ends in disproportionate excess for specific encounters (once a caster is out of spells, my money is on the fighter to keep on trucking).

Take for instance, the caster vs. rogue on stealth.

Sure, a 3rd level wizard could pick up Invisibility in the SRD. However, they still don't have Move Silently as a class skill, and with such few skill points as a base... why would I make such a character? It is only with splat books that a wizard can get a +20 bonus to such skills without having actual ranks or dexterity. For actual encounters, this makes the caster on par with a rogue... but multiple stealth encounters means the caster needs to have planned accordingly. I'll take a rogue for stealth in the long haul, just like I'll take a fighter for the long haul of surviving encounter after encounter after encounter.

Some food for thought. I like this game, I always have. I think that many people on this board love to rag on the game, and point to excesses as proof of incompetence. Anyone can crash a car against the engineer's best expectations and hopes; it's not the engineer's fault that someone crashed the car, it's the driver's.

[MukkTB]

ANGEL SUMMONER
AND BMX BANDIT
ONE CAN SUMMON ANGELS
THE OTHER RIDES A BMX!!!

My biggest problem with the current 3.x is where wizards become literal gods. I'd like a game where fighter isn't the choice you made because you wanted to be halfway terrible.

[Theprettiestorc]

I guess it's just all in my experience, then. But then again, I've been dipping into Pathfinder, where your customization hits the sky and beyond.

I've made a Drunken Monk of the Sacred Mountain's Four Winds, with Snake-Style combat. And a fighter, specialized as a Two-Weapon Warrior to do attacks with both a sword and a shield. Specialized to move around an opponent, and knock them back, controlling the battlefield.

Color me wrong, but I've never found a druid to be desirable. Animal companion or no, they're not really that fun for me.

And discounting all extra classes and such, yeah. Rangers disarm traps well, wizards/sorcerers sneak, and all that good stuff. But why would you? That takes all the fire out of a class exclusively built to sneak around, disarm, unlock, and get out of their bounds like nobody's business.

And yeah, you can build a cleric to go frontlines really well.

But again, speaking from personal experience - it is HARD, as a caster, to prepare for everything thrown my way. I don't know if we're going to get traps, encounters, zombies, bandits, ghosts...anything. All in all, it comes down to the DM to make a balanced game where everyone's talents shine. And not once has anyone really not expected me to rain fire and damage and death upon enemies. Sometimes, it's a blessing to have someone powerful around. Sometimes, you have a challenge. Sometimes, things are easier for you in your role for the party.

When it comes to less poweriffic players, who play the game based on what they want to play, the system will work. When you delve deeper, though, yeah. There's plenty and plenty of issues. Someone told me that 4e was the greatest thing since sliced cheese(which is fine) because it was more balanced. But sure! Play what you like!

But if you're focused on "balance issues", I don't think you're playing the game right and wondering exactly what traps are in that chest, whether that ring is cursed, how to get past the room of guards, or how to go about slaying a dragon quickly. You're fixed on the mechanics, and not immersion into the story.

[ArcturusV]

Well, I'd refine that to being "Some people don't like feeling superfluous constantly".

Which is something I've seen happen when you start a game out at high level. At low level it's not so much of a problem. And when you get to high levels, it's still not a problem because the low powered character had his place. And he already feels like part of the team, you're used to planning tactics around him.

Simply put? An OA Samurai might be a "****" class. But at level 1, they are at least comparably viable with Clerics, Druids, Wizards, Sorcerers, etc. Even though it's low tier, it's not felt at the time. And because of that, you plan your actions around the fact that the Samurai is a contributing, useful member of the party.

So... as you level and adventure together, you just naturally form a bond. You realize their worth. There's stories about how, back when you were fighting Kobolds the entire party was saved by the Samurai, etc. Even after the Samurai's time has effectively passed, and he's low tier.... it makes sense that you still have the Samurai. He's a valued ally. You owe him favors from back in the day. You're used to fighting along their side. So it works. You're a team.

Which is a harder feeling to have when you start at say, level 5, the Samurai is already falling into a state where they are no longer very useful, and you don't have that communal history. I mean you might still work with them. But there's not a sense that the Samurai is the reason you are alive (Barring odd circumstances). He's a meatshield. Someone you keep around in case you don't want to waste spells opening a door, or triggering traps, or breaking legs instead of charming an NPC. I've seen some games where it gets that way. The players don't seem aware of it, at first. But you see them kind of dismiss the other player as a second class feature to the party. There's a bit of Hireling Phenomenon sometimes, where they talk AT the character, or ignore the character a lot. The "I don't care where you are, as long as you're not in my way" sort of thing. It usually doesn't come to a head. But if you're paying attention you can see it.

... just something to consider.

[Kaeso]

I ask you to be honest on this one: is this really your personal experience, or do you just repeat what others have said?
Because I just don't see it. I'm DMing 3.5 for two and a half years now and it doesn't match my experience. Like, at all.
Your statements seems to imply that the resilience of a character is directly correlated to his overall "power". Which is completely bonkers. Monks are quite good at surviving a lot of things. While Druids, especially wildshaped, have AC issues. Wizards, Sorcerers, Psions and similar classes have to put some thought into their defense against physical attacks and AoE damage attacks, because if their defense fails, they're dead (because of their low hit-point total).

Like FreakyCheeseMan has pointed out, the existence of a full-caster in the group makes everyone better due to buffs, debuffs and battlefield control. Saying that often ecounters that will "challenge" full-casters will "annihilate" lower tier characters seems like an untruthful and misinformed exaggeration.
An encounter that would destroy a group without a full caster will often be in fact just fine thanks to the full-caster.

To put it in other words:
A group composed of a samurai, a rogue, a paladin and a marshal might be problematic for encounter design. A group composed of a psion, a wizard, an archivist and a sorcerer might also be problematic for encounter design. But a group composed of a rogue, a paladin, a marshal and a cleric is actually just fine. It would be my preferred group of the three.

I'd like to know how an all-caster party can be a problem. If we assume the tank-sneak-blast-heal structure, with the party face being a sub-role, we will find out that an all-caster party is able to cover all of these bases.

Tank: A wizard can summon creatures to act like tanks. A cleric and rogue can do this while themselves being tanks thanks to their buffs, wild shape and divine metamagic. Let's also not forget that the standard cleric chassis, d8 with heavy armor, is only slightly inferior to the fighter with a difference of 1 hp per level on average.

Sneak: A cloistered cleric with the trickery domain and kobold domain (for trapfinding) fits the bill perfectly. Summons can be used to scout ahead for traps, especially when a wizard takes the reserve feat that allows him to summon a small elemental at will. In the case of this wizard, that means he doesn't even need to waste a spell slot on scouting. Once this elemental activates a trap, knowledge of the trap will be there. Avoiding or disarming it will be the only problem that is left. Let's also not forget that the beguiler is pretty much Rogue+

Blast/DPS: A dedicated blaster of either the cleric or wizard variant can outdo any damage dealer, and a Cleric archer is a pretty hefty damage dealer as well.

Heal: Is there any mundane class that can even fit this role?

Face: Not only do some full casters (Beguiler, Sorcerer, certain clerics) have the social skills as class skills, they also have spells to make them better at it (glibness, charm person etc.)

In other words, when compared to the average Fighter-Rogue-Wizard-Cleric class, a Cleric-Beguiler-Wizard class outdoes them while being one member short. The cleric can outfight the fighter while still being able to heal and blast, the beguiler can outsneak and outface the rogue while still being able to heal and blast (advanced learning and/or wands with UMD), the wizard can cover nearly all bases. In an all-caster party the problem is specialization. There has to be a gentlemans agreement that the Cleric will mostly focus on melee combat, the beguiler will mostly focus on sneaking and supportive casting (wand of CLW anyone?) and that the wizard will mostly focus on battlefield control. The most dangerous thing that could happen in a full caster party is that the casters start stepping on eachothers toes.

[lord_khaine]

ANGEL SUMMONER
AND BMX BANDIT
ONE CAN SUMMON ANGELS
THE OTHER RIDES A BMX!!!

Yeah, well the main issue here is that AS was about 10-11 levels above BMXB, and when that happen its just impossibel to balance things out.


My biggest problem with the current 3.x is where wizards become literal gods. I'd like a game where fighter isn't the choice you made because you wanted to be halfway terrible.

The chese level really has to get insanely high before this happens though.

edit.


I'd like to know how an all-caster party can be a problem. If we assume the tank-sneak-blast-heal structure, with the party face being a sub-role, we will find out that an all-caster party is able to cover all of these bases.


You are moving pretty far out to fill some of these bases however, and a lot of these choices are not the pure tier 1 classes that i belive most people here think off when they say casters.


Tank: A wizard can summon creatures to act like tanks. A cleric and rogue can do this while themselves being tanks thanks to their buffs, wild shape and divine metamagic. Let's also not forget that the standard cleric chassis, d8 with heavy armor, is only slightly inferior to the fighter with a difference of 1 hp per level on average.

Lots of issues with this, like summoning normaly taking a round to do, or any smart opponents ignoring the summons to instead go after the summoner.
And druids do have some issues with getting a decent AC in wildshape, while clerics will proberly also have a lower Con.
And of course, while the cleric might be tanky enough, he runs the same problem as the monsters of getting ignored in favor of softer targets.


Sneak: A cloistered cleric with the trickery domain and kobold domain (for trapfinding) fits the bill perfectly. Summons can be used to scout ahead for traps, especially when a wizard takes the reserve feat that allows him to summon a small elemental at will. In the case of this wizard, that means he doesn't even need to waste a spell slot on scouting. Once this elemental activates a trap, knowledge of the trap will be there. Avoiding or disarming it will be the only problem that is left. Let's also not forget that the beguiler is pretty much Rogue+

And the kobold domain is as i recall both web material, and something that kinda requires you to be a kobold.

Also, of all these things i would still say its only the beguiler who can actualy cover the sneak role proberly, as i dont belive the summons would be all that usefull in this role.


Face: Not only do some full casters (Beguiler, Sorcerer, certain clerics) have the social skills as class skills, they also have spells to make them better at it (glibness, charm person etc.)

And they would not allways have a chance to cast those spells when they need them, i would still say its only the beguiler who can proberly fill this role, since the others dont have that many skillpoints by default.

[Zombimode]

I'd like to know how an all-caster party can be a problem. If we assume the tank-sneak-blast-heal structure, with the party face being a sub-role, we will find out that an all-caster party is able to cover all of these bases.

I should have elaborated. I see two cases where an all caster party could be problematic for encounter design.
1. The players don't know what they are doing and the party dies to something simple as a surprise attack, AoE-damage, or a golem.
2. The player do know what they are doing and it becomes increasingly difficult to have actually challenging encounters.

[Theprettiestorc]

Eww. EWWWWWWWW. >_<

No. Noooononono. You don't make an all-caster party. As soon as you do that, someone creates an anti-magic field. Guess what? YOU'RE PORKED!!

A fighter will always trump a cleric in combat, in my opinion, because of such things as whirlwind attack, or cleave. Bonus quirks! Or a barbarian, who(I've seen it happen) can throw their weapon, retrieve it, and go to high-rage.

The problem here is that, sure. You can specialize a caster to perform for another class. But damn it all if you're just performing for another class, period. Nobody can do all of what one specialized class does.

Besides, a wizard can summon "tanks", but they're going to die. And a proper encounter involves the wizard being at risk of dying, too, where they need reflex and fortitude saves.

And using critters to scout ahead? What if you can't see what happened, or are unconnected to them? That's where a druid's animal companion would come in, and if you're a druid and you're making your pet take traps for you, you're a very terrible person.

Not to mention if you're creating things just to make a class obsolete, you're going to just fail. Like it's said - a fighter keeps going, a wizard needs spell-slots. And if you're having combat all day, the fighter STILL keeps going, while the lesser damage of a drained cleric doesn't compare. Or a rogue, who will keep going and going through a whole dungeon, instead of constantly summoning. Casters are good in short bursts, but without their spells, they may as well be a bunch of turnips waiting for slaughter.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Too many responses to hit everything point-by-point, but trying to get in the big ones.

Wizards Are Better, So Fighters Aren't Fun
This one just strikes me as a conclusion that does not follow from the premise. For me, so long as I'm still able to hit things, kill enemies and take actions that have immediate consequences, the game is still fun - even if one of my team mates is making much more of a difference, even if they're making that difference in the same arena as me.

Some Martial Classes Don't Work Right
We may be using different language, but again, I wouldn't call this a balance issue. Balance to me refers to the interplay between the power levels of the classes - a single class in isolation cannot be "Unbalanced", it has to be weak or strong in relation to another class. In most of the examples listed, however, the martial character isn't failing because they're weak in relation to the wizard, they're failing because the class is weak by itself, does not work as intended, or can't measure up to the enemies it faces at that level. Nothing is improved by dragging the wizard down - rather, the solution is to provide more resources for the martial classes (which has been done. Yay, Tome of Battle!)

Encounters Can't Be Fun For Both High And Low Tiers
The "If it can threaten the Wizard, it's no fun for the Fighter" argument. I see a few flaws in it - first, there's the assumption that things have to be kept hard for those high-op characters. If we're dealing with the sort of wizard that really makes this a problem, there's already been plenty of effort put into making them so powerful - what does it matter if they aren't really threatened that much in combat? If your players complaint is "I put all this work into making things easy for my character, and now things are easy for my character!"... I feel an obvious solution presents itself. Furthermore, combat is complicated enough that different PCs can be engaged on different levels - if the wizard really is so far above the fighters, he'll draw fire from the more powerful enemies, and the more powerful enemies will focus their defensive options against the wizard, so he'll be facing a harder fight than the fighters, and everyone can still have a challenge.

The Wizard Always Solves Everything, So There's Nothing For Me To Do
This one seems the closest to actually being a problem (to me, "Problem" = "Thing That Directly Results In Game Not Being Fun.") However, even this one strikes me as having some flaws. First, it assumes that we're comparing a well-built wizard to a poorly-built lesser class; if not, either the wizard is not going to be *quite* that versatile, or the other class is going to have picked up some extra abilities that make it better at that single task. Second, and more importantly... if this is happening in your group, I think there's a deeper problem than the rule set. If one player is actually dominating all of the content and not giving anyone else a chance to contribute, the problem is that player, not the specific rules he's found to abuse; the DM should be able to either deal with him directly, or push more content towards the other players.

You Can't Have Fun With A Weak Character
This seems to be the biggest assumption that a lot of people make, and in D&D, I just can't see it being the case. I'm willing to bet that everyone reading this would be able to have fun in their next game if they played it as a commoner, just by focusing on the roleplay, the social interactions, and the challenge of accomplishing goals without the resources available to other players. No, it isn't something you'd want to do every time - but, again, you don't have to, every player has the option of playing whatever class or power level they want.

[CaladanMoonblad]

And using critters to scout ahead? What if you can't see what happened, or are unconnected to them? That's where a druid's animal companion would come in, and if you're a druid and you're making your pet take traps for you, you're a very terrible person.



*Wipes tear from eye due to laughter* Oh, the munchkin who doesn't understand how to role-play their nature loving druid... is laid bare in this statement. *Starts laughing again*



Not to mention if you're creating things just to make a class obsolete, you're going to just fail. Like it's said - a fighter keeps going, a wizard needs spell-slots. And if you're having combat all day, the fighter STILL keeps going, while the lesser damage of a drained cleric doesn't compare. Or a rogue, who will keep going and going through a whole dungeon, instead of constantly summoning. Casters are good in short bursts, but without their spells, they may as well be a bunch of turnips waiting for slaughter.

Hear hear!

Dungeons are less fun with nap time every 3 rooms.

[Waker]

I ask you to be honest on this one: is this really your personal experience, or do you just repeat what others have said?
Because I just don't see it. I'm DMing 3.5 for two and a half years now and it doesn't match my experience. Like, at all.
Your statements seems to imply that the resilience of a character is directly correlated to his overall "power". Which is completely bonkers. Monks are quite good at surviving a lot of things. While Druids, especially wildshaped, have AC issues. Wizards, Sorcerers, Psions and similar classes have to put some thought into their defense against physical attacks and AoE damage attacks, because if their defense fails, they're dead (because of their low hit-point total).
Though I mentioned characters being annihilated, encounters do extend beyond combat. I've seen social rogues outperformed because of the existence of spells like glibness and charm monster, paladins being outdamaged by a wizard jokingly playing around with evocation spells, fighters unable to contribute to any situation that doesn't require swinging a sword. I'm not gonna bother going on, but there are way too many times where I've noted the balance of power being wonky.
I wish there were a balance between the classes, I really do, but my experiences over the past 10 years of playing 3/3.5 just show it isn't true. Sure, you get people who intentionally play under the class's potential, though not everyone is as nice.
As for your questions and comments about building encounters, I'll address a few of them.
- Yes, a monk is decent at surviving certain situations. Good saves and evasion help, while their wisdom bonus to ac is good at low levels. Unfortunately, they deal poor damage and give no incentive to attack them in preference to other targets.
-The forms a druid takes sometimes have poor natural ac, but that can be augmented with armor that can wildshape and wildling clasps. And they can buff themselves.
- The wizard can increase his HPs to a respectable level because he can afford to buy/craft items to raise his con, or he can buff himself. The real nuisance are the defensive spells that let him avoid damage at all: Fly, Invisibility, Resist Energy, Stoneskin.... and that list is a mile long.

[Spuddles]

The Wizard Always Solves Everything, So There's Nothing For Me To Do
This one seems the closest to actually being a problem (to me, "Problem" = "Thing That Directly Results In Game Not Being Fun.") However, even this one strikes me as having some flaws. First, it assumes that we're comparing a well-built wizard to a poorly-built lesser class; if not, either the wizard is not going to be *quite* that versatile, or the other class is going to have picked up some extra abilities that make it better at that single task. Second, and more importantly... if this is happening in your group, I think there's a deeper problem than the rule set. If one player is actually dominating all of the content and not giving anyone else a chance to contribute, the problem is that player, not the specific rules he's found to abuse; the DM should be able to either deal with him directly, or push more content towards the other players.

You Can't Have Fun With A Weak Character
This seems to be the biggest assumption that a lot of people make, and in D&D, I just can't see it being the case. I'm willing to bet that everyone reading this would be able to have fun in their next game if they played it as a commoner, just by focusing on the roleplay, the social interactions, and the challenge of accomplishing goals without the resources available to other players. No, it isn't something you'd want to do every time - but, again, you don't have to, every player has the option of playing whatever class or power level they want.

I speak from experience when I say, as the game gets higher level, martial characters move more towards resource sponges that get baby sat by the casters.

This usually isn't fun for anyone.

At low levels, a fighter or barbarian is actually a really great addition to a party because the wizard needs the protection and the DPS. A druid of course has an awesome riding dog in armor and wears armor and casts spells and stabs things. The monk is terrible unless they have all 16s in ability scores, because they can't wear armor, they have low DPS, they have non-existent to hit with a flurry, and bad HP. Low level monks are super fragile.

At low mid levels, putting spells on the barbarian and monk and rogue has huge dividends- magic weapon, haste, greater mighty wollop. The most efficient combat choices are buffs and battlefield control, with some utility in there. In my experience, monks benefit disproportionately from buffs than other classes- not because their optimization floor is so low, but that their abilities actually synergize really well if they are getting good buffs.

As the high mid levels begin to show up, enemies begin to get WAY more dangerous, and casters are pressed to not only put a caster only source of protection on themselves to save their d4 HD, two bad saves, and low AC from dying, but also put it on their barb & rogue friends, because they also need to reach the enemies, or not die vs. beholder.

If the barb and rogue were replaced by two more casters, then the druid and wizard wouldn't have to spend so many rounds just making their allies competent.

Now I am not sure if this is a matter of optimization or not. Usually it is much easier and clearer for a wizard to have fly and invis and a druid to prep death ward than it is for the martial characters to optimize their WBL. Having perfect WBL at every level is only something I've seen on boards in hypothetical builds. Magic item availability seems to be very sensitive to the DM, the game, and the player. Magic items tend not to be in player material-it's up to DMs to hand that stuff out in a metagame sense. Especially vis a vis optimization- item optimization is a much nastier beast than spell optimization.

By the high levels, the druid has a pet t rex and is a t rex and the wizard is also a t rex. And they can both summon t rex. Basically at high levels the whole party is replaced by badass spell casting dinosaurs.

Rogue and barbarian are still waiting for someone to cast GMW on them.


it's not the engineer's fault that someone crashed the car, it's the driver's.

Alter Self, Gate, Shapechange, Ray of Stupidity, Web, Glitterdust, Teleport- this car crashes itself.


The chese level really has to get insanely high before this happens though.

Not cheese, just level. Full casters operate, functionally, as gods. They break virtually every rule there is to break in the game via new rules they get to use- spells. It's just so unfair, and it doesn't take that much cheese. How long does it take before your Druid player picks Shapechange because it looks cool, then turns into a beholder because he remembers that beholders made a nasty fight?


I'd like to know how an all-caster party can be a problem.

Challenging it as a DM can be quite problematic.


Eww. EWWWWWWWW. >_<

No. Noooononono. You don't make an all-caster party. As soon as you do that, someone creates an anti-magic field. Guess what? YOU'RE PORKED!!

A fighter will always trump a cleric in combat, in my opinion, because of such things as whirlwind attack, or cleave. Bonus quirks! Or a barbarian, who(I've seen it happen) can throw their weapon, retrieve it, and go to high-rage.

The problem here is that, sure. You can specialize a caster to perform for another class. But damn it all if you're just performing for another class, period. Nobody can do all of what one specialized class does.

Besides, a wizard can summon "tanks", but they're going to die. And a proper encounter involves the wizard being at risk of dying, too, where they need reflex and fortitude saves.

And using critters to scout ahead? What if you can't see what happened, or are unconnected to them? That's where a druid's animal companion would come in, and if you're a druid and you're making your pet take traps for you, you're a very terrible person.

Not to mention if you're creating things just to make a class obsolete, you're going to just fail. Like it's said - a fighter keeps going, a wizard needs spell-slots. And if you're having combat all day, the fighter STILL keeps going, while the lesser damage of a drained cleric doesn't compare. Or a rogue, who will keep going and going through a whole dungeon, instead of constantly summoning. Casters are good in short bursts, but without their spells, they may as well be a bunch of turnips waiting for slaughter.

There have been countless internet discussions and game tests demonstrating that yes, full casters do everything that rogues and barbarians do, better, and with more let over. Especially in a post-level 10 environment.

This creates problems for the DM where, to challenge these players, he needs to create further and further arbitrary measures to prevent them from being good. Like the aforementioned antimagic fields. In order to make one of those, you need a caster capable of casting 7th level spells. It's not the sort of solution you just throw all over the place without tacitly acknowledging that casters have huge problems.

It's not like you have to go very far out of your way to make life difficult for a fighter or rogue, but to make a challenge for a caster, you basically have to say "here, your powers all fail and don't work for no reason other than I as DM said that they don't because challenging you guys is hard to do with this system."

[Man on Fire]

No. Noooononono. You don't make an all-caster party. As soon as you do that, someone creates an anti-magic field. Guess what? YOU'RE PORKED!!

Why would I, as DM of all-casters party, do that? I wouldn't be able to challenge the party with casters I designed for them to fight.

[Bakkan]

Yeah, well the main issue here is that AS was about 10-11 levels above BMXB, and when that happen its just impossibel to balance things out.

I disagree. I think that it's a fairly accurate representation of say a level 15 Wizard vs a level 15 Fighter.


Eww. EWWWWWWWW. >_<

No. Noooononono. You don't make an all-caster party. As soon as you do that, someone creates an anti-magic field. Guess what? YOU'RE PORKED!!


Anti-magic fields are much more problematic for the fighter, who actually has to be close to the enemy and hence lose his buffs and magic items, than the mage, who simply steps back and fires an instantaneous conjuration into the field, or collapses the ceiling, or simply teleports away to call an extraplanar creature or wait for the duration of the anti-magic field to expire.



A fighter will always trump a cleric in combat, in my opinion, because of such things as whirlwind attack, or cleave. Bonus quirks! Or a barbarian, who(I've seen it happen) can throw their weapon, retrieve it, and go to high-rage.

Whirlwind Attack and Cleave are not Fighter class features, and the Cleric could get them as well. The only advantage a Fighter has over a Cleric is (LEVEL/2)+1 feats and +1 HP/level. The Cleric has spells, domains, and turn undead. BAB isn't an advanage for the Fighter because of DMM'ed Divine Power.



The problem here is that, sure. You can specialize a caster to perform for another class. But damn it all if you're just performing for another class, period. Nobody can do all of what one specialized class does.

As has been said, this is what Wizards was aiming for but not what they created. A Cleric with Divine Metamagic(Persistent Spell) and one spell slot per day spent on Divine Power is a better Fighter than the Fighter and so far has plenty of room to do other stuff (i.e. he's not "specialized").



Like it's said - a fighter keeps going, a wizard needs spell-slots. And if you're having combat all day, the fighter STILL keeps going, while the lesser damage of a drained cleric doesn't compare. Or a rogue, who will keep going and going through a whole dungeon, instead of constantly summoning. Casters are good in short bursts, but without their spells, they may as well be a bunch of turnips waiting for slaughter.
Limits on spells per day is only much of a limiting factor at low levels or if your casters are always going nova. Also, the Cleric has Divine Metamagic (Persistent Spell), which means he can go as long as the Fighter. Also, casters have ways of recovering or replacing spell slots, such as wands, scrolls, and mnemonic enhancer. A Fighter or Rogue has no way of recovering his own hit points, so in fact they can't go any longer than the Cleric can, since if the Cleric's out of spell slots, the mundanes are out of healing.

[Man on Fire]

Nothing is improved by dragging the wizard down - rather, the solution is to provide more resources for the martial classes (which has been done. Yay, Tome of Battle!)

Tome of Battle still didn't close the gap between meele and casters, wizard still outpreforms Warblade, Crusader and Swordsage.

I also see you're operating under strange assumption that the only way people want D&D fixed is to drag tier 1 down to tier 5, which isn't true. I, for one, would rather want everybody on Tier 3.

[Spuddles]

As has been said, this is what Wizards was aiming for but not what they created. A Cleric with Divine Metamagic(Persistent Spell) and one spell slot per day spent on Divine Power is a better Fighter than the Fighter and so far has plenty of room to do other stuff (i.e. he's not "specialized").

That's an over exaggeration. If that is all you're going to invest in melee, then you have successfully recreated the NPC warrior class.

A handful more buffs and you're on par with a moderately optimized fighter.

You are never going to have the feats to catch up with a "fighter" in terms of raw damage and tripping, but then you won't need it either.

[Nightmarenny]

Too many responses to hit everything point-by-point, but trying to get in the big ones.

Wizards Are Better, So Fighters Aren't Fun
This one just strikes me as a conclusion that does not follow from the premise. For me, so long as I'm still able to hit things, kill enemies and take actions that have immediate consequences, the game is still fun - even if one of my team mates is making much more of a difference, even if they're making that difference in the same arena as me.


If you think this is the situation people are talking about you are probably playing at an extremely low optimization level. Is your wizard hurling fireball or casting Save-Or-Die spells? Because when you get a attacked by a group of Orcs and the Wizard ends the encounter with a single sleep spell you may start to feel differently.

This is something that you get a lot when you talk about 3.5 balance issues. You don't have them because some of your players don't see/intentionally choice not to utilize the best choices.




But again, speaking from personal experience - it is HARD, as a caster, to prepare for everything thrown my way. I don't know if we're going to get traps, encounters, zombies, bandits, ghosts...anything. All in all, it comes down to the DM to make a balanced game where everyone's talents shine. And not once has anyone really not expected me to rain fire and damage and death upon enemies. Sometimes, it's a blessing to have someone powerful around. Sometimes, you have a challenge. Sometimes, things are easier for you in your role for the party.


The majority of good spells are good because they are extremely flexible. It is almost trivial to pick the "right" spells because they are almost always the same.

You are missing the bigger point though which is that as it is some classes don't have talents to shine. Fighters can be outclassed in later levels by a summon for example.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Tome of Battle still didn't close the gap between meele and casters, wizard still outpreforms Warblade, Crusader and Swordsage.

I never said it "Closed the gap", I said it made martial classes functional.


I also see you're operating under strange assumption that the only way people want D&D fixed is to drag tier 1 down to tier 5, which isn't true. I, for one, would rather want everybody on Tier 3.

When did I say that anything like that? I said that "Things wouldn't be better if everyone were on that level", but I wasn't characterizing anyone's proposals - I was demonstrating that the issue is that those classes are a problem because they're inherently poorly built, not because they aren't balanced with the Tier 1s.

I would say that even moving everyone to Tier 3 is a mistake (see the "Levels of Play" argument - some people want to commit to the mechanics of the game at different levels, and they should be able to.)

[FreakyCheeseMan]

If you think this is the situation people are talking about you are probably playing at an extremely low optimization level. Is your wizard hurling fireball or casting Save-Or-Die spells? Because when you get a attacked by a group of Orcs and the Wizard ends the encounter with a single sleep spell you may start to feel differently.

This is something that you get a lot when you talk about 3.5 balance issues. You don't have them because some of your players don't see/intentionally choice not to utilize the best choices.

Wizards ending encounters with a single spell is certainly a problem, but I don't believe that that's a common occurrence - and if it is, the DM is doing something wrong. My overall point was that (except in those most extreme cases), the wizard doing well does not mean that the fighter can't still be having fun.

[Spuddles]

If you think this is the situation people are talking about you are probably playing at an extremely low optimization level. Is your wizard hurling fireball or casting Save-Or-Die spells? Because when you get a attacked by a group of Orcs and the Wizard ends the encounter with a single sleep spell you may start to feel differently.

This is something that you get a lot when you talk about 3.5 balance issues. You don't have them because some of your players don't see/intentionally choice not to utilize the best choices.

When that happens, every DM I've ever played with just added a few more orcs to soak up the wizard's spells. The wizard no longer ends the encounter with a single spell and the other players get a chance to do stuff.

That stuff isn't so hard to deal with, orcs anyway.

Beholders, dragons, mindflayers, demons, devils, giants, dire animals all pose serious threats to martial characters and the martial characters have very little in their repertoire to retaliate or defend themselves with. Which makes them dependent on spell casters in those situations. Spellcasters, though, don't really need martial characters and, in a table-dynamic sort of way, end up being responsible for those characters for flight, protection from evil, death ward, etc.

[Theprettiestorc]

Blugh. I guess I can't keep up, here.

But I will say that, fairly, the sum of my experience has only been up to around...level 12-14 or so.

[Nightmarenny]

Kaeso- most of your assertions are correct at a level 20 game... but at levels 1-5? Or levels 6-10? If the game is played from 1 to 20, then the game starts with relative balance and ends in disproportionate excess for specific encounters (once a caster is out of spells, my money is on the fighter to keep on trucking).

Take for instance, the caster vs. rogue on stealth.

Sure, a 3rd level wizard could pick up Invisibility in the SRD. However, they still don't have Move Silently as a class skill, and with such few skill points as a base... why would I make such a character? It is only with splat books that a wizard can get a +20 bonus to such skills without having actual ranks or dexterity. For actual encounters, this makes the caster on par with a rogue... but multiple stealth encounters means the caster needs to have planned accordingly. I'll take a rogue for stealth in the long haul, just like I'll take a fighter for the long haul of surviving encounter after encounter after encounter.

Some food for thought. I like this game, I always have. I think that many people on this board love to rag on the game, and point to excesses as proof of incompetence. Anyone can crash a car against the engineer's best expectations and hopes; it's not the engineer's fault that someone crashed the car, it's the driver's.

That is a terrible a analogy.

You are arguing that the system isn't bad because it only stops working correctly when people do something unexpected but if you can break a system by taking the core assets and using them optimally then it is a bad system.

[Spuddles]

Blugh. I guess I can't keep up, here.

But I will say that, fairly, the sum of my experience has only been up to around...level 12-14 or so.

Don't take it personally- the optimization floor here is kind of embarrassingly high, given what D&D used to be like before the internet.

At low levels, the difference between caster and non-caster is rather trivial, and campaign variance can have a huge effect on who is useful. Furthermore, class niches are far better defined, and people that want to play a wizard that can cleverly solve problems and people that want to get a great cleave off with a raging barbarian can both be having fun.

[Killer Angel]

The Wizard Always Solves Everything, So There's Nothing For Me To Do
This one seems the closest to actually being a problem (to me, "Problem" = "Thing That Directly Results In Game Not Being Fun.") However, even this one strikes me as having some flaws. First, it assumes that we're comparing a well-built wizard to a poorly-built lesser class; if not, either the wizard is not going to be *quite* that versatile, or the other class is going to have picked up some extra abilities that make it better at that single task. Second, and more importantly... if this is happening in your group, I think there's a deeper problem than the rule set. If one player is actually dominating all of the content and not giving anyone else a chance to contribute, the problem is that player, not the specific rules he's found to abuse; the DM should be able to either deal with him directly, or push more content towards the other players.

OK, i'm gonna go tangent.
I've seen it happen, in my group, and there wasn't this "negative" approach.
Player A likes melee characters, and tends to avoid full casters to avoid bookeeping AND his knowledge of the system isn't great. To don't worry about spells and hitting things, is what he likes.
Player B likes to explore the system, and excels with arcane casters because they're the ones with more possibilities to explore, within the various sessions, so they're the ones more funny to play, for him.
There were a couple of sessions where player A ended saying "what am I even doing here?".

[Nightmarenny]

Wizards ending encounters with a single spell is certainly a problem, but I don't believe that that's a common occurrence - and if it is, the DM is doing something wrong. My overall point was that (except in those most extreme cases), the wizard doing well does not mean that the fighter can't still be having fun.

I got your point.

I don't think you really get the situation people are talking about. Nobody is talking about the Wizard doing well. The Wizard is capable of trivializing encounters and in order to challenge them requires the DM to create challenges that nonmagic classes can't contribute to.

You have most likely not had this happen because whoever plays a wizard in your party doesn't play them optimally. That's fine. I'm not trying to insult you or your group but your argument is "It hasn't been a problem for me so it must not be a problem".

Note again that spellcasters arn't abusing anything. They do this simply by using their core spells optimally and sensibly.

[Man on Fire]

if the wizard really is so far above the fighters, he'll draw fire from the more powerful enemies, and the more powerful enemies will focus their defensive options against the wizard, so he'll be facing a harder fight than the fighters, and everyone can still have a challenge.

"I had slayed ten ogres!" Yelled Kushua. For so experienced fighter as her, she was still very entusiastic about her job.
"You women are easily impressed. I had defeated five trolls!" Yelled Gronk, proud of his traditional, tribal chauvinism.
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Yelled Kaitlyn, holding freslhy cut head of Death Knight that had striken fear in heart of orc barbarian not so long ago.
A lightning had struck, driving their attention. They all turned their head, to see Muthazamed. They saw a dragon, acient and larger than anyting they had ever seen, even now it's dead body pulsing with terrifying power, far beyond everythign they had ever fought combined. The wizard just finished painting words "TIER 1" on corpse's wings."

[Theprettiestorc]

Don't take it personally- the optimization floor here is kind of embarrassingly high, given what D&D used to be like before the internet.

At low levels, the difference between caster and non-caster is rather trivial, and campaign variance can have a huge effect on who is useful. Furthermore, class niches are far better defined, and people that want to play a wizard that can cleverly solve problems and people that want to get a great cleave off with a raging barbarian can both be having fun.

Yeah, I'm finding my wizard is pretty utilitarian right now. Mostly evocation, and as it's Pathfinder, he's an admixture, so he's changing elements of things. I've also got my sword and board fighter who peaks out her optimization around level 16, and then goes with general increase AC, increase rolls, from there.

I just like to have fun with roleplaying and concepts, so all this talk of casters replacing everyone because they're better scares me.

[Darius Kane]

OP: "Why balance?"
Me: "Why not."

[Spuddles]

Yeah, I'm finding my wizard is pretty utilitarian right now. Mostly evocation, and as it's Pathfinder, he's an admixture, so he's changing elements of things. I've also got my sword and board fighter who peaks out her optimization around level 16, and then goes with general increase AC, increase rolls, from there.

I just like to have fun with roleplaying and concepts, so all this talk of casters replacing everyone because they're better scares me.

Pathfinder nerfed wizards hard, if you're only playing with PF only material. There are far fewer hijinks.

'Course, Blood Money, a source of ability score healing, and any spell that has a pricey material component (like gate or wish) is absolutely stupid.

[Theprettiestorc]

Pathfinder nerfed wizards hard, if you're only playing with PF only material. There are far fewer hijinks.

'Course, Blood Money, a source of ability score healing, and any spell that has a pricey material component (like gate or wish) is absolutely stupid.

I used to play 3.5 though! XD.

I guess my experiences these days are based on Pathfinder, too, which explains a lot. PF did fix a lot of things.

[Talderas]

Balance Is Relative
This one's more a definition than an actual argument, but here goes: Balance is Relative. All that "Balance" refers to is the power and versatility of one set of options relative to another; so, some things are problems, not because they're unbalanced, but simply because they're bad.

There is a concept called Hobson's choice which applies very well to D&D. In a Hobson's choice you are given one option and can select whether to take it or not. D&D is like that in that it contains a number of choices that are similar to that especially with feat traps. A Hobson's choice in an RPG is fine but for the purposes of balance it shouldn't be present when it comes to selecting classes. Certain classes are inherently weaker than other classes and this is exasperated by other classes being able to perform the roles of those classes nearly as well as the class in addition to performing their own roles.

--


I think everyone's missing the point of the game, though, like it's been stated. D&D is meant to be fun, all around.

A rogue is at their best when they're sneaking onto an enemy. Nobody else is as good at sneaking.

A bard is the best at stealth. They get both invisibility and silence at level four.

[Hyde]

The best argument I've heard concerning this is that As a DM, you don't need to worry about writing an adventure or using a module where the wizard gets to use his abilities to their fullest. Rogues, Bards, and anything with a class feature that isn't "Hurt its face" needs special consideration to make sure there's a reason for them to even show up.

In my time here, I've come to realize that theory doesn't always meet practice- personally, my players wouldn't know an optimized build if it came up and smacked them in their collective faces. It's really not a problem if you have a group that's about the same level of experience, since you're not going to have a veteran making a wizard because he knows how powerful they are along with the relative neophyte thinking "Man, I'm gonna play Legolas because he was all the shiny in that there movie".

In short, your experiences may not match everyone else's, don't trivialize the problems that others have had by declaring it "not an issue".

Also that line works for pretty much every social interaction anyone will ever have.

...Psychology degrees are kind of useless.

[Nightmarenny]

The best argument I've heard concerning this is that As a DM, you don't need to worry about writing an adventure or using a module where the wizard gets to use his abilities to their fullest. Rogues, Bards, and anything with a class feature that isn't "Hurt its face" needs special consideration to make sure there's a reason for them to even show up.

In my time here, I've come to realize that theory doesn't always meet practice- personally, my players wouldn't know an optimized build if it came up and smacked them in their collective faces. It's really not a problem if you have a group that's about the same level of experience, since you're not going to have a veteran making a wizard because he knows how powerful they are along with the relative neophyte thinking "Man, I'm gonna play Legolas because he was all the shiny in that there movie".

In short, your experiences may not match everyone else's, don't trivialize the problems that others have had by declaring it "not an issue".

Also that line works for pretty much every social interaction anyone will ever have.

...Psychology degrees are kind of useless.

That's pretty much the long and short of it.

[Morph Bark]

This is true; it's also not a balance issue, but simply a failure of the class. Would it be any more fun facing those same situations, if your allies were just as helpless as you?

It is a balance issue. However, the balance isn't PC-to-PC, but PC-to-world. If the characters are balanced against their encounters, the encounters will be challenging, but beatable.


In mathematical game theory, the presence of bad options is irrelevant, because players will instead take the good ones.

This would mean the players would need to end up doing math to make their choices even before starting the game. People who don't like math would not want to do that. Those who are bad at it would still end up with bad choices, or get confused and end up not playing at all. The result is that no fun is being had, except by those who are good at math and like it enough to want to spend a lot of time on it like you have.

[Talderas]

This would mean the players would need to end up doing math to make their choices even before starting the game. People who don't like math would not want to do that. Those who are bad at it would still end up with bad choices, or get confused and end up not playing at all. The result is that no fun is being had, except by those who are good at math and like it enough to want to spend a lot of time on it like you have.

It's not math. It's system mastery. You don't need to do math to know that Toughness or Weapon Specialization or Greater Weapon Focus are bad feats. You don't need math to know that blast spells for a wizard are less effective than other spells.

[Theprettiestorc]

But, but...I like my blast spells...

And my Burning Arc...Q.Q

[Hyde]

My Friend: "I made this awesome caster!"
Me: "Oh, some kind of Summoner wizard or-"
My Friend: "He's a Sorcerer! Uses exclusively fire evocations!"
Me: "... well, that's nice too. I'm playing a Psion."

[Guizonde]

why balance? i really don't know. so far, all i've seen are people here saying "wizard is best", "monks = lol", "fighter = bleh". here's my party's composition. levels are 4-6, encounters are for levels 8+.
-we've got a wizard, who's tremendously powerful as he should be, despite him refusing to learn magic missile and mage armor, because... "special snowflake" i think. he'd be dead in 2 rounds if it wasn't for the rest of the party, since we very often get beaned by antimagic effects (and it sucks. only the fighter and the monk are muggles). on top of that, wizards are squishy. this is why melee exists, to get in the wizard's face.
-our monk is our recon expert along with the rogue4/sorceror1. it's a very brutal tag-team, actually. you never expect ceiling-monk on your head. they're the stealthers, and take care of the traps and flanking enemies. the skillmonkeys, if you will. we can't live without them, due to traps, fast enemies, flankers, and the need to recon. to all who say "casters do it better", one answer: why waste a spell slot since we've got skillmonkeys? i'd rather prefer one more anti-horde spell instead of invisibility or disarm trap.
-i'm the cleric, and i serve as both flamethrower and healer. i'm more often than not frontline, however (oh, and combat healing works great. you need to cast heal spells on the enemy is all... ok, i've specialized anti-undead in an evil-heavy campaign. sue me). am i an optimized cleric? no! however, i'm turning into a radiant servant of pelor because a) i want to, b) the fluff and the actions of the character speak for themselves. just because i've got a very wide range of abilities doesn't mean i should use them all.
-one fighter: brutal in combat, player hates roleplaying, so he limits himself to being an aloof aristocrat. he likes hitting things, and occasionnally breaking masonry. he's a specialist. you cannot take him down. (the dm's tried. 14 will saves and 6 fortitudes saves in one combat.) he's saved the others' lives so many times it's not funny, yet he needs the stealthers and wizard (specialist, remember?)
-the sorceror is... a new addition to the team. he's trying to take on the wizard's role (at least for magical knowledge). so far, he's... not a friendly player, he's "that guy", not a team player for sure. i made my spot felt in one session (healing rocks for rp purposes), and the players and characters rejoiced and accepted me. him, he's redundant to an alarming point. and not the good kind "sure, more banish undead is always useful" kind of redundancy. we'll see how roleplay develops the character.

the point is: can casters outperform frontlines? yes, and i've seen it with me and the fighter. was it necessary? at the time, yes, since we were the only two awake keeping the other guys alive versus a horde (oh, and i was lucky with my rolls.) can they sneak better than rogues? perhaps, but then they can't outfight the fighter at the same time.

versatility does not mean "too powerful". i know it'd get boring if every halfling was a rogue, every ork a barbarian, every elf snooty, etc. this means that wizards have enough options to be everything, but it'd take a special kind of game-killer to have them do everything at once at the same time.

[navar100]

The only balance that matters is spotlight time. Every player needs equivalent moments to shine. Game mechanics are a factor but not the only one. Hooray for the wizard he Gates in a Solar. True, the game mechanics of a fighter have no equivalence of the game mechanics of Gating a Solar and some people resent that. The fighter could be General of the Army, the King's Champion, King, or some other world influencing presence. The fighter player still gets to be the Great Hero. His actions still matter and affect the gameworld. He gets his equal share of spotlight time and has fun playing along side the wizard Gating a Solar.

Teleport and its ilk of course have nothing to do with balance. It's not even a "problem" to get over. It's all about one's personal taste to how much power PCs have. Some people can't stand such power existing. They don't like PCs teleporting everywhere, but that doesn't make teleporting broken. For other people, the PCs are of such importance and responsibility of power that dealing with the minutiae of traveling is no longer necessary. These PCs have to deal with dragons and vampires and beholders and liches. They've way moved beyond local bandit thugs on the road. Teleporting is just a means to get to where the adventure takes place.

High level play is obviously different than low level play. Not liking high level play just means you don't like high level play. It has nothing to do with balance or alleged brokenness. That may be your reason for not liking it, but that doesn't make it true. Other people do like and do play at those high levels, including fighters and monks and paladins, and are having a blast. They think it's cool the wizard is Gating in a Solar.

[Deophaun]

Casters are good in short bursts, but without their spells, they may as well be a bunch of turnips waiting for slaughter.
(Non-ToB) Mundanes are good in short bursts, but without their HP, they're dead.

Guess who runs out of what first? With things like focused specialization, unless the mundanes are supported by a caster (cleric), the Wizard will be the one happily going through five or more encounters. Throw in things like reserve feats, and the Wizard player doesn't even need to be all that skilled to pull that off. Psions also have tricks where they will never run out of power points. Clerics can divine metamagic persist their buff spells to be better than a fighter all day long. The Druid's wild shape lasts for hours per level. At level 8, you can always be whatever the heck you want. And if you don't want to contend with this stuff, just be a Warlock or Dragonfire Adept.

[Aotrs Commander]

My personal experience is that any requirement for balance entirely depends on the sort of quest you're running.

I ran a party that started from level 1 in 3.0 and finished at Epic in 3.5. The Fighter 21 and the Monk with a couple of levels of Swordsage added at the last minute (not to mention the Fighter/Ranger/Deepwood Sniper/Crusader archer's horrible horrible bow-age) were plenty keeping apace with the Cleric and the Wizard at the last. Some of that was the fact I have been buffing the weaker classes (like giving monks full BAB and allowing Fighters a feat every level and giving them utility on feats that nobody (not even the Warblade) gets) - and some because of the way I design my encounters, which is primarily classed humanoid enemies with full combined arms support (i.e. mooks, ranged mooks, 1 or more casters, sometimes flankers etc). (And in that case the module I was running - a 3.5-modifed well-upped Dragon Mountain almost exclusively class levelled Kobold by that point.)

Further, the general tactical rule of thumb for all sentient/sapient races is "first kill the wizard", meaning that spellcasters automatically will usually attract more than their fair share of fire! (And buffing will only take you so far, as EVERY monster/NPC that has access to 3rd level spells or powers will be packing Dispel Magic/Psionics as a matter of principle - it's just suicide not too. (Likewise, if the PCs don't pack it, then the numerous spell-buffed NPCs are likely to ruin their day!)

So, for us, it works.


I also, depending on what setting (and thus what houserules are in play) tend to curb the worse of the caster's story-abusing powers (e.g. Scry-and-Die is not usually viable as important enemies in strongholds will be scry and/or teleport warded, and I rule that teleportation cannot go through too much rock without basically a beacon of some kind (giving us a very good blaggy reason for the existance of dungeons!). This shifts long-range mass teleportation to more ritual and plot-based.)

I also bear in mind the problem with casters is less casters than it is some spells, and take care to remove the worst offenders (anything that breaks the action economy, for example or metamagic reducers). Fortunately, both I and my players are naturally averse to using XP-cost anything (unless it's NPCs) so a lot of those offenders are off the table anyway. (We also all have a bit of a preference for blasting, come to that!)



So, yeah, it all really depends on the sort of games you play. Unmodifed 3.5 with all the bells and whistles and every published resource can be problematic (given the interaction of things that were never considered by the deigners to interact).

(I only use a subset of the available resources myself, on convieniantly and extensively- prepared lists, including page references!)

Or, if your group doesn't dig that deep, it might not be, except maybe by accident once or twice. It all depends on your group and your DM. An moderate-to-heavy-optimisation-DM like myself who rarely if ever uses a stock, out-of-the-book anything for any serious fight is more likely to have less problems, since they're more likelt to be to some extent tailoring the opposition to the players and/or the characters (and moreover, having a better idea how to counter mechanical problems). But, of course, not everyone has the time or inclination to play with the numbers or is as sad as I am...!

[Venger]

Eww. EWWWWWWWW. >_<

No. Noooononono. You don't make an all-caster party. As soon as you do that, someone creates an anti-magic field. Guess what? YOU'RE PORKED!!

unless at least one of you is a cheater of mystra. in that case, you'll be the one spamming your no button against enemy casters rather than the other way around.

[Deth Muncher]

Hoo buddy. One of these? I thought I had enough essays to write today.

My short answer is: If you're having fun, and your fun doesn't preclude anyone else from having fun and/or encourages others to have fun, then sod the rest of it.

My long answer...will take a while. Suffice it to say you have piqued my interest enough to come back out of lurking to address this, since I just had a similar conversation about this with Doc Roc.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I got your point.

I don't think you really get the situation people are talking about. Nobody is talking about the Wizard doing well. The Wizard is capable of trivializing encounters and in order to challenge them requires the DM to create challenges that nonmagic classes can't contribute to.

You have most likely not had this happen because whoever plays a wizard in your party doesn't play them optimally. That's fine. I'm not trying to insult you or your group but your argument is "It hasn't been a problem for me so it must not be a problem".

Note again that spellcasters arn't abusing anything. They do this simply by using their core spells optimally and sensibly.

Again, if the spellcasters are making every fight trivial, I'm pretty sure that either they're playing to a ludicrous level of optimization and cheese, or the DM is very much failing to adapt the encounters to the party. For your example (I think it was yours), you used a sleep spell on a set of orcs - which, yeah, any mage could trivialize. But, there are plenty of options for making that not be the case; add enemies with strong and different saves, spell resistance, specific immunities, energy resistance, geographic diversity (so it's difficult to hit them all with a single spell), defensive spells or SLAs, caster support of their, focused attacks on the PC caster to force him to spend a round or two on his own defences....

I'm not saying any of these will stop a caster from being MVP - that isn't my goal. But, they should be enough for the other builds to have a reasonable chance to contribute.

I should probably take a moment to clarify my thoughts on the extra-weak martial classes like Fighter and Monk. They're a problem with the system, but they're really only a problem for new players (experienced ones, or ones who've dug into the system, will realize they're a poor choice and either not play them, or play them because they're okay with the challenge.)

Now, the fact that they're a problem for new players is still a problem, and a very real one - I'm all about the game being more accessible to new players, and yeah, "Trap" classes or options hurt that. However, it's not really a problem that can be addressed by homebrew or rules changes, at least, not to current system.

Again, how many players are there who know about homebrew monk fixes, but don't know that the monk is weak to begin with? And for that matter, how many DMs allow homebrew but deny Tome of Battle? Even if it's just house rules, that still adds more burden to the new player, and ensures that what they learn from one game may not carry over to another. Instead, it's a problem that should be fixed by having the DM spend a little more time and energy helping new players - taking a moment to look over their character sheet, helping them understand about some of the weaker choices and direct them to stronger ones, etc.

[Theprettiestorc]

Something just occurred to me.

Has anyone brought up spell resistance yet?

[Aotrs Commander]

Something just occurred to me.

Has anyone brought up spell resistance yet?

There are plenty of ways around that. (Orb of Force being a prime example.) I know, my players have often had to resort to them so the spellcasters don't sit on their arses when dealing with ithilids of something at medium levels (or the Pit Fiend the level 16s dealt with on Monday, which was taken down largely by the (seerow's rebalanced) paladin in melee.)

Of course, it does force them to change tack and narrows their options, which is part of the point, so it's certainly one way to make the casters work a bit harder.

[Theprettiestorc]

There are plenty of ways around that. (Orb of Force being a prime example.) I know, my players have often had to resort to them so the spellcasters don't sit on their arses when dealing with ithilids of something at medium levels (or the Pit Fiend the level 16s dealt with on Monday, which was taken down largely by the (seerow's rebalanced) paladin in melee.)

Of course, it does force them to change tack and narrows their options, which is part of the point, so it's certainly one way to make the casters work a bit harder.

Yeah, because our DM was giving me Spell Resistance enemies at level 7. Going to have to take spell penetration to keep up.

[Eslin]

Yeah, because our DM was giving me Spell Resistance enemies at level 7. Going to have to take spell penetration to keep up.

Or just concentrate on spells that don't allow spell resistance, that works too.

I'd recommend preparing assay spell resistance if you have some spells that ressitance applies to that you really don't want to let go of.

[Venger]

Yeah, because our DM was giving me Spell Resistance enemies at level 7. Going to have to take spell penetration to keep up.

or just:

A) use buffs on you and your allies
B) use spells on the enemy that don't allow SR
C) use summons, etc so it's not an issue

[Karnith]

Yeah, because our DM was giving me Spell Resistance enemies at level 7. Going to have to take spell penetration to keep up.
All of the best spells have SR: No (even at level 7), anyway, so even facing arbitrarily high spell resistance or creatures with spell immunity won't do too much, if you're determined to deal with it. Also, learning spells like Assay Spell Resistance (Spell Compendium), True Casting (Complete Mage), or Lower Spell Resistance (Draconomicon), if available, would probably be a better idea than spending a feat. If you're in Core, though, I feel your pain.

[Deth Muncher]

Okay. Some of this will be a rehash of things others have said here, for which I apologize. I don't mean to cannibalize some things already stated, it's merely easier if I just put all of this here instead of trying to respond individually to people, and instead just present the concepts.

Preface

I'm going to start this off with something that should be old hat to everyone here, but since there are many faces I don't recognize in this thread, and I haven't seen this stated yet: D&D (especially unmodified 3.5) is a Gentleman's Agreement, both from player to player, and from player to DM. This means that just because someone has the ability to do something, doesn't mean they will, because doing so would be Not Fun. You're playing a Game. Games are about Fun. Not Fun, oddly enough, tends to preclude Fun. More specifically to the point of the Gentleman's Agreement, though, it means that if you do something, it means it is fair game on both sides of the DM screen - but more on that later.

Too often in theoretical optimization do we forget the most important part of the character - namely, the player. Additionally, the party, and the DM. Theoretical optimization, and even practical optimization, can absolutely account for mechanical defects in a class, or a Feat, or a spell - that's why you're optimizing, to pick things that have the fewest flaws. And in no way am I going to argue that some, if not all, of the classes in D&D have their flaws, some to the point of almost unplayability as a full character and not a one trick pony. But optimization quite often leans towards the idea of a character in a vacuum - as in, how to make this one character be the best at taking care of its own needs, as opposed to being a part of a team. If you stood here and said "Clerics or Druids win D&D, because they render most, if not all, classes obsolete due to their class features and abilities when built properly" I would absolutely agree with you, on the condition that you admit that the character is operating in the meta-realm. Realistically, no character is as prepared as the players are - player knowledge always taints the character, unless you're an absolutely harcore roleplayer, in which case I tip my hat to you because you've done what few can. Again, I say "Just because you CAN win D&D with this character, doesn't mean you should or will."

"But why not?" I hear you cry. "If I'm playing a caster, I'm playing a god! I'm literally bending the rules of reality over and having my way with them! I can do things no simple melee brute can do!" And again, you are absolutely correct. Think back to your classic fantasy, like Lord of the Rings. It was all well and good that Gimli could swing an ax, and Legolas could shoot a bow almost unerringly, but when Gandalf showed up, he wrecked faces everywhere, doing things none of the mere mortal characters could ever dream of doing. Casters ARE gods amongst mortals. They ARE supposed to wreck faces, if that's what they choose to do. Or they're supposed to beguile you, or they're supposed to pass unnoticed. Maybe they just want to go around performing miracles for the townsfolk, or putting on particularly extravagant performances, depending on which flavor of caster you're playing. These are all intended things for a caster to do, and yes, they absolutely do overlap with the abilities of other classes - with Glibness, a Bard can have a tongue more silver than the Rogue. With Divine Power, a Cleric can out fight a Fighter and still have magic left over to heal himself with. The question here is, why is redundancy a bad thing?

Redundancy

Believe it or don't, but casters are support characters. As has been mentioned, the oft-touted "best" builds for casters are battlefield controllers, locking down enemies either for their allies to mop up, or for them to spam Save or Suck/Dies at until they're gone. But as has also been said, a dedicated blaster can easily out-damage a Fighter. And let's not even get started on the Monk here - that's a whole other can of partially-charged worms. My statement to you, though, is that there is absolutely no reason for a caster to go around outperforming his allies unless he needs to. Think of any team effort. Everyone knows that Bob is good at, let's say, hurling rocks. It's what he does. It's in his job description. But Sven, his buddy, is also good at hurling rocks, but also a large host of other things that Bob could never even dream of mastering. Why, then, would Sven go around throwing rocks, unless Bob has somehow failed in his duties and needed help? The answers are either A: He wouldn't, unless Bob needed his help, because that's what you do when you're on a team - you help your teammates when they need it; or B: Sven does it anyway, proving to be a jerk, and simultaneously wasting his resources which could have been better spent elsewhere.

It doesn't MATTER if your Wizard can render your Rogue useless at social encounters with his Glibness spell, because that means that that spell slot that could have been used somewhere else has instead been dedicated to being redundant with a party member, which is a subpar life choice, with one exception: It is useful in that it is absolutely sure to get the job done. "So, why not do that first?" you ask. It falls back to teamwork - just because you're guaranteed to succeed if you expend part of your finite resources to succeed doesn't mean you absolutely have to do that thing. But likewise, if the Rogue fails, the Wizard can pop in to save the day by fixing things.

You Get Punished For Picking a Bad Class

I'm not even going to pretend to lie and say that there aren't mechanically bad classes in D&D. We all know there are, and we all know what they are. Well, not all of us - some of us don't, and then they pick those classes without knowing how to make them playable, and then they get sad that they're not contributing. I've seen it happen a million times, even in games of relatively decent optimization - two people play characters that do roughly the same thing, but one person does it better. Well, sure, okay. That sucks, right? That means that the player who isn't doing That Thing as well isn't going to have as much fun as the guy who is, right? Well, not always - again, it goes back to redundancy. Just because someone is good at something doesn't mean they have to do it all the time. If there's another way to do something, and it means they can conserve resources, then realistically they should. If two Sorcerors are in the party, but one knows Fly and Haste and the other knows Haste and Fireball, then they should be coordinating together so that they most optimally use their spell slots, lest they be left high and dry. Or, to do a caster/noncaster example, let's say that a Cleric has Divine Power. He's in a party with the fighter. Let's assume that if the Cleric pops Divine Power, he has a damage output equal to the Fighter in melee combat. But by doing so, he has limited himself - he could have, instead, prepared Dismissal, so that when he and the Fighter are fighting Demons, the Cleric can target the strongest Demon to banish it, while the Fighter mops up the enemies he knows he can kill.

It's The DM's Job To Worry About Optimization And How It Affects The Party

"Okay Deth," you're saying to yourself, "it's all well and good to imagine a perfect party, where people work together and compliment each other's skills, and aren't jerks, and let everyone have time to shine. But I mean come on, who really does that? Let's think about the reality of the situation - if I've got a Wizard who can god-mode through every encounter, be it social, combat, or otherwise, why the hell wouldn't I? The rest of the party is but so much baggage around me. And don't even try to pull the "you've got to sleep sometime" line on me, because as soon as my caster has the ability to be self sufficient, he's got wards all up on him to warn him before anything happens to him. He's a Wizard/Cleric/Druid/Whatever. He is an entire party rolled into one character, and I'm going to win my campaign myself."

If that's your attitude, and the rest of the party is okay with that, then more power to you, pal. But you're right - after a certain point, if a DM balances encounters to a party who's optimization level is all at the same, medium level, with the exception of the high-op Wizard, then yeah, it might be difficult for everyone to have fun. And you, the DM, can't just slap down arbitrary Anti-Magic fields, or have a dungeon full of things that are immune to spells, or things like that because then the guy playing the caster feels slighted and he's not having fun. This is, of course, the peril of higher level/higher optimization play and keeping everything together while honoring the DM's half of the Gentleman's Agreement. Truly, even I don't know how to make this work sometimes. My best advice is to say that you, as the DM, need to take a good hard look at your players' character sheets, and decide just what it is that your players should reasonably be able to work together to do. Maybe, you realize that one of your melee guys has an Adamantine Broadsword, but your high-end caster specialized in Save or Suck spells. So next encounter, you throw out a few Iron Golems and a bunch of casters who created them. That way, the Fighter can do what he does best - beat things to death, specifically the Golems in this case, since he can bypass their Damage Reduction, while the Wizard deals with locking down the other casters long enough for them to A: not heal the Golems and B: not be a threat so that the melee types can roll up and punch them, because they are weak and squishy. (And as a side note, that works with social encounters too - maybe the PCs need to be negotiating with two groups of people at once. If you have two characters who are good at talking to people, you can do this.)

That's just one example, but the moral here is that if you have someone playing a busted character, and the rest of the party is fair-to-middling, then you present threats that each tier of character can handle. In both combat and social situations, if you squander your resources, you'll end up with a dead party, or at least a party who isn't where they wanted to be - and that's okay. Sometimes, things don't go the characters' way. That's how stories work.

D&D Is A Group Game

In closing, D&D is a group game. You need to work as a group to make it fun - and that goes for inter-party cooperation (unless the party turns on itself, which can also be fun) as well as DM/Player cooperation. If one player, by virtue of having a broken character (either broken powerful or broken weak), is ruining the fun for everyone else, then the group needs to work together to solve the situation so that everyone is having fun again.

[Zarrgon]

Again, if the spellcasters are making every fight trivial, I'm pretty sure that either they're playing to a ludicrous level of optimization and cheese, or the DM is very much failing to adapt the encounters to the party. For your example (I think it was yours), you used a sleep spell on a set of orcs - which, yeah, any mage could trivialize. But, there are plenty of options for making that not be the case; add enemies with strong and different saves, spell resistance, specific immunities, energy resistance, geographic diversity (so it's difficult to hit them all with a single spell), defensive spells or SLAs, caster support of their, focused attacks on the PC caster to force him to spend a round or two on his own defences....


This really is so important. And this is the cause of a great deal of the whole 'balance problem'. The 10th level characters encounter orcs with sharp sticks. Then the wizard blasts and takes out 100 of them, while the fighter kills two. And everyone starts to cry about balance. But make the foes half-feind drow warlocks and suddenly the wizard can't just 'blast' all of them. There are so many races, templates, feats, classes and magic items that can be used to buff or protect or enhance a foe.

And this is where Hilarity Ensues. As soon as a DM has, say a 500 year old lich give every single one of his undead minions a mantle of spell resistance, then everyone would complain that the poor wizard was now being unfair attacked and that part of the 'balance' is that the wizard must be a god.

And little tricks like, having characters stay up and active 16 hours a day really hurt a spellcaster. "I know you used up every single spell you had at 6 am, but it's only 11 am, we have another 10 hours of game time before you can rest.

A lot of this can come back on the DM. All they need to do is spot light the other 'so called' lesser classes.

[Theprettiestorc]

Oh, no, I'm in Pathfinder. But as an Evocation spec, it can be tricky. Since I dish out good damage in an area, and that's counted on. Most of the character's purpose is AoE, even, with sides of buffing and utility. And some control, with moving allies about, or dimension door.

And then there's Blood Transcription, which is pretty cool and handy.

Spells can do a lot, but as a consequence, they have a lot of counters. It's the only reason I haven't taken up scrying yet, because our main party villain is a cabal of wizards creating designer zombies, pretty much. They can abduct people, and clear whole towns in the course of a week. O.O.

[Augmental]

But make the foes half-feind drow warlocks and suddenly the wizard can't just 'blast' all of them.

What level are these half-fiend drow warlocks? Are there 100 of them? If so, the fighter's going to get blasted to death.


And this is where Hilarity Ensues. As soon as a DM has, say a 500 year old lich give every single one of his undead minions a mantle of spell resistance, then everyone would complain that the poor wizard was now being unfair attacked and that part of the 'balance' is that the wizard must be a god.

How does the lich afford to equip an undead army with Mantles of Spell Resistance, which cost 90000 gp each? And crafting isn't an option, since you need the spell Spell Resistance to make them, which is a cleric spell.


And little tricks like, having characters stay up and active 16 hours a day really hurt a spellcaster. "I know you used up every single spell you had at 6 am, but it's only 11 am, we have another 10 hours of game time before you can rest.

At low levels, maybe, but wizards past mid-level have enough spell slots to make it through 16 hours.

[Deophaun]

This really is so important. And this is the cause of a great deal of the whole 'balance problem'. The 10th level characters encounter orcs with sharp sticks. Then the wizard blasts and takes out 100 of them, while the fighter kills two. And everyone starts to cry about balance. But make the foes half-feind drow warlocks and suddenly the wizard can't just 'blast' all of them.
Nope. More specifically, he can energy substitute/searing spell blast of flame all of them. Really, as soon as you know you're up against drow (and specialist wizards can't give up the divination school, sorry), the SR: No spells come out, assuming they weren't out already.

There are so many races, templates, feats, classes and magic items that can be used to buff or protect or enhance a foe.
And there are even more ways for the Wizard to negate those defenses; and they do so, as a matter of course.

And this is where Hilarity Ensues. As soon as a DM has, say a 500 year old lich give every single one of his undead minions a mantle of spell resistance, then everyone would complain that the poor wizard was now being unfair attacked and that part of the 'balance' is that the wizard must be a god.
No. Everyone says "free treasure!"

And little tricks like, having characters stay up and active 16 hours a day really hurt a spellcaster. "I know you used up every single spell you had at 6 am, but it's only 11 am, we have another 10 hours of game time before you can rest.
Pitty, because the fighter used up all his hit points a 5:30 am. I'll just animate his corpse, then, and we'll carry on.

[Juntao112]

Mantle of Spell Resistance. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#mantleofSpellResistance) SR 21. A most terrible and fearsome item.

[Theprettiestorc]

There is just no love at all for fighters, is there? I think you should give them more credit, all things considering, since they're the most likely to survive a spell because of saves(besides Paladins), and they have a decent Armor Class to add to that HP.

If you've got a fighter who dies constantly, then they're not playing the character to everyone's "standards".

[Deophaun]

There is just no love at all for fighters, is there? I think you should give them more credit, all things considering, since they're the most likely to survive a spell because of saves(besides Paladins), and they have a decent Armor Class to add to that HP.
Huh? Fighters only have a good Fort save. Reflex and Will are poor, and Wisdom is a dump stat. They're toast.

As for AC: assuming spell casters are attacking AC, it's going to hit touch. All their fancy armor does exactly nothing.

[Karnith]

There is just no love at all for fighters, is there? I think you should give them more credit, all things considering, since they're the most likely to survive a spell because of saves(besides Paladins), and they have a decent Armor Class to add to that HP.
The problem is that, since the fighter has no class features but feats, pretty much anyone else can do what he does. Fighters are great for feat-intensive builds (like uberchargers, or dedicated trippers), but short of high levels of optimization they really just don't have very much going for them that you couldn't get from some other classes.

Also, I question to "good saves" part; monks (the best class in the game to make comparisons to) are probably going to have at least two better saves than a fighter, and it's not like fighters get evasion or mettle or anything.

[Juntao112]

There is just no love at all for fighters, is there? I think you should give them more credit, all things considering, since they're the most likely to survive a spell because of saves(besides Paladins), and they have a decent Armor Class to add to that HP.

If you've got a fighter who dies constantly, then they're not playing the character to everyone's "standards".

I love my brother, but will not hesitate in pointing out his shortcomings.

[Zarrgon]

What level are these half-fiend drow warlocks? Are there 100 of them? If so, the fighter's going to get blasted to death. And the wizard too...




How does the lich afford to equip an undead army with Mantles of Spell Resistance, which cost 90000 gp each? And crafting isn't an option, since you need the spell Spell Resistance to make them, which is a cleric spell.

Well, as we are talking about the unbalanced ''I can stop the world and make any magic items to auto win'', we are talking about, then we are tossing the idea of money that makes sense. If a player wizard can spend millions of gold a year, then so can the DM.

A lich can get the magic items made a couple ways, I'm sure he could think of something over 500 years. Maybe the lich could found and control a while dark religion....




At low levels, maybe, but wizards past mid-level have enough spell slots to make it through 16 hours.

Do we have different rules? Mine give a 20th level wizard four spells per level for a total of thirty six. If it was a specialist they would get nine more, for a whole forty five. And using metamagic feats would cut this down to at least half. So we are talking like 25 spells per day even for a 20th level wizard. A lot less for any lower level. And the spells would be split between attack, defense, and utility. So like seven of each type.

So how many spells do you cast per encounter? Three, four, five? On just spells alone, a wizard won't make it much past five encounters, let alone ten. So what, the wizard carries around like a thousand scrolls and two dozen spellcasting magic items? This goes back to the problem of ''oh my wizard sat down and scribed a hundred scrolls'' and the ''oh my character has a thousand scrolls on them, but DM you got to *wink wink* not ever go after my scrolls as that would be unfair."

[Douglas]

I view "balance" as really a problem with labels. It's perfectly fine to design a game where one kind of character will utterly and completely overshadow another type, but that needs to be obvious up front to everyone. If the rule book directly tells you "class B is extremely weak compared to class A", then anyone who plays class B anyway should know what he's getting into and has no basis for complaint. The problem with D&D is that level is supposedly a universal measure of power that's the same for all classes, and people who take that at face value are in for an unpleasant surprise.

[gr8artist]

I'm a little short on time, so I'll admit that I didn't read all 3 pages. I skimmed, and thought I'd throw in my two cents.

Any talk of optimization, balance, or anything like it means mostly one thing: someone's missed the point of d&d.
Sometimes it's the person who's optimizing. Sometimes it's the people complaining about it. Usually it's everyone. I'll admit that it's possible for certain character builds to make the DM's job more interesting, but hey, that's fun!
We've got a PF campaign going now. We started it because we wanted a laid-back, jovial weekly roleplay session. We've been changing DMs on a regular basis, round-robin style. We've also been changing characters. No one in our core group gives a ratfolk's keister about tiers. We each came up with a character concept we liked, a personality that fit, and a skill set that made sense.
And then we played.
We've got a ratfolk magister (3rd party, combo sorc/oracle); a gunslinging time thief from the future (3rd party, skillmonkey with supernatural abilities), a weed-smoking packlord druid, a half-ogre barbarian hulking hurler, and a catfolk ninja.
Yeah, if the rat optimized, she could probably blow us all away. But... why would she want to? What's the point? The barbarian specialized. He can throw a 6d6 rock up to 500 feet away with ease. We have yet to fight a creature he cannot lift (and throw). He makes the job of DMing a nightmare. But we love having him. The time-thief got one-shotted 5 times in the first two months. Every attack knocked her down. But now she's got the most useful powers and skills for getting random stuff done. Anything, you name it.
Yeah, the druid could be a powerhouse, but he wants to buff and support.

My point is... None of us looked at the tier list and picked the biggest, shiniest class. None of us researched the most efficient and optimized build. None of us shied away from "weak" or "underpowered" classes.
None of that is the point of D&D.
D&D is about playing the role of a character in a story, going on adventures and having fun. If at any point that's not why you're here... just be done with it.

[Karnith]

Do we have different rules? Mine give a 20th level wizard four spells per level for a total of thirty six. If it was a specialist they would get nine more, for a whole forty five. And using metamagic feats would cut this down to at least half. So we are talking like 25 spells per day even for a 20th level wizard. A lot less for any lower level. And the spells would be split between attack, defense, and utility. So like seven of each type.
A standard 20th-level wizard of a race that doesn't have an Int-penalty should have an Intelligence of 34 (18 base, assuming point buy of 16 or higher +5 inherent from tome or wish +5 levels +6 headband of intellect), with higher scores possible if the character is a grey elf (or something else with an Int bonus), if the character is willing to be at least old age or older, or if the DM is willing to grant custom items. This gives them a lot of bonus spells. I recently posted a 20th-level wizard for a different thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14904451&postcount=158), who got base spells per day 5/8/8/8/8/7/7/7/7/6 as a specialist diviner (71 spells per day total). After his buff routine, he still had spells per day of 5/7/8/7/7/5/5/6/5/4 (59 spells per day left). He also had pearls of power, giving him at least one extra 8th- and 9th-level spell per day. This does not include about 50k gold that he had open that could be spent on staves, wands, scrolls, rings of wizardry, or other things.

So, it's not that hard to get a ton of spells per day. And all of this is assuming that the wizard is the one who needs to be solving all of the problems. When you've got a party of spellcasters, it's very easy to not run out of spells per day.

[Zubrowka74]

Ok, here are several random thoughts on the subject :

Centering around the RP. If you make RP the most important part of your game, balanced is less of an issue because mechanics are less present. I've rarely had any problems with balance in the 25 years or so of play. It's a Role-Playing game, hence I gove RP center stage. Sure, it can be played like a game of MTG or a miniature wargame (its roots), then yes in this case yes you have to adress the matter closely.

Also, around friends or mostly sane people, the gentlemen's agreement will ensure proper fun for all, most of the time. Around stranger, at a tournament, over the internet, you can make a solid case that balance is requiered even if RP in the main element.

On the OP stating that borken classes aren't a balance problem. I think what he meant was even if you play a campaign where every one is a truenammer, for example, you'll have a problem. So the problem here is deeper than balance. But these are fringe cases.

Why play anything but T1 ? Or why play D&D in the first place ? A bit around the topic but goes into the "if you are worried about balance why are you playing D&D ?" lot. I'll make a food analogy here. Sure I like foie-gras, it's tasty. Would I want to eat it every day of the week ? H@%&! no! Also, I know I could follow a diet that is optimal for my health, giving me well-being and energy. Why am I not following this ? Why is fast-food so popular ? Figther and Monks are the fast food of D&D, they're traps but some flavorfull traps. The "new" 3.x crowd (hey, I'm old and grumpy) is all about freedom and options. If you always optimise your crimping you options, even if these are bad ones. You don't have to always play maximized characters to have fun, don't you ?

Of course, if a player is sub optimizing to the point of hampering the fun of the rest of the group, then it is a problem. The key is to talk over these thing BEFORE starting a game or campaign.

[GoddessSune]

Balance is such an odd thing. What is ''balance'' when it comes to D&D? Most people try to say ''balance'' is ''everyone having equal fun'', some say ''balance'' is ''everyone must be able to contribute equally'', some say ''balance'' is ''everyone must be equal in all ways at all times'', some say that ''balance'' is that ''everyone must be exactly the same''.

Listening to everyone, it seems that a balanced game would be very boring. ''My character type 1 attacks with weapon type 1 and does 5 points of damage, my character type 2 attacks with a spell type 2 and does 5 points of damage.''

I wonder should D&D, or really anything, even be balanced? Is that how life works? Would you want the type of balance people want for D&D in other things in life? Should all sports teams be rearranged so each team has the same number of good players? Should all music groups be rearranged so that each has the same amount of talent? And so on. Would anyone what that?

[Hiro Protagonest]

I stopped reading at the point of the first point where theprettiestorc said that we're forgetting D&D is about having fun.

I don't have fun in 3.X. The most fun I'll have in that system is with my IRL group. They're very low-op, so it doesn't really matter. But at that level of power and options, the game is boring to me, and I'm playing because I get to spend time with my friends.

I want to play 4e, because 4e doesn't require me to do a bunch of stuff just to make sure I have fun. I want to play FATE, because FATE lets me be creative and is a nice simple system. Hell, I'd rather play Exalted, notorious for being utterly broken and still pretty broken after the massive amount of errata, because at least Exalted has cool stuff.

This is an opinion I formed after a year and a half of research and discussion on the web, and a lot of thinking on my own.

[Augmental]

And the wizard too...

Because it doesn't matter if the wizard is stronger than the fighter if they're both dead.


Well, as we are talking about the unbalanced ''I can stop the world and make any magic items to auto win'', we are talking about, then we are tossing the idea of money that makes sense. If a player wizard can spend millions of gold a year, then so can the DM.

When did I say anything about WBL shenanigans on the wizard's part?


A lich can get the magic items made a couple ways, I'm sure he could think of something over 500 years. Maybe the lich could found and control a while dark religion....

A mantle of spell resistance costs 90000 GP. Any necromancer BBEG worth his salt is going to have millions of undead. 90000 * a million = 90 billion. That's probably more than the GDP of the entire campaign.

[ericgrau]

Relative balance is important; all players should be about equal. It's tough when the DM can't challenge one player without accidentally killing another. This is in fact a common problem. If you have a good support character it won't matter if he's extra powerful, but one who shines on his own will cause issues next to one who doesn't.

Casual games tend to be much less polarizing between players. When people aren't playing with the craziest of crazy tricks, usually everyone can still provide a major contribution. I find in such cases any differences tend to be exaggerated. They're sometimes a little bit of a pain, but not the end of the world. You can have an even game at any level of optimization, but if you cut off the top 5% of crazy it's a lot easier to make sure it's close enough to even.

And it's equally important for the experienced players to help the new players keep up, or to take a step back until they do.

I do agree that while homebrew is great for variety of options, fixes don't tend to do much.

[Deophaun]

And the wizard too...
Or, you know, the wizard just does the old scry and die, contingent spells himself to invulnerability, or heck, even gives himself insane levels of SR. With walls he can easily cut down on the number of warlocks capable of being in position to even take a shot at him even in an open field, and he can pile on miss chances and immunities.

The fighter, meanwhile, is a sitting duck.

Well, as we are talking about the unbalanced ''I can stop the world and make any magic items to auto win'', we are talking about, then we are tossing the idea of money that makes sense. If a player wizard can spend millions of gold a year, then so can the DM.
And if the DM is spending it that way, it's just free money. SR is a minor annoyance to a wizard.

Do we have different rules? Mine give a 20th level wizard four spells per level for a total of thirty six.
Apparently we are. Focused specialist gives you six per level, and intelligence modifiers can give you as many as four. Throw on pearls of power, and you're set. Metamagic costs can be reduced or even negated entirely with items without having to do funky things with WBL. But, if your DM is willing to set you up against a horde of enemies equipped with expensive but totally useless treasure...

Three, four, five?
If I need to cast more than two in an encounter, it's an encounter that would TPK the party without me. Meanwhile, if the fighter dies on the first action of the surprise round, I can make a replacement.

[Zarrgon]

Or, you know, the wizard just does the old scry and die, contingent spells himself to invulnerability, or heck, even gives himself insane levels of SR. With walls he can easily cut down on the number of warlocks capable of being in position to even take a shot at him even in an open field, and he can pile on miss chances and immunities.

The over all point would be, that even before the wizard could do all of them things, the foes could do all of them and more. Foes can do all the insane stuff too.




And if the DM is spending it that way, it's just free money. SR is a minor annoyance to a wizard.

How is it minor when spells don't work at all? Are you saying the wizard would only cast spells that have no SR? Or that the wizard just auto wins vs SR somehow? (And you do roll a check for each creature right? So 20 drow=20 checks) And don't go too ''theoretical'', sure a wizard could go to super SR auto win, but remember they must also be a character.





If I need to cast more than two in an encounter, it's an encounter that would TPK the party without me. Meanwhile, if the fighter dies on the first action of the surprise round, I can make a replacement.

Two spells an encounter? See that sounds more like a DM just lining up foes like targets. That is not a 'balance' problem, that is all on the DM.

General question: How do the wizard supporter people feel about a high magic/fantasy game? If for example the entire Desert of Death was a massive dead magic zone. Or the wild jungles a wild magic zone. Or just powerful builds? How about foes using tactics? Is this ok? Or must the DM stick to the ''well the whole world is just like cave men, so they just have 'fire'. And not just a one shot, one spot place...a whole world.

[Karnith]

How is it minor when spells don't work at all? Are you saying the wizard would only cast spells that have no SR?
Yeah, basically. Off the top of my head: Grease, Web, Glitterdust, (Greater) Dispel Magic, Stinking Cloud, Sleet Storm, Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, Wall of X, Cloudkill, Telekinesis, Acid Fog, Forcecage, Reverse Gravity, Incendiary Cloud, and Disjunction are all SR: No spells that are pretty useful (well, okay, Incendiary Cloud is iffy). And that's just in Core. There are waaaay more outside of Core, including the ever-popular Orb of X (in Complete Arcane and Spell Compendium).


Two spells an encounter? See that sounds more like a DM just lining up foes like targets. That is not a 'balance' problem, that is all on the DM.
Well, for example, one of Cindy's (http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/profiler/view_char.php?cid=5890) Chained metamagic'd Orbs of Force is probably going to kill anything in a 30-foot radius from her primary target. Or we could talk about a widened, metamagic'd Kelgore's Grave-Mist (or Cloudkill, etc.), which will hit anything within a 40-foot radius from the target. So unless enemies are extremely spread-out, it's entirely possible to murder/debuff them sufficiently with only a couple spells.

General question: How do the wizard supporter people feel about a high magic/fantasy game? If for example the entire Desert of Death was a massive dead magic zone. Or the wild jungles a wild magic zone. Or just powerful builds? How about foes using tactics? Is this ok? Or must the DM stick to the ''well the whole world is just like cave men, so they just have 'fire'. And not just a one shot, one spot place...a whole world.
Huge dead magic zones are basically DM fiat for "Sorry, no casters allowed." While they can be effective anti-caster measures, they're not really high-magic, and they're dreadfully unfair to anyone relying on spells or magic items.

As to other powerful builds, the only other builds that are going to challenge spellcasters are probably going to be other spellcasters, because magic is really just that strong.

[Nightmarenny]

Again, if the spellcasters are making every fight trivial, I'm pretty sure that either they're playing to a ludicrous level of optimization and cheese, or the DM is very much failing to adapt the encounters to the party.

Let me stop you right there. I'm telling you that this isn't the case and since it isn't what you experienced you are ignoring it. There is no cheese in what we are talking about. We are talking about a Wizard that uses only the core spells and feats but who makes the better choices.

The simple facts are that it is possible for a Wizard to to far out class a warrior and that players have in the past been frustrated playing a fighter or monk. They've felt useless and stopped having fun. If that hasn't been your experience that's fine but it still happens.

[Nightmarenny]

The over all point would be, that even before the wizard could do all of them things, the foes could do all of them and more. Foes can do all the insane stuff too.




How is it minor when spells don't work at all? Are you saying the wizard would only cast spells that have no SR? Or that the wizard just auto wins vs SR somehow? (And you do roll a check for each creature right? So 20 drow=20 checks) And don't go too ''theoretical'', sure a wizard could go to super SR auto win, but remember they must also be a character.





Two spells an encounter? See that sounds more like a DM just lining up foes like targets. That is not a 'balance' problem, that is all on the DM.

General question: How do the wizard supporter people feel about a high magic/fantasy game? If for example the entire Desert of Death was a massive dead magic zone. Or the wild jungles a wild magic zone. Or just powerful builds? How about foes using tactics? Is this ok? Or must the DM stick to the ''well the whole world is just like cave men, so they just have 'fire'. And not just a one shot, one spot place...a whole world.

It sounds like that to you because you already have it in your mind that the game isn't the problem.

Of course tactics are ok.

If you're suggesting that a good way to balance Wizards is create areas in your world in which they don't get to do anything how is that not a problem with the world?

[Karnith]

The simple facts are that it is possible for a Wizard to to far out class a warrior and that players have in the past been frustrated playing a fighter or monk. They've felt useless and stopped having fun. If that hasn't been your experience that's fine but it still happens.
Consider, for example (getting outside of the wizard example), that a wolf animal companion at level 1 is competitive in combat with a level 1 fighter. Or that a cleric one day might try out the spell divine power and realize that with it up he's more combat-effective than a fighter. Or that, given relatively minor buffing, a wizard's undead minions are as effective as the melee-oriented characters in the group.

I have had these problems crop up in my own games, and while you can just tell one player to tone it down, that doesn't make the weaker character feel any better (because they now know that they're weaker than support features from other classes), and it really doesn't make any in-character sense for the higher-powered character to not use his abilities if they're that effective.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Let me stop you right there. I'm telling you that this isn't the case and since it isn't what you experienced you are ignoring it. There is no cheese in what we are talking about. We are talking about a Wizard that uses only the core spells and feats but who makes the better choices.

The simple facts are that it is possible for a Wizard to to far out class a warrior and that players have in the past been frustrated playing a fighter or monk. They've felt useless and stopped having fun. If that hasn't been your experience that's fine but it still happens.

The problem with saying "let me stop you right there" is that it means you miss all the actual meat of the statement. Did you actually read the list of things DMs could do to prevent this from happening? Because you offered no rebuttal more substantial than "nuh uh!"

[Zarrgon]

Well, for example, one of Cindy's (http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/profiler/view_char.php?cid=5890) Chained metamagic'd Orbs of Force is probably going to kill anything in a 30-foot radius from her primary target. Or we could talk about a widened, metamagic'd Kelgore's Grave-Mist (or Cloudkill, etc.), which will hit anything within a 40-foot radius from the target. So unless enemies are extremely spread-out, it's entirely possible to murder/debuff them sufficiently with only a couple spells.

If this does happen, the DM is well within the rules to fix it. The whole encounter rule set says that they are just examples and each DM must modify it for their games. That, for example, a powerful character might not equal an average character of that same level.

So to use your example that a wizard might have a large scale mass combat spell or three. Well, then you simply add in more mass combats. They could widened, metamagic'd Kelgore's Grave-Mist the first five mass groups, but what about six and seven and eight? Or use tactics. Have, say four, groups of foes attack from every direction. The wizard can only target one group a round.



Huge dead magic zones are basically DM fiat for "Sorry, no casters allowed." While they can be effective anti-caster measures, they're not really high-magic, and they're dreadfully unfair to anyone relying on spells or magic items.

So your taking the side that if the DM does anything that you would consider to be ''against the casters'' that it is a DM fiat and wrong? Why the double standard? Why can a player do anything, but the DM can't?



As to other powerful builds, the only other builds that are going to challenge spellcasters are probably going to be other spellcasters, because magic is really just that strong.

Well, I'm talking about buff builds. For example, acidborn is a template that makes all a wizards SR:No acid and poison spells useless.

[ArcturusV]

There is just no love at all for fighters, is there? I think you should give them more credit, all things considering, since they're the most likely to survive a spell because of saves(besides Paladins), and they have a decent Armor Class to add to that HP.

If you've got a fighter who dies constantly, then they're not playing the character to everyone's "standards".

I respect Fighters. At low level. At high levels they are just kind of secondary targets. Unless the Wizard is telling you what to do "Okay, I just buffed you, go do my bidding", you typically aren't a key member of the team anymore. At low levels, you're very key. If you played through the low levels, into the high, you're probably still key because natural bonds and tactics have developed around you.

As opposed to everyone showing up at session 1 with level 12 characters and one guy is the Fighter. They didn't really know you. You don't have a backstory with them. They may still buff you but it feels artificial. People seem to know in the back of their mind "I'm just doing this so the fighter can even be relevant to the fight".

To use an analogy? Typically the Wizard is like the kid with his very first bicycle. He can't ride it more than a few feet without losing his balance and falling on his side. The Fighter is the "Adult" who is holding onto the back of the bicycle, keeping it level while the kid peddles, holding the upright. Until the Wizard gets the hang of it and the fighter can let go.

High level DnD, is like when the Wizard grew up and is now in some BMX stunt bike extravaganza. The fighter is still the adult. He can ride a bike. But he can't really do the stunts. It's the wizard's show. He can be there, he can be supportive, cheer the wizard on, maybe help provide first aid if the wizard takes a nasty spill. But he's no longer a critical part of the operation. The wizard isn't going to tumble over and fall the moment the Fighter is no longer holding them up.

[Augmental]

So your taking the side that if the DM does anything that you would consider to be ''against the casters'' that it is a DM fiat and wrong? Why the double standard? Why can a player do anything, but the DM can't?

There are ways a DM can nerf casters without making them useless - and the other party members, for that matter, since dead magic zones deactivate magic items.

[Hiro Protagonest]

There are ways a DM can nerf casters without making them useless - and the other party members, for that matter, since dead magic zones deactivate magic items.

Magic items being required to give the fighter flight, better numbers, the ability to attack incorporeal creatures, etc...

Even if you let magic items work in them for some reason, it's not a good balance. It just means that either the wizard stays outside of it and is all-powerful, or goes inside and is suddenly a commoner with a magic crossbow.

No, scratch that bit about the commoner. I can build stronger commoners than that.

[Nightmarenny]

The problem with saying "let me stop you right there" is that it means you miss all the actual meat of the statement. Did you actually read the list of things DMs could do to prevent this from happening? Because you offered no rebuttal more substantial than "nuh uh!"

Yes I read your entire post. All of those counters have been covered by other people. SR and a SI are not effective counters to the spells we're talking about. Neither is geographical diversity. I didn't think I had to repeat what other people have already written.




So your taking the side that if the DM does anything that you would consider to be ''against the casters'' that it is a DM fiat and wrong? Why the double standard? Why can a player do anything, but the DM can't?



Do you really need to be told why completely neutralizing a character so they can't do anything for an adventure is a terrible thing for a DM to do?

[eggynack]

There are a lot of posts along the lines of, "We used a gentleman's agreement" or "Dead magic zones shut down wizards pretty hard". I don't really understand how this argument works at all. If you use a gentleman's agreement whereby wizards play down their natural abilities to the benefit of fighters, then in your game you've noticed that there are natural imbalances in the game, and used the agreement to stop those imbalances. The same goes for anti-magic fields, and dead magic zones, and an army of drow. If, as a DM, you start playing with specific tactics that kill wizards and are weak against fighters (though I dispute the usefulness of many of these tactics at killing wizards) then once again you've found a balance issue and rectified it. These things aren't proof that balance issues don't exist; all they mean is that these games have found a solution of some kind. Further, knowing where these imbalances exist is incredibly helpful. If a DM decides to rectify issues in balance by either a: giving sorcerers an extra spell known per level, or b: letting monks move and full attack in the same round, the only way to know which house rule to put into effect is by gaining system mastery and using that mastery to figure out which change would add balance, rather then reduce it.

In conclusion, there are tons of perfectly valid arguments that can be made against some of the proposed methods of adding balance, but even if those methods were perfect, the fact that you folks are proposing them means that there are fundamental imbalances in the game.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Yes I read your entire post. All of those counters have been covered by other people. SR and a SI are not effective counters to the spells we're talking about. Neither is geographical diversity. I didn't think I had to repeat what other people have already written.


The point isn't that any one of those things would be something a caster couldn't counter - the point is that a good combination of those will mean that the caster isn't ending the fight with a single spell, so the other party members have a chance to contribute.

Additionally, people have covered SR and geographic diversity (sort of) - two items off a very long list. The point is that, if the enemies have varied and powerful resistances, or pose a threat that the caster has to take time to counter, that creates space in which the other players can still contribute.

[Zubrowka74]

...the fact that you folks are proposing them means that there are fundamental imbalances in the game.

I don't think nobody is arguing that D&D is balanced except for 4e. My point is that it is unbalanced, so why is so many people are having fun playing it ? Because it was originally not meant to be balanced. Ironically enough, it's rule heavy.

[JaronK]

But in most games, the DM balances it. They go out of their way to work to fix the imbalance, because very few people have fun when their characters don't participate at all.

Identifying the imbalance in advance is a good idea, because it means our in the field fixes tend to be more on point.

JaronK

[FreakyCheeseMan]

In conclusion, there are tons of perfectly valid arguments that can be made against some of the proposed methods of adding balance, but even if those methods were perfect, the fact that you folks are proposing them means that there are fundamental imbalances in the game.

Nowhere did I make the argument that D&D was balanced - it isn't, at all, even remotely. The argument I made is that that lack of balance is not actually harmful to the game, and can, in fact, be a very good thing.

Balancing For Skill (http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/balancing-for-skill)

I doubt I'll actually get many of you to watch it, but the above is a video from an excellent webcast on game design. That specific video refers to the process of balancing game mechanics in terms of skill, and making those options that require more skill to execute also give more power. Now, for our debate, "Investment" is at least an important a term as "Skill", but a lot of the principles remain the same - and, just like a good multiplayer video game has to have options for people at different skill levels, D&D should have options for people at different levels of investment.

Incidentally, the video also brings up pretty much the definition of what I think the base martial classes should provide (Note the word "Should") - First Order Optimal strategies. A FOO strategy is a strategy that is relatively easy to execute, while still providing a respectable level of power - one that a beginning player can latch onto, and use until they have the experience/understanding of the system to try more complicated and difficult tasks.

When I think about some of those basic classes - fighter, paladin, rogue, barbarian, monk - that are generally viewed as under-powered, this is the position I think they should fill; underpowered but easy-to-use classes that new players can drop into, that will give them just enough significance to keep the game fun until they're ready to try out more advanced classes (whether that means wizards, Tome of Battle or multi-classed martial builds and gishes.)

[eggynack]

Nowhere did I make the argument that D&D was balanced - it isn't, at all, even remotely. The argument I made is that that lack of balance is not actually harmful to the game, and can, in fact, be a very good thing.

Balancing For Skill (http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/balancing-for-skill)

I doubt I'll actually get many of you to watch it, but the above is a video from an excellent webcast on game design. That specific video refers to the process of balancing game mechanics in terms of skill, and making those options that require more skill to execute also give more power. Now, for our debate, "Investment" is at least an important a term as "Skill", but a lot of the principles remain the same - and, just like a good multiplayer video game has to have options for people at different skill levels, D&D should have options for people at different levels of investment.

Incidentally, the video also brings up pretty much the definition of what I think the base martial classes should provide (Note the word "Should") - First Order Optimal strategies. A FOO strategy is a strategy that is relatively easy to execute, while still providing a respectable level of power - one that a beginning player can latch onto, and use until they have the experience/understanding of the system to try more complicated and difficult tasks.

When I think about some of those basic classes - fighter, paladin, rogue, barbarian, monk - that are generally viewed as under-powered, this is the position I think they should fill; underpowered but easy-to-use classes that new players can drop into, that will give them just enough significance to keep the game fun until they're ready to try out more advanced classes (whether that means wizards, Tome of Battle or multi-classed martial builds and gishes.)
First off, extra credits is pretty awesome. Second, I don't really think of fighters as filling the role of first order optimal strategies. How much skill does it really take to shoot an entangle spell at a battlefield, practically ending the encounter, or to do the same with black tentacles? A good fighter build requires pretty specific levels, feats, and system mastery, and doesn't give much bang for that optimization buck. The idea of balancing for player skill makes a lot more sense when you need to do things quickly. When you can just sit back and think a bit, it doesn't take that much more effort to cast a spell than to stab someone, and it's so much more effective that they're not even on the same level much of the time.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

First off, extra credits is pretty awesome. Second, I don't really think of fighters as filling the role of first order optimal strategies. How much skill does it really take to shoot an entangle spell at a battlefield, practically ending the encounter, or to do the same with black tentacles? A good fighter build requires pretty specific levels, feats, and system mastery, and doesn't give much bang for that optimization buck. The idea of balancing for player skill makes a lot more sense when you need to do things quickly. When you can just sit back and think a bit, it doesn't take that much more effort to cast a spell than to stab someone, and it's so much more effective that they're not even on the same level much of the time.

That's one of the reasons I mentioned that we're talking about player investment, at least as much as player skill. But, to the rest of the point, two things: First, I'd say that in this context "Skill" means "System knowledge and ability to apply it". Given that, "Entangle" actually does require a fair amount - understanding what makes it such a good spell, knowing when to apply it, understanding the different models of spell learning and casting, all of that, strikes me as requiring more than a fighter's basic Attack/AC/Damage/HP system.

Second, I would very much say that Fighter fails to fill this role - this is just what I think Fighters *should* be, not what they are. Though I haven't played them myself, I've been told that Barbarians do a much better job of this.

[eggynack]

That's one of the reasons I mentioned that we're talking about player investment, at least as much as player skill. But, to the rest of the point, two things: First, I'd say that in this context "Skill" means "System knowledge and ability to apply it". Given that, "Entangle" actually does require a fair amount - understanding what makes it such a good spell, knowing when to apply it, understanding the different models of spell learning and casting, all of that, strikes me as requiring more than a fighter's basic Attack/AC/Damage/HP system.

Second, I would very much say that Fighter fails to fill this role - this is just what I think Fighters *should* be, not what they are. Though I haven't played them myself, I've been told that Barbarians do a much better job of this.
Knowing that entangle is good could require a ton of player knowledge. It could also require absolutely none. When you get up there in the tiers, the characters start breaking the game incidentally and accidentally. In terms of balance, I tend to subscribe to the "everyone is two tiers apart" method. Druids completely obsolete monks in every conceivable way all the time always with incredibly little effort, but if you replace that monk with a swordsage then you suddenly have a character that can fill a role. The issue with your claim is that, at the level of knowledge where the druid isn't casting entangle, the fighter is probably using two weapon fighting and dodge. At that point, the fighter is definitely obsoleted by a good animal companion, and he loses even more.

[ngilop]

so the only point i got from teh original post was
balance does exist because everybody has the hoice to be teh overpowered class"

that is hardly anywhere near what i would conisder balance.

but that is the exact definition of IMbalance. why be a rogue when 1 first level spells renders ehalf your class obsoelete while a 2nd level spell renders the rest of the class moot. but accoridng to the OP that in and of istelf is balance.

[Deophaun]

So to use your example that a wizard might have a large scale mass combat spell or three. Well, then you simply add in more mass combats.
See, the problem here is that you're assuming mass combats are a weakness of the wizard, and a strength for the fighter. The opposite is true. A wizard, or a cleric, or a druid, can decimate an entire army or four no problem. The fighter, meanwhile, gets curbstomped by a single company. Once that wizard is out of resources to deal with the next mass combat you have prepared, the wizard teleports out and, if he doesn't take the rest of the party with him, the party dies a horrible, horrible death, because they're in the middle of a battle that's supposed to challenge the wizard.

And I'm not casting two spells to end the encounter. I'm casting two spells so that other people have something to do. I could cast three instead, and have the whole encounter to myself, but I'm generous. The problem is, by only casting two spells, it means that the PCs I'm allowing to play get hurt, and their HP pool dries up much faster than my spell pool. We stop not because I'm out of spells, but because the fighter is at -9, and it's no fun playing an unconscious character while the rest of the party is adventuring.

[Gavinfoxx]

Agreed on 'Barbarians with two handed sword and power attack' as being the FOO strategy.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Knowing that entangle is good could require a ton of player knowledge. It could also require absolutely none. When you get up there in the tiers, the characters start breaking the game incidentally and accidentally. In terms of balance, I tend to subscribe to the "everyone is two tiers apart" method. Druids completely obsolete monks in every conceivable way all the time always with incredibly little effort, but if you replace that monk with a swordsage then you suddenly have a character that can fill a role. The issue with your claim is that, at the level of knowledge where the druid isn't casting entangle, the fighter is probably using two weapon fighting and dodge. At that point, the fighter is definitely obsoleted by a good animal companion, and he loses even more.

>_> Did you watch the video? The point I was making was sort of based off of it, so it might not make much sense.

My argument is that fighters should be a FOO strategy - not the most powerful option by any extent, but a reasonably powerful that requires very little player skill or prior knowledge. I'm not saying that at any given skill level, fighter and druid are balanced - I'm saying that (were the fighter class correctly designed to begin with) - fighter would provide an easy, simple way for new players to experience the game. Even if you neglect the different benefits of their choices entirely, druids still have a lot of sheer homework to be done for the class to be played - selecting an animal companion and working out how it advances, choosing spells and understanding how spell casting works, all of that.


so the only point i got from teh original post was
balance does exist because everybody has the hoice to be teh overpowered class"

that is hardly anywhere near what i would conisder balance.

...yeah, you didn't get the point of the original post.

I never said that this meant the game *was* balanced - it isn't, at all. My argument is that the fact that the game isn't balanced, isn't nearly the problem people make it out to be. The lack of balance is still present, but it doesn't make the game not fun.

[MukkTB]

A Barbarian player needs to rage in combat, and take power attack with a big two handed weapon. This is actually likely to happen because all of these things are consistent with the mental image most people have of Barbarians. In this mode the Barbarian is a solid noobie friendly class that can contribute in combat scenarios fairly well. At high levels its value begins to break down, but for noobies with noobie play the barbarian may be the best class in core at level 1. (Yes I know any degree of optimization makes them not.)

Out of all the melee classes, for me, the Barbarian is the melee class that feels most satisfying to have in party in the hands of a noobie.

[eggynack]

>_> Did you watch the video? The point I was making was sort of based off of it, so it might not make much sense.

My argument is that fighters should be a FOO strategy - not the most powerful option by any extent, but a reasonably powerful that requires very little player skill or prior knowledge. I'm not saying that at any given skill level, fighter and druid are balanced - I'm saying that (were the fighter class correctly designed to begin with) - fighter would provide an easy, simple way for new players to experience the game. Even if you neglect the different benefits of their choices entirely, druids still have a lot of sheer homework to be done for the class to be played - selecting an animal companion and working out how it advances, choosing spells and understanding how spell casting works, all of that.



...yeah, you didn't get the point of the original post.

I never said that this meant the game *was* balanced - it isn't, at all. My argument is that the fact that the game isn't balanced, isn't nearly the problem people make it out to be. The lack of balance is still present, but it doesn't make the game not fun.
First off, as I hinted at in my first response to you on the topic, I've seen all of the extra credits videos. More to the point, your argument seems to lead in the opposite direction than you say it does. Yes, it would be nice if fighters were a solid first order optimal strategy. I just don't think they are that. Further, that thesis of game design didn't seem to have cooperative gaming as the target. A FOO is what a fighter should be, but I don't think that's what they are. Adding balance to the game is what would make it possible for just swinging a sword to be somewhat useful. In addition, your idea of balancing for skill only works for low op games. For folks such as we, who know all the high power stuff, it's necessary to have some way to have balance. I already know entangle is great, so in a game with a bunch of mes, a fighter is going to be completely pointless. Granted, all games aren't filled with clones of me, but in general the people who think about D&D high op, and the people who think about adding balance to the game, are the same people.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

First off, as I hinted at in my first response to you on the topic, I've seen all of the extra credits videos. More to the point, your argument seems to lead in the opposite direction than you say it does. Yes, it would be nice if fighters were a solid first order optimal strategy. I just don't think they are that. Further, that thesis of game design didn't seem to have cooperative gaming as the target. A FOO is what a fighter should be, but I don't think that's what they are. Adding balance to the game is what would make it possible for just swinging a sword to be somewhat useful. In addition, your idea of balancing for skill only works for low op games. For folks such as we, who know all the high power stuff, it's necessary to have some way to have balance. I already know entangle is great, so in a game with a bunch of mes, a fighter is going to be completely pointless. Granted, all games aren't filled with clones of me, but in general the people who think about D&D high op, and the people who think about adding balance to the game, are the same people.

D'oh. Sorry, I completely failed to realize that response came from you as well, not sure how. Apologies.

So, the fighter needing to be fixed to function as a FOO-strategy class I would say falls under what I was saying about classes like fighter being too weak in and of themselves, not with any regard to balance. Fighter would still be a poorly designed class if wizards and other options were taken off the table; fixing it is a matter of fixing a poorly designed class that acts as a trap for new players, not a matter of "Balancing" it against other classes. It's still something that needs doing, but not something that any amount of homebrew can fix - because the people who know about home brew aren't the ones in need of a FOO strategy.

Second, for high-op play... I fail to see why balancing fighters is important there, because by high-op, players can simply choose from among the plethora of more powerful classes and options. At this point, it ties back into what I said earlier about game theory - the addition of "bad" options has no impact on the game, because they will not be taken. It's not like there's a lack of powerful options on the field - and I'm pretty sure that with a little work, you can build powerful options to different flavors, as well.

[eggynack]

D'oh. Sorry, I completely failed to realize that response came from you as well, not sure how. Apologies.

So, the fighter needing to be fixed to function as a FOO-strategy class I would say falls under what I was saying about classes like fighter being too weak in and of themselves, not with any regard to balance. Fighter would still be a poorly designed class if wizards and other options were taken off the table; fixing it is a matter of fixing a poorly designed class that acts as a trap for new players, not a matter of "Balancing" it against other classes. It's still something that needs doing, but not something that any amount of homebrew can fix - because the people who know about home brew aren't the ones in need of a FOO strategy.

Second, for high-op play... I fail to see why balancing fighters is important there, because by high-op, players can simply choose from among the plethora of more powerful classes and options. At this point, it ties back into what I said earlier about game theory - the addition of "bad" options has no impact on the game, because they will not be taken. It's not like there's a lack of powerful options on the field - and I'm pretty sure that with a little work, you can build powerful options to different flavors, as well.
I think my problem with this view is that there isn't something intrinsically wrong with all low tier options. Playing a fighter isn't a completely boring proposition all the time, and a good barbarian certainly isn't. Playing a fighter in a party with a wizard, however, usually is. Always choosing the most powerful option all the time might make some sense in a competitive game, but in a cooperative game, you generally choose whichever archetype you think would be neat to play. Then, in my view, you try to build that archetype as close to the party's tier as possible. That's how I see balance as working anyway. Apart from archery, you can build just about any archetype to be balanced with any already balanced party. I think being able to hit people with a sword in a way that matters in a party with a wizard in it is a good thing. That's why I think constructing balance is cool beans.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I think my problem with this view is that there isn't something intrinsically wrong with all low tier options. Playing a fighter isn't a completely boring proposition all the time, and a good barbarian certainly isn't. Playing a fighter in a party with a wizard, however, usually is. Always choosing the most powerful option all the time might make some sense in a competitive game, but in a cooperative game, you generally choose whichever archetype you think would be neat to play. Then, in my view, you try to build that archetype as close to the party's tier as possible. That's how I see balance as working anyway. Apart from archery, you can build just about any archetype to be balanced with any already balanced party. I think being able to hit people with a sword in a way that matters in a party with a wizard in it is a good thing. That's why I think constructing balance is cool beans.

To the first point, just to make sure we're on the same page - would you say that playing a good barbarian in a party with a wizard is boring? If so, I'd tend to disagree, unless the wizard is actively being a problem player, in which case that should be addressed independently of the system. If not, I'd say that was a weakness of the fighter class, if it can't perform alongside a wizard while a well-designed class occupying the same niche could.

Definitely agree with the second part - that you can build almost any archetype to work at almost any power level. (I'm honestly surprised that archery is an exception. It seems like that would be a common enough issue, and easily enough fixed, that one of the splat books would have got it right by now... must resist urge to homebrew...)

Anyway, that's a big part of why I don't see lack of balance as being a problem, at least in high-op play.

[eggynack]

To the first point, just to make sure we're on the same page - would you say that playing a good barbarian in a party with a wizard is boring? If so, I'd tend to disagree, unless the wizard is actively being a problem player, in which case that should be addressed independently of the system. If not, I'd say that was a weakness of the fighter class, if it can't perform alongside a wizard while a well-designed class occupying the same niche could.


Basically, yes. Wizards, especially when they get to mid level play, obsolete encounters incredibly easily. I don't think that it requires incredibly high op either. The issue is even more evident with druids though, because they can do a lot of the regular magic stuff, while fighting as well as most melee builds without putting too much effort into it. I don't see our views of balance as being that different really. The main difference is likely that I view warblades as being an effective method of balancing wizards and fighters to some extent. Barbarians are just about the best damage dealers in the game when optimized, but that means so little at some point.

[Lans]

Frankly the game doesn't need "Balance" and most of the people here don't want it. Balance was 4E. We need things to not be so skewed that it looks like a Justice League line up of Superman, Green Lantern, May Parker, WW and Aquaman

[TheIronGolem]

I never said that this meant the game *was* balanced - it isn't, at all. My argument is that the fact that the game isn't balanced, isn't nearly the problem people make it out to be. The lack of balance is still present, but it doesn't make the game not fun.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that imbalance makes the game "not fun". But it does make the game less fun than it otherwise would be. D&D is a great game despite its balance issues, not because of them.

An excellent illustration of this can be found by comparing 3.x to older versions. Bad as they can be (and they can get pretty bad), 3.x's balance problems are nothing on what the older editions had. WOTC made a very deliberate effort to balance the game when they designed 3rd Ed. And while they clearly fell short of that goal in a number of ways, their efforts (past and present) shaped the game and made it as enjoyable for you as it is.

The design concept you dismiss as unimportant is the same one whose benefits you reap each and every time you play the game.

[Karnith]

Frankly the game doesn't need "Balance" and most of the people here don't want it. Balance was 4E. We need things to not be so skewed that it looks like a Justice League line up of Superman, Green Lantern, May Parker, WW and Aquaman
How did Aunt May get into the Justice League? She's Marvel, all the other people you listed are DC. Separate universes, dude.

[Nightmarenny]

Frankly the game doesn't need "Balance" and most of the people here don't want it. Balance was 4E. We need things to not be so skewed that it looks like a Justice League line up of Superman, Green Lantern, May Parker, WW and Aquaman

That's called balancing. You are creating an imaginary distinction.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I don't think anyone's suggesting that imbalance makes the game "not fun". But it does make the game less fun than it otherwise would be. D&D is a great game despite its balance issues, not because of them.

An excellent illustration of this can be found by comparing 3.x to older versions. Bad as they can be (and they can get pretty bad), 3.x's balance problems are nothing on what the older editions had. WOTC made a very deliberate effort to balance the game when they designed 3rd Ed. And while they clearly fell short of that goal in a number of ways, their efforts (past and present) shaped the game and made it as enjoyable for you as it is.

The design concept you dismiss as unimportant is the same one whose benefits you reap each and every time you play the game.

Hmm. What do you say to my point about the imbalance allowing for different levels of play, thus broadening the appeal of the game?

To summarize said point- different people will want to put different levels of energy, investment and work into the mechanical aspects of the game. The different classes allow this to happen - there are classes where you can pretty much just throw on a few obvious feats and get going, and there are classes that require a massive investment of preparation, planning and system knowledge. Obviously, the players that put more work in are going to get more power out - it doesn't work to have them do busywork for no benefit. Thus, the unbalanced nature of the classes actually means that the same game can be approached and enjoyed by a much larger and more diverse group of people.

[Guizonde]

quick question from a guy who shies away from wizards:

i've seen a lot of uber builds for wizards, sorcerors, fraction-casters, and all of those "highly optimized" builds. most of them require careful planning, but also loads of gold and specialist items. for instance, the grey elf wizard up there has 34 int, but at least 11 of those are based on items (tome and headband of intellect). where do you get them in-game?

i'm asking this question because when i showed my dm pun-pun, all he saw was that he needed both: a lot of splatbooks and a candle to summon a critter.

all he told me "IF" (you get the candle, that is). heck, this happens whenever i show him the latest uberbuild that has caught my fancy. "if you get X item, if splatbook y is allowed..." so, have any of you actually conned your dm's into allowing you to get those crazy items?

i think it's jaronk who said that the dm balances out power-disparity. it's true. in the campaign, it's my shining moment since i'm a cleric specialized against undead and evil. next part will be against dragons, so it'll be the rogue's turn to shine (long story about a tattoo). i could XYZ my way into modifying my build to be the star i'm sure, but honestly, i'd hate myself for it and the dm would never allow it.

after reading a lot of comments that boil down to "yeah but if my wizard has X item, his e-peen will be Y times more powerful than a warrior". "if" is the main thing here. slap an antimagic collar on the wizard and take away his spellbook and what can he do? a warrior with the same collar will say, "right, what's the hittiest, rippiest thing i can find? i've got payback to deliver". it's all about circumstance. take away a cleric's symbol, he's a glorified fighter. take away a barbarian's equipment? "ok, i'll gnaw their arms off!". even the monk. when all you have is a hammer, having a body conditionned for close quarters is a blessing, and not a flaw.

[Hiro Protagonest]

i've seen a lot of uber builds for wizards, sorcerors, fraction-casters, and all of those "highly optimized" builds. most of them require careful planning, but also loads of gold and specialist items. for instance, the grey elf wizard up there has 34 int, but at least 11 of those are based on items (tome and headband of intellect). where do you get them in-game?
You make them.

i'm asking this question because when i showed my dm pun-pun, all he saw was that he needed both: a lot of splatbooks and a candle to summon a critter.

It's been a while since I've looked at Pun-Pun, but... how many splatbooks does he need? Doesn't he just need the one with the Sarrukh, and the one with the creature who has the ability to gain the stat boost?

Plus, Pun-Pun is the ultimate TO build, because no DM would ever allow it unless they'd never heard of him and you don't reveal your intentions. And then they'd ban him as soon as you use it. So saying "no DM would allow Pun-Pun, therefore D&D is balanced in practice" is MASSIVE Oberoni Fallacy, and perhaps some strawmanning since nobody else in this thread mentioned Pun-Pun.

[Karnith]

You make them.
Alternately, you can walk into a city and buy them. A metropolis, per RAW, has an item price limit of 100,000 gold. Large cities have a limit of 40,000 gold, and if we get the Epic Level Handbook involved, the gold limit is something like 250,000 gold for a planar metropolis. So our wizard can purchase his headband of intellect +6 in a large city, a tome of clear thought in a metropolis, or his tome of clear thought +5 in a planar metropolis. All of which he should have pretty easy access to by the time he gets to 20th level.

And, honestly, it's not like he really needs the items, assuming his starting Intelligence isn't terrible.

[Lans]

That's called balancing. You are creating an imaginary distinction.

No, I am not. Just because balancing has occurred does not mean things have entered a state of balance

[georgie_leech]

No, I am not. Just because balancing has occurred does not mean things have entered a state of balance

I think he means "balance" as a sliding scale, between "perfectly" and, well, what there is now. Balancing doesn't have to mean making it so that everything is equal always, but could just be reducing the vast gulf between classes that we have now.

[eggynack]

No, I am not. Just because balancing has occurred does not mean things have entered a state of balance

Well, you've gotta have some balance in everything, including balance. The real issue is that you've constructed a bit of a false dichotomy. The balance being proposed by the pro-balance folks isn't some kinda perfect absolute balance where wizards are basically just fighters. All I want is a game state where everyone can be reasonably content with the character they're playing. For me, that means a two tier range that can fit anywhere on the list you want, and for someone else that can mean a gentleman's agreement, and for a third person that can just mean that they're bad enough at the game that being able to stab someone is better than the wizard's phenomenal cosmic power. You can have some balance without everything becoming homogeneous, and you can have a system where everything is pretty homogeneous and things are unbalanced.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

and for a third person that can just mean that they're bad enough at the game that being able to stab someone is better than the wizard's phenomenal cosmic power.

Not quite sure if that was directed at me, but just to be clear, I don't think that stabbing is "Better" - just easier, if you have limited time and energy to invest in the game, the mechanics of your character, and the rule set.

[TheIronGolem]

Hmm. What do you say to my point about the imbalance allowing for different levels of play, thus broadening the appeal of the game?

To summarize said point- different people will want to put different levels of energy, investment and work into the mechanical aspects of the game. The different classes allow this to happen - there are classes where you can pretty much just throw on a few obvious feats and get going, and there are classes that require a massive investment of preparation, planning and system knowledge. Obviously, the players that put more work in are going to get more power out - it doesn't work to have them do busywork for no benefit. Thus, the unbalanced nature of the classes actually means that the same game can be approached and enjoyed by a much larger and more diverse group of people.

I have a number of responses to that point:

1. Tying a character class to a "level of commitment" makes unwarranted assumptions about players who are interested in that class. Choosing to play a fighter doesn't mean you're not "committed", nor does choosing to play a wizard mean that you are. Chances are good that the fighter player is a hardcore veteran who knows the book by heart, and chances are also good that the wizard player is a casual who just wants to zap orcs with fireballs and then go home. You cannot gauge a player's level of commitment to the game by looking at the class name written on their character sheet, and any design decisions you make on that assumption will make the game worse, not better.

2. It doesn't reward commitment in the straightforward effort-in-reward-out fashion that you seem to think it does. No matter how hard that veteran fighter player works to optimize his character, he won't be able to contribute as well as the casual wizard player does, even in what is supposed to be his area of expertise. Without even meaning to, the casual wizard player will make him redundant at best.

3. It makes for penalty based on character concepts. At high levels, if you're not playing a caster, you're playing a caster's sidekick, because no matter what you do, they can do it better than you and they can do more on top of that. They're literally better than you in every way. Only clumsy DM-fiat hacks like antimagic fields have any way of mitigating that, and other posters have already shown how ineffective those hacks really are. There's no reason a player character should be consigned to mediocrity merely because their concept involves swinging a sword instead of putting on a robe and wizard hat.

4. It assumes a false dichotomy of "easy or useful". There's no reason why a class can't/shouldn't be both easy to learn and effective at all levels. And that's not just a problem on the martial side; too often I've had new/casual players turned off of playing a caster due to the paperwork involved, even though they were initially interested in the concept. Essentially the wizard has a sign around his neck saying "you must be this nerdy to play, go be a fighter if you don't want to do homework". That's not a good thing. It certainly doesn't help open the game to a bigger variety of players as you suggest.

5. It goes against the game's own design goals. Martial characters aren't supposed to suck at high levels in D&D; it's an accident that they do. The game claims to support martial concepts just as well as magic ones, and it certainly tries to. But it fails to do so, and you're mistaking that bug for a feature.

[Edit: Oh, and I almost forgot:]
6. It's a non-sequitur to assume that accomodating different "levels of play" requires massive discrepancies in power levels, or that such discrepancies should be based on character class.

[Guizonde]

You make them.

It's been a while since I've looked at Pun-Pun, but... how many splatbooks does he need? Doesn't he just need the one with the Sarrukh, and the one with the creature who has the ability to gain the stat boost?

Plus, Pun-Pun is the ultimate TO build, because no DM would ever allow it unless they'd never heard of him and you don't reveal your intentions. And then they'd ban him as soon as you use it. So saying "no DM would allow Pun-Pun, therefore D&D is balanced in practice" is MASSIVE Oberoni Fallacy, and perhaps some strawmanning since nobody else in this thread mentioned Pun-Pun.

ok regarding the making of items. it just seems like sinking a lot of xp and gold and time-wasting to me (well, from what i've seen of some "gimme gimme i want i need" items). i had thought of that, but it seems like quite a hassle that would require a scenario or quite a bit of down-time to pull off.(proof that i'm not caster-material)

i called on pun-pun precisely because everyone holds him as the ultimate T0. i'm not saying what you're making me say. hell, i'm saying dnd is as balanced as your DM makes it out to be. oh, and if i came across as strawmanning, my bad. i tend to use the uber examples because i don't know the name of other high-op builds (and i'm guessing i'm not the only newbie around here who doesn't know it too). sure, wizards are powerful. they can do everything, but i've always seen their list more as a "pick and choose how you want to twist physics" rather than a "this is all the ways you can make physics cry. at the same time". i guess i'm stuck in the "specialist" wizard archetype, rather than the "archmage" one. wizards would become very balanced vis à vis warriors if they stuck to one or two schools max. that pyromancer can't have all the solutions, and neither can that diviner or summoner (while still being very powerful).

edit: regarding pun-pun's build, it's here (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Pun-Pun). 4 splatbooks for full exponential growth, otherwise only core and serpent kingdoms are needed. the point is moot. call it a jab at crunch-happy optimizers forgetting about the roleplay aspect of the game (i know a few irl... it gets grating talking to them)
edit2:here is for the crunch-happy step-by-step (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Pun-Pun_%283.5e_Optimized_Character_Build%29)

[eggynack]

Not quite sure if that was directed at me, but just to be clear, I don't think that stabbing is "Better" - just easier, if you have limited time and energy to invest in the game, the mechanics of your character, and the rule set.
Not in particular. I'm just pointing out that in low op games, balance fluctuates quite a bit from the norm. Thus, the fighter with his fancy armor can outdo the wizard with his fireballs without too much difficulty. It's just another theoretical method of achieving balance. Another one is constructing encounters specifically tailored to kill the wizard and not the fighter (though this may require a relatively low op party) or just making the world a dead magic zone. In any of my listed cases, and probably a bunch of others, mundane characters can be made to compete directly with magic ones with varying degrees of success. Such is the magic of balance.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I have a number of responses to that point:

1. Tying a character class to a "level of commitment" makes unwarranted assumptions about players who are interested in that class. Choosing to play a fighter doesn't mean you're not "committed", nor does choosing to play a wizard mean that you are. Chances are good that the fighter player is a hardcore veteran who knows the book by heart, and chances are also good that the wizard player is a casual who just wants to zap orcs with fireballs and then go home. You cannot gauge a player's level of commitment to the game by looking at the class name written on their character sheet, and any design decisions you make on that assumption will make the game worse, not better.

Your groups may be radically different than mine, but I don't know a lot of hardcore veteran players who go straight fighter, and new players are generally advised that Wizard is a difficult and rule-intensive class, and that they may want to pick something simpler. Now, if you're talking about archetypes, that's another matter - there are certainly melee builds that are either more complicated and deep to play, require more experience to build, or both.


2. It doesn't reward commitment in the straightforward effort-in-reward-out fashion that you seem to think it does. No matter how hard that veteran fighter player works to optimize his character, he won't be able to contribute as well as the casual wizard player does, even in what is supposed to be his area of expertise. Without even meaning to, the casual wizard player will make him redundant at best.

If he chooses to play straight fighter, yes, but why would an experienced player who's frustrated by the lack of power of a fighter proceed to play a fighter, when there are much better martial classes available? Unless his thought process is actually "I'm gonna take this class cause it's a challenge, but I'll get upset if it's a challenge", then the game doesn't suffer from that.



3. It makes for penalty based on character concepts. At high levels, if you're not playing a caster, you're playing a caster's sidekick, because no matter what you do, they can do it better than you and they can do more on top of that. They're literally better than you in every way. Only clumsy DM-fiat hacks like antimagic fields have any way of mitigating that, and other posters have already shown how ineffective those hacks really are. There's no reason a player character should be consigned to mediocrity merely because their concept involves swinging a sword instead of putting on a robe and wizard hat.

That one's a little more complicated, but I'd point out the existence of things like Tome of Battle, Gishes, etc, all of which means that there are some pretty solid options for martial characters. The fact that you can make a character that's as good as a wizard at any specific task is a tautology; of course you can, in the absolute worst case scenario, you could just build a wizard focused on those tasks.


4. It assumes a false dichotomy of "easy or useful". There's no reason why a class can't/shouldn't be both easy to learn and effective at all levels. And that's not just a problem on the martial side; too often I've had new/casual players turned off of playing a caster due to the paperwork involved, even though they were initially interested in the concept. Essentially the wizard has a sign around his neck saying "you must be this nerdy to play, go be a fighter if you don't want to do homework". That's not a good thing. It certainly doesn't help open the game to a bigger variety of players as you suggest.

Again, unless the casters are going out of their way to be *******s to the rest of the party, even the less-powerful builds can still be useful - a good caster should actually be making them *more* useful. Furthermore, if a class fails to be useful at higher levels, that's an independent failure of the class, not a failure of balance. So, the way to fix fighters, paladins and monks is to fix fighters, paladins and monks, not to nerf wizards.

Now, you can say that "Everything should be easy to play", and there's some support for that - but it leaves the more wonkish, experienced and nerdy players bored and without the sort of depth they currently enjoy. I would actually describe this as the sort of tactic used with 4e, and it hasn't been a resounding success.


5. It goes against the game's own design goals. Martial characters aren't supposed to suck at high levels in D&D; it's an accident that they do. The game claims to support martial concepts just as well as magic ones, and it certainly tries to. But it fails to do so, and you're mistaking that bug for a feature.

I never said the game was without flaws, I'm saying that the problem isn't balance, or more specifically, balance between classes. If martial classes fail at higher levels, that's a problem with or without the presence of casters and other more effective classes.


6. It's a non-sequitur to assume that accomodating different "levels of play" requires massive discrepancies in power levels, or that such discrepancies should be based on character class.

I wouldn't call that a non-sequitur at all; some players are going to pursue more advanced, more difficult options, and obviously that's going to reward them with a higher level of power. It doesn't *have* to be done one a class-by-class basis, but that's the easiest and most intuitive way to go about it.

[MukkTB]

At the moment, everything is held together by a gentlemen's agreement. It doesn't seem unreasonable to want the game developers to be responsible for making sure no Pun-Pun and that the classes fall within a couple tiers of each other.

[TheIronGolem]

Your groups may be radically different than mine, but I don't know a lot of hardcore veteran players who go straight fighter

The hardcore veterans would go straight fighter if they had a character concept in mind that the fighter class is most suited for, especially if splat classes like the warblade aren't allowed.


and new players are generally advised that Wizard is a difficult and rule-intensive class, and that they may want to pick something simpler.

And as I noted, that's a problem.


If he chooses to play straight fighter, yes, but why would an experienced player who's frustrated by the lack of power of a fighter proceed to play a fighter, when there are much better martial classes available? Unless his thought process is actually "I'm gonna take this class cause it's a challenge, but I'll get upset if it's a challenge", then the game doesn't suffer from that.

Because, again, the character concept they have in mind demands a purely martial class. And fulfilling that concept shouldn't require accepting the role of the casters' sidekick.


That one's a little more complicated, but I'd point out the existence of things like Tome of Battle, Gishes, etc, all of which means that there are some pretty solid options for martial characters.

Those things have a role, but their existence does not justify the other martial classes being terrible. They also only narrow the gap a bit, they don't address the fact that the casters do their own jobs better than they do. Even the best martial classes are Tier 3, whereas the "lesser" caster classes are Tier 2.


The fact that you can make a character that's as good as a wizard at any specific task is a tautology; of course you can, in the absolute worst case scenario, you could just build a wizard focused on those tasks.

Without DM fiat behind you, you can't make a martial character that's as good as a wizard at any specific task. The wizard fights better than the fighter, sneaks better than the rogue, and scouts better than the ranger, plus he does all kinds of things that none of those guys can do at all. And that's without a build focused on a particular task. The allegedly generic wizard outperforms the alleged specialists at their own specialties.



Again, unless the casters are going out of their way to be *******s to the rest of the party, even the less-powerful builds can still be useful - a good caster should actually be making them *more* useful.

First, that assumes that all casters should be buffers/debuffers. That's like saying all martial characters should be tanks.

Second, the casters certainly don't need to go out of their way to obsolete the rest of the party. On the contrary, they pretty much have to make a conscious effort not to.


Furthermore, if a class fails to be useful at higher levels, that's an independent failure of the class, not a failure of balance. So, the way to fix fighters, paladins and monks is to fix fighters, paladins and monks, not to nerf wizards.

Well, merely by suggesting that some classes need to be fixed you're admitting that balance is desirable, so in a very real way you've already conceded the core argument. Balance isn't just each class in relation to the others, it's also the viability of each class individually.

However, you're still neglecting the importance of the relative power levels between classes. Most of the problems martials have is that, again, casters are better at martials' roles than martials are. This problem wouldn't exist if there was no magic in the game, but that's obviously a poor way of fixing the problem, so the discrepancy remains an issue.

And while I'm not necessarily saying that nerfing casters is the answer, I will emphatically say that it shouldn't be off the table as a matter of principle. If we elevate all the martials to wizard-level power, we now have a bunch of classes that can do everything, and then what's the point of having classes at all?


Now, you can say that "Everything should be easy to play", and there's some support for that - but it leaves the more wonkish, experienced and nerdy players bored and without the sort of depth they currently enjoy. I would actually describe this as the sort of tactic used with 4e, and it hasn't been a resounding success.

"Easy to play" does not imply "lacking in depth". 4E definitely has its problems, but accessibility is not one of them.


I never said the game was without flaws

Nor did I (or to my knowledge, anyone) suggest that you did.


I'm saying that the problem isn't balance, or more specifically, balance between classes. If martial classes fail at higher levels, that's a problem with or without the presence of casters and other more effective classes.

Except that a large part of the reason that martial characters underperform at high levels is because of the fact that the casters are overpowered. It's not that the fighter can't fight, it's that the wizard fights better without trying. But even if you have a purely-martial party, you're going to have problems fighting level-appropriate encounters at high level, because the monsters are designed under the assumption that you have some Level X casters along to babysit the martials. And sure, you could band-aid the problem by having them fight lower-level monsters, but that's an implicit admission that the game is really about casters and martials are just along for the ride. And that's a problem.


I wouldn't call that a non-sequitur at all; some players are going to pursue more advanced, more difficult options, and obviously that's going to reward them with a higher level of power. It doesn't *have* to be done one a class-by-class basis, but that's the easiest and most intuitive way to go about it.

Why "obviously"? If it's not a non-sequitur, then it's circular reasoning. Casters are more powerful because they're more difficult, and they're more difficult because they're more powerful, etc. But you seem to be missing that the system mastery you seek to reward is already its own reward, because it lets you make more effective use of whatever class you're playing. You don't need to be rewarded for it again by having the game explicitly make you the best.

And I would remind you again that casters are still better than non-casters even with low degrees of system mastery on the part of their players. The effort-to-reward ratio for casters is exponential, whereas martials (particularly fighters and monks) hit a wall of diminishing returns around mid-level. The "difficult therefore powerful" justification simply doesn't hold water.

Every class should be really good at one or two things, or reasonably good at several things. But no class needs to be supremely good at practically everything, and that's what Caster Supremacy gives us. It doesn't make D&D/PF a bad game, not even remotely, but it does keep it from being as good as it could be. It's a manageable problem, but it it is a problem.

[Flickerdart]

Wizard may be the go-to example of a spellcaster, but it's not like it's the only one. If you want to make a caster character with minimal book-keeping, roll up a sorcerer or beguiler. Not a big deal.

[Nightmarenny]

Your groups may be radically different than mine, but I don't know a lot of hardcore veteran players who go straight fighter, and new players are generally advised that Wizard is a difficult and rule-intensive class, and that they may want to pick something simpler. Now, if you're talking about archetypes, that's another matter - there are certainly melee builds that are either more complicated and deep to play, require more experience to build, or both.

You don't see anything wrong with that? That experienced or skilled players will find Fighters boring? Or that a player who likes the idea of playing a Wizard won't be able to play it?

[FreakyCheeseMan]

You don't see anything wrong with that? That experienced or skilled players will find Fighters boring? Or that a player who likes the idea of playing a Wizard won't be able to play it?

I see a lot of benefit from there being people interested in options at different levels; there are also martial classes that have more investment and options, and casting classes that are simpler to understand. So what if there are specific classes that people won't be in the mood for, or well suited for, at particular times in their gaming career? It's not like 3.5 suffers from a lack of options.

[ArcturusV]

True enough. I still haven't played even half the stuff I've wanted to.

And sometimes, the things I don't realize I want like the Idiot Savant Fighter/Sorcerer into Anointed Knight. :smallbiggrin:

Of course, sometimes the lack of balance also ruins the fun. Particularly if your DM feels like punishing you for playing something that isn't good. Like the story of my Vashar Ninja.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I don't have time to address the plethora of points right now, but one that keeps getting brought up is that casters will not only completely dominate every encounter to the point where there's nothing left for the rest of the party to do, but that even inexperienced casters will do so by accident.

This strikes me as, at the very least, a gross exaggeration.

There are a hundred things DMs can do to counter this, that don't make life harder for the martial classes at all:

Enemies with SR
Enemies with high saves
Enemies with specific immunities (Undead, Constructs)
Enemies that are spread out, so single AoE spells won't hit them
Enemies with feats or abilities that render certain debuffs less helpful (Blind-fight, freedom of movement)
Enemies that focus on the PC caster, forcing him to devote resources to self-defense
Enemy casters that work to counter the actions of the party caster (Dispel magic, Dismissal)
Enemy casters that take actions the party caster has to counter
(Summon monsters near the caster, blind or otherwise de-buff the caster)

Now, before everyone says it, yes, a caster could counter each of those individually; that's not my point. My point is that, if the DM simply includes a mix of two or three of those in each encounter and plays them intelligently, there will be plenty of room for the martial characters to be useful alongside the mage, unless the mage really is some massively over-built monstrosity that is not only optimized by an experienced player, but going out of his way to make sure no one else gets their time in the sun.

[Morph Bark]

It's not math. It's system mastery. You don't need to do math to know that Toughness or Weapon Specialization or Greater Weapon Focus are bad feats. You don't need math to know that blast spells for a wizard are less effective than other spells.

Either way, you need to put in time to make the "correct" choices, and know how to make them. Most people who don't check online boards don't know, and a lot who do don't either or disregard the information they find.

Before going online to see what other people thought about wizards, the only wizard I played was a rogue//wizard with primarily evocation spells and one or two conjuration spells. The feats you mention did look pretty bad even back then, but Spell Focus: Evocation looked good, even though it hardly is.

The major problem though? The designers ended up claiming they designed the game so that system mastery would be rewarded. By actually making functioning characters. And that's just sick.

[lord_khaine]

The hardcore veterans would go straight fighter if they had a character concept in mind that the fighter class is most suited for, especially if splat classes like the warblade aren't allowed.

In that case he can allways stick to core material like psionic warrior.


And as I noted, that's a problem.

Its not a problem if you instead just guide them towards sorcerer or psion.


Because, again, the character concept they have in mind demands a purely martial class. And fulfilling that concept shouldn't require accepting the role of the casters' sidekick.

And Warblade allready exist to solve that problem, if it isnt allowed then its more a problem with the GM than the game, since things are being made harder for the martrial classes than they needs to.


Those things have a role, but their existence does not justify the other martial classes being terrible. They also only narrow the gap a bit, they don't address the fact that the casters do their own jobs better than they do. Even the best martial classes are Tier 3, whereas the "lesser" caster classes are Tier 2.

Do remember that the tier system is an artificial way of sorting the classes, and that it meassure versatility, not power.
Outside of TO the tier 3 classes shouldnt have any problems adventuring with tier 1 and 2 classes.


Without DM fiat behind you, you can't make a martial character that's as good as a wizard at any specific task. The wizard fights better than the fighter, sneaks better than the rogue, and scouts better than the ranger, plus he does all kinds of things that none of those guys can do at all. And that's without a build focused on a particular task. The allegedly generic wizard outperforms the alleged specialists at their own specialties.

And this is actualy false outside of TO or semi-epic games where the wizard has gotten his level 8-9 spells.
Without those he is highly unlikely to beat the fighter or the rogue in their own game.


First, that assumes that all casters should be buffers/debuffers. That's like saying all martial characters should be tanks.

Second, the casters certainly don't need to go out of their way to obsolete the rest of the party. On the contrary, they pretty much have to make a conscious effort not to.

This really depends on how competent the rest of the party is, and many different things the casters need to be prepared for.


However, you're still neglecting the importance of the relative power levels between classes. Most of the problems martials have is that, again, casters are better at martials' roles than martials are. This problem wouldn't exist if there was no magic in the game, but that's obviously a poor way of fixing the problem, so the discrepancy remains an issue.


Again, this has been said a couple of times now, but i really dont see a level 9 wizard outdoing a martrial character using only buffs, but if you really belive its the case then i would certainly like to see the build.


Except that a large part of the reason that martial characters underperform at high levels is because of the fact that the casters are overpowered. It's not that the fighter can't fight, it's that the wizard fights better without trying. But even if you have a purely-martial party, you're going to have problems fighting level-appropriate encounters at high level, because the monsters are designed under the assumption that you have some Level X casters along to babysit the martials. And sure, you could band-aid the problem by having them fight lower-level monsters, but that's an implicit admission that the game is really about casters and martials are just along for the ride. And that's a problem.

Actualy, the game was designed under the assumption that those casters would do nothing but heal or lob fireballs at the problem, a world where things are actualy kinda equal.


And I would remind you again that casters are still better than non-casters even with low degrees of system mastery on the part of their players. The effort-to-reward ratio for casters is exponential, whereas martials (particularly fighters and monks) hit a wall of diminishing returns around mid-level. The "difficult therefore powerful" justification simply doesn't hold water.

This does make sense however, and i do agree on that there is a diminishing return for the build of pure melee classes, and that it is a problem.

[Gurgeh]

You've got two pretty serious (albeit unrelated) problems with your argument there...

1) The warblade and his ilk are still pretty much irrelevant compared to full casters - they're very much still in the territory of being BMX Bandit to the Wizard's Angel Summoner.

2) Not everyone who wants to hit things with swords wants to have to buy a bunch of splatbooks about weeaboo fightan magic. Some people just want to be a fighter.

There's sadly no easy solution to the power discrepancy, of course - if there were then I'm sure that one would have emerged years ago. You can try nerfing casters (either by cutting out particularly broken spells or arbitrarily rigging the game against them with AMF everywhere) or buffing everyone else and getting a situation like Pathfinder where it's impossible for anybody to level up without tripping over five new special abilities - at the end of the day, you're left with the fact that hitting things with a sword is a pretty narrow skillset when compared with being able to conjure fire, turn invisible, fly, teleport, transform into a dragon, or turn the nearest enemy into your personal mind slave.

You're looking at such enormous qualitative differences that the only way to really allow any sort of parity is to either take away the vast majority of spell effects or to throw verisimilitude out the window and take the 4E approach of turning everyone into a wizard.

[Darius Kane]

2) Not everyone who wants to hit things with swords wants to have to buy a bunch of splatbooks about weeaboo fightan magic. Some people just want to be a fighter.
Warblade is a better Fighter, tho. And one splatbook isn't really "a bunch".

[Killer Angel]

1) The warblade and his ilk are still pretty much irrelevant compared to full casters - they're very much still in the territory of being BMX Bandit to the Wizard's Angel Summoner.

So what?
Warblade is 2 tiers up than the fighter. Does it fill the gap between meleers and full casters? certainly not, but the chasm is smaller, and I wouldn't compare the warblade to BMX bandit...

[Gurgeh]

I dunno. Being able to disarm terrorists with BMX moves sounds pretty far out of my league... ;)

And Warblade is most certainly not a better fighter - it's more powerful, and it's about hitting things with other things, but that's about it. It has a bunch of flavour that's fairly off-putting to a lot of the grognard types out there, and it's far more specific about it than the fighter is. Not everybody wants wuxia in their heroic fantasy.

[eggynack]

\
Those things have a role, but their existence does not justify the other martial classes being terrible. They also only narrow the gap a bit, they don't address the fact that the casters do their own jobs better than they do. Even the best martial classes are Tier 3, whereas the "lesser" caster classes are Tier 2.

Your other stuff is of varying degrees of truth, but this statement is just false. Casters range all the way from tier 5 to tier 0. The list goes something like, tier 5: healer, tier 4: warmage, tier 3: beguiler, tier 2: sorcerer, tier 1: everything in tier 1, and tier 0: stp erudite (as long as this fits your definition of both a caster and a tier 0 which it does in many people's minds). Further, though without magic martial characters are stuck below tier 2, if you add magic a lot of archetypes in the martial set can be built to a higher tier. I understand that it exemplifies the balance issues of 3.5 rather than eliminating them, but clerics make a good paladin replacement, a gish build can probably make a good fighter. It's less true than my statement that casters can fill lower tiers, but if you're hitting someone with a weapon of some kind as your primary means of attack, you can still be tier one.

edit: the real reason that this is important is that it allows a party to be close tier-wise while filling all of the major archetypes. at the high end a guy calling himself the party meat shield is really playing a cleric, and at the low end a guy calling himself the party magic man is really playing a beguiler or warmage. Thus, the maximum of two tier difference system can be maintained while keeping party diversity.

[JBento]

Enemies with SR
Enemies with high saves
Enemies with specific immunities (Undead, Constructs)
Enemies that are spread out, so single AoE spells won't hit them
Enemies with feats or abilities that render certain debuffs less helpful (Blind-fight, freedom of movement)
Enemies that focus on the PC caster, forcing him to devote resources to self-defense
Enemy casters that work to counter the actions of the party caster (Dispel magic, Dismissal)
Enemy casters that take actions the party caster has to counter
(Summon monsters near the caster, blind or otherwise de-buff the caster)


Except that none of those actually solve problems, or worse, they only hamper casters with lower system mastery and that like slinging fireballs around. And those already aren't an issue (or, at least, as much as an issue as the casters who know what they're doing).

SR is only really relevant in a couple of creatures like ropers. And Assay Resistance takes care of even those. Regardless, SR: No says hi.
There's quite a bunch of spells who don't allow saves. Orb of X wipes the floor with pretty much anything.
Undead and Constructs hamper the meleers MORE than knowledgeable casters. The rogue is certainly dead in the water, any incorporeal undead is going to laugh at mundanes and let's not get started on the nightshades and the "Will save or die" plethora.
Spread out enemies ALSO screw the meleers more than casters, who can at least split-ray themselves to victory or solid fog chokepoints. The guys who can't move more than 5 feet and do decent damage? Screwed.
Enemies will blind-fight/sense/sight whatever will probably capitalise on those senses by going around in darkness. Who doesn't have ways to generate special senses of their own? That's right, mundanes. Freedom of Movement helps mobility. Who can't compensate for an opponent's higher mobility? Mundanes.
I've never known a caster who doesn't devote resources to self-defense (mostly at the start of the day/crawl). You know what that tactic tells mundanes? You're not relevant enough for me to care.
On the use of counter-casters: Debuffing harms the mundanes more (who have no way of reapplying the buffs or removing the debuffs), Summons only show up the next round (giving the casters plenty of time to move somewhere else), and casters are likely to have other senses that negate blinding anyway. And, again, these tactics just tell mundanes "you're not relevant enough for me to care."

[Deophaun]

There are a hundred things DMs can do to counter this, that don't make life harder for the martial classes at all:

Enemies with specific immunities (Undead, Constructs)
No sneak attack. No critical hits.

Enemies that are spread out, so single AoE spells won't hit them
No full attack. No cleave.

Enemies with feats or abilities that render certain debuffs less helpful (Blind-fight, freedom of movement)
No grapple. No trip.

Enemies that focus on the PC caster, forcing him to devote resources to self-defense
Ok, if your meatshield isn't meatshielding, then the wizard really doesn't need him around. This is more "let's give the fighter something to do" than "let's make the caster's life difficult," as a caster that finds himself in the front lines with any frequency will soon counter that as a matter of course, demonstrating with its full plethora of skills how superior a caster is at martial combat versus the fighter, that you wind up undermining your own point.

[Zubrowka74]

call it a jab at crunch-happy optimizers forgetting about the roleplay aspect of the game (i know a few irl... it gets grating talking to them)
edit2:here is for the crunch-happy step-by-step (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Pun-Pun_%283.5e_Optimized_Character_Build%29)

Pun-pun, unlike some other high-op builds, was never meant to see play. It was just an exercise on how to break the system. That's why it's TO. So I guess another build would better fit as an example.

[lord_khaine]

And Warblade is most certainly not a better fighter - it's more powerful, and it's about hitting things with other things, but that's about it. It has a bunch of flavour that's fairly off-putting to a lot of the grognard types out there, and it's far more specific about it than the fighter is. Not everybody wants wuxia in their heroic fantasy.

Well, considering that we are talking about warblades there isnt any wuxia to start with (allways hated that word anyway), so problem solved.

And for that matter, the warblade isnt that much stronger than the fighter, but he is a lot more versatile, and he can keep up with the casters in his chosen area of specality, namely hitting things until they stop moving.


SR is only really relevant in a couple of creatures like ropers. And Assay Resistance takes care of even those. Regardless, SR: No says hi.
There's quite a bunch of spells who don't allow saves. Orb of X wipes the floor with pretty much anything.
Undead and Constructs hamper the meleers MORE than knowledgeable casters. The rogue is certainly dead in the water, any incorporeal undead is going to laugh at mundanes and let's not get started on the nightshades and the "Will save or die" plethora.
Spread out enemies ALSO screw the meleers more than casters, who can at least split-ray themselves to victory or solid fog chokepoints. The guys who can't move more than 5 feet and do decent damage? Screwed.
Enemies will blind-fight/sense/sight whatever will probably capitalise on those senses by going around in darkness. Who doesn't have ways to generate special senses of their own? That's right, mundanes. Freedom of Movement helps mobility. Who can't compensate for an opponent's higher mobility? Mundanes.
I've never known a caster who doesn't devote resources to self-defense (mostly at the start of the day/crawl). You know what that tactic tells mundanes? You're not relevant enough for me to care.
On the use of counter-casters: Debuffing harms the mundanes more (who have no way of reapplying the buffs or removing the debuffs), Summons only show up the next round (giving the casters plenty of time to move somewhere else), and casters are likely to have other senses that negate blinding anyway. And, again, these tactics just tell mundanes "you're not relevant enough for me to care."

All this is getting into the realm of Schrödingers wizard however, for the more a wizard tries to prepare for one occation, the weaker he will become against everything else.

And when you load up on enough defensive buffs, backups of defensive buffs to handle dispels, utillity and crowd controll, then you will proberly not have enough magic left to actualy kill your opponents before very high levels, resulting in a need for someone to actualy finish things and do the killing.


No sneak attack. No critical hits.

Rogues have Gravestrike/golemstrike, while most melee classes wont care that much about critt immunity.


No full attack. No cleave.

But so many additional aoo for those who pack a reach weapon that it doesnt matter.
Also, warblades dont care about full attacks, and who takes cleave anyway?


No grapple. No trip.

Whats going to stop the trips? because its not freedom of movement.


Ok, if your meatshield isn't meatshielding, then the wizard really doesn't need him around. This is more "let's give the fighter something to do" than "let's make the caster's life difficult," as a caster that finds himself in the front lines with any frequency will soon counter that as a matter of course, demonstrating with its full plethora of skills how superior a caster is at martial combat versus the fighter, that you wind up undermining your own point.

But he isnt, not outside of TO.
And unless the caster is going for a gish build, then he is more likely to end up dead if he starts eating full attacks, than to outshine the meatshield.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Except that none of those actually solve problems, or worse, they only hamper casters with lower system mastery and that like slinging fireballs around. And those already aren't an issue (or, at least, as much as an issue as the casters who know what they're doing).

SR is only really relevant in a couple of creatures like ropers. And Assay Resistance takes care of even those. Regardless, SR: No says hi.
There's quite a bunch of spells who don't allow saves. Orb of X wipes the floor with pretty much anything.
Undead and Constructs hamper the meleers MORE than knowledgeable casters. The rogue is certainly dead in the water, any incorporeal undead is going to laugh at mundanes and let's not get started on the nightshades and the "Will save or die" plethora.
Spread out enemies ALSO screw the meleers more than casters, who can at least split-ray themselves to victory or solid fog chokepoints. The guys who can't move more than 5 feet and do decent damage? Screwed.
Enemies will blind-fight/sense/sight whatever will probably capitalise on those senses by going around in darkness. Who doesn't have ways to generate special senses of their own? That's right, mundanes. Freedom of Movement helps mobility. Who can't compensate for an opponent's higher mobility? Mundanes.
I've never known a caster who doesn't devote resources to self-defense (mostly at the start of the day/crawl). You know what that tactic tells mundanes? You're not relevant enough for me to care.
On the use of counter-casters: Debuffing harms the mundanes more (who have no way of reapplying the buffs or removing the debuffs), Summons only show up the next round (giving the casters plenty of time to move somewhere else), and casters are likely to have other senses that negate blinding anyway. And, again, these tactics just tell mundanes "you're not relevant enough for me to care."

As I stated *directly* after the section you quoted, I know all of those things have counters - the point is, they don't all have the same counters, which means that mages will have to spend additional spells dealing with each, creating a window in which the martial classes can get their licks in.

As for half of what you said - the point of this is that the DM can use these things to make things more difficult for the mage and create space for the martial classes to have fun and be useful. Half of what you're saying only applies if the DM is trying to use it to screw over martial characters, which is the opposite of what he'd be doing: using incorporeal undead, using enemies immune to precision damage if the party has members reliant on such, blind-fight enemies attacking in total darkness, freedom of movement enemies attacking in difficult terrain, and focusing debuffs/dispel magic on the martial classes rather than the mage are all things the DM could simply not do.

Geographic diversity can just mean two or three clumps of enemies spread out across the map - as the mage deals with one, the fighters move to another.

Yes, mages have defences - but every turn they spend bringing up those defences is a turn in which they aren't dealing with the enemy, and the martial classes are. Unless we're dealing with specific metamagic-heavy builds, not all of their defences are going to be all-day things - and if they are, dispel magic can slow them down all the more.

As for focusing attacks on the parties mage "telling the martial classes they're not important enough to matter"... every group I've ever seen has a policy of "Kill the mages first" when it comes to enemies. I'm not trying to protect the martial classes ego - I'm saying that a little work by the DM can make sure they stay relevant. Hell, if the only reason they stay relevant is because enemies under-estimate anything that isn't a caster, that's still a win.

[JBento]

All this is getting into the realm of Schrödingers wizard however, for the more a wizard tries to prepare for one occation, the weaker he will become against everything else.

Unfortunately, it's not. Orb of Force ALONE deals with saves and SR, and if properly metamagic'd cleans the floor with plenty of stuff. It certainly deals with incoporeal enemies, which the mundanes have a great difficulty with.
And 2 spells per spell level is usually more than enough for protection purposes and barely dents the wizard's daily allotment.


Rogues have Gravestrike/golemstrike

Actually, they don't. They MAY have it, assuming the party cleric or wizard wants to make them not feel useless, or they bought wands, which will take the rogue a standard action to activate (during which he can only be wielding one weapon, since he needs to wield the wand in the other hand) and will work the whoop-de-doo duration of 1 round. Depending on how loud your DM rules the activation word must be spoken, you may have stealthing problems as well. Frankly, you're better off with MIC's weapon crystals.


But so many additional aoo for those who pack a reach weapon that it doesnt matter.
Also, warblades dont care about full attacks, and who takes cleave anyway?

Unless the opponents have tumble. Or are invisible. Or they have cover (from, for instance, your other opponents). Or they have ranged capabilities. Or reach. And this is all assuming you took combat reflexes and have sufficient dexterity to capitalise on the "so many additional aoo." And cleave is pretty good for a fighter, because so much of the rest sucks even harder. I'll concede on the warblades, who, by and large, don't suck.


Whats going to stop the trips? because its not freedom of movement.

No, but flight is. As is being a big bruiser, whose trip modifiers tend to exceed the fighter's. And that's assuming you can be tripped to start with.



And unless the caster is going for a gish build, then he is more likely to end up dead if he starts eating full attacks, than to outshine the meatshield.

Casters don't eat full attacks. Those two spell slots/level used on defensive measures? Yeah. And that's if they didn't ACF the familiar away for Abrupt Jaunt, in which case you're not even managing one attack, let alone a full.

EDIT to answer FCM:

Many things DO have the same counters. See Orb of Force, metamagic'd or not.

Caster don't really care if something is undead. The only ones who do are those investing heavily in mind-affecting effects, but those tend to be the ones that already DON'T bring much power disparity to the table (and you can just use Mind Blank if they do). For golems, see Orb of Force. And you were the one suggesting enemies immune to precision damage, not me.


Geographic diversity can just mean two or three clumps of enemies spread out across the map - as the mage deals with one, the fighters move to another.

This deserves special mention. By your own words, one mage handles the same as the fighters (plural). At which point, the mage is better off finding other mages to adventure with instead of the mundanes, which is the problem everyone tells you about but you seem to be insisting on denying. That the caster is simply better at doing stuff than the mundanes, if the mundanes are even capable of doing it at all.

At level say, 7 and up? The turns used to bring those defences to bear are done in the morning, with Extend. At even higher levels, they're done 1 or 2 days before. Action economy is NOT where the mundanes trump the casters, ever.


As for focusing attacks on the parties mage "telling the martial classes they're not important enough to matter"... every group I've ever seen has a policy of "Kill the mages first" when it comes to enemies. I'm not trying to protect the martial classes ego - I'm saying that a little work by the DM can make sure they stay relevant. Hell, if the only reason they stay relevant is because enemies under-estimate anything that isn't a caster, that's still a win.

Do you know why they kill the mages first? Because they're the relevant opponents. If you're a caster yourself, they might very well be the ONLY relevant opponents. The enemies aren't underestimating the non-casters, they're estimating them right. It just so happens that, unfortunately, a correct estimation of a mundane and a caster with the same level of optimization means that the mundane is so far below in threat rating that it's not even funny.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Unfortunately, it's not. Orb of Force ALONE deals with saves and SR, and if properly metamagic'd cleans the floor with plenty of stuff. It certainly deals with incoporeal enemies, which the mundanes have a great difficulty with.
And 2 spells per spell level is usually more than enough for protection purposes and barely dents the wizard's daily allotment.

Orb of Force also only deals moderate damage to a single enemy; it's countered by things I didn't even bother including on the list, like "Have multiple opponents" or "Have a lot of HP." With more metamagic it deals more, and possibly to more enemies, but it also reduces the number or times per day it can be cast, since most metamagic reducers have limited uses per day.

The wizard having those spells isn't a problem, so long as he has to cast them in combat - that means, once again, their are turns in which the wizard isn't dealing with the enemy, and the rest of the party can. If the spells are persisted or simply have a long duration, enemies with dispel magic become all the more important.



Actually, they don't. They MAY have it, assuming the party cleric or wizard wants to make them not feel useless, or they bought wands, which will take the rogue a standard action to activate (during which he can only be wielding one weapon, since he needs to wield the wand in the other hand) and will work the whoop-de-doo duration of 1 round. Depending on how loud your DM rules the activation word must be spoken, you may have stealthing problems as well. Frankly, you're better off with MIC's weapon crystals.

The point is that the DM can make encounters that people besides the wizard can contribute to; if the martial classes are heavily reliant on crits/sneak attack, he can just not use things immune to those. I only listed undead and constructs as examples of creatures with a lot of immunities - the DM could just as easily use any monster immune to particular energy types or debuffs. Or, the DM could make sure that the right magic item falls into the hands of the party rogue, putting undead and constructs back on the sneak attacked table.


Unless the opponents have tumble. Or are invisible. Or they have cover (from, for instance, your other opponents). Or they have ranged capabilities. Or reach. And this is all assuming you took combat reflexes and have sufficient dexterity to capitalise on the "so many additional aoo."
Again, these are things the DM can do to make casters not dominate every fight to the point where no one else can contribute - the fact that he could also choose to use them to screw over martial classes isn't relevant.


No, but flight is. As is being a big bruiser, whose trip modifiers tend to exceed the fighter's. And that's assuming you can be tripped to start with.

...then why was trip brought up in response to a comment about freedom of movement?

[Suddo]

Note: I'm responding to the first post. I could read all 5 pages but often we talk in circles so I'll just state my opinion. Maybe I'll read the replies.

So I do agree with you in many ways. You seem like a person who understand balance quite well. This is mainly noted, in my opinion, by the fact you like Tome of Battle instead of saying its stupid. I think often my main goal isn't balance as it is good game design. I don't want a class to not function properly (monk/truenamer), I don't want a class to be almost strictly inferior (figther vs Warblade), and I don't want a class to be misleading on what it does when other do that aspect better (PF rogue vs archeologist bard).

I'll personally state that I don't think the game would be unplayable if we had a wizard/cleric/warblade/bard party. The problem more comes up with classes like the monk who is basically outclassed completely by an unarmed swordsage (or even a normal swordsage who burns some feats). The one note on balance I'd like to make is that some spellcasting is completely borked. And I'm not talking about Wish or anything I'm talking about Polymorph a spell that comes online at 9th level and makes the Fighter cry.

If we want to take a more interesting look we can either compare the Rogue to the Factotum (in 3.5) or the Rogue to a variety of classes in pathfinder. Either way we will see unless you want to be a backstabbing combat nuking rogue and nothing else then you're going to end up falling short. And on top of that you are often worthless if you try and specialize into the combat rogue because of how many immunities there are. The Factotum is a better skillmonkey pure and simple, and the combat rogue is outclassed by swordsages.

As a side note I do like what pathfinder has done for a lot of classes I think its a step in the right direction. Though they still mess up a few things and you see the eventual problems with old ideas. This is mainly a look into the rogue class. Rogue are pretty much the same in Pathfinder, they have a few new tricks, and can still only fill about 1.5 to 2 out of 3 roles they would like to fill (combat, traps, face). This is only worse by allowing many other classes to gain the trapfinding class feature (the 1/2 level to percpetion and DD) allowing a Bard to often be a better rogue then the rogue. The two big ones I know of are the Alchemist (who is a bomb chucker who has a couple of pseudo-spells) and the bard (who has almost the same skills/level a spell list and some other fun features).

I think I'm done with my rant.

[Darius Kane]

And Warblade is most certainly not a better fighter - it's more powerful, and it's about hitting things with other things, but that's about it. It has a bunch of flavour that's fairly off-putting to a lot of the grognard types out there, and it's far more specific about it than the fighter is. Not everybody wants wuxia in their heroic fantasy.
You can have a wuxia Fighter too. Doesn't change the fact that Warblade is a better Fighter in every part (except the name of course). The flavor is what you make it to be. And incidentally the Fighter's default flavor is much more fitting for the Warblade. Just use mechanics of the Warblade and flavor of Fighter. Done.

[Deophaun]

All this is getting into the realm of Schrödingers wizard however, for the more a wizard tries to prepare for one occation, the weaker he will become against everything else.
First of all, the Batman wizard is a thing. Second, even if you aren't going Batman, spells are versatile enough that a creative player can use them to much greater effect than their stats indicate. Look at a simple wall spell. A well-placed wall can let the wizard dictate where enemies go and how they group up, trap them until the party is ready to deal with them, debuff or kill outright, or provide cover. There are few encounters where throwing up a wall is a waste. It may be unlikely that a non-Batman wizard has the perfect wall spell for the particular scenario, but they'll have one that's close enough to do the job.

And when you load up on enough defensive buffs, backups of defensive buffs to handle dispels, utillity and crowd controll, then you will proberly not have enough magic left to actualy kill your opponents before very high levels, resulting in a need for someone to actualy finish things and do the killing.
You greatly underestimate the spells available. Utilities are shunted off to scrolls: wizards get Scribe Scroll as a bonus feat at level 1, and even some battlefield control and defensive spells can be safely kept on hand in scroll or wand form (wind wall!). Give them to an improved familiar that has UMD (cross-class it: what else are you going to do with your skill points?), and you can also have free buffs applied to you during combat.

Rogues have Gravestrike/golemstrike, while most melee classes wont care that much about critt immunity.
Won't care about crit immunity? That's news to my group. And rogues might have gravestrike/golemstrike. I've seen enough complaints about rogues in an all-undead campaign here to know it's a problem. The only casters that get screwed by an all-undead or construct campaign are the beguiler and warlock (warlocks go sit in a corner until golems are killed), tier 3s and 4 respectively, not the problem 1 or 2. In my experience as a player and DM, the only people that have problem with constructs are the mundanes, which have to overcome high DRs and find themselves next to opponents with obscene grapple checks.

But so many additional aoo for those who pack a reach weapon that it doesnt matter.
If they are close enough that multiple creatures will be provoking AoOs, they're close enough for a wizard not doing anything special for his spell selection.

Also, warblades dont care about full attacksWarblades? You mean the ToB class? You mean a class from that book which I specifically excluded from my posts? You mean a class that I have not criticized at all? That class?

But he isnt, not outside of TO.
Bull. PO is more than adequate to stack miss chances and get a higher AC than the fighter. Furthermore, I said nothing about taking full attacks. Wizards are vastly more mobile than a fighter. They need only a standard action to do what a fighter needs a full-round action to do. They can make sure their enemies can't charge and pounce them after the fact. And simply being near them can be painful.

But yes, I said if it happens with any frequency, the wizard will start to specialize. And you disagree with me by saying they'd have to specialize? Wha?

[Gavinfoxx]

Actually, Warblade is a fantastic mundane Fighter. You can simulate real martial arts with a Warblade better than you possibly could with the Fighter.

[Deophaun]

Orb of Force also only deals moderate damage to a single enemy; it's countered by things I didn't even bother including on the list, like "Have multiple opponents" or "Have a lot of HP." With more metamagic it deals more, and possibly to more enemies, but it also reduces the number or times per day it can be cast, since most metamagic reducers have limited uses per day.
If you're dealing with multiple enemies, you are no longer targeting opponents. You're targeting the battlefield.

The point is that the DM can make encounters that people besides the wizard can contribute to; if the martial classes are heavily reliant on crits/sneak attack, he can just not use things immune to those. I only listed undead and constructs as examples of creatures with a lot of immunities - the DM could just as easily use any monster immune to particular energy types or debuffs. Or, the DM could make sure that the right magic item falls into the hands of the party rogue, putting undead and constructs back on the sneak attacked table.
The thing about wizards is that they are like the borg: you might get a single trick off against them once. But that's it: once. They'll adapt. And you now have to go through more and more effort to challenge the wizard. You know what that means? It means your campaign is about the wizard. Everyone else, as has been stated, is a sidekick.

No one is saying that mundanes won't contribute. We are saying they won't have meaningful contributions. If the wizard eliminates 95% of an encounter, and the rest of the characters spend five rounds dealing with the remainder, that's not a success. It means that the wizard is playing a completely different game than the rest of the party.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

If you're dealing with multiple enemies, you are no longer targeting opponents. You're targeting the battlefield.

Assuming you mean what I think you mean - battlefield control, rather than direct attacks (AoE or otherwise), that's all I'm trying for - that instead of wiping out every encounter before the rest of the party has a chance to contribute, the wizard is working with the rest of the party, and everyone can be having fun.



The thing about wizards is that they are like the borg: you might get a single trick off against them once. But that's it: once. They'll adapt. And you now have to go through more and more effort to challenge the wizard. You know what that means? It means your campaign is about the wizard. Everyone else, as has been stated, is a sidekick.

Er... you're gonna need to justify this a bit more. Did you see the full list of different sorts of enemies I listed - energy immunities was only a single item. Point is, the DM can throw together different sets of enemies that challenge the wizard in different ways, and that ensure that the wizard isn't wiping everything out before the rest of the party can contribute.


No one is saying that mundanes won't contribute. We are saying they won't have meaningful contributions. If the wizard eliminates 95% of an encounter, and the rest of the characters spend five rounds dealing with the remainder, that's not a success. It means that the wizard is playing a completely different game than the rest of the party.

You may not be saying that, but a lot of people have, and have even extended it to "Casters have to go out of their way not to do so." Furthermore, nothing described has had the wizard doing that; the Orb of Force has him dealing with one, two, maybe four enemies in a turn (with tons of metamagic I'm not even sure would work together), the other things have him applying applying debuffs that only effect specific portions of the battlefield, taking actions which are countered by enemy casters, etc.

As for the argument that "Doing this means the game is all about the wizard, so even trying means you've failed"... that's not just wrong, that's just plain lazy. Right now, I'm talking about a set of things that can be done to counter wizards and other casters - obviously this particular set is going to be about the wizard, but it's not the only thing going on in the campaign, it's barely even a fraction.

[Deophaun]

Assuming you mean what I think you mean - battlefield control, rather than direct attacks (AoE or otherwise), that's all I'm trying for - that instead of wiping out every encounter before the rest of the party has a chance to contribute, the wizard is working with the rest of the party, and everyone can be having fun.
Yes, it's doable, if the wizard wants to. Of course, there are battlefield control spells that will end the encounter as well (Evard's black tentacles comes to mind). There's also the fact that with creative use of divinations and teleportation, the wizard can bypass all those encounters right from the start.

Er... you're gonna need to justify this a bit more. Did you see the full list of different sorts of enemies I listed - energy immunities was only a single item.
I saw the list, but aside from another wizard, there's nothing there that isn't going to be overcome by a standard wizard. And if there is another wizard, hello rocket tag! And wizard verse wizard just goes back to the wizard playing a different game than the rest of the party.

Furthermore, nothing described has had the wizard doing that; the Orb of Force has him dealing with one, two, maybe four enemies in a turn (with tons of metamagic I'm not even sure would work together)But blast of flame, mentioned before the orb, has him mowing down an entire division of drow. And metamagic is easy with arcane thesis and Incantatrix, which are common PO tricks.

As for the argument that "Doing this means the game is all about the wizard, so even trying means you've failed"... that's not just wrong, that's just plain lazy.
No, it means the system has failed. The part in bold? That's nowhere in anything I said.

[Karnith]

Assuming you mean what I think you mean - battlefield control, rather than direct attacks (AoE or otherwise), that's all I'm trying for - that instead of wiping out every encounter before the rest of the party has a chance to contribute, the wizard is working with the rest of the party, and everyone can be having fun.
This is exactly how most high-op, practically optimized wizards in parties play, actually. It's also pretty much the only way to play a high-op wizard without completely obsoleting other party members/roles.

Er... you're gonna need to justify this a bit more. Did you see the full list of different sorts of enemies I listed - energy immunities was only a single item. Point is, the DM can throw together different sets of enemies that challenge the wizard in different ways, and that ensure that the wizard isn't wiping everything out before the rest of the party can contribute.

You may not be saying that, but a lot of people have, and have even extended it to "Casters have to go out of their way not to do so." Furthermore, nothing described has had the wizard doing that; the Orb of Force has him dealing with one, two, maybe four enemies in a turn (with tons of metamagic I'm not even sure would work together), the other things have him applying applying debuffs that only effect specific portions of the battlefield, taking actions which are countered by enemy casters, etc.
Since I would guess that you aren't familiar with her, please meet Cindy (http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/profiler/view_char.php?cid=5890). She was built by a GitP user (Karsh) a few years ago for use in a high-op campaign, and is primarily focused on dealing damage (normally a melee shtick). She is easily capable of killing any enemy (and most reasonably-sized groups of enemies, for that matter) that she encounters who isn't built specifically to counter her. Her defenses are so strong that anything that can realistically threaten her without DM fiat is going to be a TPK for pretty much anybody else but other casters.

Now obviously that's at a rather high level of optimization, but let me offer a tamer look from a different perspective (and at a lower op-level). Suppose that we have a debuffing/BFC wizard, around level 5. He can drop a stinking cloud, which enemies that aren't immune are going to have a hard time saving against. If the enemies fail their save, then they are going to be crippled for the rest of the encounter. After the stinking cloud, the wizard can cast haste on his friends, and they will beat the enemies to death, either when they try to get out of the fog, or as soon as the spell ends. Everybody contributed, and everyone is happy.

But what was the actual contribution of the other members of the party? The wizard disabled all of the enemies. The wizard's haste spell made them far more effective than they otherwise would be. By level 7, he could animate some hill giant skeletons and get largely the same result. He doesn't really need the party for combat; he just needs bodies. He could adventure with NPC warriors and be fine.

This is what people talk about when they say "meaningful contributions." Because at most op-levels, wizards (etc.) have ways to disable most encounters. You can make encounters less tactically favorable for the wizard, but he's still going to have ways to deal with most situations, especially if you want to pretend that you aren't warping the game around him specifically. I used combat as a specific example, but the principle applies just as much (if not more so) outside of combat, as well. Mundane party members will contribute, but without significant help or optimization of their own (for classes like the fighter, this will probably require optimization beyond the wizard's), they'll basically be bodies.

[jindra34]

Adding some things on (yes I read the thread):
1. Perfect balance, where everyone is equally useful at all times (eg. 4th ed.) is definitely bad and to be avoided.
2. There is this thing called Dynamic balance, where on the whole of an adventure/story arc/whatever everyone gets as much time to show of, help out etc. as everyone else. This is good.
3. There is honest imbalance, where even though things aren't balanced options are pointed out as being BETTER and the DM/GM is told to watch carefully and potentially rule to limit the imbalance. This is common and fine.
4. There is minor imbalance, like above but not pointed out. Its fairly uncommon and slightly problematic when people are new to the game.
5. There is what 3.x DnD has which is no balance and on top of that the statement that everything is balanced from the start. This is pretty much a unique case, and is very bad a problematic at all levels of play.

As stated if the DM is having to specifically tailor and build encounters such that one character doesn't handle it themselves, or that one or more characters aren't left out, then there is starting to be a problem. My last game of Dnd 3.5 had a group of 6 people, and three of us, despite low-balling optimization and helping the others out, were pulling most of the weight of the group and were capable of handling, individually, challenges of CR equal to our level to level +3. How do you propose actually building encounters to deal with that without sidelining anyone?

[Gnaeus]

I agree with OP. Balance doesn't matter. Having god wizard and bmx bandit in a party is not really a problem.

D&D's problem is not balance. It is transparency. Commoner is weaker than wizard, and no one complains. As someone pointed out earlier, it is very possible to play as a Commoner and have fun. But when you do that, you know that is what you are doing. No one gets into a game and says "my commoner is weaker than his wizard!!!" Of course it is. Or "My commoner can't beat up beholders!" Nope. He can't. He delivers exactly what is promised, a non heroic farmer type (Well, without Knowledge Nature, he can't identify common animals, but anyway....)

But if I want to play a kickass champion of battle, or a cool martial artist, and I choose Fighter or Monk because that is what those classes promise, I WILL feel bad about my character because they cannot carry out their concept. Those classes should be able to at least equal or surpass other classes in their area of specialty, and they just can't. That is a serious failure of game design.

[Suddo]

But if I want to play a kickass champion of battle, or a cool martial artist, and I choose Fighter or Monk because that is what those classes promise, I WILL feel bad about my character because they cannot carry out their concept. Those classes should be able to at least equal or surpass other classes in their area of specialty, and they just can't. That is a serious failure of game design.

This is what I think people often mean when they say they want to balance the classes. Its more about applying better game design to the characters.

[Hiro Protagonest]

And Warblade is most certainly not a better fighter - it's more powerful, and it's about hitting things with other things, but that's about it. It has a bunch of flavour that's fairly off-putting to a lot of the grognard types out there, and it's far more specific about it than the fighter is. Not everybody wants wuxia in their heroic fantasy.

You think D&D has ever successfully been heroic fantasy without using E6?

[Gavinfoxx]

Regarding Warblades and Realism... lemme quote myself

"Actually, if you want to explicitly simulate non supernatural martial arts in D&D, the Warblade is possibly the closest class you can use for that purpose before going to 3rd party sources to simulate the sorts of things that happen in real fighting. Now, that doesn't mean that it is always realistic, just that you can build the most realistic fighter with that class if you put your mind to it! For example, I've always wanted to play a Warblade who is a Federfechter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federfechter), who used to be a Zweihänder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweih%C3%A4nder) wielding Doppelsöldner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppels%C3%B6ldner) in the Landsknechts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsknechts), who focuses on Iron Heart (with a bit of Stone Dragon), and I would just rename the stances and strikes and counters and stuff with terms from German longsword fencing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_school_of_fencing). He'd wear a Breastplate and fight with a Greatsword. It totally fits!"

[FreakyCheeseMan]

This is what I think people often mean when they say they want to balance the classes. Its more about applying better game design to the characters.

That may just be a different in language - I'd just call those classes poorly-built, not unbalanced. I mean, they're also unbalanced, but I don't think that's the core problem.

Eh.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Yes, it's doable, if the wizard wants to. Of course, there are battlefield control spells that will end the encounter as well (Evard's black tentacles comes to mind). There's also the fact that with creative use of divinations and teleportation, the wizard can bypass all those encounters right from the start.

So, the divinations and teleportations are a problem, but once again, I'd say they're not a balance problem - those would still be in an issue in an all-caster party.


I saw the list, but aside from another wizard, there's nothing there that isn't going to be overcome by a standard wizard. And if there is another wizard, hello rocket tag! And wizard verse wizard just goes back to the wizard playing a different game than the rest of the party.

Again, the goal isn't to "Overcome" the wizard - I'm not trying to play Kill The Wizard, here. I'm saying that those things can throw enough different challenges at him that, assuming he's not massively over-optimized, combat can still be a challenge for him while not being impossible for the rest of the party.


But blast of flame, mentioned before the orb, has him mowing down an entire division of drow. And metamagic is easy with arcane thesis and Incantatrix, which are common PO tricks.

Arcane Thesis applies to a single spell, so its application is more limited - if the spell taken is Orb of Force, it will be poor against larger groups of enemies; if it's blast of flame, it'll be poor against enemies with good reflex saves and evasion, or fire-resistant ones (Unless the mage has taken energy substitution, but then they're burning up even more feats.) Incantrix is more versatile, but their coolest ability only applies to spells after they've been cast; so, they can't use it on any spells that lack duration.


No, it means the system has failed. The part in bold? That's nowhere in anything I said.

You're right, you didn't say that one specifically, I'm sorry for implying that you did - that was just a point I'd seen other people make, and wanted to address.

Above everything, I think that my particular threshold of success may be lower than a lot of peoples - I happen to think that martial characters can have fun even if they aren't crucial to the fight, so long as they're still making a contribution, getting to use their class features, deal damage, occasionally get the kill on a BBEG or two. If the wizard would have done just fine without them... eh, that doesn't bug me so much.

Also, I still maintain that the counters you all are discussing exist only at a pretty high level of optimization - the claims made earlier that wizards have to intentionally avoid dominating the game to this extent, or that even inexperienced players will end up doing so, doesn't hold up.

[eggynack]

I believe that one major contention here is that the classes that can't compete with wizards are inherently poorly designed. I disagree with that notion. The essential parameters of my claim are that a class has to both be interesting to play, and be tier 4 and below. These are the classes that I would theoretically play, but wouldn't be able to if there were a tier one in the party. I agree, for instance, that the fighter is a pretty boring class to play, given that it basically just gets one or two shticks. Naturally, any classes on my list are a bit subjective, but there ya go. I'd say that barbarian, warlock, warmage, hexblade, spellthief, and dungeoncrasher fighter are the tier 4 classes that I'd be willing to play, but that are pushed out by a high power level. Off of tier 5, I suppose I might play a healer or a knight. The other options seem somewhat boring to me. These are the classes, at least from a cursory reading of the tier list, that I believe are the victims of poor game balance. There's probably a bunch I'm missing, including some somewhat boring options that can be pushed up to tier 4 with interesting prestige class options. Either way, the specific classes on the list are somewhat irrelevant. All that matters is that there are almost certainly well designed classes that can be tossed out of relevance if the party doesn't have a standardized power level.

[navar100]

The fallacy of Uberwizard is the assumption the wizard character has every spell ever published at the exact moment it is needed, and the bad guys always fail their saving throws. That is not the case. It is true there are several effective spells not subject to spell resistance. Not every wizard everywhere automatically have them when suddenly he has to face half-fiend drow. Not every wizard everywhere has Assay Resistance. Not every wizard everywhere will have Orb Of Force.

Speaking only in hypotheticals, yes, a wizard has the ability to overcome practically any level appropriate threat. Hypotheticals, however, is irrelevant to actual game play. In game play, a wizard only has available what is available in that game and the choices the player made. He is inherently limited and cannot have every spell ever published at the exact moment he needs it. He's still strong. He can still do alright given a staple of a suite of spells. That is a feature. However, he does not Win The Game every time all the time by himself with warriors having nothing to do.

[eggynack]

The fallacy of Uberwizard is the assumption the wizard character has every spell ever published at the exact moment it is needed, and the bad guys always fail their saving throws. That is not the case. It is true there are several effective spells not subject to spell resistance. Not every wizard everywhere automatically have them when suddenly he has to face half-fiend drow. Not every wizard everywhere has Assay Resistance. Not every wizard everywhere will have Orb Of Force.

Speaking only in hypotheticals, yes, a wizard has the ability to overcome practically any level appropriate threat. Hypotheticals, however, is irrelevant to actual game play. In game play, a wizard only has available what is available in that game and the choices the player made. He is inherently limited and cannot have every spell ever published at the exact moment he needs it. He's still strong. He can still do alright given a staple of a suite of spells. That is a feature. However, he does not Win The Game every time all the time by himself with warriors having nothing to do.
I disagree with this claim to a pretty large extent. There should be a fancy fallacy name for it. Like the "wizards can't have all the spells, and all of their spells are situational so they can't handle anything" fallacy. The fact of the matter is, there really aren't that many situations where polymorph isn't a good answer to a problem. The same goes for solid fog, and black tentacles. These spells aren't going to be a universal perfect answer to everything always, but they're a pretty good answer to most things most of the time. Most of the spells a well build wizard picks are gonna be good against groups of enemies, or enemies with SR, or enemies with energy resistance. In fact, all three of those spells are good in those situations and many more. On the defense side, you don't need to take the spell "protection from that kobold over there", you just need mirror image or dimension door and you'll do pretty well. Druids are even better at this, because you know what can do decently against spell resistance, or groups, or single tough enemies, or flying guys, or demons? Bears. Just a pile of bears, or large elementals of whatever kind you want, or a hippogryph if you need it. Sure, you can take some spells that are great in corner cases, like wind wall or floating disc, and those are fine. It's just that 90% of a strong wizard's spellbook is going to be stuff like polymorph, which doesn't have too many situations where it's not gonna help. You don't need to be crazy prepared to have polymorph. There's a whole lot of other spells that got mentioned, and they're great too. Orb of fire, or force sometimes, are great quite a lot of the time. Not all the time, but when it's not enough you have a whole pile of other spells.

[MukkTB]

Over the course of the article I've heard this: Balance doesn't matter because high tier characters can play nice with the party, the DM can gun for the wizard, and the gentlemen's agreement can keep the game in order.

I put this forward in reply. every one of those things is the players attempting to rectify balance issues. If balance didn't matter, those things wouldn't fix the non existent problem.

[lord_khaine]

First of all, the Batman wizard is a thing. Second, even if you aren't going Batman, spells are versatile enough that a creative player can use them to much greater effect than their stats indicate. Look at a simple wall spell. A well-placed wall can let the wizard dictate where enemies go and how they group up, trap them until the party is ready to deal with them, debuff or kill outright, or provide cover. There are few encounters where throwing up a wall is a waste. It may be unlikely that a non-Batman wizard has the perfect wall spell for the particular scenario, but they'll have one that's close enough to do the job.

And you completely miss the point of the discussion..

By being "batman", the wizard usualy dont have enough direct damage spells to actualy end things, meaning he needs the rest of the party to actualy end things.


You greatly underestimate the spells available. Utilities are shunted off to scrolls: wizards get Scribe Scroll as a bonus feat at level 1, and even some battlefield control and defensive spells can be safely kept on hand in scroll or wand form (wind wall!). Give them to an improved familiar that has UMD (cross-class it: what else are you going to do with your skill points?), and you can also have free buffs applied to you during combat.

No i dont, im just being realistic in regard to what you can actualy afford to spend on scrolls.
And as for the skillpoints, then im usualy spending them on knowledge skills, so i avoid doing something stupid, like blasting a iron golem with fire.
As for having your familiar out during combat, then it sounds like a stupid idea thats going to get it killed.


Won't care about crit immunity? That's news to my group. And rogues might have gravestrike/golemstrike. I've seen enough complaints about rogues in an all-undead campaign here to know it's a problem. The only casters that get screwed by an all-undead or construct campaign are the beguiler and warlock (warlocks go sit in a corner until golems are killed), tier 3s and 4 respectively, not the problem 1 or 2. In my experience as a player and DM, the only people that have problem with constructs are the mundanes, which have to overcome high DRs and find themselves next to opponents with obscene grapple checks.

Well, i cant remember when i last saw a player make critical hits a crucial part of his build, but it wasnt in the last 1-2 years.
As for the rogues, then i will simply say if they chose not to get a wand of gravestrike, then they dont get to complain about the undeads.

Also, you have yet again completely missed the point that was being disgussed, noone but you has ever mentioned an all-undead or construct campaign, what was being talked about was to spread the encounters out enough to keep the casters on the toes.


If they are close enough that multiple creatures will be provoking AoOs, they're close enough for a wizard not doing anything special for his spell selection.

Not if its over several rounds, or because there is a party member in the middle that they gather.


Warblades? You mean the ToB class? You mean a class from that book which I specifically excluded from my posts? You mean a class that I have not criticized at all? That class?

I mean the class thats a melee class, and thats being discussed in line with every other melee class.


Bull. PO is more than adequate to stack miss chances and get a higher AC than the fighter. Furthermore, I said nothing about taking full attacks. Wizards are vastly more mobile than a fighter. They need only a standard action to do what a fighter needs a full-round action to do. They can make sure their enemies can't charge and pounce them after the fact. And simply being near them can be painful.


Elephant. To start with i cant even see how you are going to stack miss chances, and outside of TO you will need a solid dose of shorttime buffs to survive in melee range with just a d4 hp and a bad fort save.
So many that by the time they are all up you would be either dead or the battle would be over.
And no, they can try to avoid getting charget or pounched, but even at higher levels that isnt foolproof.


But yes, I said if it happens with any frequency, the wizard will start to specialize. And you disagree with me by saying they'd have to specialize? Wha?

Im disagreing by saying that if the caster becomes a gish then he is isnt a pure caster any longer.

[Augmental]

By being "batman", the wizard usualy dont have enough direct damage spells to actualy end things, meaning he needs the rest of the party to actualy end things.

What about battlefield control spells that also do damage, like black tentacles?


I mean the class thats a melee class, and thats being discussed in line with every other melee class.

Nobody's saying that the warblade isn't a viable choice in a party of high-tier characters. The fighter, not so much.


And no, they can try to avoid getting charget or pounched, but even at higher levels that isnt foolproof.

Abrupt Jaunt gives a caster a foolproof defense against chargers - at level 1.

[eggynack]

I mean the class thats a melee class, and thats being discussed in line with every other melee class.

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make here. Melee classes can be balanced with the rest of the party. Melee classes can be not balanced with the rest of the party. The problem I have is with the latter. Warblades are cool beans in my book. As a tier 3, in a party of average optimization they are effectively in line with the power level of every group that isn't full of commoners. In this sense, they're possibly the most balanced class in the game, approximately tied with all the other tier 3's. Warblades aren't the problem; they're the solution.

[Talderas]

And you completely miss the point of the discussion..

By being "batman", the wizard usualy dont have enough direct damage spells to actualy end things, meaning he needs the rest of the party to actualy end things.

If you think that you must kill a creature to end its threat then you have a very narrow viewpoint and it's not surprising that you don't see the problem.


Well, i cant remember when i last saw a player make critical hits a crucial part of his build, but it wasnt in the last 1-2 years.
As for the rogues, then i will simply say if they chose not to get a wand of gravestrike, then they dont get to complain about the undeads.

That's quite a holier than thou stance. You're basically saying to rogues that you are definitely a second class citizen if you don't get wands of gravestrike. Any sort of tax to a class or build, be it feat, item, or a dip class, is simply bad game design.



Not if its over several rounds, or because there is a party member in the middle that they gather.

Shape spell, buffs, there's plenty of ways for the ally in the middle of whatever pain the wizard is dropping to not be subjected to the aforementioned pain.


Elephant. To start with i cant even see how you are going to stack miss chances, and outside of TO you will need a solid dose of shorttime buffs to survive in melee range with just a d4 hp and a bad fort save.
So many that by the time they are all up you would be either dead or the battle would be over.
And no, they can try to avoid getting charget or pounched, but even at higher levels that isnt foolproof.

Melee creatures? Really? A foe that is foiled by the spell Fly.


Im disagreing by saying that if the caster becomes a gish then he is isnt a pure caster any longer.

How is a gish with full casting not a caster?

[Earthwalker]

Why Balance ?

If you are GMing a game and you have a finite amount of time to plan an encounter, if you have to spend more time making sure that all the players can participate then you have less time to add in ideas that make the encounter fun and interesting. If as a GM you have to spend your time adding in balancing factors you must have less time on adding to other factors.

Now you might have enough time to always be able to balance the encounter perfectly yourself and add in all the other work you need to do. But that isnt always the case for all GMs.

[Gnaeus]

This is what I think people often mean when they say they want to balance the classes. Its more about applying better game design to the characters.

And that is why I distinguish it. "Balance" is an overused term, which means different things to different people, and implies equal power (as Jindra correctly points out above). Classes do not need equal power. They need to perform as they promise to perform.

I once played as a Kinfolk in a werewolf game that ran for years. After years of exp, a new player playing a basic Garou could still have owned me. And that was OK, because I knew that going in. It did not hurt my character play at all that things could kill me that should be able to kill me. I was not in any way balanced. Every other PC was better. It did not hurt the RP.

[DeltaEmil]

1. Perfect balance, where everyone is equally useful at all times (eg. 4th ed.) is definitely bad and to be avoided.Why would this be bad? Not that 4th edition is capable of doing this, because wizards and clerics are still flying over a huge chasm, whereas fighters, warlord and rogues need to burn a feat and money to be able to fly over the chasm, or hope their magic-using buddies are willing to carry them over.

[jindra34]

Why would this be bad? Not that 4th edition is capable of doing this, because wizards and clerics are still flying over a huge chasm, whereas fighters, warlord and rogues need to burn a feat and money to be able to fly over the chasm, or hope their magic-using buddies are willing to carry them over.

Because it involves narrowing the games applicable areas down to an extreme and/or smoothing over differences between builds to the point where the ONLY effective difference is fluff. And both of those will get incredibly boring quick and likely push the game into a different genre.

[Reverent-One]

Because it involves narrowing the games applicable areas down to an extreme and/or smoothing over differences between builds to the point where the ONLY effective difference is fluff. And both of those will get incredibly boring quick and likely push the game into a different genre.

Not really, you may not have liked 4e, but the basic idea of allowing everyone to have options in most situations (combat, social, exploration, ect) isn't a bad one. The alternative, where you'll have some players doing nothing in any given situtation because they don't have options, has it's own issues.

[jindra34]

Not really, you may not have liked 4e, but the basic idea of allowing everyone to have options in most situations (combat, social, exploration, ect) isn't a bad one. The alternative, where you'll have some players doing nothing in any given situtation because they don't have options, has it's own issues.

There is quite a big difference between everyone having options, and everyone having equal capability, capacity, and/or efficacy with those options.

[Reverent-One]

There is quite a big difference between everyone having options, and everyone having equal capability, capacity, and/or efficacy with those options.

And yet you didn't include it seperately on your list. Your first point is the closest to it, as Dynamic balance is more the "I do stuff in this situation, you do stuff in some other situtation" type.

[Coidzor]

There is quite a big difference between everyone having options, and everyone having equal capability, capacity, and/or efficacy with those options.

Equality of efficacy at the baseline* isn't bad, though it's more often being asked that characters have an equality of opportunity to act and influence the world around them in all the spheres that they play in. If everyone was equally capable of influencing events in the various spheres of the game but in different ways and means so that they weren't identical, that'd actually be one of the better outcomes because it'd be both balanced and distinguish the characters from one another.

The question would then become how much of an edge a specialist should get over baseline competency and/or whether a specialist would mostly get more options to fine-tune his selection of responses or a combination thereof, though having a way to model incompetence or partial skill is of interest to some groups, but I feel that's the sort of thing that should be opt-in rather than something that groups are forced to houserule and homebrew their way out of once they realize what's going on. Granted, I'd feel less sure of myself if I didn't continually have my view reinforced by the numbers of people who have never even considered that fighters are a bad class or cared that they're effectively relegated to one role within one sphere of the game and nothing else.


And that is why I distinguish it. "Balance" is an overused term, which means different things to different people, and implies equal power (as Jindra correctly points out above). Classes do not need equal power. They need to perform as they promise to perform.

They may not *need* it absolutely in every situation in every system and homebrewed amalgamation, but it does help with certain forms of balance to not have huge power discrepancies and so have some baseline of power to refer back to at the very least. So that you're consciously making something weak rather than doing it accidentally while also making something Pun-Pun strong and then telling players that it's totally OK for these things to be together without highlighting that there could be issue.s

[eggynack]

The assertion that a balanced game is one in which every character is effectively the same seems somewhat incorrect. Let's imagine for a moment a party comprised of a wizard, a cleric and a druid. In any given combat situation, a reasonable assumption could be made that all of these classes have some sort of solution. Morever, there's a good possibility that each character's solution has a similar degree of effectiveness in the given situation. However, each character's solution can also be highly different from each other character's solution. In this way, the game can be reasonably balancing without producing a forced homogeny. Similarly, a fighter, and healer, and a paladin can also be reasonably capable of producing a combat result similar to that of the others. You don't need the balance to be that close though. A warblade and a wizard could both probably come up with something in most situations, though the wizard would have more, and more powerful, answers. A wizard and a warblade could therefore be happy together in a party, though perhaps not quite as happy as the first solution. Balance and variety are not mutually exclusive.

[Gnaeus]

They may not *need* it absolutely in every situation in every system and homebrewed amalgamation, but it does help with certain forms of balance to not have huge power discrepancies and so have some baseline of power to refer back to at the very least.

Bold statement is true. It is also somewhat self evident (having equal power helps with some forms of balance. Yes.) I would also say that it is not necessarily a good thing, because not everyone regards all forms of balance as good for their game.


So that you're consciously making something weak rather than doing it accidentally while also making something Pun-Pun strong and then telling players that it's totally OK for these things to be together without highlighting that there could be issue.s

Stop. Now you are back to transparency. I don't care a bit about balance. transparency, as I mentioned earlier, is, IMO, one of the most critical points in game design. If a system has transparency, it does not need balance. DM and players can consciously make those decisions as to whether it is a good thing for Pun-Pun and Marty the Mook to be in the same party or not.

Imagine, for example, a 3.5 like system that had weak, average, and strong classes (not so difficult). But unlike 3.5, each set of classes was clearly and accurately labled in the PHB as being weak, average, or strong, where classes in each category were of similar power levels with each other. From that baseline, you could run a high powered game with all strong classes, a low powered game with all weak classes, an average game but using weak classes for the most skilled players, or a game involving parents and young children for players where the parents take weak classes and the kids take strong ones so they can be in the spotlight, or any other combination you want. As long as the system performs as advertized, balance is only a + in groups that see balance as a desirable goal.

[The Trickster]

Imagine, for example, a 3.5 like system that had weak, average, and strong classes (not so difficult). But unlike 3.5, each set of classes was clearly and accurately labled in the PHB as being weak, average, or strong, where classes in each category were of similar power levels with each other. From that baseline, you could run a high powered game with all strong classes, a low powered game with all weak classes, an average game but using weak classes for the most skilled players, or a game involving parents and young children for players where the parents take weak classes and the kids take strong ones so they can be in the spotlight, or any other combination you want. As long as the system performs as advertized, balance is only a + in groups that see balance as a desirable goal.

+1 to this. I haven't read all the previous posts, but this pretty much nails it. IIRC, the Tier system JaronK made was for balancing parties. That way, if a party has a druid, fighter, and a paladin in the group, the druid would know to tone it down a few notches in order to stay with the rest of the group, power wise. Thats really the only balance you need.

Ultimately, this is the main point. No one is making the druid break games, the player is choosing to do so themselves. If you want balance, you can balance the game yourself by not having the wizard take celerity, or not buying wilding. clasps or whatever.

[eggynack]

Bold statement is true. It is also somewhat self evident (having equal power helps with some forms of balance. Yes.) I would also say that it is not necessarily a good thing, because not everyone regards all forms of balance as good for their game.



Stop. Now you are back to transparency. I don't care a bit about balance. transparency, as I mentioned earlier, is, IMO, one of the most critical points in game design. If a system has transparency, it does not need balance. DM and players can consciously make those decisions as to whether it is a good thing for Pun-Pun and Marty the Mook to be in the same party or not.

Imagine, for example, a 3.5 like system that had weak, average, and strong classes (not so difficult). But unlike 3.5, each set of classes was clearly and accurately labled in the PHB as being weak, average, or strong, where classes in each category were of similar power levels with each other. From that baseline, you could run a high powered game with all strong classes, a low powered game with all weak classes, an average game but using weak classes for the most skilled players, or a game involving parents and young children for players where the parents take weak classes and the kids take strong ones so they can be in the spotlight, or any other combination you want. As long as the system performs as advertized, balance is only a + in groups that see balance as a desirable goal.
This seems about true, and is actually pretty close to the tier system as it currently exists. Generally, tier 1-3 is strong, tier 2-4 is average, tier 3-5 is weak, and tier 4-6 is super weak. Thus, the issue of balance is one that exists, and is also one that has at least one solution. From this point, there are two options for given group. The first is basically the one you suggested, which is using the tiers as a good guideline for party makeup. this method is pretty effective, but it requires that the tier list be accepted by the campaign in question, and it requires the players to give up some of their class choosing volition in the name of balance.

The second is basically the sum total of all of the other methods that have been stated in this thread, and a few more besides. Some of these methods are targeting the higher tiers, houseruling low tiers up or high tiers down, or gentleman's agreements. I don't think these methods have a high degree of success, so I'd stick to the tier method.

Past that, the only issue is one of terminology. What you call increased transparency, I call balance. It's true that theoretically a strong player could pick a low tiered class as a challenge, and a weak player could pick a high tier as a boon, but in general I think it's more important to call a campaign weak or strong and pick classes accordingly, than to have each player pick based on their own difficulty preferences.

[Darius Kane]

Generally, tier 1-3 is strong, tier 2-4 is average, tier 3-5 is weak, and tier 4-6 is super weak.
You meant Tier 1-2 strong, Tier 3-4 average, Tier 5 weak and Tier 6 very weak, right?

[Toy Killer]

well, that's it. I'm convinced.

Only commoner's are allowed from here on out. No flaws, non-core is the only allowed material, and an E1 game.

the boss fight of the campaign is a house cat.

This is the only way to truly have a balanced party.

[eggynack]

You meant Tier 1-2 strong, Tier 3-4 average, Tier 5 weak and Tier 6 very weak, right?
Not really. It's true that in terms of class classification, generally there are big barriers hanging out between the three subsets of 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6. However, in terms of campaign structure, I think that a maximum of two tiers between any two characters should exist (This is, in fact, one of the balance options presented in the tier list). Thus, while classes can be defined by the means you've provided, in terms of the balance of the campaign as a whole, my classification is the one I'd use. A party can stretch from tier one to three and be a strong and balanced campaign, or it can stretch from 4-6 and be a weak and balanced campaign, or take either of the other two options for somewhere in the middle. Unless the casters in question were super optimized, I'd never bar a warblade from entry into a cleric, druid, sorcerer party due to balance concerns.

[Coidzor]

Bold statement is true. It is also somewhat self evident (having equal power helps with some forms of balance. Yes.) I would also say that it is not necessarily a good thing, because not everyone regards all forms of balance as good for their game.

To say that they're instantly dismissible, however, is the height of hubris. :smallwink: You have not really shown that the approach is illegitimate.


Stop. Now you are back to transparency. I don't care a bit about balance. transparency, as I mentioned earlier, is, IMO, one of the most critical points in game design. If a system has transparency, it does not need balance. DM and players can consciously make those decisions as to whether it is a good thing for Pun-Pun and Marty the Mook to be in the same party or not.

Well, no, because you'd need to have some idea of how weak and strong and inbetween the things are. And that weak is comparable to other weak and strong is comparable to strong. So you'd have to work with some idea of what balance is in mind anyway. You're mostly just adding additional layers and complexity, really, though honesty on the part of the devs is refreshing, I agree.

You kinda say so yourself. We even agree that a baseline is a good idea.


Imagine, for example, a 3.5 like system that had weak, average, and strong classes (not so difficult). But unlike 3.5, each set of classes was clearly and accurately labled in the PHB as being weak, average, or strong, where classes in each category were of similar power levels with each other.

[Thunndarr]

This discussion about tiers and balance and the way 3.5 describes characters reminds me of Joss Whedon's "The Avengers."

In DnD 3.5, all the heroes of the Avengers would be listed in the my hypothetical 3.5 edition players handbook as follows:

Player 1: Wow, this archer guy sounds cool.
Player 2: I want to play the assassin!
Player 3: Leadership and an impenetrable shield? Sign me up
Player 4: Hm...the guy with the big hammer sounds pretty good.
Player 5: I want power armor!
Player 6: Unarmed brawler? Sounds like my thing.
.

In a typical D&D campaign, with the power disparity between characters 1-3, and 4-6 being pretty severe, I can definitely see players 1-3 being pretty upset. They didn't realize when they signed on that characters 4-6 were literally almost gods, whereas they were merely heroic humans.

Now, in the movie "the Avengers" I think Whedon did an admirable job of fitting the mundanes in with the superheros pretty well. But...That still doesn't address the fact that the character classes really need to be labeled in order of their overall power.

[Darius Kane]

Yeah, the archer guy being dominated half of the game/movie might have not been fun for the player.

[lord_khaine]

You meant Tier 1-2 strong, Tier 3-4 average, Tier 5 weak and Tier 6 very weak, right?

You are kinda using the tier system wrong, it doesnt meassure power as much as versatility.

And you can actualy have a campaign that contains classes from tier 1 to 5 where everyone has fun, as long as those playing the less versatile classes just have to accept they will only shine at a singel task (mostly breaking stuff).

Disclaimer.
This observation only applies to gameplay in the level range 1-11, where things are a bit more down to earth.

[Gnaeus]

To say that they're instantly dismissible, however, is the height of hubris. :smallwink: You have not really shown that the approach is illegitimate.

It is not illegitimate, in the sense that Group A may want balance (where balance means that everyone can contribute with roughly equal results in every situation) and Group B may want balance (where balance means that everyone has a specialty in which they have a chance to shine).

It is illegitimate in the sense that a balanced game is better. It is better for A & B. It may be neutral for group C, which really doesn't care who is stronger than who because everyone is working as a team and no one cares who did the most damage. It may be detrimental for D, which desires a game with a variety of power levels (one of the scenarios I described above). Transparency is better than balance. Transparency is Good for A, B, and D (because A & B can choose options that meet their definitions of balance if they wish). Balance (depending on what we mean by it) is good for A (and/or) B and bad for D.


Well, no, because you'd need to have some idea of how weak and strong and inbetween the things are. And that weak is comparable to other weak and strong is comparable to strong. So you'd have to work with some idea of what balance is in mind anyway.

If your system has transparency of result, if you know what you are getting with a certain build, then you KNOW how weak and strong and inbetween the things are. Thats the entire point.

Do not use the word Balance unless you mean in some way making things equal or achieving parity between them. There are too many definitions. Yes, you do need to have some idea of what comparative power is. That, again, is the point. It has nothing to do with making things balanced, unless that is the goal of the DM and players in that game.


You're mostly just adding additional layers and complexity, really, though honesty on the part of the devs is refreshing, I agree.

And you are simplifying in a way that actually makes the game worse. Having a variety of power levels allows choice, and informed choice is a good thing.


You kinda say so yourself. We even agree that a baseline is a good idea.

No. I kinda didn't. I threw out a hypothetical that resembles the current system. Just as good (but more complex) would be a system with 50 different power levels. Or 100. The important thing is not in making A equal to B (or C, D, etc.). The important thing is making it clear where A lies compared with those other things.

If instead of 3 power ranges, you accurately rated every class on a scale, where commoner is 0 and Pun-Pun is 100 that would work fine also. Of course, making that accurate scale would probably be impossible. But the number of "tiers" you use is ultimately arbitrary. Group B (the folks who want everyone to have a specialty) might be better served if every class was accurately rated in multiple categories (like taking damage, dealing damage, overcoming obstacles, etc). So that they can see clearly that the fighter is adequate but not awesome in combat and is rubbish at everything else, or that the druid is good at everything. The key is that you understand what your character will be able to do in play when you make it.

[Darius Kane]

You are kinda using the tier system wrong, it doesnt meassure power as much as versatility.
No, I'm using it correctly. Tier 1-2 has much more versatility than 3-4 and Tier 3-4 has much more versatility than 5-6.
Sorcerer, thanks to spells, has all the versatility he needs. Wizard is a higher tier just because he's even more versatile than Sorc. It's the same with lower tiers.

[eggynack]

It is not illegitimate, in the sense that Group A may want balance (where balance means that everyone can contribute with roughly equal results in every situation) and Group B may want balance (where balance means that everyone has a specialty in which they have a chance to shine).

It is illegitimate in the sense that a balanced game is better. It is better for A & B. It may be neutral for group C, which really doesn't care who is stronger than who because everyone is working as a team and no one cares who did the most damage. It may be detrimental for D, which desires a game with a variety of power levels (one of the scenarios I described above). Transparency is better than balance. Transparency is Good for A, B, and D (because A & B can choose options that meet their definitions of balance if they wish). Balance (depending on what we mean by it) is good for A (and/or) B and bad for D.



If your system has transparency of result, if you know what you are getting with a certain build, then you KNOW how weak and strong and inbetween the things are. Thats the entire point.

Do not use the word Balance unless you mean in some way making things equal or achieving parity between them. There are too many definitions. Yes, you do need to have some idea of what comparative power is. That, again, is the point. It has nothing to do with making things balanced, unless that is the goal of the DM and players in that game.



And you are simplifying in a way that actually makes the game worse. Having a variety of power levels allows choice, and informed choice is a good thing.



No. I kinda didn't. I threw out a hypothetical that resembles the current system. Just as good (but more complex) would be a system with 50 different power levels. Or 100. The important thing is not in making A equal to B (or C, D, etc.). The important thing is making it clear where A lies compared with those other things.
I think the issue here is that for A and B, balance is a desirable outcome that is being reached through transparency. Having transparency can be an effective way to create balance, as I've noted, and that's a good thing. It's like I want a cheeseburger, and you're arguing that cheese fits in more contexts than a cheeseburger so it's better. Class transparency can be used to any number of ends, but it's ultimately just a component of whatever ends the party in question wants to reach. You can put transparency in a lot of places, like creating a low powered campaign, or creating a party of varied power, or trying to create an extra powerful character for a PvP arena fight, or to make a grilled cheese sandwich. That doesn't mean that balance isn't a desirable result.

[Gnaeus]

I think the issue here is that for A and B, balance is a desirable outcome that is being reached through transparency. That doesn't mean that balance isn't a desirable result.

It doesn't mean that balance IS a desirable result either. Balance is only good for groups that want balance. Balance is neutral. It is like having a high combat or low combat game. Either one is good for certain groups. Some groups may want no combat at all.

Transparency of outcome, on the other hand, is good for every group I have ever heard of.

[eggynack]

It doesn't mean that balance IS a desirable result either. Balance is only good for groups that want balance. Balance is neutral. It is like having a high combat or low combat game. Either one is good for certain groups. Some groups may want no combat at all.

Transparency of outcome, on the other hand, is good for every group I have ever heard of.
Balance isn't a universally desired result, but that doesn't mean it isn't an often desired result. Transparency is a tool that can be used to reach any number of goals. I use it as a tool to balance games. Transparency is like a chunk of theoretical science, and balance is a potential application of that science. It's up to subjective opinion which is more important. Still, that doesn't make me wrong when I say I want balance. Also, I'm gonna keep coming up with random metaphors for transparency and balance until that magically makes everyone agree with me.

edit: Ooh, here's a good one. It's like I'm saying "I want to take a trip to France next summer," and you say, "I don't even know why we're talking about France when planes are the really important component of this discussion. Planes can take you to France, and can also take you to China. France shouldn't even enter the equation." Sometimes a guy can just want to go to France.

[Gnaeus]

Balance isn't a universally desired result, but that doesn't mean it isn't an often desired result. Transparency is a tool that can be used to reach any number of goals. I use it as a tool to balance games.

All True.


Transparency is like a chunk of theoretical science, and balance is a potential application of that science. It's up to subjective opinion which is more important.

Disagree. How many posts do we get that start "When I made my Fighter/Monk I knew I was going to suck from day one. And I knew that the Cleric next to me was going to be better than I was at everything. And all that happened to me exactly like I knew it would and now I am angry about it."?

How about "My party consists of Druid, Cleric, Wizard, Monk. The monk player knew that every member of the party was going to be way stronger than he was, was given options to build his concept to be on par with the others, and voluntarily and knowingly chose to be a monk anyway. He was told at the beginning of the campaign that I would not treat him differently. And now, he cannot meaningfully contribute in challenges." Any sympathy here for Mr. Monk?


Still, that doesn't make me wrong when I say I want balance.

Also true. As long as you do not imply that your desire is universal

[Rejusu]

Hmm. I think the points made in the original post are correct but the arguments behind them aren't necessarily right. My take on it is:


System balance isn't necessary for game balance.
Only party balance is relevant.
The DM is the arbiter of balance, not the system.


Essentially they all add up to the same thing:
System balance is largely irrelevant.

3.5 is horribly unbalanced, but you can still play perfectly balanced games with it. As long as there's no big power diversifies within the party encounters can be created where everyone can contribute and the difficulty isn't trivialised. This is true whether it's a party of casters or mundanes. The difficulty is simply scaled relative to the parties capabilities. This is balanced, regardless of each parties actual power level.

Balance is absolutely relative by definition. It means equilibrium. Imbalance occurs when one side tips the scales but can be corrected by increasing the weight of the other side.

Also the system rules aren't set in stone. The person running the game is a person, not a computer. Which means that game balance can be adjusted on the fly. Our party has a player that's ignorant that two weapon fighting requires a full attack. I (and the DM too, but I don't think that the DM knows the rules on TWF either) just ignore it because he's a samurai playing in a party with a Psion and a Druid.

Personally I find an unbalanced system more fun as it opens up more options and creates more unique possibilities. The obsession with system balance is why I can't stand 4E. In trying to make all the classes balanced all they did was make them all the same.

Uniqueness generally leads to inequality and that can easily lead to imbalance. Hence why a focus on balance often ends up homogenising everything. And not only does it make things dull, it's not necessary.

[eggynack]

Also true. As long as you do not imply that your desire is universal
Well, yeah. It's not something that everyone wants or needs. It's just something that a lot of people want or need. This gets us back to the title of the thread: why balance? I think balance is good from a DM perspective, because it allows you to plan your encounters on the basis of group power levels, rather than a lot of individual power levels. I think balance is good from a player perspective, because it means that the players are never bored or overshadowed due to their class. Transparency is the thing that gets us to that goal, but that doesn't make the goal unimportant. There are other goals that transparency can help us reach, but a lot of those seem somewhat unimportant compared to balance. I'm not advocating perfect, all the time, balance. I'm just advocating broad, a lot of the time, balance. I think that a world where the party monk isn't consistently overshadowed by the druid's riding dog animal companion is a good one, and I don't think that this necessarily means that monks should never be played by anyone. We basically have transparency already in the form of the tier list. I think that balance is a good way to use that tool.

[Deepbluediver]

I was demonstrating that the issue is that those classes are a problem because they're inherently poorly built, not because they aren't balanced with the Tier 1s.

Compared to what? You yourself pointed out that a class can't be called "weak" in a vacuum, it needs to be compared to something else.

Your designation that a class isn't well designed relies on it fighting the same monsters are the classes that are ARE well designed.

Your basic assumption that people can have fun with classes of different tiers does not invalidate the issue that one player can, through their in-game actions, make it much less fun for one or more other players in the group. The decision that a player can choose playstyle that limits themselves (blaster-wizard, healer cleric) is a fallacy, and does not prove that the game is somehow now broken or doesn't need improvement.


I would say that even moving everyone to Tier 3 is a mistake (see the "Levels of Play" argument - some people want to commit to the mechanics of the game at different levels, and they should be able to.)

Making all the classes more balanced does not rule out the ability for any particular class to be PLAYED better than another class. If every class was around the tier three level, a complex build with lots of multiclassing, PrC's, and heavy use of items from splatbooks could still be

The problems people have with imbalance are because you have something like the monk, which no matter how well built, multi-classed, geared, etc, will never be comparable with even an average-level wizard.

In fact, if all the classes are more even, then the game is far MORE dependent on the players for power level/versatility/fun, which is what you seem to want.



Edit: I somehow missed that there where 7 pages of conversation in between the OP and the end of the thread, sorry if I'm repeating stuff, I'll go back and try to skim through everything else quickly.

[Gnaeus]

We basically have transparency already in the form of the tier list. I think that balance is a good way to use that tool.

The only problem is that it only helps people who are already lurking on the forums, who are mostly the people least likely to need help. And the default assumption that classes are balanced leads to phenomenon like Monkday. If It were in the PHB, there wouldn't be an issue.

But I basically agree.

I think some people think they want balance, when what they really want is for their expectations of how the game will play to match how the game actually plays.

[Zubrowka74]

In a typical D&D campaign, with the power disparity between characters 1-3, and 4-6 being pretty severe, I can definitely see players 1-3 being pretty upset. They didn't realize when they signed on that characters 4-6 were literally almost gods, whereas they were merely heroic humans.

The analogy doesnt work because first three are (relatively) normal humans while Thos is a God, Stark is a human but with god-level armor and Hulk is in the same power range. If you take a sneak in the old Marvel Superheroes RPG (the FASERIP version at least) there IS a sizable difference in power (crunch-wise) between the two groups. You'll notice that the silver age / 80s Avengers where at the same high level, with Captain America is somewhat in between but still. Hawkeye was a West-Coast looser and the widow was added from the Shield / Nick Fury stories.

[Thunndarr]

The analogy doesnt work because first three are (relatively) normal humans while Thos is a God, Stark is a human but with god-level armor and Hulk is in the same power range. If you take a sneak in the old Marvel Superheroes RPG (the FASERIP version at least) there IS a sizable difference in power (crunch-wise) between the two groups. You'll notice that the silver age / 80s Avengers where at the same high level, with Captain America is somewhat in between but still. Hawkeye was a West-Coast looser and the widow was added from the Shield / Nick Fury stories.

That whooshing sound is the point going right over your head.

[Renen]

My opinion on the power levels:
Mages:

Are very strong. If played to full potential, make brawlers useless.
If not played to full potential, make no sense RP wise (why NOT blow up the enemies in one shot), and possibly aggravate the player who plays them because they have to hold back.
DM making monsters resist magic, simply forces players to use things that disregard magic resistance.


Brawlers:

Weaker than mages.
The best warrior can walk into an enemy base and walk out a few hours later w/o a scratch having killed everybody. Best wizard can snap his fingers and vaporize the whole base. (or a number of things that can kill them all in 5 seconds)


It seems that so far the main point FOR the brawlers is the mentality "kill mage 1st"
So we just keep brawlers as living shields around? They are basically mage's slaves that protect them with their lives?

[Zman]

A 4th level Beguiler is better at sneaking than a 20th level rogue.

A 1st level Beguiler makes most noncombatant situations moot with charm. This becomes Suggestion, Dominate, etc. Rogues Social skills fail miserably in comparison. The Beguiler is better at those skills anyway thanks to Cha.

A Beguiler starts the game with Combat ending abilities and gains encounter altering abilities later which is maintained. Focused rogues can contribute.

A 1st level Fighter hits things with his sword.
A 1st level Wizard ends encounters with spells.

A 20th level Fighter hits things with his sword.
A 20th level Wizard has been rewriting reality to his every whim for three levels already.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Note that the question was "Why Balance" not "If Balance" - no one is arguing that the system *is* balanced, debate is over whether or not the lack of balance actually renders play less enjoyable.

[ArcturusV]

Well, the yardstick for me has always been: "Your right to 'have fun' ends where another player's begins".

Which is useful for what would otherwise be disruptive stuff. If a guy wants to "Mess" with scenes because it's fun with him, it's okay only so long as everyone else is cool with it.

Similarly goes for Optimization/Balance issues. The moment one guy has just completely marginalized a teammate, that's the end of your rope.

[eggynack]

Note that the question was "Why Balance" not "If Balance" - no one is arguing that the system *is* balanced, debate is over whether or not the lack of balance actually renders play less enjoyable.
Well, by my estimation it all comes down to the spell heart of water. It, like its big daddy freedom of movement, allows a caster to just say no to grappling, and lets the caster have free all day swimming as a bonus. If there's an enemy that focuses its power on grappling, then that caster has just completely invalidated the whole encounter. The monster basically just has to sit back and take the pain. Meanwhile, as the caster stands around being unaffected and punching the bad guy for rounds per level, the low tier guys are being an active burden to the caster's abilities. The not-casters are dead weight that has to be saved damsel in distress style. As a player, that doesn't seem like a fun place to be. There's a ton of cases like that, and for the mundane folk they kind of suck. They sit around being less than relevant. In a balanced party, made up of either the type of character that invalidates encounters, or the type of character that is invalidated by an encounter, it seems a lot more fun for everyone. If a druid uses freedom of movement to end one encounter for himself, it's made up for when a wizard uses true seeing to destroy the crazy maze of illusions. Meanwhile, if a fighter gets grappled by a squid then he at least made some way towards helping, and everyone else is in the same position he's in. A wizard/fighter party just feels like the kind of game where no one is really happy. That's why I think balance is cool beans; because it means that everyone can work together towards a goal, instead of either crushing any given encounter or having at least one character be useless.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Hmm...

So, mechanically, I understand that everything discussed *can* happen, but I'm still not convinced that it *needs* to happen, so long as the players/DM have a good dynamic and the DM does a little work. Maybe I just need to see it in practice.

[Snails]

Skipping forward...

I do not really see any evidence that the OP has thought about the issue much. Balance does not necessarily matter. But, then again, I can assert that about anything and everything does not matter, so that is a non-argument.

"Balance" as a virtue is really a statement that fewer significant imbalances are in play (or that having fewer is desirable).

Why does that matter? An imbalance is an opportunity for the game to go awry, for someone to make a mistake. So when someone says imbalances do not matter, it is same thing as saying errors and mistakes do not matter.

Now a really savvy DM or really sporting players know how to work with mistakes. But that usually requires effort. Why ask the DM and players to work around mistakes that might be avoidable with better design?

And here is where we come to the bottom line. To say that balance is unimportant really boils down to saying that rules do not matter -- it is only an issue of degree. It might be true that rules do not matter all that much for a particular group. If true enough for your group, playing rules heavy game like 1e or 2e or 3e or 4e is completely silly. If your gaming skills and go with the flow skills are all that great, you can just start with a lightweight system and make up stuff along the way.

In this day and age, I can get cool gaming stuff lousy with balance issues online for free. The reason I am paying money to game publishers and the designers they hired is so I can get a coherent bunch of stuff that is less error inducing than random fan stuff or junk I could make up while pounding beers.

[Snails]

I think some people think they want balance, when what they really want is for their expectations of how the game will play to match how the game actually plays.

It is a related issue. If the game play does not match the expectations, that is most likely an extremely bad thing.

Of course, it is possible that expectations are unreasonable or inappropriate. For players to correct their own views, balance is probably a very good thing.

[Amphetryon]

Hmm...

So, mechanically, I understand that everything discussed *can* happen, but I'm still not convinced that it *needs* to happen, so long as the players/DM have a good dynamic and the DM does a little work. Maybe I just need to see it in practice.

That sounds, from here, like "so long as the Players/DM put some effort into balancing things themselves."

[eggynack]

Hmm...

So, mechanically, I understand that everything discussed *can* happen, but I'm still not convinced that it *needs* to happen, so long as the players/DM have a good dynamic and the DM does a little work. Maybe I just need to see it in practice.
Well, the way I see it, a good DM and good players can compensate for lack of balance to some degree. However, to some extent, the degree to which the group has to be good is roughly proportional to the amount of imbalance in the group. In addition, I'd argue that though a good group can make an imbalanced game good, balance and a good group can make a game great. A good DM that somehow manages to tailor an encounter to both a druid and a commoner could be spending that time making encounters that are targeted to a groups power level, and get better encounters because of it. I don't think that everyone in a game should need to be good and do work in order to get a playable game out of it.

Player one should just be able to say "I want to play a wizard" and player two could say "Monks look cool", and the DM says "Here are some level appropriate orcs" and everyone should have a good time. That's not really how things are in the game though. Instead, you need a DM who considers balance issues on a constant basis, and throws some more powerful enemies into the sky where only the wizard can reach them, so the monk can have some room to have fun. If those issues are front loaded though, then they can just fight orcs, or fight some crazy cool bad guy with a neat backstory without thinking about balance anymore. The DM can say "I'm sorry. Wizard guy, you should play a beguiler, and monk guy, you should play an unarmed swordsage so everyone can have a good time." It doesn't need to be so hamfisted, but that's the general idea of balance in my view.

[ArcturusV]

Weeeeelll. Not so much that you have to work really hard at tailoring an adventure to somehow balance power perfectly across several tiers of players (And their own system mastery and optimization, which is always a factor). I've never seen that as the right goal to pursue. It's just really impossible to balance out encounters on that concept that everyone will have something appropriate they can do, which is important and so on, and so forth.

Because here's what happens if I try to do that:

Say I have a party consisting of a Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue. I want the encounter to FEEL balanced, and everyone has a role to play in it, etc. So I look at them and go... Well, the Wizard gets balanced out if he has to face down an enemy spellcaster like a Sorcerer or something which requires his attention. You can get a cool spellcasting duel where they are burning protection spells, dispelling, countering, etc, until one of their magic bullets finally hits the mark. Sounds fun. And the Cleric can tussle against a few powerful Undead so that he can turn one, maybe two of them, and has to otherwise fight them, can use his Positive Magics to harm them, etc. Sounds neat. The Fighter can deal with a group of savage Orcs working as muscle for the enemy wizard, holding them off, showing off his combat mastery. And the Rogue can help the Fighter clear it off, or go sneak off to trigger some Plot MacGuffin which will impact the fight. Cool. They all got something to do, none of them will feel overshadowed, etc.

Then what happens when you get to that encounter? Well... the Wizard says "Screw this!" and uses his spells to annihilate the Undead/Orcs instead with some mass destruction. The Cleric 'roid rages with buffs and just beats the enemy wizard with a stick and uses debuffs to remove his protections and make him easier to hit. The fighter and rogue, with nothing else left to really do join the cleric and may or may not feel marginally useful based on how tough the Wizard's magical defenses are to overcome. Usually not very much. And if they are, it's usually that the players feel more like a Busboy, cleaning up the trash off the table after everyone was already done with it.

It's just balancing encounters so everyone has something to do across tiers and optimizations doesn't really work out. Least in my experience. You just can't do that with a singular encounter.

Thus you're off to look at makign balance less of a problem by providing what I usually call the "Shining Moment of Glory" for various characters. People are generally fine with being the less powerful guy, etc, if they at least get one moment during a session where they get to just roll out, show what they can do, and the scene actually counts on you.

This is one of the reasons why Ambush Scenarios and the like are so common. Because it effectively removes the higher tiers out of the situation and suddenly "Oh, we were resting because the Wizard and Cleric are tapped out and got attacked? FIGHTER TIME!". Of course, there are mentions of various ways spellcasters can avoid that happening to them. Rope Trick I know gets mentioned.

... though as a DM I tend to admittedly punish people who try those things, or overtly rely on them and try to Nacroleptic Adventure because of them. If you're going to go on 1/2 Encounter per Day adventuring and hide inside a Rope Trick to recharge while you're supposed to be assaulting the evil guy's lair? He's going to figure that one out. And then... well... bad, bad things happen. A la the vague warning label on Rope Trick and a bad guy who tossed a Bag of Holding into the Rope Trick.

[Zman]

Assuming that with a great DM and a fantastic group of players inherent abysmal balance does not matter is erroneous as few individuals will live up to these idealized visions.

[Renen]

Note that the question was "Why Balance" not "If Balance" - no one is arguing that the system *is* balanced, debate is over whether or not the lack of balance actually renders play less enjoyable.

Lack of balance DOES make it less enjoyable.
T1 is so much stronger than the rest that the rest just FEEL weak and useless and its less enjoyable. If T1 does curb their power and not use full potential, its less enjoyable for them, because no one likes hanging back when they can do so much more

[ArcturusV]

Well, suffice to say I conditionally disagree. Most people I think understand not everyone can have the spotlight all the time. And until you really get towards fairly high levels, like 15+, high power casters don't yet have their full lock in necessarily.

So because everyone knows they cannot always have the spotlight, as long as they get their spotlight once in a while, they're cool with it.

[Renen]

Wizard spotlight: 90% of the time
Rest of the party (lets say 4 ppl): 10% of the time

Yeh, they DO get their spotlight...

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Wizard spotlight: 90% of the time
Rest of the party (lets say 4 ppl): 10% of the time

Yeh, they DO get their spotlight...

That's assuming a few things - first, that you're only talking about pure mechanics rather than roleplay, and second, that people are optimizing at least to a degree.

Right now, I'm playing an Archivist - I love the class, I love the flavour, I love having the range of options that I do. But, I roleplay him as being very much an academic and theologian - his interests are all in understanding, in religion and philosophy, in the pursuit of knowledge, in artwork; "Adventuring" is just something he does to get him close to what he really cares about. So, when it comes time to make feat and spell selections, he doesn't go "This will make me mighty in combat," he goes "This shows a commitment to knowledge, this will let me learn things I couldn't otherwise learn." I've spent at least some of his gold on rare books and art objects that he carries, and in different incarnations of him, I even invested feats in stuff that lets him do things that are interesting to him as a character, but that don't directly contribute to party goals (crafting sculptures of the landscapes on different planes, attempting to create that world's first Warforged as an exercise in understanding the nature of sentience, etc.)

The result? I have an absolute hoot playing a very powerful, tier-1 class, but everyone else can have their fun too. In combat he hangs to the back and makes sure that his allies are hasted, enlarged, etc; I'm not sacrificing any of my own fun, but I'm not getting in the way of others enjoying themselves, either.

Another time I set out to play an Artificer - another Tier 1 class - that functioned as a noble warrior from the Paladin school of thought. The power of that class let me build him to what I wanted him to be - another time I played an *actual* Paladin and was frustrated because the class just didn't work right, but as an Artificer, I could make him work exactly as I wanted, cause, well, Artificers can do anything. Again, I wasn't going out of my way to "let" the other players function - I just wasn't intentionally building myself to a level where others became irrelevant. The power and versatility of the class let me play what I wanted to play, and the depth of the class meant that I had enough cool rules stuff to obsess about to my heart's content.

The same works the other way - I could play an underpowered class (I don't really like to, because the mechanics are too simple for my tastes), but do it in an interesting and unique way. In-character dialogue, approaching problems with a certain attitude and style, having a plot or two related to elements from your character back story... there's all kinds of stuff you could do that will give you "Time in the Spotlight" that you could do just as easily with a 1st level commoner.

[Hiro Protagonest]

It seems that so far the main point FOR the brawlers is the mentality "kill mage 1st"
So we just keep brawlers as living shields around? They are basically mage's slaves that protect them with their lives?

Except for the part where the mage is flying, Displaced, Protected from Arrows, and has a Contingent Dimension Door.

So no, you don't keep the brawler around to protect the mage.

[Renen]

That's assuming a few things - first, that you're only talking about pure mechanics rather than roleplay, and second, that people are optimizing at least to a degree.

Right now, I'm playing an Archivist - I love the class, I love the flavour, I love having the range of options that I do. But, I roleplay him as being very much an academic and theologian - his interests are all in understanding, in religion and philosophy, in the pursuit of knowledge, in artwork; "Adventuring" is just something he does to get him close to what he really cares about. So, when it comes time to make feat and spell selections, he doesn't go "This will make me mighty in combat," he goes "This shows a commitment to knowledge, this will let me learn things I couldn't otherwise learn." I've spent at least some of his gold on rare books and art objects that he carries, and in different incarnations of him, I even invested feats in stuff that lets him do things that are interesting to him as a character, but that don't directly contribute to party goals (crafting sculptures of the landscapes on different planes, attempting to create that world's first Warforged as an exercise in understanding the nature of sentience, etc.)

The result? I have an absolute hoot playing a very powerful, tier-1 class, but everyone else can have their fun too. In combat he hangs to the back and makes sure that his allies are hasted, enlarged, etc; I'm not sacrificing any of my own fun, but I'm not getting in the way of others enjoying themselves, either.

Another time I set out to play an Artificer - another Tier 1 class - that functioned as a noble warrior from the Paladin school of thought. The power of that class let me build him to what I wanted him to be - another time I played an *actual* Paladin and was frustrated because the class just didn't work right, but as an Artificer, I could make him work exactly as I wanted, cause, well, Artificers can do anything. Again, I wasn't going out of my way to "let" the other players function - I just wasn't intentionally building myself to a level where others became irrelevant. The power and versatility of the class let me play what I wanted to play, and the depth of the class meant that I had enough cool rules stuff to obsess about to my heart's content.

The same works the other way - I could play an underpowered class (I don't really like to, because the mechanics are too simple for my tastes), but do it in an interesting and unique way. In-character dialogue, approaching problems with a certain attitude and style, having a plot or two related to elements from your character back story... there's all kinds of stuff you could do that will give you "Time in the Spotlight" that you could do just as easily with a 1st level commoner.

Sigh... I see your point, but assuming people ARE optimized to the same level (if the fighters in your pt optimize with the same mentality that you use for your Archivist, then god help them)
Yes, RP wise everyone can shine equally but usefulness wise T1s win by a long shot.
Say you get points for every tie you shine (assuming everyone is equally skilled at the game and RP):

T1:
5 points for shining in RP scenarios
5 points for shining in utility scenarios
5 points for shining in battle
Total: 15

Other tiers (except maybe 2):
5 points for shining in RP scenarios
2 points for shining in utility scenarios
3 points for shining in battle
Total: 10


Just as an example of everyone being of equal skill/RP ability and their opportunity to get that "i am a badass" moment

[lord_khaine]

Except for the part where the mage is flying, Displaced, Protected from Arrows, and has a Contingent Dimension Door.

So no, you don't keep the brawler around to protect the mage.

And screwed over by a dispel magic?

Not to mention thats a level 12 caster, thats a pretty high level.

[ArcturusV]

Eh... I think there's certain assumptions in that which don't necessarily kick in until higher level.

I mean, I know even low level spells can have a huge impact. Even for high level characters, when used right. That's a thing. Kind of an overlooked thing as in the Optimization Scenario it doesn't tend to get mentioned other than things like Guidance of the Avatar or Permancied Arcane Sight, etc, once we start talking about higher levels. Or Rope Trick as the unassailable fortress it really isn't until Mordekanian's Magnificent Mansion comes online.

But until that point? As long as you don't let the spellcasters determine the terms of the campaign's pacing, the usual Narcoleptic Adventuring, it's not so much a thing. Maybe if the guys really use a lot of item crafting they can get a similar effect of "Do everything" at lower levels. As long as you make sure to run them into the ground before they can safely rest, there typically isn't that problem until higher levels. And not even because the wizard, Cleric, Druid, etc, is necessarily "holding back" but more so because, at the end of an adventuring day the Fighter or the Rogue, etc, are still exactly as effective as they were at the start of the day, and the spellcasters are naturally waning in power. Of course with some classes, like the Druid, the waning power is not necessarily all that low compared to the lower tier classes. Same with the Cleric. I mean it's still a full plate mail wearing combat beast if it chooses to be. But they are significantly weaker, and you do get those points where suddenly it's the Fighter, or the Barbarian, or the party's Rogue, etc, who are carrying the day. This tends to stop being a thing so much around level 10 in my experience. Around then even an otherwise helpless without my spells type, like a Wizard, is going to have enough low level slots that he still has a few options left when push comes to shove. But it's more an ace up his sleeve than I Win At Everything buttons. So the gap has closed up. But they haven't really been surpassed. When you start talking about levels around 15, then yes, the lower tiers have lost their bite. Least the mundane lower tiers. I admit I have not played (or seen played) any of the lower tier spellcasters to compare against, like the Warmage.

I mean, yeah, there's a point where that no longer applies as the spellcaster in general does have to check themselves. Or get a very adversarial DM going.

[JaronK]

And screwed over by a dispel magic?

Not to mention thats a level 12 caster, thats a pretty high level.

Spellblade. Cheap, stops that stunt entirely.

JaronK

[Gnaeus]

Say I have a party consisting of a Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue. I want the encounter to FEEL balanced, and everyone has a role to play in it, etc.

So, WHY is the group Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard? Did the fighter and the rogue know before game that they were going to be trivialized when Wiz and Cle decided to cut loose? Did words like "I don't want to play a (Warblade/Crusader/Factotum/Beguiler) come into play? If balance is your goal, and you have some degree of system mastery, why didn't you fix problem before hand by recommending a balanced party?


Lack of balance DOES make it less enjoyable.
T1 is so much stronger than the rest that the rest just FEEL weak and useless and its less enjoyable. If T1 does curb their power and not use full potential, its less enjoyable for them, because no one likes hanging back when they can do so much more

Well, first off, your opening line is incorrect. It DOES NOT. It MAY, depending on players. Or it MAY NOT. An unbalanced party may have a different dynamic, but it is not necessarily less fun. I can give lots of examples where it did not hurt party enjoyment at all. So unless you have some proof, please step back from your sweeping overgeneralizations.

Your second statement is also not always true. A T1 wizard played as a blaster (like some people do) is weaker than some T1 options, but not necessarily not fun for someone who wants to throw around Fireballs. A Batman wizard who makes good use of spells like Haste and Polymorph (cast on the fighter) can make his allies feel awesome like members of a badass team. He can further narrow the game imbalance by crafting items for his comrades during downtime. In other words, A T1 with a support emphasis can play at a high level of power by supercharging teammates.

[ArcturusV]

Various reasons. There are people who think that limiting a game to Core Only instantly makes for a balanced game. It doesn't, most of the "broken" stuff tier 1s do is in Core. Some people just don't have the books to know it's an option. Sometimes they get hung up on an idea we'd normally consider bad. "But of course fighter is good, LOOK AT ALL THOSE FEATS! And look at the awesome things like this feat, and this one! I'll be awesome!". It was a hypothetical, but not an unrealistic hypothetical. I'd say you're more likely in general (Except maybe PbP games on a forum such as this filled with much more knowledgeable people) to run into that scenario than the Wizard, Cleric, Warblade with Dips, Beguiler with Dips, or something like the Savage Bard into Ur-Priest, etc. Of course compounded with the "I don't have it" problem is even if you do tell them about it, they usually don't want to run it on the basis of being unfamiliar with the class for not having the book themselves. So their Optimization (And thus effective tier) isn't really improved because s/he doesn't know how to do it well.

[Gnaeus]

Various reasons. There are people who think that limiting a game to Core Only instantly makes for a balanced game. It doesn't, most of the "broken" stuff tier 1s do is in Core. Some people just don't have the books to know it's an option. Sometimes they get hung up on an idea we'd normally consider bad. "But of course fighter is good, LOOK AT ALL THOSE FEATS! And look at the awesome things like this feat, and this one! I'll be awesome!". It was a hypothetical, but not an unrealistic hypothetical. I'd say you're more likely in general (Except maybe PbP games on a forum such as this filled with much more knowledgeable people) to run into that scenario than the Wizard, Cleric, Warblade with Dips, Beguiler with Dips, or something like the Savage Bard into Ur-Priest, etc. Of course compounded with the "I don't have it" problem is even if you do tell them about it, they usually don't want to run it on the basis of being unfamiliar with the class for not having the book themselves. So their Optimization (And thus effective tier) isn't really improved because s/he doesn't know how to do it well.

What I take from that is that the problem isn't a problem of class balance. The problem is that the imbalanced ("trap") options are hidden and are implied to be balanced. Its a labeling issue. Like describing a Fighter as someone who is actually good at fighting.

[ArcturusV]

Well, mostly a problem of scaling balance.

It's an artifact of older editions, where the balance was presumed that you needed mundane characters to reach higher levels with your Wizards, at which point the Wizards start pulling their weight and helping the Fighters remain relevant.

Certain things in 3rd I think ruined that balance ideal. Things like bonus spells for Intelligence, adding Cantrips and having wizards even at low levels able to crank out 7 or 8 spells per day. But they tried to keep that balance ideal because that's what people expected out of DnD in general.

Thus the Linear Fighter vs Quadratic Wizard. It's not new to 3rd edition. It's just instead of having the Wizard start out at Power Level 1, you're starting out at Power Level 3, and thus increasing a whole lot faster compared to the Fighter who starts at Power Level 4 and only gets that + 2 each level.

Not that there is a real "power level" scale that I know of. Just plugging in numbers to help visualize.

So the Fighter doesn't have a lot of good high level options. Never has. The Feat Chains are supposed to give the illusion of high level options but it's often something far too late to really matter.

Really it just feels like something where, if the designers dropped the pretext of the older balance formula and designed it from the ground up, it'd be quite different. They were trying too hard to stick to an ideal that was not really relevant to how they were designing the game.

[Lans]

[QUOTE=JaronK;14952824]Spellblade. Cheap, stops that stunt entirely.

Aren't there like a half of dozen dispel magic effects? 1 Spell blade might be cheap, but at 6k 2 or 3 will put a damper on most budgets pre 10th

[Gnaeus]

Well, mostly a problem of scaling balance.

It's an artifact of older editions, where the balance was presumed that you needed mundane characters to reach higher levels with your Wizards, at which point the Wizards start pulling their weight and helping the Fighters remain relevant.

Certain things in 3rd I think ruined that balance ideal. Things like bonus spells for Intelligence, adding Cantrips and having wizards even at low levels able to crank out 7 or 8 spells per day. But they tried to keep that balance ideal because that's what people expected out of DnD in general.

Thus the Linear Fighter vs Quadratic Wizard. It's not new to 3rd edition. It's just instead of having the Wizard start out at Power Level 1, you're starting out at Power Level 3, and thus increasing a whole lot faster compared to the Fighter who starts at Power Level 4 and only gets that + 2 each level.

Not that there is a real "power level" scale that I know of. Just plugging in numbers to help visualize.

So the Fighter doesn't have a lot of good high level options. Never has. The Feat Chains are supposed to give the illusion of high level options but it's often something far too late to really matter.

Really it just feels like something where, if the designers dropped the pretext of the older balance formula and designed it from the ground up, it'd be quite different. They were trying too hard to stick to an ideal that was not really relevant to how they were designing the game.

There are lots of opinions on why the game isn't balanced, mostly variations of "bad playtesting" and "they did it on purpose". I don't think that anyone would argue that 3.5 is actually balanced. I think we all agree it isn't. The question here is "is that a good thing or a bad thing"?

The scenario you describe is clearly a problem. You see it as a balance problem. I do not. I see it as an information problem, which is fixed when the players understand that the game is not balanced, and work to resolve it if it is something that their group cares about.

[123456789blaaa]

There are lots of opinions on why the game isn't balanced, mostly variations of "bad playtesting" and "they did it on purpose". I don't think that anyone would argue that 3.5 is actually balanced. I think we all agree it isn't. The question here is "is that a good thing or a bad thing"?

The scenario you describe is clearly a problem. You see it as a balance problem. I do not. I see it as an information problem, which is fixed when the players understand that the game is not balanced, and work to resolve it if it is something that their group cares about.

Well since it is much easier to unbalance something than to balance it, wouldn't it be better for the game to be balanced in the first place?

[navar100]

Spellblade. Cheap, stops that stunt entirely.

JaronK

Right, cause every wizard everywhere all the time every time is flying, displaced, protected from arrows, had contigent Dimension Door and Spellblade.

This is what I'm talking about. Theoretically on paper a wizard can handle anything. In reality that's not the case. I don't even know what "spellblade" is and had to look it up. Ignoring Pathfinder references, the only thing I can find for D&D is a prestige class. Every wizard everywhere is a Spellblade prestige class now? You can hunt and search everything published anywhere to circumvent any obstacle of any kind. None of that matters for an actual game being played. You can never have everything ever published to circumvent every obstacle everywhere in an instant. That is why spellcasters aren't pwning the game. No doubt they're powerful. No doubt they can have easier time of it than other classes. Non-spellcasters are not made obsolete.

[Lupus753]

I've heard plenty of people (mostly fans of 4E or Mike Mearls) blame most of the overpoweredness of spellcasters on Monte Cook. I believe that such a pervasive problem cannot be blamed on one person, though his writings on 'timmy cards' make me wonder.

People just don't like it when their favorite class concept is useless and isn't fun to play. I was gravely disappointed when I found that my favorite class concept of unarmed ki-using strikers couldn't hit anything and had to stretch their points across four stats to accomplish a fraction of what an unoptimized Sorcerer could do. WotC tried to make casters more fun to play than in ADnD2, making them more powerful. Among many other changes, they decided that Magic Resistance ,which few things could get by, was unfun, so it was replaced with Spell Resistance, which was easy to overcome. Removing one flaw increased another.

The GM can houserule away the mistakes the devs made (or, less cynically, adapt for personal playstyles), but houseruling spellcasting is difficult. You can easily buff a Monk or Fighter to tier 3, or nerf the class features of Druids and Clerics to that tier, but spellcasting is nowhere near as easy. You have to go through hundreds of spells to keep them merely competitive with other classes, not superior. Worst of all, the game seems to expect magic to be that powerful, since their the only ones who can deal with the toughest monsters without the GM nerfing dozens of those, as well. It's a pain in the ass for any GM who wants balance, which is one reason why they hate it so much.

[Gnaeus]

Well since it is much easier to unbalance something than to balance it, wouldn't it be better for the game to be balanced in the first place?

Absolutely not. Although it sounds like I am repeating myself.

1. Not every group desires balance. It is not by itself a good thing. It is only a good thing for games that desire to be balanced. I will provide examples of games I have been in or observed in which game imbalance is an assumed and helpful part of the game if you wish.

2. People mean different things by balance. Does balance mean that everyone is equal in most or all circumstances (the goal of 4.0)? Does it mean that everyone contributes equally to the party? Does it mean that everyone has a chance at spotlight? And are you talking about equality of opportunity or equality of outcome. If I am a skilled player who is good at optimization, playing with less skilled players, "balance" may be achieved by starting me out with a weaker base class for example.

3.5 has a lot of options that result from its imbalance. As a dm or group, I can set up a high power game with Tier 1s and 2s, or a low power game with 4s and 5s. They will play very differently. If my group doesn't care about balance, we can play with a mixture of power levels with no harm done. If we have players of a higher skill level, we can choose to balance them by asking them to play mechanically weaker classes. Imbalance leads to choice, and choice is good. But for choices to be meaningful requires an understanding of which classes are more powerful than others. My issue with 3.5 is not one of balance, but of transparency. People get mad when their fighter can't fight or their monk can't do anything. They don't get mad when their commoner sucks. Because they don't expect a commoner to fight well. The crunch equals the fluff.

[Darius Kane]

I honestly don't remember ever encountering a group or a gamer that doesn't care about balance.
Tell me - if I wanted to play a fighter that doesn't suck, what would your suggestion be?

[ArcturusV]

Start campaigns at level 1.

Also probably would suggest my Old School Spellcaster Fix (That only a few people I've played with are willing to accept).

[Darius Kane]

Start campaigns at level 1.
How does that help a fighter not suck? :smallconfused:

[ArcturusV]

Suck is always a relative term. At level 1, a fighter is just as capable as his teammates (Wizard is still top power at level 1, but lacks staying power and depends on setting up encounters to his strength, thus they are roughly equal in power). Take away Narcoleptic Adventuring so you let the Wizard always have his "I Win the Encounter" buttons active. But no DM should really be letting players halt the adventure every 2 encounters (1 spell to shut down each encounter, and one bonus spell for any "night ambush" scenario).

[Darius Kane]

What about other levels? If to enjoy playing a fighter I have to play at 1st level then there's something seriously wrong.

[ArcturusV]

Kind of the problem, which I was saying earlier. I mean you can continue to keep your edge. But somewhere around level 8 you start to fall behind. You opened on your teammates to carry you, the way you helped carry the skill monkey and the wizard at level 1.

Which is kind of fine, and can make good story gristle, as long as you actually play out that swing. If there is a history to the campaign, it provides an interesting dynamic. It's how stories like Raistlin and Caramon Majere come about.

But when you start playing at level 5... you don't get that sense that the team really counts on you to carry you at all. Useful, but not carried. And you go to Carried pretty fast. Start at level 10, you're already a second banana on the team. Start at level 15? People are going to be asking themselves, "... now... why do we keep him around? Porter for our loot?"

[123456789blaaa]

Absolutely not. Although it sounds like I am repeating myself.

1. Not every group desires balance. It is not by itself a good thing. It is only a good thing for games that desire to be balanced. I will provide examples of games I have been in or observed in which game imbalance is an assumed and helpful part of the game if you wish.
<snip>


Right, I get what you're saying here. My point is that if a group desires imbalance than it is a simple matter to imbalance a balanced game. It is much harder to balance an imbalanced game. This means that an initially balanced game with be able to satisfy both types of players with much less effort than if a game was initially imbalanced.

[eggynack]

I honestly don't remember ever encountering a group or a gamer that doesn't care about balance.
Tell me - if I wanted to play a fighter that doesn't suck, what would your suggestion be?
Well, there are a few good solutions. The first is playing a warblade and reflavoring it with the bland fighter flavor. You'll get your burly fighter guy and be able to play with the wizards without them kicking over your sandcastle. The second is playing in a group full of fighters. If your group is a paladin, a healer, a monk, a marshal and a fighter, the fighter isn't gonna suck. The third way, and the way which I suppose would best fit your question, is the magic of high op. There are some good ways to push fighter up to tier 4, which gets it right on the barrier between suck and unsuck. Most notable among these are the zhentarim fighter and dungeoncrasher fighter. Without those acf's, you're better off just taking two levels of fighter and stacking on a bunch of other base and prestige classes. You're still likely to top out at tier 4, unless some of the component classes are at three or above. Thus, unsucky fighters for all.

[Rejusu]

Right, I get what you're saying here. My point is that if a group desires imbalance than it is a simple matter to imbalance a balanced game. It is much harder to balance an imbalanced game. This means that an initially balanced game with be able to satisfy both types of players with much less effort than if a game was initially imbalanced.

Uh actually the reverse is true. It's a lot harder to unbalance a balanced game than balance an imbalanced one. One requires adding to the game, and one requires taking away. Applying some simple limitations requires far less work than redeveloping the game.

[Darius Kane]

Kind of the problem, which I was saying earlier. I mean you can continue to keep your edge. But somewhere around level 8 you start to fall behind. You opened on your teammates to carry you, the way you helped carry the skill monkey and the wizard at level 1.

Which is kind of fine, and can make good story gristle, as long as you actually play out that swing. If there is a history to the campaign, it provides an interesting dynamic. It's how stories like Raistlin and Caramon Majere come about.

But when you start playing at level 5... you don't get that sense that the team really counts on you to carry you at all. Useful, but not carried. And you go to Carried pretty fast. Start at level 10, you're already a second banana on the team. Start at level 15? People are going to be asking themselves, "... now... why do we keep him around? Porter for our loot?"
I want to matter on all levels.


The first is playing a warblade and reflavoring it with the bland fighter flavor.
I don't actually mean "Fighter" the class. But that's moot, becasue ToB is banned.
My point with the question is: even if I have transparency as Gnaeus is arguing (the system is straightforward and honest with the fact that Fighters suck and Wizards rock) it doesn't make the game fun, because it doesn't help me play the archetype I want, which is a Fighter that doesn't suck.
The problem with his argument is that we don't wine Commoner sucks, because we aren't supposed to play Commoners. We are supposed to play Fighters right next to Wizards and Clerics, so being informed that one sucks and the other does not doesn't really help.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Uh actually the reverse is true. It's a lot harder to unbalance a balanced game than balance an imbalanced one. One requires adding to the game, and one requires taking away. Applying some simple limitations requires far less work than redeveloping the game.

...adding is much, much easier than removing.

Consider this - after the umpteen splat books that have been published for 3.5, how many options have been added? And how many have been taken away?

[Augmental]

...adding is much, much easier than removing.

Consider this - after the umpteen splat books that have been published for 3.5, how many options have been added? And how many have been taken away?

None, but any individual group can easily take away all those options by playing a core-only game.

[ArcturusV]

That's kind of a problem Darius. I don't really have a fix for it. I don't think anyone does. Not even "Use ToB" is really an answer for it, as somehow being able to do things like shatter walls and hit things better, short range quasi magical abilities, etc, don't really compare to things like:

I can make my own dimension.

I can become immortal.

I can level entire countrysides with a single action.

The gulf between tier 1/2, and tier 3, at high levels, is pretty much just as wide as the gulf between tier 1/2 and tier 5 at high levels.

[Barmoz]

Balance doesn't exist in the real world, why should it exist in the game? The nerd who got beat up in high school (low levels) grows up to control a powerful financial and political empire (wizard at high levels) while the bully who was so dominant in his youth ends up pumping gas or turning a wrench. The morale of the store is, if you want to end up being a world power, don't go to diesel mechanic school (be a fighter). If you're content to relive your high school glory days (only play at lower levels) then take the Indian burn feat as many times as you want.

[Darius Kane]

That's kind of a problem Darius. I don't really have a fix for it. I don't think anyone does. Not even "Use ToB" is really an answer for it, as somehow being able to do things like shatter walls and hit things better, short range quasi magical abilities, etc, don't really compare to things like:

I can make my own dimension.

I can become immortal.

I can level entire countrysides with a single action.

The gulf between tier 1/2, and tier 3, at high levels, is pretty much just as wide as the gulf between tier 1/2 and tier 5 at high levels.
And that's where balancing comes into play.


Balance doesn't exist in the real world, why should it exist in the game?
Because the game isn't the real world?

[eggynack]

I want to matter on all levels.


I don't actually mean "Fighter" the class. But that's moot, becasue ToB is banned.
My point with the question is: even if I have transparency as Gnaeus is arguing (the system is straightforward and honest with the fact that Fighters suck and Wizards rock) it doesn't make the game fun, because it doesn't help me play the archetype I want, which is a Fighter that doesn't suck.
The problem with his argument is that we don't wine Commoner sucks, because we aren't supposed to play Commoners. We are supposed to play Fighters right next to Wizards and Clerics, so being informed that one sucks and the other does not doesn't really help.
I listed some other non-tob methods of fighter optimization. There's some other good stuff, but generally you're going to be looking at a cleric playing at melee. Other than that, I feel like there's a bit of a gordian knot here just waiting to be cut. Premise the first: you wanna play a fighter that's balanced with wizards. Premise the second: your group has banned tome of battle. Premise the third: you're looking for some kind of way for transparency to take you from these problems to a good game. Conclusion: you should probably get ToB unbanned. I mean, if you have a problem, and transparency solves that problem, and you reject that solution, that's not really the system's fault. It's really the fault of whoever banned ToB. Transparency has done nothing wrong. Psychic warrior is also a neat tier 3 fighty type guy. Seriously, just look at the tier list at tier 3 and pick whatever fits closest to your grand design. Transparency doesn't push you anywhere near balance if you never use it.

[ArcturusV]

The "Balance doesn't exist" thing is one of those lines that got me ticked at the russian developers of World of Tanks. When matches were blatantly NOT balanced by the matchmaker and they just feed a line about "Everything is working as intended. Historical battles were not always fair so neither is the game.".

That's frustrating. And frustrating in a game where, at longest, I only have to deal with the lopsided conditions for 15 minutes. Instead of 12 hours a week for several months.

So it's a worthy goal to try and close the gap as much as you can.