Class Feature Concept [3.5, Your Thoughts are Appreciated]

[Amechra]

I recently was reading some notes on game design; namely, the difference between soft and hard pushes.

A push is a mechanical construct (i.e., a class feature or feat) that affects the approach a player has to problems. A Barbarian goes into Rage in combat, while a Rogue tries to set up flanking or making the enemy flat-footed.

A soft push gives you a benefit for taking a certain course of action. An example would be the Rogue, who gets a bunch of extra damage if he attacks someone they can sneak attack.

A hard push punishes you for taking certain actions. For example, a Knight's Code of Honor penalizes them for attacking flatfooted opponents.

Soft pushes are the way to go; they feel better psychologically.

So, reading this, I thought of a concept for a route of making the Fighter (or indeed, noncasters in general) a lot cooler.

Give them class features that boost magic items that they use or spells cast on them by other people.

For example, one class might get:

Extended Magic (Su): X/day, you may apply the Extend Spell feat to any spell targeting you that is cast by another person as a free action.

or

Exquisite Muscles (Ex): Any spell cast by another creature that grants you a bonus to your Strength score increases that bonus by 2; any spell or effect that inflicts a penalty to your Strength score reduces that penalty by 2.

And so on and so forth.

That way, when the buffs are getting planned out each morning, the utility (to use the economic term) of throwing combat buffs on the classes intended to be front-line combatants is higher than throwing it on the casters.

Your thoughts?

[Milo v3]

I like it. Would assist balancing buffs a fair bit. Not sure how you would flavour it though.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Your thoughts?

Definitely not.

You're right about hard and soft pushes, but this push is engineered to be annoying however it pans out. Observe:

Case One: Casters buff Fighter
The Fighter runs around feeling great. Everyone else feels less great...they didn't get any buffs. Further, the casters feel a bit shafted, as there's no longer as much strategic thinking in their buffing, nor as many choices for them: buffs are simply better spent on the Fighter.

Case Two: Casters spread buffs around/buff others
Now everyone feels bad. The Fighter feels like people didn't value his abilities enough...and the CASTERS also feel bad because, by spreading their buffs around, they're actually losing effectiveness of their spells.

In short, it doesn't really work when you soft push OTHER people to do things, as it's just restrictive all around. When the Rogue doesn't land a Sneak Attack, he realizes how much better it is when he does. When a Paladin breaks his code, he realizes that he shouldn't.

When a caster is rewarded for targeting a specific character, he loses some of his choice in the matter. The rest of his party loses out on potential buffs. The Fighter feels bad when he isn't targeted, because he knows the spell would be better on him. It's just awkward.

[nonsi]

I second DIT's motion.
Also, you'd have to explain what sort of training qualifies Mr. Fighter to make such augments.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Give them class features that boost magic items that they use or spells cast on them by other people.
[...]
Your thoughts?

Djinn already covered why enhancing buff spells is not the best idea, but enhancing magic items could work. Things like improving the enhancement bonus of their weapons and armor as if using greater magic weapon/magic vestment with CL = fighter level, automatically adding synergy properties (MIC) to their weapons and armor when their items have the base property, improving the uses/day and save DCs of their item abilities proportional to their Str mod, etc. would definitely mean that magic weapons and armor are most effective in the hands of a fighter type.

Of course, the problem with this is that it only really makes thematic sense to enhance weapons and armor (i.e. fighter-y items) this way rather than items in general, since "is good with magic items" is an artificer or gish thing more than a fighter thing, and it's all the other items that fighters really need for wards, flight, and so forth. And if you enhance weapons and armor to Stormbringer-like levels to let them compete with casters, well, you run into the usual problem with giving fighters artifact swords to compete: they're now effectively sword-shaped casters wielded by a fighter cohort rather than being a fighter with a helpful (but not mandatory) magic weapon.