More talk about leveling the playing field: casters and non-

[Segev]

I often puzzle over what one would have to do to elevate non-casting classes to Tier 2 or Tier 1, because I generally find efforts to nerf Tier 1 casters to throw out the proverbial baby with the equally metaphorical bath water, and so adding things seems more likely to be successful in creating something fun. However, I have yet to come up with a satisfactory method to do so. This is doubtless in part to the general response I get: that there's just so much spells can do and only so many subsystems one can make that a "mundane" stops being mundane if you successfully elevate him. "Magic can be justified to do anything," means that it's going to out-shine mundane methods.

The nominal balance, of course, is that non-casting methods can be done at will and without items (or at least, without special, magical items). But that's deceptive, at best; a wizard with a wand of Knock may have spent low 4 digits of gold on it (or half that value and some exp and a feat), but he'll plow through locks faster than a rogue with Open Locks/Disable Device. And the wizard's gold is far less of a long-term expenditure than are the rogue's skill points. Even postulating the more-corner-case-than-most-admit of being stripped of gear and thrown in a dungeon, the rogue now lacks his lockpicks as much as the wizard does his wand.


Thus, the common reply is - probably rightly - that at some point the casters need some nerfing.

My thought on this is that, if we're going to accept that premise, we should not just slap arbitrary restrictions on casting classes, or strip them of spells over a certain level, or the like. I'm not even sure that we can reasonably apply the traditional "limited number of uses/day" restriction to magic and expect it to in any way balance out. (Still, I'll spoiler-tag a quick write-up of a way to potentially alter things to enable this in the way I think more games get played.)

The "15 minute adventuring day" is more a 4e than 3e problem, but still arises in 3e. The conceit that 4 encounters of appropriate CR will happen in a given day just doesn't hold up all that well, in my experience.

The balance of exhausting resources is thus just not a factor for most casters beyond level 5 or 6.

So, what if we spread the resource-exhaustion over something more directly controllable? What if casters gain more spell slots when and only when they level up?

We know it's supposed to take 13-14 CR-appropriate encounters to gain enough experience points to achieve the next level. At the game-designed 4 encounters per day, that's about 12.5 days worth of adventuring per level.

Determine the number of spell slots per day for a given caster when he gains a new level. Multiply that by 12.5. He gets that number of spell slots. He can expend them however he likes, but when they're gone, he's out of spells until he levels up again.

We'd need some specialized rules for "downtime casting" to keep that intact (though perhaps even that should be more limited), and NPCs might need to have different rules (an asymmetry I always dislike, but as a stop-gap can work). Allow prepared casters to take their normal spell-prep time at any time to fill any slots they wish. Maybe clerics remain restricted to dawn or dusk, but I think you get the idea.

In the end, the caster can ration his spells, or he can rock 4-7 encounters and then be near-useless for half a level. Or at least dependent on his magic items.

Now, more to the point of this thread: If we want to honestly balance casting vs. non-, there has to be something that casters can do that non-casters cannot (already done!), and there also has to be something that casting cannot do, so non-casting methods are required.

What I'd like to dedicate this thread to is discussing what we think non-casters' niche should be in the game. That is, what should a dedicated caster, who's spent all his class levels on casting, be unequipped to do sufficiently that he'd turn to a non-caster (a rogue, a fighter, a ranger, even a bard's non-magical skills) to achieve? We know what, say, a fighter goes to a caster for. "Make me a magic item," is a good start, and it goes from there. What would a caster need to be unable to do to make him still need to go to a fighter for help?

This would then let us identify what fighters should do, what rogues should do, what other non-casting classes should be able to approach and where we can unashamedly increase their class features and ability to apply the skill system. We will also know what casters are incapable of (or, if they are capable, they're only marginally so, e.g. melee combat unaided by spells). But where my parenthetical has to add "unaided by spells," we want to identify things that spells casters use shouldn't be able to empower them to be equal to or better than the non-casters whose niche it is.

We should also identify with greater specificity what magic should do. Identify its niche, and tailor spells to achieve it. Anything that is not explicitly "something magic should do" and is not explicitly "something magic should NOT do" is a middle ground into which we should be unafraid to extend either spells OR class abilities, and to make spells not more powerful than class abilities that can do the same thing. We need to recall that the "well, we run out of spell slots" thing is less of an issue than the "I get on the order of 20 class features over my career, but a spellcaster gets dozens of spells" issue that makes the opportunity cost of class features greater than the opportunity cost of a spell.

[Yvanehtnioj]

There is no need to nerf caster spells.

The problem with the Tier system is that an assumption is made that a level 1 fighter is equivalent to a level 1 Mage (or ought to be).

This is false. Classes at the same level will never be equal to one another in power. They are unequal in hit dice, weapons available, average damage of said weapons, armor class, and relative damage output. (I would go as far as to say that a Fighter1 is close in power to a Wizard3.)

The non-casters have the upper hand until such time that the casters gain their 5th level spells. When they get their 6th level spells, the casters victory becomes "something something dark side complete."

The real problem is that the classes all share the same rate of progression by experience points. All we have to do is adhere to the xp charts from 2nd edition.
Then balance will be restored. (Hopefully 5th edition will do that.)

Thank you for listening.

[Psyren]

It's not about "being unable to do." A powerful caster is truly capable of anything. The question becomes what is worth his time/slots.

A lawyer can presumably type his own legal briefs, and a doctor can presumably read charts, take a patient's temperature and draw their blood. Yet both of these individuals hire assistants (paralegals and nurses respectively) rather than do these relatively simple tasks themselves. A movie star or political dignitary has more than enough resources to learn self-defense techniques and even acquire a firearm permit, yet you'll often see such individuals with bodyguards or personal security instead. Why is that? The answer is that, while they can do these things themselves, the opportunity cost is the time/resources they would spend doing the much more valuable activities that only they are trained for/capable of doing.

My point is that, just because you can do something yourself, doesn't mean that is the most optimal or efficient course of action for you. A wizard who is prepping all kinds of resources to survive in melee routinely has less resources available to do the stuff that only he can do, than one that only has to worry about escaping melee occasionally because he has a meatshield. Similarly, a wizard who has to prep resources to bypass 10 locks has less available than one who simply brings a rogue along.



The real problem is that the classes all share the same rate of progression by experience points. All we have to do is adhere to the xp charts from 2nd edition.
Then balance will be restored. (Hopefully 5th edition will do that.)

I really would not hold your breath on that. Separate level advancement was done away with for a reason - it's arbitrary, it's annoying for both the DM and players, it makes multiclassing a nightmare, and it doesn't account for player skill at all.

[Dread_Head]

There is no need to nerf caster spells.

The problem with the Tier system is that an assumption is made that a level 1 fighter is equivalent to a level 1 Mage (or ought to be).

This is false. Classes at the same level will never be equal to one another in power. They are unequal in hit dice, weapons available, average damage of said weapons, armor class, and relative damage output. (I would go as far as to say that a Fighter1 is close in power to a Wizard3.)

The non-casters have the upper hand until such time that the casters gain their 5th level spells. When they get their 6th level spells, the casters victory becomes "something something dark side complete."

The real problem is that the classes all share the same rate of progression by experience points. All we have to do is adhere to the xp charts from 2nd edition.
Then balance will be restored. (Hopefully 5th edition will do that.)

Thank you for listening.

I'm not sure all of this is completely true, with mid to high levels of optimisation the wizard will be at least as useful as the fighter. Sleep and colour spray can be used to completely end encounters and Abrupt Jaunt makes the Wizard far more survivable than the fighter is. This is just one of the T1s, a Cleric will have as good armour as the fighter, probably slightly worse combat abilities though but spells to back him up should make him more of a match. Druid 1 isn't even fair to Fighter 1 as a riding dog animal companion is pretty much the match of the fighter and the druid can cast Entangle and Impeding stones and other BFC spells to immobilise the fighter whilst his dog goes to work and he plunks away with his sling or wades into combat with Shillelagh on a quarter staff.

By the time a wizard is hitting level 3 even a level 3-5 fighter isn't going to stand a chance; Hold Person, Glitterdust, Ray of Enfeeblement, Blindness or some other similar spell will have incapacitated the fighter before he can do anything useful and.


If I was going to balance the casters against mundanes I'd scrap all the T1s and T2s and replace them with fixed list casters similar to the Beguiler, Warmage and Dread Necromancer. With the right reduction in what spells they know they'll fall down a tier or two.

In terms of what mundanes should be able to do, the Fighter should be able to actually fight more effectively than anything a wizard can manage with polymorph etc. A rogue should be able to sneak and pick locks etc better than a caster with Silence, Invisibility and Knock. A Ranger should be able to track better, a Paladin should be better at fighting evil etc. The problem is that there are spells to do all of the things that are these classes purpose and often better than they can do it themselves. To that end the problematic spells really need to go for any rebalancing to work.

[Yvanehtnioj]

I can always hope that we will get separate xp charts for each of different Tier ranks (1 to 5). That, and partitioning the xp a person gets amongst the classes they have (they decide what class gets what fraction).

I would like them to adopt the Pathfinder fix to grapple, the Giant's fix to polymorph, bring back weapon speed (make it a negative bonus to initiative), and replace the Vancian (spelling?) spell slot system with mana points.

Still going to hope.

(This thread has been interesting to read.)

[Togo]

Spellcasters enjoy an advantage particularly when they have preparation time, forewarning, a precise knowledge of what they are facing, a limited number of encounters and a permissive interpretation of spells and spell effects

I find the following works well:

1) plan and average of about 6-8 encounters of day, of which 3-4 will be CR appropriate, and the rest will be low CR fights, challenges of various kinds, aggressive social encounters and so on. Make sure the campaign varies a lot around that average, so that the party can't just assume that fight #4 is it.

2) Don't telegraph encounters. Characters may be able to identify particularly powerful monsters, but they may not. Make knowledge rolls in secret, so players can't metagame the identification of monsters (I failed the roll, so it must be above X HD!), and refluff monster descriptions to make some of them harder to recognise out of character.

Both of these measures help prevent turn 1 rocket tag, as spellcasters have to preserve their better spell slots, not knowing whether a given encounter is hard or trivial.

3) Try and keep the clock ticking. Characters are capable of incredible feats when given enough time to prepare - the first time you have PCs raise a literal army to storm a dungeon complex you'll see that this isn't limited to casters. Make sure the story you're telling doesn't always support the party taking unscheduled rests, and that rest isn't always the main source of healing.

4) Make sure downtime is valuable. People should be able to gather information, rise in society, make contacts, build personal buildings or organisations, and so on. Spellcasters should not be the only ones to benefit from downtime, so make sure that spending two months cranking out items, researching spells, or preparing a bizzare web of contingencies, comes only at an opportunity cost. That cost shouldn't be prohibitive, but make sure all classes can benefit from downtime more or less evenly.

5) Theme days. Many DMs plan to give their players a variety of experience, but end up giving something very predictable - one each of several basic encounter types each day. Play campaigns where the same sort of challenge can and does crop up more than once each day. Don't be afraid to throw three undead encounters in a row at them, and then none for the next week, rather than having the more predictable one undead encounter every other day.

Most spellcasters are only good at dealing with one threat of a kind per day.

6) Be strict on ruling spells. Don't handwave practical difficulties with spell casting. Spells are very powerful, but they achieve very specific effects. Scrying for example, is very useful. But it doesn't necessarily show enough of a location to identify where someone is, or to teleport there, it doesn't show who they're with unless everyone is standing in a bunched group, the invisible sensor is actually quite likely to be spotted by a large crowd. Planar binding relies on paying for a service, and there's no reason to assume that this can be bypassed. Contact other plane doesn't necessarily connect you to a being that knows the answer, or give a clear reply. Overland flight has too rubbish a manuvere class to allow the navigation of a right angle turn in a 5ft corridors. Contingency isn't a divination, and can't use as it's trigger anything the target themselves would be unaware of. And so on.

Spells should still be incredibly powerful when cast, but quite specific, and interpreted in such a way as to make it difficult to substitute them for mundane capabilities.

7) Don't be afraid to swing the banhammer. There are several prestige classes, monsters, races, templates and items that are unsuitable for your game. You wouldn't allow a player to play a winged undead cat who drives a magic train piloted by his personal constructs, even though it's perfectly fine by the rules. So do the same with spells and magic. Ban _effects_ that cause you problems, whatever the source. Infinite loop? Ban it. Elimination of the downside of a class or ability, ban it. Duplicates the distinctive class features of another character? Ban it. Don't worry about what the source of the effect is, just ban any _use_ of it that strikes you as game-breaking. Feel free to get the players involved in this process, as they may have a better idea of what they should and shouldn't be allowed to do than you do. In particular, anything that skirts the edge of allowable should be run past you before it gets chosen as a character option, or else get banned until you have a chance to research it properly.

In particular don't be afraid of banning previous allowed elements, or unbanning things that are no longer a problem. Flight may be a problem at very low level, but simply part of the game at higher levels.

8) Agree with the players what should and shouldn't be allowed, and what power level the characters should be capable of. Introduce plot elements into the game to bring up the power or influence of characters who are lagging behind, whatever the reason. My favourite techniques include infecting someone with lycanthropy, giving them a romance with a useful NPC, or introducing a cult who worship them as the one identified by prophecy as the one who will destroy/conquer/eat the world. In a pinch, more spotlight can substitute for raw power, depending on the game.


I personally don't experience much of a problem with spellcasters. They are very powerful some of the time, and less powerful than other characters the rest of the time. Which is a result that seems balanced, and which people enjoy.

[sideswipe]

i just referenced this issue in another thread and this is what i said. it applies here too.



It is obvious that fighting classes are inferior to casters in most ways. so letting them have access to epic feats earlier is a good idea (at least non magic related ones).

For example, the biggest feat in the weapon specialisation feat chain is that you can take a 10 on an attack roll once per round. gain some disarm advantages, get a single +5 to a secondary attack and attack properly in a grapple.

fighters don't get pounce without multi classing and you need 18 levels in fighter to take this.

this is against taking 9th level spells like wish, miracle, true res and mind rape that a caster could get.

this is not a fair trade off.

so allowing fighting classes to take epic level combat based feats at level,say 15+ could help close the gap between combat classes and casters a little.

though giving casters of any level below 20 epic level feats is giving them almost infinite power even earlier. so this is a horrible idea.

also reducing level dependent criteria on feats to lower levels so the fighter can take this feat at around level 10 or 12 and take epic combat feats after that.

of course its not specific to fighters but any combat class that does not also get casting.

getting epic combat feats for combat classes and keeping casters to normal feats would allow combatants to achieve levels of damage and combat efficiency above normal combat classes and possibly above the levels that can be achieved by casters.

this would mean that the casters would continue to have utility but a slight dip in relative combat effectiveness. this does not solve the problem but it reduces it a lot.

to be honest making fighting classes more utility was the intention of Tome of battle, but they just could not reach the utility of pure casters.

[Segev]

Hrm. While I appreciate the responses, this is so far a rehashing of the usual problems that arise rather than a focused identification of what niches magic should fill, and which it should not.

"Eliminate the T1 and T2 classes" is exactly the sort of solution that I wish to avoid. It doesn't really solve the problem, certainly not in an overarching design scheme.

The idea that we should have different exp tracks for different classes is something one could try. A quick-and-dirty version would be to take PF's three different charts, assign T1 and T2 characters to the slowest, T3 characters to the medium one, and T4 and lower to the fast one.

Unfortunately, the idea that "a lawyer COULD write his legal briefs, but doesn't" is twice over a problem. First, it puts the caster as the "boss" of any party, inherently. He's the one who deigns to work with the less important schlubs so he doesn't have to do grunt work. (While a perfectly reasonable attitude for casters to take in-character, it shouldn't be objectively true.) Secondly, it leaves the caster as able to choose anything he wants to do, and leave the rest for others; the non-casters remain focused on only what they CAN do, and have to hope the caster doesn't want to do it and do it better.

I'd like to see this thread categorize niches and "things to do in game" into three categories:
Things magic absolutely should be doing, and probably is necessary for
Things magic may or may not do, and which may have mundane solutions as well
Things magic absolutely should not be doing, and therefore which is the exclusive purview of mundane solutions.

We could start with specific effects - flinging fireballs and shape changing should be amongst magic's niche tricks; unlocking locked doors should be exclusively mundane - but we're basically combing the spell list for things that step on non-caster toes at that point, and we'll spend a lot of time to unsatisfactory effect, I think.

I'd rather examine what roles characters play in a game based on their classes. Identify what is iconicly "non-caster," and set strictures in place that limit spells from encroaching on that territory. Instead of eliminating T1 classes, we could then identify spells which encroach on areas that should belong to non-casters.

For instance, "front-line tank" is probably the most iconic role for a Fighter to play. It has the job of being a damaging enough threat that you can't ignore it, and of being tough enough that it can take the brunt of what the enemies are doing. We should therefore not allow wizards - and maybe even not clerics and druids - spells that let them do this as well as or better than a Fighter. This means attention must be given to summons and bindings, so that they either are not as good at it as to be a replacement for a fighter. Perhaps we seek methods to make them "handleable" by enemies in the know: a recognizable weakness of bound "demons" and "genies" is that they're bound by their Name or a key phrase, which, if known by the enemies of their master, can be used to free them. Buff spells, too, need to be watched carefully. They need, in some way, to make fighters better than they do non-.

The Princess and the Frog features a limitation on Voodoo such that the practitioner "can't create a thing for [him]self," so others must be the beneficiaries. Maybe buff spells of a certain sort (a sub-school or label, the way [evil] or [water] can be applied?) should not be able to be cast on the caster. Sure, two casters could then buff each other, but now that they're buffing somebody else, they may as well buff somebody who's already going to make better use of it, right?

That is, obviously, just one area. And a T1 caster might still find ways around it by simply having enough prepared defenses that he can't be reached. And enough whammy that he can destroy anybody who tries. "Long-range glass cannon" is definitely a role I think is iconic to the wizard, who is the stereotypical T1 caster.

"Breaking, Entering, and other Clandestine Operations" are amongst the Rogue's traditional duties. Therefore, spells should not make casters better at this than rogues can be. Knock, perhaps, simply shouldn't exist. Or, if it does, it should have distinct downsides over an Open Locks (or, in PF, Disable Device) check; perhaps it makes a particularly loud noise that cannot be missed, and is [sonic] so that anything which muffles the noise prevents the Knock from working. Silence, as implemented by the spell, is actually one area that it's perhaps done right: you can't be silent without also being deaf, because you suppress sound in a radius. And if you get that radius around people watching for trouble, that could tip them off when they lose hearing for a bit.

Invisibility could use work; it's too obviously something magic SHOULD do to eliminate it, but it needs to not be just plain better than a 3rd level rogue's ability to hide. Maybe a sufficient Hide check to defeat a Spot check can keep the Invisibility spell active even after an attack; this would make it far stronger on a rogue than on a wizard, making the wizard synergize with the rogue rather than overshadow him.

But even this means a rogue can be replaced by a wizard to an extent, which is an issue. Rogues need to be better in their niche, and to have at least some untouchable thing they can do.

Perhaps we should group the core book classes into types or roles, and define what they SHOULD be able to do, with special emphasis on things that should REQUIRE one of those classes to achieve competently. We then can explore how to make sure that they CAN do it and casters (or casters outside that cluster) do not.

[FabulousFizban]

I don't know about 3.5, but things seem fairly well balanced in pathfinder. If you are a wizard, then at low levels a barbarian will kill you. If you are a wizard, then at high levels a barbarian with spell sunder will kill you. Seems legit.

EDIT: I originally put spellbreaker, I meant spell sunder

[Segev]

Nah, the barbarian with spellbreaker won't ever get into range with you. Pathfinder still suffers from tiers. More importantly, though, the wizard can do anything the barbarian can; the barbarian, on the other hand, needs wizards in the world to get him close to what wizards can do (usually by making magic items).

[Pan151]

If caster and non-caster classes are to be balanced with each other, that cannot be done with simple blanket changes to rules or spells. It has to be done through the dm's careful managing of each player's wealth and items on a case by case and level by level basis.

Let me explain teh concept of "non-scaling factors". It's something that comes a lot when discussiong the balance of MOBA games, and while DnD is nothing like that, the concept still applies.
Let's say that we have one 20 lv wizard and one 20 lv fighter. If you compare the two at 0 wealth, then it's beyond obvious that the wizard will mop the floor with the fighter. That is because most of the wizards power is gained though just leveling, while the fighter gets most of his power through items.
If we increase the wealth from 0 to low, then the wizard will still win - but not that easily anymore. That is because, while extra magic items do make a wizard more powerful, they do not make that much of a difference as they do for a fighter. A wizard's powr is in his spells, and no matter what magic items you have, your spells will stay largely the same. Give the fighter a 10k gold sword and he suddenly hits like a truck. Give the wizard a 10k gold wand and he... saves himself a couple spell slots.
If we increase the wealth to arbitrarily high, then the fighter easily overtakes the wizard, because at that point both characters have access to more magic than they can feasibly use, but the fighter also has twice the BAB and the HP of the wizard.

In other words, there exists a wealth level, between very low and infinite, where a wizard is just as powerful as a fighter (or any caster with any non-caster). It's just a matter of eyeballing where that level is for your specific party and character level.

[AmberVael]

I'd like to see this thread categorize niches and "things to do in game" into three categories:
Things magic absolutely should be doing, and probably is necessary for
Things magic may or may not do, and which may have mundane solutions as well
Things magic absolutely should not be doing, and therefore which is the exclusive purview of mundane solutions.

I honestly don't think it can be done. At least, not in the way you're envisioning.

The problem you'll run into is that magic is just too big. There are myths and stories and concepts that use magic in every sort of way- pointing out what magic in general should not be able to do is nigh impossible.

I think if you want to approach the problem of the magic system, the first problem you have to tackle is that 3.5 tried to lump all of these concepts under the same category and system of magic. Yeah, they're magic. We call them all magic. They have similarities. But what they did would be a lot like making a class called Mundane and allowing it to be an archer, a fencer, an investigator, and a sage equally.

If you start breaking down the casting system into certain themes and classes, and restricting those in thematic and mechanically sound ways you can start asking these kinds of questions. But probably not before.

Look at the example you gave- Dr. Facilier from Princess and the Frog. He had a far more narrow set of powers and fitting restrictions. He had a number of lacks, even if he had a pretty nice range of powers. But you could easily find a "magic" concept that contrasted him- one about using passive powers to strengthen themselves, or a more active and offensive magician throwing fireballs. None of these has to be a problem for D&D, but they do become a problem when you give all of them to one class.

In short, look at all the more specialty magic classes. Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Binder, Incarnum- these are the kinds of things that are fine. That's how this needs to be done. It will mean that magic can still cover almost anything, but that's absolutely okay, because no single class will have all magic.

[Segev]

I'm sorry, Pan, but your analysis - at least in the example comparison you give - is wrong. The best you can hope for to get the Fighter "catching up" with the wizard, when you have arbitrarily high wealth, is that the Fighter will have items that give him item-based duplications of the spells the Wizard has cast, particularly those with ongoing effects.

The fighter "hits like a truck," but he's not going to hit the wizard. The wizard isn't going to deign to face the fighter in combat, melee or otherwise. The fighter will be facing a simulacrum or an astral projection, and even with the best tools for information gathering that money can buy, the wizard has spells AND items to defend himself even from those. Not the least of which include the wizard's contingent teleports if, somehow, the fighter gets within combat range of his true body.

The thing about MOBAs is that even the "fighter types" have "spells." That is, they have combat abilities that are specific and strong techniques they can invoke. "Mages" in MOBAs don't have "more" spells than "fighters;" they have different "spells" with effects focused on a more "magical" theme.

4e is oft accused of being an MMO; it isn't. It's a lot more like a very involved MOBA. (That's not entirely fair as a comparison, either, but if you think of MOBAs as using highly simplified 4e rules, you can get at least a modicum of a picture of it.)

This thread is meant to be about identifying niches, not arguing that the tier system is invalid nor whether to ban T1 classes or not. "Balancing" the non-casters, theoretically, can be done by making sure the non-casters are needed by casters at least as badly as non-casters need casters.

[Phelix-Mu]

Alright, let me post a few of the guidelines that I plan to use when I go back over mundanes in an upcoming re-vamp of my own houserules.

1.) Mundanes that Don't Need Items to Be Cool: Alright, the premise here is that, just like even a bad wizard has magic that works at full effectiveness, even a suck fighter should rock with a sword. Basically, this equates to some bonus features designed to remove some of the normal drawbacks of in-combat mundaneness, stuff that is often relegated to magic items. This includes bonuses to avoid AoO, better Fight Defensive and Total Defense rules, and other stuff that varies by class designed to help that class perform its role out-of-the-box, without crazy optimization acrobatics or extensive dipping. I'm not aiming to make all mundanes tier 1, or even 3, but to at least have what's in the box match what it says on the box.

2.) Greater Skill Tricks: All mundane classes will have an array of Greater Skill Tricks available to each of them (rogues will have their own list, fighters their own, and so forth), and will have a regime of bonus ones that they get over 20 levels. Want your fighter to be able to toss his greataxe 1/encounter? Done. Want the rogue to be able to HiPS 1/encounter? Done. Want +20 on your next skill check to use a class skill? Done. The idea here is to add a degree of utility and mastery that can hold a candle to that granted by the many spells out there that high tiers use to own the game. This comes along with bonus skill points, so if you wish to invest in these Greater Skill Tricks normally it won't gimp your normal skills. There will also be an option to repurchase the same skill trick, but probably with some kind of increasing cost, so I can keep the coolness of the initial ability high.

3.) Higher-level Kickass: Still working on some ideas for this, but so far it exists as a kind of secondary resource (maybe ABL, Awesome by Level) that every class will have at high levels. Casters must spend it to get spells known above 6th or so, but also can spend it to get apprentices, an influential position in town, a noble title, and so forth. Mundanes don't have any decent high-level abilities as written, so I will be adding some designed to, once again, hold a candle to the cosmic power of high-tiers. So this gives out-of-combat (generally) options to mundanes that normally eat up their already spoken for WBL. Maybe also some kind of high-level craziness to mundanes (like higher level ToB maneuvers that they don't need pre-reqs for...stuff like that).

Anyway, those are my main ideas on how to tweak things. The major note here is that I've already done tweaks designed to eliminate broke stuff (like monks that can't hit, rogues that can never have enough skill points, soulknives that should have just bought a magic sword). These more extensive additions are designed to go deeper and make play over sustained levels seem less like a "and now lets all listen to the [tier 1-2] solve this encounter" exercise.

EDIT: And largely agreeing with AmberVael. No use is gained from comparing mundanes to wizards and other tier 1s that literally obviate most plotlines and most of the setting at higher levels. The best benchmark is to give each class a role, similar to what is present in the tier 3 limited list casters (DN, Bard, and so forth), and aim to bring mundanes up to that level of effectiveness in their field of study.

[Psyren]

Unfortunately, the idea that "a lawyer COULD write his legal briefs, but doesn't" is twice over a problem. First, it puts the caster as the "boss" of any party, inherently.

Is Vaarsuvius boss of the OotS? Is Durkon?

Obviously not, so something has gone wrong in your reasoning here. Being the most powerful member of the party does not mean you're in charge, it simply makes you the artillery/secret weapon. Your mistake is in thinking that's universally a problem - whereas I would say, players who choose to play lower-tier classes do so because they don't want to be the artillery or the answer-man.


He's the one who deigns to work with the less important schlubs so he doesn't have to do grunt work.

You are the one applying that negative connotation (schlub, grunt) to the mundane classes, not me.


Secondly, it leaves the caster as able to choose anything he wants to do, and leave the rest for others; the non-casters remain focused on only what they CAN do, and have to hope the caster doesn't want to do it and do it better.

The thing is that there are many things that only the pure/high-tier casters can do. So chances are slim that they will want or be inclined to usurp a lower-tier class' role. But in an emergency situation (melee got paralyzed/dominated, e.g.) they can do so, and that's okay.

So long as you make the choice between doing a melee's job and doing a caster's job a meaningful one (as 3.5 failed to do with the druid, and PF arguably pulled off, or at least improved) then it doesn't actually matter that the caster is capable of doing their job - if doing so hurts their ability to be a caster, they will have that meaningful choice to make. And if the melee player wants to have that meaningful choice himself, he can play a caster or gish build himself.



I'd like to see this thread categorize niches and "things to do in game" into three categories:
Things magic absolutely should be doing, and probably is necessary for
Things magic may or may not do, and which may have mundane solutions as well
Things magic absolutely should not be doing, and therefore which is the exclusive purview of mundane solutions.


Third category should be empty - or at the very least, it should be "things that magic can do, but the party is generally better off doing mundanely due to {limitations.}" For example, a mage can easily open locks with a spoken incantation, but a rogue can do it quietly an unlimited number of times per day, as well as detect any traps that may be in the lock, so generally you want him to do it instead.

[Segev]

Interesting thoughts, Phelix. One thing I'll note, however, is that what gives T1 and T2 its power is often its versatility. Whether that's the prepared caster's one day or the spontaneous caster's selection at level-up, they have far more choices than to non-casters.

These choices give them the right tool for just about any job. Particularly those which summon and call creatures to serve the mage, but hardly limited to that.

Fighter-types and rogue-types will need something that can expand as easily (each new book had a dozen or few new spells) and which can be selected and possibly traded out semi-regularly.

I've toyed with something akin to your "greater skill tricks" in the past, trying to come up with a system of things you could "buy" up to your ranks of skills in that for which you buy them. It doesn't cost you SP; you just can't have more "points" worth on a skill that has fewer ranks than "points.'

[Segev]

Is Vaarsuvius boss of the OotS? Is Durkon?

Obviously not, so something has gone wrong in your reasoning here.I would dare say that Order of the Stick is, in fact, a comic strip, written by a man with a plot and with characters capable of exactly what he decides they can do and which has established precedent for going with things not strictly by the RAW.

That means that your examples are not useful. Besides, I noted this was a problem with the characterization of wizards as lawyers who keep the other PCs around to write their legal briefs.

To play with your argument, however, V follows Roy because V thinks he should. V has demonstrated quite thoroughly that he cannot be bound to Roy's leadership against his will. Nor can he be bulled into doing what he's told by Roy; he has to agree it is worth doing.

A caster determined to take over a party could do so. A fighter determined to do so would have a hard time of it. A rogue or bard would be capable in theory, through charismatic interaction, but a wizard could do it without regard for under-developed sub-systems, such as skills.


Being the most powerful member of the party does not mean you're in charge, it simply makes you the artillery/secret weapon. Your mistake is in thinking that's universally a problem - whereas I would say, players who choose to play lower-tier classes do so because they don't want to be the artillery or the answer-man.Except that those players who play lower-tier will be overshadowed unless the player of the T1 chooses to hold back in some fashion. (Or lacks system mastery.)


You are the one applying that negative connotation (schlub, grunt) to the mundane classes, not me.Whoever said "the lawyer could write his legal briefs, but has para-legals do it for him" (and I am paraphrasing, I know) basically equated non-casters to grunt-workers. Even if it's skilled labor, they're doing something that we acknowledge another character could do, but doesn't want to.

Replace the rogue and fighter with casters who have spells chosen to fill those roles as-is, and you have fully functional parties with PCs who can shift roles if they need to.


The thing is that there are many things that only the pure/high-tier casters can do. So chances are slim that they will want or be inclined to usurp a lower-tier class' role. But in an emergency situation (melee got paralyzed/dominated, e.g.) they can do so, and that's okay.The first part of this paragraph belies the second. The T1 classes can do anything, as you say. Why do they need the T3s? Why not find another T1 who wants to do that role?

The problem is precisely that "there are many things that only the pure/high-tier casters can do," but that the same is not true of the mundanes. Why oppose making there be things the T3 and lower classes can do that T1s cannot? Moreover, why is it okay that the T1 can step in "in an emergency situation" and do the Fighter's or the Rogue's job, but not that a Fighter could "step in in an emergency" and do the T1's jobs?

Playing a non-caster gimps your choices. It makes it so that, if it turns out you really want your character to have facility in some area, you may not be able to do ANYTHING to achieve it. Meanwhile, playing the caster, you could assume the role you thought you wanted to play with a T3 or lower class, and retain the versatility to branch in whatever direction you need to in order to acquire capabilities you feel you need.

It makes it so that playing a T1 is just better than playing a T3, as evidenced by the existence of the Tier classification at all.


So long as you make the choice between doing a melee's job and doing a caster's job a meaningful one (as 3.5 failed to do with the druid, and PF arguably pulled off, or at least improved) then it doesn't actually matter that the caster is capable of doing their job - if doing so hurts their ability to be a caster, they will have that meaningful choice to make. And if the melee player wants to have that meaningful choice himself, he can play a caster or gish build himself.
That, right there, is the reason there exists a problem. There is no reason to play anything but a caster, because a caster can make the meaningful choice (and maybe even change his mind later in his life), while the non-caster has no meaningful choice and is stuck doing what he started on doing.

Because training/study/etc. have no mechanical reflection that makes players have reason not to play the guy with years of hard study under his belt, because playing a wizard is as easy to do as playing a fighter (that is, you pick one, and that choice is all it takes to be in that class), the usual "well, a lawyer has more training and thus SHOULD be better at things than the para-legal who does his briefs" argument used in the real world doesn't work.


Third category should be empty - or at the very least, it should be "things that magic can do, but the party is generally better off doing mundanely due to {limitations.}" For example, a mage can easily open locks with a spoken incantation, but a rogue can do it quietly an unlimited number of times per day, as well as detect any traps that may be in the lock, so generally you want him to do it instead.
You say "should" be empty. Why? Using, "the way it's already written, it IS empty" is not justification for why it SHOULD be.

Why do you believe that the non-caster options should all be inferior to the caster options? Why should playing a caster be the best choice you can make, regardless of role you wish to fulfill? Why should it never be better to pick Fighter if you want to be the front-line tank than it is to pick Cleric or Druid?

[Pan151]

I'm sorry, Pan, but your analysis - at least in the example comparison you give - is wrong. The best you can hope for to get the Fighter "catching up" with the wizard, when you have arbitrarily high wealth, is that the Fighter will have items that give him item-based duplications of the spells the Wizard has cast, particularly those with ongoing effects.

The fighter "hits like a truck," but he's not going to hit the wizard. The wizard isn't going to deign to face the fighter in combat, melee or otherwise. The fighter will be facing a simulacrum or an astral projection, and even with the best tools for information gathering that money can buy, the wizard has spells AND items to defend himself even from those. Not the least of which include the wizard's contingent teleports if, somehow, the fighter gets within combat range of his true body.

The thing about MOBAs is that even the "fighter types" have "spells." That is, they have combat abilities that are specific and strong techniques they can invoke. "Mages" in MOBAs don't have "more" spells than "fighters;" they have different "spells" with effects focused on a more "magical" theme.

4e is oft accused of being an MMO; it isn't. It's a lot more like a very involved MOBA. (That's not entirely fair as a comparison, either, but if you think of MOBAs as using highly simplified 4e rules, you can get at least a modicum of a picture of it.)

This thread is meant to be about identifying niches, not arguing that the tier system is invalid nor whether to ban T1 classes or not. "Balancing" the non-casters, theoretically, can be done by making sure the non-casters are needed by casters at least as badly as non-casters need casters.

The fact that fighters have spells in MOBAs is irrelevant. The term non-scaling factors is used when comparing "carries" and "non-carries", not casters and non-casters.

At any rate, my point is valid -you cannot balance the whole caster-noncaster thing by directly fiddling with spells and rules. As others have said above, magic is just too big to try and re-balance. Not without having to basically rewrite a large portion of 3.5, at any rate.

The easiest way is to fiddle with the players' wealth. If that fighter has wealth way beyond the one suggested for his level, then he can get the methods to get to the enemy spellcaster without having to get 20 different buffs from the party's cleric. If that fighter has wealth way beyond the one suggested for his level, you can put higher CR encounters that the wizard cannot hold with his spells and summons alone. Suddenly, the fighter (or barbarian, or monk etc) has a reason of existance in a party with other casters. Suddenly, the wizard (or cleric, or druid) cannot autowin vs a non-caster just because they have high level spells.

Non-caster classes can use magic just as well as caster classes. They simply cannot cast it as an innate ability. So, if you want to balance the two, simply get them at a level where they both have a decent amount of magic going for them. If you are trying to balance mundane vs non-mundane on the other hand... that's a pointless struggle. It's like trying to balance a slingshot vs a handgun - it functionally impossible.

[Psyren]

I would dare say that Order of the Stick is, in fact, a comic strip, written by a man with a plot and with characters capable of exactly what he decides they can do and which has established precedent for going with things not strictly by the RAW.

Nobody does things "strictly by the RAW." Look at the arguments on this forum, and look at the Dysfunctional RAW thread - every table has at least one houserule, or has decided on exactly how some vague spell or bit of text in a rulebook will actually work at the table. So "it's a comic!"is a pointless statement. They are an adventuring party in a narrative - you know, like every D&D game ever - and so who is "boss" of the party (if that title even means anything) is not purely a function of power. And they don't even have players, with different levels of skill and experience at the game, as a factor besides.



To play with your argument, however, V follows Roy because V thinks he should. V has demonstrated quite thoroughly that he cannot be bound to Roy's leadership against his will. Nor can he be bulled into doing what he's told by Roy; he has to agree it is worth doing.

It's almost like they're colleagues or something.



A caster determined to take over a party could do so.

PvP is not an assumption of this game. It is not designed for it, it is not balanced for it, and it is not a "problem" to be "fixed."



Except that those players who play lower-tier will be overshadowed unless the player of the T1 chooses to hold back in some fashion. (Or lacks system mastery.)

You have yet to demonstrate why this is a problem. Intraparty imbalance has been a thing since 1e; the game has yet to implode.



Whoever said "the lawyer could write his legal briefs, but has para-legals do it for him" (and I am paraphrasing, I know) basically equated non-casters to grunt-workers. Even if it's skilled labor, they're doing something that we acknowledge another character could do, but doesn't want to.

"Want" has nothing to do with it. It's a question of efficiency. The group as a whole will perform better if the caster is covering the caster-only bases and the mundanes are doing the things they can do, than if the caster is doing their job and being less effective at his own as a result.



The first part of this paragraph belies the second. The T1 classes can do anything, as you say. Why do they need the T3s? Why not find another T1 who wants to do that role?

Because the other player wants to be a T3 class. Or T4, or T5 even. This is not a problem.



Playing a non-caster gimps your choices. It makes it so that, if it turns out you really want your character to have facility in some area, you may not be able to do ANYTHING to achieve it.

Presumably if that truly bothered them, they would play something that could do everything. You don't roll a fighter thinking "gosh, I'd really love to teleport the party everywhere one day."



You say "should" be empty. Why? Using, "the way it's already written, it IS empty" is not justification for why it SHOULD be.

Because magic should be capable of anything. (Note: this is not the same as being capable of everything.) To do otherwise is to limit the stories that can be retold using the game system. For instance, should spellcasters be able to open locks? That sounds like something you might have put in your third category. Yet take it away and all of a sudden you've lost iconic stories like Harry Potter. (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Unlocking_Charm)



Why do you believe that the non-caster options should all be inferior to the caster options?

I never said this at all. Indeed, I pointed out several reasons the mundane option might be better - it uses few resources, it doesn't require noisy verbal components etc. That doesn't mean there should be no magical option for X at all, just that there should be situations where one might be preferable to the other.

[Segev]

At any rate, my point is valid -you cannot balance the whole caster-noncaster thing by directly fiddling with spells and rules. As others have said above, magic is just too big to try and re-balance. Not without having to basically rewrite a large portion of 3.5, at any rate.

I get the feeling I have been unclear. The purpose of this exercise is not to tweak D&D 3.5. It is to think about the underlying fundamental design principles. My hypothesis is that, if we establish a list of niches, capabilities, or schticks which the various classes should fill, and define what magic should absolutely be able to do as well as what it absolutely should not, and what magic should definitely be needed for versus what may be achieved by mundane means, we can use that to determine guidelines for creating spells in some hypothetical rewrite of D&D (call it 10th edition, just to emphasize that it's a mental exercise and not an attempt to create something usable tomorrow).

In this "10e," then, it would have underlying design criteria that state "no spells that do X should be written" and "spells that do Y should be less effective than mundane means to do the same" and "spells definitely should do Z and be the best solutions for Z-type problems."



PvP is not an assumption of this game. It is not designed for it, it is not balanced for it, and it is not a "problem" to be "fixed."Irrelevant. NPC v NPC is something that is assumed to happen, and thus NPC parties and societies would and should be dominated by mages. Tippyverse may not be the only way things could possibly go, but it has a point in that, as mechanics work in D&D 3e, casters would be the rulers (de facto if not de jure).


You have yet to demonstrate why this is a problem. Intraparty imbalance has been a thing since 1e; the game has yet to implode.You seem to be under the misaprehension that I approach this from the perspective of an unacceptable state which makes 3.5e unplayable. I apologize if I've given that impression. I enjoy 3.5 greatly, even with its flaws.

This is, to me, an engineering/design exercise. "How could we do this better?" I am approaching it from the standpoint that it would be better if the choice between playing a Fighter and playing, say, a Cleric were meaningful with honest give and take. You, however, noted that the guy-who-would-play-a-fighter could play a gish or a caster if he wanted the choice and chance to change what role he plays in the party later on. Meanwhile, the guy who plays a cleric or a wizard or another caster can decide to just take on front-line fighter duties later on.

It isn't a meaningful choice when the choices are "buy this car that goes from point A to point B, but lacks A/C, heat, or a radio...or buy this other car that goes from point A to point B and has every luxury bell and whistle you can think of...and they both cost the same amount of money."

In 3.5, the choice is slightly more meaningful than that; the touch and handling of the first "car" - the fighter-type or the rogue - is different and it has a different-looking body than the second "car" with all the bells and whistles - the caster. But that is not sufficient to make it good design.

The purpose of this exercise is to elevate the meaningfulness of the choice. Make choosing NOT to play a fighter as meaningful as choosing NOT to play a cleric. As it stands, choosing NOT to play a fighter doesn't cost you the ability to play the fighter's role; choosing NOT to play a cleric DOES cost you the ability to play the cleric's role.

This is, from the perspective of this exercise in design, a problem to be solved.


"Want" has nothing to do with it. It's a question of efficiency. The group as a whole will perform better if the caster is covering the caster-only bases and the mundanes are doing the things they can do, than if the caster is doing their job and being less effective at his own as a result.But the party is no less efficient if the "mundanes" are replaced by additional casters who are choosing to do the mundanes' jobs. Replace the fighter with another cleric and the rogue with a wizard, and pick their spells appropriately, and the party of two clerics and two wizards will be no less efficient than the party of a cleric, a fighter, a wizard, and a rogue.


Because the other player wants to be a T3 class. Or T4, or T5 even. This is not a problem.Yes, but what does he get from it?

Flavor? Sure, that's valid in 3.5. I know I have chosen weaker-tier classes, myself, for flavor or some quirky mechanic that looked like fun. But from the sheer perspective of playing the game as a game, all those things the T3/4s can do, I could have a T1 who can choose to do them when needed and who could do a whole lot more.


Presumably if that truly bothered them, they would play something that could do everything. You don't roll a fighter thinking "gosh, I'd really love to teleport the party everywhere one day."1) That's true. So why don't people play NPC classes like Commoner?
1a) You don't go in playing a Commoner thinking "gosh, I'd really love to bash in my foes' faces with a greataxe in a furious rage."
1b) You don't expect somebody to go into playing a wizard thinking "gosh, I'd really love to tank the front line of the skirmish one day." And yet, the guy playing the fighter is told, "because you didn't plan on teleporting the party when the game started, you can't change your mind now," while the wizard is told, "even though you never planned to tank the front line, you have the ability if you decide later to use it."

2) The fact that playing a fighter is actually WORSE at doing the fighter's job than, say, playing a cleric or a druid (or even a properly-decked-out wizard) makes it a trap for the inexperienced. He may not go in thinking "gosh, I'd love to teleport the party," but he may well feel he's 'lost the game' when the wizard doesn't need him to tank anymore, and his capabilities are just not keeping up in utility with those of the cleric or druid.

Again, I'm not saying I hate 3.5 and want to change it. I certainly am not planning tweaks, because the "problem" (such as it is) runs deeper and would take a fundamental change to the design principles. The purpose of this thread is to discuss what design principles and some specific guidelines therefor would lead to a more balanced hypothetical game if developed in the future.


Because magic should be capable of anything. (Note: this is not the same as being capable of everything.) To do otherwise is to limit the stories that can be retold using the game system.To not elevate mundanes to capacity to do anything (which is not the same as being able to do everything), you also limit the stories that can be retold using the game system. Game systems are limited. They have stories they tell better, and stories they tell worse, due to their mechanics. I wouldn't tell the same story in Exalted as I would in BESM as I would in D&D.

D&D is well-designed for, and should continue to be (in my opinion) designed for, mid-to-high fantasy. It is not shounen action anime (that's more Exalted's level of phenomenal cosmic power), and it isn't gritty and realistic, and it certainly isn't "modern." (I am not denigrating d20 modern, but I wouldn't personally use it over other systems better designed for modern settings.)


For instance, should spellcasters be able to open locks? That sounds like something you might have put in your third category. Yet take it away and all of a sudden you've lost iconic stories like Harry Potter. (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Unlocking_Charm)Note that Harry Potter is a story where everybody important is a wizard. Magic can do anything, and this actually did lead to mages being "better" than muggles. THe only thing that limits mages is that their choice to be secretive and insular means they didn't keep up with the technological solutions of the muggles. IF the two integrated, mages would be "just better" than muggles.

If you want to tell a story where those who have magic are "just better," you can. D&D is (somewhat unintentionally) a good system in which to do so. But 3e did exacerbate the issue, as you just plain don't need T3 or weaker classes if you have enough T1s or T2s to fill all the positions.

If you want to tell a story about a party of adventurers where the people who chose to be casters need non-casters in the party to help them out - where a party of snobbish clerics and wizards who fill the roles traditionally filled by non-casters is actually going to suffer an Aesop about how everybody has something to offer (because the main character party does better due to having non-casters in it) - then you need there to be something that a caster cannot do as well as the non-caster whose job it is.

That is the kind of tale D&D generally promises: a party that includes a fighter and a rogue is better at doing its job than a party that replaces the fighter and rogue with an extra cleric and wizard.

It's playable as-is. A party that has non-casters can be played effectively. But the choice to include non-casters weakened the party's potential. Playing a party of two clerics and two wizards, with one cleric being the "fighter" and one wizard being the "rogue," will be no less effective under normal circumstances, and can shift into having extra magical firepower if it needs it.

I'd like, as an exercise in game design, to rethink what aspects of the "fighter" and "rogue" roles should be exclusive to the non-caster classes designed to play them. What should casters NOT be able to do, such that a party with non-casters in it to fill those roles will be stronger for the synergy?



[QUOTE=Psyren;16790099]I never said this at all.You said that it's not a problem that mundane classes can be replaced by casters, but that the reverse is not true. This is a definition of being "weaker:" to be unable to do what another can when that other can do all you can.


Indeed, I pointed out several reasons the mundane option might be better - it uses few resources, it doesn't require noisy verbal components etc. That doesn't mean there should be no magical option for X at all, just that there should be situations where one might be preferable to the other.Why, then, would it be a problem if the non-caster could do everything that casters can, and just take more resources/be less desirable due to more awkward method/whatever?

If it's not a problem that non-casters can't do everything casters can, would it be a problem if they could? If so, why? And then, why does that not extend equally to why casters being able to do everything non-casters can is supposedly not a problem?

[12owlbears]

I agree that mundane skills could use some powering up but, what most people fail to realize in these threads s that the T1 casters' power is mostly theoretical. In my experience most players don't have the patients for high optimization shenanigans and those that do usually don't play T1. The only time I've seen the difference in power become a serious problem is when a campaign has to many of one type of encounter, when you have a mostly combat focused game the skill focused characters will get bored and vise-versa. Most tier problems can be solved with an out of character conversation.

[AmberVael]

I get the feeling I have been unclear. The purpose of this exercise is not to tweak D&D 3.5. It is to think about the underlying fundamental design principles. My hypothesis is that, if we establish a list of niches, capabilities, or schticks which the various classes should fill, and define what magic should absolutely be able to do as well as what it absolutely should not, and what magic should definitely be needed for versus what may be achieved by mundane means, we can use that to determine guidelines for creating spells in some hypothetical rewrite of D&D (call it 10th edition, just to emphasize that it's a mental exercise and not an attempt to create something usable tomorrow).

In this "10e," then, it would have underlying design criteria that state "no spells that do X should be written" and "spells that do Y should be less effective than mundane means to do the same" and "spells definitely should do Z and be the best solutions for Z-type problems."

By what criteria would you even determine what magic shouldn't be able to do? In fact, why should there be something that magic can't do? Is there any compelling reason that magic shouldn't be able to do anything a mundane character can do?

If you say "one class shouldn't have everything" then I agree, and point you back to my previous post where I addressed that topic. But as magic can and should span multiple classes, I see no issue with it overlapping what anyone else can do- it just lets you give different flavors and styles on the same kind of mechanics, and that's something that D&D typically likes.

[12owlbears]

that's why I like the ritual magic from 4E it lets everyone have some magic:smallsmile:

[Segev]

If you say "one class shouldn't have everything" then I agree, and point you back to my previous post where I addressed that topic. But as magic can and should span multiple classes, I see no issue with it overlapping what anyone else can do- it just lets you give different flavors and styles on the same kind of mechanics, and that's something that D&D typically likes.
Fair enough. Let me turn this around on you, then: Do you see issue with non-magical classes being able to span the territory traditionally reserved for "casters?" e.g. clerics and wizards? Do you see issue with non-magical classes overlapping with everything wizards (for example) can do? It still has different flavors and styles of mechanics.


By what criteria would you even determine what magic shouldn't be able to do? In fact, why should there be something that magic can't do? Is there any compelling reason that magic shouldn't be able to do anything a mundane character can do?The criteria would be mildly arbitrary, as the whole purpose of this thread is to discuss and establish them. The idea is that you have your traditional 4-5 man party consisting of Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Rogue, and sometimes Bard. Each of these has an iconic role, and at least the first four should be essential for maximal efficacy as an adventuring party doing adventuring party things.

Ideally, therefore, you establish what it is that each of their iconic roles is, and you stake out unique proprietary ownership for each class over the central span of that role, such that no other class can do it as well if they can indeed even do it at all.

We already have wizards pretty firmly staked out over the ground of glass cannon artillery and esoteric alterations to the fundamental conditions of the problem at hand (conjuring stuff, changing one thing into another, making people able to fly...). The cleric is fairly firmly straddling the "healbot" job, and is the one with most extensive control over buffing (though the wizard shares a bit of this).

The issue is that Rogues don't have anything they can do better than, say, a wizard who says he wants to do it. Wizards, in fact, have spells that exactly duplicate several iconic jobs of the rogue, but do it perfectly where he has a chance to fail.

Fighters are even worse off; a cleric who tries moderately hard can do his job better than he can.

Actually staking out what ground the Fighter and Rogue should have, and identifying what they should have exclusive purview (or at least be flat-out the best at doing even if the casters or each other can do a little bit of it not quite as well), is therefore the next necessary step towards identifying what "spells should not be able to do."

The compelling reason is that we want D&D's claims about the various classes each having their own niche and necessary contribution to the party to be true.

Again, I'm not talking about tweaking things. This is an exercise in game design philosophy and base principle development.



(Notably, if you answer that you don't have a problem with non-casters doing everything casters can do, just with different flavor et al, you're approaching the other solution I've contemplated: elevating everything to T2 or T1.)

[Rebel7284]

One way to balance it is:
- Casters use the Ardent/Wielder Mechanic for getting a very limited number of spells.
- Non-casters all take TOB classes.

Everyone is then roughly on the same playing field for MOST of the game.

This isn't really a problem in general if players all optimize to the same tier, whether you try to enforce it in the rules or not is a different story. Of course Wizards of the Coast thinking the classes are balanced as written is laughable.

[Emperor Tippy]

If I was redesigning D&D from the ground up then I would make magic skill based and use an action point cost system.

Want to learn a spell? Then you need X ranks in the related skill.
Want to cast a spell that you know? Then you need to make a skill check for the related skill with a DC based on the spells level (in 3.5 I would probably go something like 15 or 20 plus spell level).

Want to take *any* action, from swinging a sword to casting a spell? Then you need to spend an action point. Move actions might be 1 point while standard actions might be 2 points, full round actions are 3 points, swift actions are 4 points, and immediate actions are 5 points. As you level the amount of points that you get to use per round increases. Maybe level 1 gets 3 points and then a point every level there after.

So a Wizard would have "Arcane Spellcasting" as a class skill and maybe have other spell casting related abilities like "casting spells with a level equal to one third or less of your Wizard level cost one fewer action point than they would otherwise cost" while a Fighter would have to cross class the skill and would instead have things like "melee attacks cost a point less".

But that is basically scrapping and reworking the whole system from the ground up. Although on the plus side it does make for a far more fluid and versatile system. Enemy trying to move to get the squishy wizard? Well spend 5 of your points to move as an immediate action and then another 5 to make an attack, as one example of something that this system would do far better than the 3.5 system.

[Pan151]

I get the feeling I have been unclear. The purpose of this exercise is not to tweak D&D 3.5. It is to think about the underlying fundamental design principles. My hypothesis is that, if we establish a list of niches, capabilities, or schticks which the various classes should fill, and define what magic should absolutely be able to do as well as what it absolutely should not, and what magic should definitely be needed for versus what may be achieved by mundane means, we can use that to determine guidelines for creating spells in some hypothetical rewrite of D&D (call it 10th edition, just to emphasize that it's a mental exercise and not an attempt to create something usable tomorrow).

In this "10e," then, it would have underlying design criteria that state "no spells that do X should be written" and "spells that do Y should be less effective than mundane means to do the same" and "spells definitely should do Z and be the best solutions for Z-type problems."


Magic should be able to do everything. Magic should be the best solution to any problem. If that is not the case, and you can casually match magic with totally mundane skills, then it's not magic. Magic is, after all, by definition, something that cannot be done by mundane means.

It should obviously not always be the best solution (a simple diplomancy check is usually a better choice than a Dominate spell), and not every magic user should be able to do everything at once, but the only hard limitation should be that magic should never be able to create something out of nothing (because then any universe would inevitably dissolve in a sea of Pun-Puns and traps of create food/water/gold).

You cannot expect non-caster classes to keep up with innate magic users with mundane means. A 100% mundane person cannot possibly hope to keep up with a mage, just like a 100% unarmed person cannot hope to keep up with a mech suit. Not without giving an entirely new definition of what magic means in a high-fantasy setting, anyway.

[Hurnn]

There is no need to nerf caster spells.

The problem with the Tier system is that an assumption is made that a level 1 fighter is equivalent to a level 1 Mage (or ought to be).

This is false. Classes at the same level will never be equal to one another in power. They are unequal in hit dice, weapons available, average damage of said weapons, armor class, and relative damage output. (I would go as far as to say that a Fighter1 is close in power to a Wizard3.)

The non-casters have the upper hand until such time that the casters gain their 5th level spells. When they get their 6th level spells, the casters victory becomes "something something dark side complete."

The real problem is that the classes all share the same rate of progression by experience points. All we have to do is adhere to the xp charts from 2nd edition.
Then balance will be restored. (Hopefully 5th edition will do that.)

Thank you for listening.

I think the power shift happens starting with 4th lvl spells, 3rd lvl spells they are more or less even, beyond 4th and its all over.

[Dimers]

I'd like to see this thread categorize niches and "things to do in game" into three categories:
Things magic absolutely should be doing, and probably is necessary for
Things magic may or may not do, and which may have mundane solutions as well
Things magic absolutely should not be doing, and therefore which is the exclusive purview of mundane solutions.

Put briefly, I feel that magic SHOULD be good for

transportation
communication
forecasting, scouting
sensing otherworldly things
mind control in a more absolute sense than mundane persuasion, including illusions that exist within the mind
reducing or precluding otherworldly effects


I feel that magic should be ON PAR (or thereabouts) with specialized mundane expertise in

fixing body problems -- curing hit points, nonmagical disease, etc.
providing small fixed bonuses to a wide variety of rolls


I feel that magic should NOT be particularly strong at

manipulating forces and energies
manipulating luck/fate
providing large arrays of new abilities to choose from, such as via Polymorph or Wish


I think the "should not be good at" section is in part because those abilities are so very open-ended and abusable.

[Phelix-Mu]

I actually do kind of like the idea of mundane versions of things that normally are considered "magic."

Examples:

Boom-boom: This game sure could use a mad bomber class (or just port in Alchemist).

Healer: I always liked the idea of a class that had a mastery-of-self like thing going on, that would cause their own body to heal very rapidly. Maybe make this a type of monk ACF that focuses on using the monk's ki to heal themselves, and also to heal others. With some refluffing, I could see this being Ex, not Su.

Diviner: Ho ho ho, this would be a nice place for some Far Realm/insanity based stuff. Normal people rely on normal senses. Me? I'm just tainted by a place with no time/space/silly physics, and my brain no longer relies on the kind of classic stimuli that y'all are stuck using. The game is totally lacking more Far Realm feats and stuff, and I don't see anything inherently magical about aliens having cracked open my pc's skull and turned him into a walking experiment in madness.

So, yeah, if I wanted to expand mundane spheres of influence, I could fluff it pretty much any way I wanted to. Some of this might change the flavor of a setting or campaign a bit more or a bit less, but there's already huge variation from Eberron to Athas to Aber-Toril.

On the other hand, I do have a small problem with spells that totally axe entire fantasy tropes with a single casting. There is room for spells to be awesome without forcing the entire rest of the game to play by their rules.

[Psyren]

Irrelevant. NPC v NPC is something that is assumed to happen, and thus NPC parties and societies would and should be dominated by mages. Tippyverse may not be the only way things could possibly go, but it has a point in that, as mechanics work in D&D 3e, casters would be the rulers (de facto if not de jure).

Yeah - and they are! Toril, Athas, Eberron, Golarion, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Oerth - you name it, casters rule the roost. It's a logical consequence of magic working the way it does, i.e. at all. Again, this is not a problem to be fixed.



This is, to me, an engineering/design exercise. "How could we do this better?" I am approaching it from the standpoint that it would be better if the choice between playing a Fighter and playing, say, a Cleric were meaningful with honest give and take. You, however, noted that the guy-who-would-play-a-fighter could play a gish or a caster if he wanted the choice and chance to change what role he plays in the party later on. Meanwhile, the guy who plays a cleric or a wizard or another caster can decide to just take on front-line fighter duties later on.

It isn't a meaningful choice when the choices are "buy this car that goes from point A to point B, but lacks A/C, heat, or a radio...or buy this other car that goes from point A to point B and has every luxury bell and whistle you can think of...and they both cost the same amount of money."

The difference between the two "cars" is not cost, it's complexity. Some people just want to sit down and roll dice with their friends, and leave all the fiddly parts of the game in the "Spells" chapter alone entirely. Even some veteran players want to just veg out and play a Barbarian for a while. Those simpler classes exist to fill that need.

Your car analogy would be better off as something like Linux vs. Windows. One has far more capability/customizability, but it also requires much more mastery and expertise to make it work. Windows is not only less capable, it's more expensive, yet it is far and away more popular because not everyone wants or needs complex.



The purpose of this exercise is to elevate the meaningfulness of the choice. Make choosing NOT to play a fighter as meaningful as choosing NOT to play a cleric.

Leveling out the power field across classes has been tried before. It's called 4e and it certainly works if balance problems were hurting your play experience, but it does so at the expense of storytelling through mechanics and



But the party is no less efficient if the "mundanes" are replaced by additional casters who are choosing to do the mundanes' jobs.

This is only true if the players playing those casters can use them effectively. This is much less frequent at actual tables than it is in messageboard forum land where everybody is a world class tabletop player.



Yes, but what does he get from it?

Flavor?

Simplicity primarily (see the car discussion above), but flavor is a reason too.


1) That's true. So why don't people play NPC classes like Commoner?
1a) You don't go in playing a Commoner thinking "gosh, I'd really love to bash in my foes' faces with a greataxe in a furious rage."
1b) You don't expect somebody to go into playing a wizard thinking "gosh, I'd really love to tank the front line of the skirmish one day." And yet, the guy playing the fighter is told, "because you didn't plan on teleporting the party when the game started, you can't change your mind now," while the wizard is told, "even though you never planned to tank the front line, you have the ability if you decide later to use it."

2) The fact that playing a fighter is actually WORSE at doing the fighter's job than, say, playing a cleric or a druid (or even a properly-decked-out wizard) makes it a trap for the inexperienced. He may not go in thinking "gosh, I'd love to teleport the party," but he may well feel he's 'lost the game' when the wizard doesn't need him to tank anymore, and his capabilities are just not keeping up in utility with those of the cleric or druid.

1) Because there's a lower bound to these things as much as there is an upper bound. Commoner crosses that threshold into being too simple and too weak. (It also breaks verisimilitude the first time you haul in more gold from one adventure than a Commoner would make in an entire lifetime and still be called a Commoner.)

2) At which point he is ready to move on and maybe give that cool Magus or Druid his buddy was playing a try. It's not like the world ended when he learned what tiers are.



Note that Harry Potter is a story where everybody important is a wizard. Magic can do anything, and this actually did lead to mages being "better" than muggles. THe only thing that limits mages is that their choice to be secretive and insular means they didn't keep up with the technological solutions of the muggles. IF the two integrated, mages would be "just better" than muggles.

If you want to tell a story where those who have magic are "just better," you can. D&D is (somewhat unintentionally) a good system in which to do so. But 3e did exacerbate the issue, as you just plain don't need T3 or weaker classes if you have enough T1s or T2s to fill all the positions.

I can assure you it was very intentional (see my sig for quotes from all editions of D&D prior to 3rd.) And yes, wizards are Just Better, and should be - potentially. Realizing that potential is a rite of passage within the metagame.


If you want to tell a story about a party of adventurers where the people who chose to be casters need non-casters in the party to help them out - where a party of snobbish clerics and wizards who fill the roles traditionally filled by non-casters is actually going to suffer an Aesop about how everybody has something to offer (because the main character party does better due to having non-casters in it) - then you need there to be something that a caster cannot do as well as the non-caster whose job it is.

The funny thing about potential is that that's all it is. If you have players who can all coax a wizard's potential out and obviate the need for a fighter and rogue in all cases, then of course they're better off all being wizards. What I'm pointing out to you though is that very often isn't the case in practice.



You said that it's not a problem that mundane classes can be replaced by casters, but that the reverse is not true. This is a definition of being "weaker:" to be unable to do what another can when that other can do all you can.

Why, then, would it be a problem if the non-caster could do everything that casters can, and just take more resources/be less desirable due to more awkward method/whatever?

If it's not a problem that non-casters can't do everything casters can, would it be a problem if they could? If so, why? And then, why does that not extend equally to why casters being able to do everything non-casters can is supposedly not a problem?

"Can do" and "could do" is not "will do." Without the necessary player skill, that caster is not taking anyone's job, or he's doing it so poorly he may as well not have bothered.

Someone has a quote in their sig around here about Wizards having more potential to suck than any other class because they can, say, Plane Shift to Stygia one day and get stuck, or try to bind a Pit Fiend and fail the check to keep him trapped. These even applies to smaller-scale endeavors, like incorrectly placing a fog spell, or summoning the wrong creature for the job, or starting a summon with 3 archers training arrows on you. Skill is an important factor, and the game rewards the higher skill cap of the caster with higher capabilities.

[AmberVael]

Fair enough. Let me turn this around on you, then: Do you see issue with non-magical classes being able to span the territory traditionally reserved for "casters?" e.g. clerics and wizards? Do you see issue with non-magical classes overlapping with everything wizards (for example) can do? It still has different flavors and styles of mechanics.
Absolutely no problem at all. Admittedly, I do have trouble seeing how they would do much of what we can accept magic as doing, but if you want to elevate them to superhuman levels then they can do a lot. And honestly, there are some really awesome concepts that fall under that. 3.5 suffers because it mires the 'mundane' classes in reality while accepting that magic can do anything. If I can make Skuld the half elven queen who can raise an army of undead, why can't I make Arjuna, who can fire showers of arrows and subsist on nothing but air?


The criteria would be mildly arbitrary, as the whole purpose of this thread is to discuss and establish them. The idea is that you have your traditional 4-5 man party consisting of Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Rogue, and sometimes Bard. Each of these has an iconic role, and at least the first four should be essential for maximal efficacy as an adventuring party doing adventuring party things.

Ideally, therefore, you establish what it is that each of their iconic roles is, and you stake out unique proprietary ownership for each class over the central span of that role, such that no other class can do it as well if they can indeed even do it at all.

We already have wizards pretty firmly staked out over the ground of glass cannon artillery and esoteric alterations to the fundamental conditions of the problem at hand (conjuring stuff, changing one thing into another, making people able to fly...). The cleric is fairly firmly straddling the "healbot" job, and is the one with most extensive control over buffing (though the wizard shares a bit of this).
This is distinctly different from limiting what magic can do. Right here you're talking about limiting specific classes to specific roles. Within the classes you name there are three magic classes (mage, bard, cleric)- you're obviously not arguing to limit all those three classes to the same role, or under the illusion that they all share the same pool of abilities. So really, you're already thinking and talking about what I was talking about. You don't care about what magic can do, you care about what each class can do- that's what matters.

However, I would object to some of the other ideas you bring up. I don't think a class should have exclusive access to a specific role. They should have a unique style and set of mechanics to make them worth being a distinct class, but a system benefits from variety and options. Barbarian, Psychic Warrior, and Warblade all bring similar things to the table and really fill a very similar role, but give people a different play style and theme if they desire it.

This is why I say I don't object to magic being able to do everything. Having a Duskblade class doesn't make having a Warblade class obsolete, and yet the Duskblade does most of his fighting with magic. The Duskblade doesn't overtake other roles either, because his magic is limited to the role and theme of fighting, regardless of what magic other classes have. It's just another option for filling a specific role, one that happens to have the flavor and style of "magic."


The issue is that Rogues don't have anything they can do better than, say, a wizard who says he wants to do it. Wizards, in fact, have spells that exactly duplicate several iconic jobs of the rogue, but do it perfectly where he has a chance to fail.

Fighters are even worse off; a cleric who tries moderately hard can do his job better than he can.

Actually staking out what ground the Fighter and Rogue should have, and identifying what they should have exclusive purview (or at least be flat-out the best at doing even if the casters or each other can do a little bit of it not quite as well), is therefore the next necessary step towards identifying what "spells should not be able to do."

Right, this is the problem. The problem is that one class covers multiple roles. But is there a problem with the paladin or the beguiler, which overlap fighter and rogue already? And is there a problem with the healer or necromancer, which also use magic but are overlapped by the wizard or cleric?

It's all these powers in a single chassis that is the issue, not having so many things fall within the purview of magic. If you keep a class within bounds it shouldn't matter whether it is mundane or magic.


(Notably, if you answer that you don't have a problem with non-casters doing everything casters can do, just with different flavor et al, you're approaching the other solution I've contemplated: elevating everything to T2 or T1.)

I'd be repeating myself to address your other points, so I'll just sum up with this:
1) I have no desire to elevate everything to a sort of tier one and tier two status in which they can do everything. Quite the opposite.
2) Magic spans multiple classes and roles, but this is not a problem. You could make a magic rogue and a magic fighter that did not overshadow their counterparts, but wizard would still overshadow them.
3) Your goal is not to limit magic as a whole, but to ensure that specific classes don't overshadow each other.
4) Therefore, don't give every kind of magic to one class. Give them enough magic to fill one kind of role.
5) If you have a separate magical class for every role, that's fine, so long as they can't also do what another class does. Having a different option for the same role just allows variety.

[JaronK]

The problem with the Tier system is that an assumption is made that a level 1 fighter is equivalent to a level 1 Mage (or ought to be).

Note: This assumption is never made.

JaronK

[Lans]

Fighters are even worse off; a cleric who tries moderately hard can do his job better than he can.

This isn't actually true, a cleric has to try pretty hard to be better or equal to the fighter. This is a problem that can be solved by giving the fighter more feats, so its something pretty easily remedied. I like to do so by giving them different feat trees so they don't turn into one trick ponies. So 11 general fighter feats, then a few choices of archery, grappling, lockdown, twf, etc.

Fighter is still not going to be on par with the casters, but his role is a bit more solid.

[TuggyNE]

Segev, I like the way you think, and you seem to have a very solid grasp of just about everything I've managed to figure out so far on this topic. So it might take a good bit of thought before I can contribute much that's new.

About the only thing I've come up with that hasn't been mentioned is the idea of having magical power be something everyone has in some capacity, and in approximately equal amounts, but have fightery sorts channel it quite differently (into empowering their gear in fairly subtle ways) than magey types (which might use more blasting, or might use lasting spell effects that continue to consume power as they remain).

Perhaps the most important part of that, really, is to have all magic over a period of time continue to cost resources. That way, leaving a wizardy sort alone for seven years will not end up in a mini-Tippyverse being created and the wizard having ascended on the power of permanent/instantaneous effects alone. Instead, their total power is limited to the same order of magnitude anyone else's is: there is no open-ended action economy breakage from downtime casting, basically.


The problem with the Tier system is that an assumption is made that a level 1 fighter is equivalent to a level 1 Mage (or ought to be).

This is false. Classes at the same level will never be equal to one another in power. […]
The real problem is that the classes all share the same rate of progression by experience points. All we have to do is adhere to the xp charts from 2nd edition.

So, two classes of the same XP total can be equal, but it is not possible for classes of the same level total to be equal? This does not add up in any formal way, and either the premise is wrong or the conclusion is wrong.

[Hurnn]

This isn't actually true, a cleric has to try pretty hard to be better or equal to the fighter. This is a problem that can be solved by giving the fighter more feats, so its something pretty easily remedied. I like to do so by giving them different feat trees so they don't turn into one trick ponies. So 11 general fighter feats, then a few choices of archery, grappling, lockdown, twf, etc.

Fighter is still not going to be on par with the casters, but his role is a bit more solid.

No it doesn't solve it, and the cleric is still potentially better and can do all his class stuff plus anything else he can think of to use his spells for.

Maybe if you gave a fighter 6 skill points per lvl and a few more class skills and a feat every other level, took away the tax feats which are generally useless or something a fighter should just be able to do. Then maybe the fighter will be a better combatant, and have a use other than "Mongo hit xxx with big stick". God that would almost make him t 3....

[Togo]

The difference between the two "cars" is not cost, it's complexity. Some people just want to sit down and roll dice with their friends, and leave all the fiddly parts of the game in the "Spells" chapter alone entirely. Even some veteran players want to just veg out and play a Barbarian for a while. Those simpler classes exist to fill that need.

Except that the combat mechanics are far more complicated than spellcasting. Spells are comparatively simple, although still easy to get wrong, because all the rules are given under each spell. A point that's made very early on in Order of the Stick ("he'd be a better warrior if only he was better at math")

If you want to veg out, playing a blaster sorcerer is much simpler.



This is only true if the players playing those casters can use them effectively. This is much less frequent at actual tables than it is in messageboard forum land where everybody is a world class tabletop player.

Um.. What? While there a great many tabletop games in the world played by people with no particular knowledge of the game, there are also players out there who are vastly better at playing the game than most people here.

Forums that discuss optimisation a lot tend to produce communities who consider themselves superior players, because they associate themselves with playing characters designed to be more powerful than those around them. I'd take that attitude with a pinch of salt, because it's rarely bourn out in an actual game.


The funny thing about potential is that that's all it is. If you have players who can all coax a wizard's potential out and obviate the need for a fighter and rogue in all cases, then of course they're better off all being wizards. What I'm pointing out to you though is that very often isn't the case in practice.

Quite so. My experience has been that the 'problem' described here simply doesn't occur very often in practice, and is rarely hard to deal with. If you're happy with players trying to break your game, then yes, some classes have more tools to work with than others. If you aren't, then the theoretical number of tools available to do so doesn't really matter.

What may be worth considering is to what extent the 'problem' being described is actually a feature of the rules, and to what extent it is the way you're approaching the game.

[Psyren]

Except that the combat mechanics are far more complicated than spellcasting. Spells are comparatively simple, although still easy to get wrong, because all the rules are given under each spell.

No, they're not - not even close! The entire magic system has a whole set of meta-rules that are not in the text of a spell at all - spell schools and descriptors, casting in various situations (in a grapple, underwater, while falling, in inclement weather, while on fire etc.), line of sight, line of effect, area of effect, and so on. Being a good spellcaster is about far more than knowing what your spell's entry says - you have to know (or at least be aware of) all the meta stuff too, otherwise you will be ineffective at your job. The party won't thank you for zapping them with your color spray because you don't know how to place a cone, or gumming everyone up with your black tentacles because you didn't know spreads go around corners, or wasting your action because you didn't know patterns don't affect undead etc.



Um.. What? While there a great many tabletop games in the world played by people with no particular knowledge of the game, there are also players out there who are vastly better at playing the game than most people here.

People that good are invariably on a forum somewhere. They may not be on this forum, but learning all the tricks out there is very difficult to do with no interaction at all, and even if they're not actively participating in any discussions they're certainly lurking.


Forums that discuss optimisation a lot tend to produce communities who consider themselves superior players, because they associate themselves with playing characters designed to be more powerful than those around them. I'd take that attitude with a pinch of salt, because it's rarely bourn out in an actual game.

...

Quite so. My experience has been that the 'problem' described here simply doesn't occur very often in practice, and is rarely hard to deal with. If you're happy with players trying to break your game, then yes, some classes have more tools to work with than others. If you aren't, then the theoretical number of tools available to do so doesn't really matter.

What may be worth considering is to what extent the 'problem' being described is actually a feature of the rules, and to what extent it is the way you're approaching the game.

Sounds like we're in agreement on all of this.

[Gemini476]

Magic should be able to do everything. Magic should be the best solution to any problem. If that is not the case, and you can casually match magic with totally mundane skills, then it's not magic. Magic is, after all, by definition, something that cannot be done by mundane means.

It should obviously not always be the best solution (a simple diplomancy check is usually a better choice than a Dominate spell), and not every magic user should be able to do everything at once, but the only hard limitation should be that magic should never be able to create something out of nothing (because then any universe would inevitably dissolve in a sea of Pun-Puns and traps of create food/water/gold).

You cannot expect non-caster classes to keep up with innate magic users with mundane means. A 100% mundane person cannot possibly hope to keep up with a mage, just like a 100% unarmed person cannot hope to keep up with a mech suit. Not without giving an entirely new definition of what magic means in a high-fantasy setting, anyway.
My personal favorite, as far as magic systems go, is "if you can do it mundanely, you can do it with magic." Or, to put it in another way, "if you cannot do it mundanely, you cannot do it with magic."
Expand it a bit so that it's "if you can do it mundanely, you can do it with magic faster" to get teleportation and divination and such, and you've got a pretty decent system going. Any idiot with a lighter and a can of hairspray can make a fireball, for instance, the magic-user is just doing it without needing the tools for it. If no-one has invented flying, however, then flight is an arcane impossibility that only becomes possible somewhere around when people invent the hang-glider.
Add on some things like doing it via magic taking roughly the same effort, in the end, as doing it mundanely, and you have your self-balancing MP system. You can still get powerful wizards raising castles in seconds and teleporting people across the continent, but they'll at least be appropriately exhausted after the fact rather than 3.5's system where it's just a spell slot. Oh, and Wizards overestimating themselves and dying for their hubris.
You can't emulate all magic from mythology/literature this way, of course, but that's why you have separate classes. Make a class for rune mages, a class for demon-summoners, a class for techwizards, a class for Harry Potter-style wizards... Actually, skip the last one. HP Wizards have ridiculous spells available at-will.



The big problem with D&D wizardry, of course, is that it costs nothing at all to use. It's completely risk-free! Back in the old editions it at least took time to cast the spells so that they could be disrupted by a fighter with a dart/wizard with a crossbow. In 3.5 Wizards have preposterous amounts of spells prepared, can cast them without many issues, and even have ways to get around the whole "Concentration check" thing.

You also get into the problem of what exactly they were emulating. Gandalf, the various casters in Conan, Merlin? Very few magic-users in pre-D&D literature were PCs. They were DMPCs, villains, they had groundbreaking magical power, and none of it was directly available to the heroes. Because it wouldn't be much of a story if the heroes didn't have to struggle for victory, would it?

Then there's the issue that while the Wizard is Merlin getting into a Shapechange-duel with witches, the Fighter is King Arthur and is nowhere in the same league. Compare the feats that a Fighter 20 is capable of to someone like Herakles - could a mundane character be expected to complete the Twelve Labors? If he cannot, then why is he in the same adventures as a Wizard 20, a being who has more power than some mythological gods?

[Emperor Tippy]

Compare the feats that a Fighter 20 is capable of to someone like Herakles - could a mundane character be expected to complete the Twelve Labors? If he cannot, then why is he in the same adventures as a Wizard 20, a being who has more power than some mythological gods?

Herakles's feats can be matched or exceeded by a 12th level Fighter.

[Shining Wrath]

Things that *might* help

Magic can do anything, until it can't.

A starting point would be to go through the non casting classes, identify their unique class features, and then ban spells that duplicate those features. So, Knock is gone, because opening doors is a special thing for rogues and some others. Detect Trap, same story. Anything that raises a caster's attack bonus is gone. Spells that boost physical abilities only work if there's something there to work with, e.g., Bull's Strength has NO effect on someone with strength less than 15.
You can always summon something to fight and find traps for you, until you can't

Summons above a certain level should require that the caster be on good terms with the rulers of the plane where the summoned creature normally lives. You want a celestial badger or fiendish rat? Not a problem, usually. You want a Solar or Balor? He's not coming, unless the rulers of the respective planes are willing to allow the contact to be made. Also, critters like Balors do not like being summoned. Anything with a high intelligence is capable of resenting being summoned, remembering you after the summons ends, and looking you up later for payback.
Casters scale quadratically, melee scales linearly, until they don't

Physical combat needs ways to boost attacks per round and damage per attack. Suggest lots of new feats. For example, why is there not a feat path allowing a fighter to be able to Feint as a move action, a swift action, a free action? Have the writers of D&D never sparred, even once? Great martial artists feint more often than they attack!

There also needs to be more magical equipment support for combat types. Why, for example, is there no plus up for a weapon that allows you to double up your power attack bonus? Or one that allows extra attacks like a Belt of Battle does?

[AmberVael]

Herakles's feats can be matched or exceeded by a 12th level Fighter.

Yeah? Please explain to me how your standard level 12 Fighter holds up all the heavens. Go on. :smalltongue:

[Emperor Tippy]

Yeah? Please explain to me how your standard level 12 Fighter holds up all the heavens. Go on. :smalltongue:

Who said anything about standard?

And Festering Anger + paying for a casting of Kissed By the Ages for immortality + Shape Soulmeld (Strongheart Vest) with 3 points of invested Essentia + a few hundred trillion trillion trillion years on a fast time demiplane.

More than doable at ECL 12. :smalltongue:

[AmberVael]

Who said anything about standard?

And Festering Anger + paying for a casting of Kissed By the Ages for immortality + Shape Soulmeld (Strongheart Vest) with 3 points of invested Essentia + a few hundred trillion trillion trillion years on a fast time demiplane.

More than doable at ECL 12. :smalltongue:

Because if you want to use ridiculous stupid cheese, you might as well say that his feats can be replicated by a level one kobold. It doesn't mean anything.

[Segev]

In those settings where "magic is just plain better" than any other solution - as some have postulated things should be as well as are in this thread - the number of mages tends to be significantly smaller than the number of mundanes. Magic is strange and wondrous, and simply "being a mage" is enough to put you on a pedestal of legendary status next to the mightest warrior-kings and most cunning phantom thieves.

You're a first-class citizen in a third-class world, if you're a mage.

In most points-based games, if you want to play somebody with social connections and wealth or political power and influence, you have to expend character-building resources on these things. If you want to play a poverty-stricken nobody without barely a friend in the world, you might get points back for the somewhat serious drawbacks these limitations impose upon you.

Similarly, simply having access to the "potential" to "do anything" because you have the gift of magic, in a setting and system where magic can do anything (even if you can't personally do everything) and is a better solution than nearly any mundane one...that makes you stronger than your non-magical counterparts.

3e did, like it or not, have the conceit that all level X characters are - in general and over all - roughly equal in power. They can take on CR X challenges with the same equanimity, and they can be as secure in adventuring in areas of X-level challenges as any other level X character.

There is also no cost to saying, "I want to play a cleric at level 1" or "I want to play a wizard at level 1" compared to "I want to play a fighter at level 1." The only "cost" is the opportunity you give up to play something else.

Combine "magic can do anything," "magic is almost always the superior solution," and "the only cost to playing a man who has magic is not playing a man who doesn't," and you wind up making it rather foolish to choose to play somebody without magic. The only reason to do so is because you LIKE the idea of having a harder time accomplishing anything and get a thrill out of, in a parlance that would be accurate if 3e's conceits re: CRs were true, playing a lower-level character than everybody else. "I want to play a 1st level character in your party of level 5s."

I appreciate all the replies, but Psyren, I don't think we're going to agree. You are butting your head against the premise of the thread. Questioning the premise is fine, of course, but there's no "proving" it wrong in this case. I'm simply starting from the standpoint that I'd like to conduct a mental exercise in design with the goal of making it so that there is advantage to be gained by choosing other than to play a spellcaster.

AmberVael, you're partially right, at the very least: I am focusing right now on "what spells should do" more than "what magic should do." My biggest problem with 4e is that, in its efforts to balance all the classes against each other, it made them all into Martial Adepts, mechanically speaking. It eliminated all other subsystems and means of doing things, and in so doing robbed itself of its D&D-ness.

Other subsystems, magical or not, might step in the very areas that spells "must not tread." The focus on spells right now is because spells are why T1s are T1. And I think they're responsible for it because T1 classes can have arbitrary numbers of spells available, and spells are something that just keep getting added because they're so easy to add.

Since that behavior is not going to change unless you start forbidding writers from creating new spells with each new book, it is better to start from a standpoint of, "Spells (perhaps 'spells that this class can use') must never be able to do this, that, and the other thing."

If you later decide the Duskblade is a spellcaster and really has to be, but should have some unique spells that make him a better warrior, so be it. But be careful, again, that you're not creating spells that simply make him better at being a fighter than a fighter ever could be. He's supposed to be a different, not purely superior, approach to the class.

Perhaps, as well, it would be wise to ensure that whatever subsystem(s) are the core of the various "mundane" classes also are endlessly and relatively easily expandable, with ways to perform partial "rebuilds" much the way a cleric, druid, or wizard can "rebuild" their spell selections day to day.

Dimmers and Shining Wrath have given us some ideas, for which I thank them, and which I'll post here in spoiler tags for easy reference.
Things that *might* help

Magic can do anything, until it can't.

A starting point would be to go through the non casting classes, identify their unique class features, and then ban spells that duplicate those features. So, Knock is gone, because opening doors is a special thing for rogues and some others. Detect Trap, same story. Anything that raises a caster's attack bonus is gone. Spells that boost physical abilities only work if there's something there to work with, e.g., Bull's Strength has NO effect on someone with strength less than 15.
You can always summon something to fight and find traps for you, until you can't

Summons above a certain level should require that the caster be on good terms with the rulers of the plane where the summoned creature normally lives. You want a celestial badger or fiendish rat? Not a problem, usually. You want a Solar or Balor? He's not coming, unless the rulers of the respective planes are willing to allow the contact to be made. Also, critters like Balors do not like being summoned. Anything with a high intelligence is capable of resenting being summoned, remembering you after the summons ends, and looking you up later for payback.
Casters scale quadratically, melee scales linearly, until they don't

Physical combat needs ways to boost attacks per round and damage per attack. Suggest lots of new feats. For example, why is there not a feat path allowing a fighter to be able to Feint as a move action, a swift action, a free action? Have the writers of D&D never sparred, even once? Great martial artists feint more often than they attack!

There also needs to be more magical equipment support for combat types. Why, for example, is there no plus up for a weapon that allows you to double up your power attack bonus? Or one that allows extra attacks like a Belt of Battle does?



Put briefly, I feel that magic SHOULD be good for

transportation
communication
forecasting, scouting
sensing otherworldly things
mind control in a more absolute sense than mundane persuasion, including illusions that exist within the mind
reducing or precluding otherworldly effects


I feel that magic should be ON PAR (or thereabouts) with specialized mundane expertise in

fixing body problems -- curing hit points, nonmagical disease, etc.
providing small fixed bonuses to a wide variety of rolls


I feel that magic should NOT be particularly strong at

manipulating forces and energies
manipulating luck/fate
providing large arrays of new abilities to choose from, such as via Polymorph or Wish


I think the "should not be good at" section is in part because those abilities are so very open-ended and abusable.

And thanks, Emperor Tippy, for your contributions, as well. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to totally rewrite the underlying mechanics of classes, nor tie spells to skills, but I do like the idea of, instead, having spells be more effective if, say, the beneficiaries have more ranks or can roll higher on skill checks.

Suddenly, the wizard "needs" a rogue to have his party be best at stealthing or unlocking or whatever because the rogue can be the beneficiary of the wizard's spell and get much more out of it than could the wizard.

[Psyren]

3e did, like it or not, have the conceit that all level X characters are - in general and over all - roughly equal in power. They can take on CR X challenges with the same equanimity, and they can be as secure in adventuring in areas of X-level challenges as any other level X character.

For the most part, they can; you just need WBL to do it.



Combine "magic can do anything," "magic is almost always the superior solution," and "the only cost to playing a man who has magic is not playing a man who doesn't," and you wind up making it rather foolish to choose to play somebody without magic.

If power is your only concern... then yes, playing something less powerful is indeed not the best approach.



I appreciate all the replies, but Psyren, I don't think we're going to agree. You are butting your head against the premise of the thread. Questioning the premise is fine, of course, but there's no "proving" it wrong in this case. I'm simply starting from the standpoint that I'd like to conduct a mental exercise in design with the goal of making it so that there is advantage to be gained by choosing other than to play a spellcaster.

Noted, and I'll agree to disagree.

The premise of this thread seems to be to create 4e/Legend, or at least something that won't bear much resemblance to 3e and its philosophies when it's done. I don't really see how you can accomplish the stated goals here without doing that. You can reduce the gap somewhat, certainly, but eliminating it entirely likely means a new system entirely.

If I may though:



Suddenly, the wizard "needs" a rogue to have his party be best at stealthing or unlocking or whatever because the rogue can be the beneficiary of the wizard's spell and get much more out of it than could the wizard.

That's kind of the way it works now. Buffing {mundane class that does X} with {buff that improves X} is generally better than self-buffing with the same.

[Dimers]

AmberVael, you're partially right, at the very least: I am focusing right now on "what spells should do" more than "what magic should do." My biggest problem with 4e is that, in its efforts to balance all the classes against each other, it made them all into Martial Adepts, mechanically speaking. It eliminated all other subsystems and means of doing things, and in so doing robbed itself of its D&D-ness.

Nitpick: Rituals are definitely a different subsystem and means of accomplishing goals. They're blandly written and underpowered, but a touch of homebrew could fix that right quick. Interestingly, the difference between rituals and powers also touches on AmberVael's point -- magic =/= spells.

[Aegis013]

I've read most of this thread (though admittedly only skimmed some of the comments) but I haven't seen what I interpreted the big question Segev is asking really addressed.

What can, or should, mundanes be able to do that is exclusive to them, sets them apart from casters, and makes Hypothetical Group 1 come to the conclusion that in Hypothetical Game 1 they should include a mundane class in their party? Or even multiple mundane classes?

(Let's assume that Hypothetical Game 1 has the difficulty scaled up to 11, and without serious optimization and game mastery the party will die very quickly and not make it anywhere)

What abilities/roles might these look like? Since, many of us agree that casters have higher op ceilings, how would one make these mundane abilities/roles have similar op ceilings?

I think this is the line of reasoning Segev is interested in, and how to expand/inflate/improve such abilities/roles as to make mundanes more attractive in the game, mechanically.

If I'm wrong, Segev, please say so, but this is what I thought you were after. (Unfortunately, I don't have an adequate answer)

[Togo]

No, they're not - not even close! The entire magic system has a whole set of meta-rules that are not in the text of a spell at all - spell schools and descriptors, casting in various situations (in a grapple, underwater, while falling, in inclement weather, while on fire etc.), line of sight, line of effect, area of effect, and so on.

Most of these also apply to combat, or are specialist subsets of more complicated combat rules. It's odd to claim, for example, that fighting in a grapple, which includes fighting spellcasters in a grapple, is somehow less complicated than merely casting spells in a grapple. The grappler needs to know all the rules, the spellcaster merely those that apply to spells and spellcasting.


Being a good spellcaster is about far more than knowing what your spell's entry says - you have to know (or at least be aware of) all the meta stuff too, otherwise you will be ineffective at your job. The party won't thank you for zapping them with your color spray because you don't know how to place a cone, or gumming everyone up with your black tentacles because you didn't know spreads go around corners, or wasting your action because you didn't know patterns don't affect undead etc.

Sure, and being a good warrior is more than just hitting someone with a sharp pointy thing, which is the comparison you chose. It involves working out the action economies of different fighting styles, optimising weapon choices for different situations, understanding the trade-offs involved in disabling, inhibiting, attacking or going all out for an opponent, how to balance AC versus damage, and so on. Try using a fighter with a reach weapon versus large creatures around a corner with combat reflexes and a viable trip option, and you may agree that placing a cone or calculating a spread really is the simpler option.

Of course you can just hit people, and be an indifferent warrior. Just like you can blast with a limited array of sorcerer spells and be an indifferent spellcaster.


People that good are invariably on a forum somewhere. They may not be on this forum, but learning all the tricks out there is very difficult to do with no interaction at all, and even if they're not actively participating in any discussions they're certainly lurking.

Only to the extent that people in general are often on a forum somewhere. Interaction=/ being on the internet. Being good at a game =/ learning tricks off the internet.


As you pointed out though, we do agree on most other things :-)




Combine "magic can do anything," "magic is almost always the superior solution," and "the only cost to playing a man who has magic is not playing a man who doesn't," and you wind up making it rather foolish to choose to play somebody without magic.

Sure. The suggestions I made were to play up the downsides of magic. To show how magic can't solve every problem, isn't always the superior solution, and has a cost over and above opportunity cost. Enforce those and, by your own argument, the problem is at least lessened.

Now it appears that isn't the way you want to go. Fair enough, it's your discussion. But it might be helpful to know what aspects of your playstyle make this solution unviable, because I suspect that that choice of playstyle may more of a problem than the rules themselves.


I'm simply starting from the standpoint that I'd like to conduct a mental exercise in design with the goal of making it so that there is advantage to be gained by choosing other than to play a spellcaster.

And the barrier we're running into is that such advantages exist already. People can and do play classes other than primary spellcasters, because depending on the game it may be advantageous to do so. You've reached an extreme position whereby the games your playing always benefit primary spellcasters over other choices. We can tinker with the rules, sure, but it's needful to understand what it is about your games that's led to this point, so we can change the right things.


My biggest problem with 4e is that, in its efforts to balance all the classes against each other, it made them all into Martial Adepts, mechanically speaking. It eliminated all other subsystems and means of doing things, and in so doing robbed itself of its D&D-ness.

A fair point. So it looks like we have two broad avenues of attack - making sure the spellcasting subsystem doesn't overlap with other subsystems, and making sure that, if they do overlap, other subsystems have advantages that spellcasting doesn't.

So for the first:

We have the 'areas magic shouldn't go'. So magic shouldn't be able to duplicate stealth, lockpicking, climbing, melee competence, ranged damage on a single target, escapology, acrobatics, high stats other than the primary spellcasting stats, high AC, high hp, social interaction, knowledge, high skills, and so on.

In terms of buff spells, I think we're ok as long as a buff spell is notably better on a character already built for the activity being buffed than a straight spellcaster would be. So tenser's transformation is out, as is divine power, but something like righteous might or invisibility is ok.

I'd suggest we also ditch spells that attempt to directly mitigate the disadvantages associated with spellcasting. So anyspell, lubrication, and spells with extremely general applications (such as polymorph) are possibles for banning, as are rope trick, d-door, and boccob's blessed book. Spells that remain highly specific, such as some of the PHB II transformation spells that turn you into a particular creature, are probably ok.



I'm not sure I'd go so far as to totally rewrite the underlying mechanics of classes, nor tie spells to skills, but I do like the idea of, instead, having spells be more effective if, say, the beneficiaries have more ranks or can roll higher on skill checks.

Some spells already do this, like the 'lorecall' line of spells, which give you benefits depending on how many ranks of a skill you already have.

You also need to do something more with druid and cleric, since as designed they are fighting spellcasters, and that role needs to either be ditched entirely, or restricted to particular aspects of fighting (such as clerics being very tough, but suffering on the damage-dealing side of things).



Suddenly, the wizard "needs" a rogue to have his party be best at stealthing or unlocking or whatever because the rogue can be the beneficiary of the wizard's spell and get much more out of it than could the wizard.

Precisely so, although as Psyren pointed out, many spells already work that way, which is precisely why some people choose to play mixed parties rather than all casters.

[The Insanity]

I gestalt mundanes with T1 and T2 classes.

[Segev]

Some very good points in this thread (and way too many to quote directly without making an unreadable wall of text).

The Lorecall line of spells was an interesting experiment. I liked it, in theory, though it definitely came too late in the cycle (and too far after other effects which were already "perfect" effects) to be an effective paradigm-shift. I think, though, their biggest flaw is that they actually were restricted to self only. They were designed, if I remember right, to be good for mix-builds who use magic to augment skills.

It would be interesting to expand that, I think, to buff spells meant for use on the already-specialized "mundanes" who have the feats or skills needed to make the most of them. What if Listening Lorecall could be cast by the Druid on his Scout buddy?

One can make the argument that, for instance, Invisibility is better on a character with a higher Stealth (Hide+Move Silently) score, because it gives a +40 to the hide/stealth check but isn't perfect and Move Silently is going to be needed if you're in 3.5. That may be a good guideline.

Silence has its own drawbacks. I'd like to see something that allowed those with Move Silently (or Stealth) make better use of it.

Knock, on the other hand, is a poster boy for the kinds of problems we have. I don't, honestly, want to eliminate iconic spells like this one. Knock has been in the game forever. (So have polymorph and Tenser's Transformation, for that matter.) But where they cross the lines of "what spells shouldn't do," they may need serious work.

Maybe Knock should only provide a hefty bonus to an Open Locks check (or a Disable Device check to open locks). This would enable DMs to have locks with high DCs against which Knock alone might fail without having to have "special magic locks." Similarly, it would make rogues who pick up wands of Knock not feel they've mostly wasted their skill points on the lockpicking skill.

Tenser's Transformation, as it existed in 2e and 1e, actually probably was fine. Even in 3e, it's widely considered one of the weaker choices to cast. Admittedly, that's largely because you're using a single spell to become a T3 or 4 class instead of the T1 or 2 you are natively, but TT's restriction of not only removing all spellcasting but not giving you any new proficiencies or feats can be enough. No wizard or sorcerer will adequately replace a fighter like that.

If we design "mundane" subsystems right, the fighter's ability to "super jump" or the like would step as much on the wizard's exclusive "cast a fly spell" territory.

Divine Power, on the other hand, which gives a Cleric a full BAB and has no downsides...that probably has to go. A full BAB divine devotee already exists in the Paladin.

Now, I recognize that I'm picking and choosing here, and nibbling around the edges, but I'm doing so more as examples of how I think we should think about this than as "these are the solutions!" Togo and Aegis013 have some particularly good thoughts, and Aegis's guidelines, while probably not perfect, are good starting points, I think, to approaching this.

Because yes, my goal is to either elevate "T3" and "T4" classes or to diminish "T1" and "T2" classes, and to do so not by simply saying "I have a goal of all being T3" or the like, but by setting out guidelines of what you should expect from class-based mastery of a given sub-system.

In the vein of working from solid guidelines, perhaps we should further identify the "disadvantages of spellcasting" that we don't want spells to mitigate, rather than naming specific spells first. (I'm sure you had some ideas in mind, but naming them explicitly always helps.)

A start on such a list might be: inability to shift your spell load-out in surprise situations (so you must either be prepared for all eventualities already or have prepared well for this specific circumstance); vulnerability to spell interruption (whether by being hit by an attack or by counterspelling or other distractions)...I'm drawing a blank for more at the moment.

I think, looking at a lot of what are the "problem" spells, a base design principle should be that things need to be based more strongly on the baseline of the target character, rather than setting values to new totals and thus obviating the benefits and penalties of low stats or lack of skill or the like.

Polymorph as PF does it might be the right idea (though I won't comment as to balance, it does at least make polymorphing the Fighter with high strength and dex into an ogre a more daunting physical specimen than polymorphing the wizard into one would).

The other area that is, perhaps, the biggest sinner in terms of "replacing mundanes" is Planar Binding (and, to a lesser extent, Summon Monster/Nature's Ally). These literally can replace party members. Why have an elven ranger when you can have a hound archon or a Solar? Especially if the latter are loyal to you by magical binding, while the elf has to be treated as an equal. Downsides for summoning monsters and "nature's allies" include the casting time and short durations, but Planar Bindings can be cast last week.

Short of banning such effects, the best I can think of is to introduce new weaknesses to the procedure. Perhaps learning the name under which the Solar is bound can allow any native to the plane to release the binding.


One other approach, from sort of the opposite direction, is to treat spellcasting the same way that the other (pseudo-)magical subsystems have been treated. Most of these got the treatment because they came later and were designed to be integrable on existing characters, and yes, it can lead to cheese if done poorly. However, spellcasting remains, to my knowledge, the one widely-used subsystem for which you cannot take feats to gain access to it without dipping into classes that use it. We have feats that give a short list of spell-like abilities, but compared to Hidden Talent or the various feats to give access to Incarnum or vestige-binding...

I may dislike some of what 4e did, but having feats that openly allow pseudo-multiclassing by nabbing tricks from other class lists was not a bad idea.



Finally, I think I should probably say one more thing: I don't entirely disagree with those who say magic should be needed. I do disagree with those who say "WBL is the solution." "I need to depend on the existence of spellcasters, but they don't need to depend on mine" is frustrating. (I like PF's approach to this, empowering non-casters to make magic items with nothing but feats and skills.)

But if magic is so ubiquitous and powerful that all serious adventurers need it, then one solution is to make magic accessible to every class. Not necessarily spells and spellcasting (though feat-granted access to limited varieties of this might not be inappropriate), but ability to have spell-like or supernatural abilities even as a "mundane" may be wise.

After all, everybody in the real world uses technology common to their culture. We spend a lot of time training people in use of things they couldn't invent, and we have people gain smatterings of odd knowledge and skills based on hobbies. Hobbies also tend to lead to odd conglomerations of unusual skills peripherally related to their pursuit.

Adventuring is a hobby and a career; if magic is the most effective tool, every adventurer should have some access to it.

Then, the "mundane" who uses limited access to magic to augment his capabilities is going to be better at his pursuit than is the mage trying to use magic to emulate him: the mundane combines them for synergy, while the mage is relying heavily on it. This does mean we can't have the mage get strictly better tools for it in his higher-level spells...or at least that he should be able to use those tools to make the mundane EVEN BETTER than the mundane could make himself.

[Mutazoia]

The problem doesn't lay with the "mundane" classes, the problem is with the casters. When WOTC bought out TSR and copy-pasta'd stuff from 2e into their 3e ruleset, they threw the balance out with the bathwater.

In 2e meta magic did not exist, nor could casters "cast defensively" (honestly how do you cast defensively?). If they took a hit while casting their spell was interrupted, and they couldn't move while casting...casting a spell took extreme concentration to bend the forces of magic to your will. Caster's were not all powerful characters that could outshine the rest of the party.

In 3x casters can use meta magic, somehow cast a spell while dodging a sword and walking around the battlefield, taking a hit doesn't phase them one bit. Casting a spell is as simple as blinking. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPSSF32oWK8). Casters are all powerful characters that can easily outshine the rest of the party.

These changes have horribly unbalanced casters and trying to add stuff to the "mundane" classes does not address the actual problem. It's like having an oil leak in your car but instead of fixing the leak you just try to add bigger and bigger oil pans.

The solutions that (IMHO) can fix the balance issues are:


Dump meta magic (or change the way it works...see below)
No more defensive casting
no more 5 foot steps (or movement of any kind) while casting
You take damage, your spell fails (or force concentration checks with a DC = damage taken)


There are other things that could be tweaked like:

Separate XP charts. Sure this made some characters level slower than others, but then that kept the party pretty well balanced. Why should a wizard who controls the mystical forces of the universe gain levels as easy as the barbarian who hacks people into little pieces for a living? Some careers are easier than others...that's why some people choose to steal for a living rather than getting jobs.

Spellcraft checks to learn new spells. Odds are good that you'll learn that new spell but there's always a chance you will blow a roll now and then. A critical failure means you can NEVER learn that spell. Perhaps a critical success will allow you to apply one meta magic effect to that spell.

Change meta magic. You are attempting to alter the way a spell is designed to work, that shouldn't be as easy as blinking. Spellcraft checks apply meta magic effects to spells instead of increasing spell level. If you fail, the entire spell fails. A critical failure means the spell targets YOU for full damage/effect, a critical success means you can attempt to apply another effect (keep going until you fail) or can choose to have the spell do maximum damage/effect to the target. Critical failure means you lose the previous meta magic effect and the spell functions normally.

I'm sure we could come up with other's but I'm sure you see my point. Casters get a lot of power-ups for little to no cost and have been released from the balancing rules of previous versions. You don't have to try to fix the mundane classes, they are not broken. You have to fix the caster's, they ARE.

[Shining Wrath]

I think one approach might be that buff spells should be multipliers, not adds.

So instead of Knock opening a locked door, it multiplies the recipient's skill in Open Lock by 5/4, drop fractions. A first level thief with 4 ranks and 18 dex (skill = 8) gets two additional points. A wizard who has Dex 16 and no ranks and hits himself with New Knock gets NO benefit: 3/4 rounds down to zero.

Instead of Bull's Strength adding four to the recipient's strength, it multiplies their strength modifier by 3/2, drop fractions. A wizard who dumped strength and hits himself with New Bull's Strength actually gets *weaker*, but if he casts it on his buddy the fighter with 18 strength, the fighter's strength modifier goes from 4 to 6.

This of course means that at high levels low-level buff spells could become ridiculous. Perhaps they only affect the inherent score, i.e., the score the recipient would have divested of all items.

The basic idea is a spell makes you better at what you can already do proficiently, but doesn't make someone who has no talent suddenly competent.

One other thing that would REALLY weaken casters: increase the length of time required to cast any spell to a minimum of a full-round action. Which pretty much means "Nerveskitter" and "Celerity" need complete rewrites. And yes, "Contingency" takes a full round to go off after the criterion is met, during which time you can't take any other actions AND the enemy can try to interfere if their Spellcraft lets them determine what is happening. And of course if you take damage during that full round action a concentration roll is required. More damage, harder roll; grappled = very hard roll. REVENGE OF THE MONKS!

[Mutazoia]

I think one approach might be that buff spells should be multipliers, not adds.

So instead of Knock opening a locked door, it multiplies the recipient's skill in Open Lock by 5/4, drop fractions. A first level thief with 4 ranks and 18 dex (skill = 8) gets two additional points. A wizard who has Dex 16 and no ranks and hits himself with New Knock gets NO benefit: 3/4 rounds down to zero.

I would say that knock opens the door...right off the hinges, smashes chests, etc. It's not a quiet way to open said item. If you want to blast open a door, cast knock, if you want to pick the lock stealthily, use a rogue. Knock by RAW doesn't disarm traps either, so casting knock on a trapped door will spring the trap.


Instead of Bull's Strength adding four to the recipient's strength, it multiplies their strength modifier by 3/2, drop fractions. A wizard who dumped strength and hits himself with New Bull's Strength actually gets *weaker*, but if he casts it on his buddy the fighter with 18 strength, the fighter's strength modifier goes from 4 to 6.

This of course means that at high levels low-level buff spells could become ridiculous. Perhaps they only affect the inherent score, i.e., the score the recipient would have divested of all items.

Effects like this are probably better left as written to prevent (even more) high level caster cheese.


The basic idea is a spell makes you better at what you can already do proficiently, but doesn't make someone who has no talent suddenly competent.

But then you couldn't have scene's like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3oURsGzs9o) :smallbiggrin:
(And yes the blonde IS a very young, hot Angela Landsbury)


One other thing that would REALLY weaken casters: increase the length of time required to cast any spell to a minimum of a full-round action. Which pretty much means "Nerveskitter" and "Celerity" need complete rewrites. And yes, "Contingency" takes a full round to go off after the criterion is met, during which time you can't take any other actions AND the enemy can try to interfere if their Spellcraft lets them determine what is happening.

Bringing back casting times from 2e would accomplish this. If a spell has a casting time of 7 you declare your intention to cast (and start casting) on your initiative ( say...18) but the spell doesn't go off until later (initiative 11) giving others a chance to attempt an interrupt.


And of course if you take damage during that full round action a concentration roll is required. More damage, harder roll; grappled = very hard roll. REVENGE OF THE MONKS!

See my previous post :smallwink:

[Emperor Tippy]

I never understood why people had any real issue with Knock.

You just get a mechanical auto reset trap that re-locks the object when it is unlocked.

If you want to ensure that only the skill monkey can disable it then just also make it a magical trap with say, Mending, to repair the door/lock.

It's low level, cheap, and has the desired result.

[Mutazoia]

I never understood why people had any real issue with Knock.

You just get a mechanical auto reset trap that re-locks the object when it is unlocked.

If you want to ensure that only the skill monkey can disable it then just also make it a magical trap with say, Mending, to repair the door/lock.

It's low level, cheap, and has the desired result.

By RAW knock suspends any magical re-locking attempt for 10 minutes.

Knock was grandfathered in from 1-2e, where it was common to have doors magically locked and thus thief proof. It opened doors that were barred from the other side and doors that were warped shut. Originally it would open said doors quietly so you didn't make a lot of noise (and possibly alert wandering monsters/room occupants) that you were doing so, which made it a preferred choice over simply bashing said door. It was also from a time when you and to memorize a spell twice (using two slots) if you wanted to cast it twice.

[Segev]

I never understood why people had any real issue with Knock.

You just get a mechanical auto reset trap that re-locks the object when it is unlocked.

If you want to ensure that only the skill monkey can disable it then just also make it a magical trap with say, Mending, to repair the door/lock.

It's low level, cheap, and has the desired result.

And illustrates the issue neatly: to keep out a skill-monkey, you need a common lock (though admittedly you probably want a well-designed one for a higher-level skill monkey); to keep out Knock, you need a magical trap. The skill monkey may or may not succeed in either case. Knock auto-succeeds unless magic is involved. Knock is superior to ranks in Open Locks outside of one specifically-designed locking mechanism intended to be disable-able by Open Locks but not Knock. One wonders why one designs it so the skill works at all, when one could design that to fail, too.

[Psyren]

Most of these also apply to combat, or are specialist subsets of more complicated combat rules. It's odd to claim, for example, that fighting in a grapple, which includes fighting spellcasters in a grapple, is somehow less complicated than merely casting spells in a grapple. The grappler needs to know all the rules, the spellcaster merely those that apply to spells and spellcasting.

None of that was what you originally claimed. You said that all the rules for spellcasting are in the spell's entry, and I showed that to be false.

Also, you're wrong - not only do spellcasters have to know the rules about casting in a grapple, very often they have to know all the grapple rules in general thanks to broad schools like summoning/shapeshifting (knowing which creatures are good at grappling helps you know, as well as spells that grapple targets directly like black tentacles, telekinesis and grasping hand.



Sure, and being a good warrior is more than just hitting someone with a sharp pointy thing, which is the comparison you chose.

Being bad at melee however has less dramatic consequences than being bad at magic. A bad melee player will either do less or take more damage than he should - both of these can be compensated for easily by other members of the party, even by other mundanes. For example, an average warrior teamed with a very good rogue can still take down foes quickly as the rogue will weaken his targets through flanking, ambushing and other tactics.

A bad caster though can absolutely wreck the party, both metagame-wise and in-universe. In-universe, poor placement of area effects or choosing the wrong spells for the job (e.g. enchantments in an undead campaign) can make one worse than useless. Metagame-wise, tactics like clogging the battlefield with summons and bogging down combat, or creating detrimental terrain/lighting/fog with magic can quickly turn the party against you.



Only to the extent that people in general are often on a forum somewhere. Interaction=/ being on the internet. Being good at a game =/ learning tricks off the internet.

It's highly improbable to achieve those levels of skill without interacting with the community in some way, even a passive exercise like reading a handbook. This is part of the reason public playtesting is so effective; if two heads are better than one, a hundred or a thousand heads are better still.



And illustrates the issue neatly: to keep out a skill-monkey, you need a common lock (though admittedly you probably want a well-designed one for a higher-level skill monkey); to keep out Knock, you need a magical trap. The skill monkey may or may not succeed in either case. Knock auto-succeeds unless magic is involved. Knock is superior to ranks in Open Locks outside of one specifically-designed locking mechanism intended to be disable-able by Open Locks but not Knock. One wonders why one designs it so the skill works at all, when one could design that to fail, too.

For starters, I'll point out that PF changed Arcane Lock so that rogues do not autofail against it anymore. It's hard to beat but not impossible, particularly if you have the time to take 20.

But more importantly, Knock has a verbal component, so it can be counterintuitive to use if you're in a covert situation. Mundane lockpicking is much quieter and thus is often more useful.

[Segev]

For starters, I'll point out that PF changed Arcane Lock so that rogues do not autofail against it anymore. It's hard to beat but not impossible, particularly if you have the time to take 20.

But more importantly, Knock has a verbal component, so it can be counterintuitive to use if you're in a covert situation. Mundane lockpicking is much quieter and thus is often more useful.

Both good changes and in line with the sorts of things I'm exploring in this thread. Thanks for pointing them out!

[Emperor Tippy]

By RAW knock suspends any magical re-locking attempt for 10 minutes.
No, it doesn't.

All it does is suspend an Arcane Lock effect. It does nothing to magical traps of any kind.


And illustrates the issue neatly: to keep out a skill-monkey, you need a common lock (though admittedly you probably want a well-designed one for a higher-level skill monkey); to keep out Knock, you need a magical trap. The skill monkey may or may not succeed in either case. Knock auto-succeeds unless magic is involved. Knock is superior to ranks in Open Locks outside of one specifically-designed locking mechanism intended to be disable-able by Open Locks but not Knock. One wonders why one designs it so the skill works at all, when one could design that to fail, too.
No, you don't need a magical trap to keep out Knock. You need a mechanical trap that relocks the door when it is unlocked. Anyone with Disable Device can then disable said trap or find its bypass before unlocking the door. If you add a magical component to the trap then this makes it so that only those with the Trapfinding Class feature or similar effects can disable to trap.

And Knock has tons of downsides compared to Open Lock ranks. It takes up a (usually) finite resource, it takes up a spell known, it makes noise unless Silent Spell is applied to it, it can be stopped relatively trivially, it doesn't work in dead magic zones, and Open Lock can be done faster potentially.

[Gemini476]

No, you don't need a magical trap to keep out Knock. You need a mechanical trap that relocks the door when it is unlocked. Anyone with Disable Device can then disable said trap or find its bypass before unlocking the door. If you add a magical component to the trap then this makes it so that only those with the Trapfinding Class feature or similar effects can disable to trap.

And Knock has tons of downsides compared to Open Lock ranks. It takes up a (usually) finite resource, it takes up a spell known, it makes noise unless Silent Spell is applied to it, it can be stopped relatively trivially, it doesn't work in dead magic zones, and Open Lock can be done faster potentially.

Y'know, you can just stick multiple locks on the thing you want locked. Knock only unlocks one of them at a time.

It still won't stop something like Time Hop, but then again what will?

[Mutazoia]

Y'know, you can just stick multiple locks on the thing you want locked. Knock only unlocks one of them at a time.

It still won't stop something like Time Hop, but then again what will?

Actually Knock by RAW disables 2 locking effects at once, and only disables magical auto re-locking for 10 minutes.

BUT this knock debate is getting off topic

[Psyren]

It still won't stop something like Time Hop, but then again what will?

A load-bearing door will do that; Hop it, and suddenly you're worse off than before. It's also unclear if you can Hop part of something, so making the door part of a much larger mechanism (or creature!) could potentially require Hopping the whole thing.

[Emperor Tippy]

and only disables magical auto re-locking for 10 minutes.
No, it only disables the spell Arcane Lock for ten minutes, not magical locking effects in general.

[Gemini476]

A load-bearing door will do that; Hop it, and suddenly you're worse off than before. It's also unclear if you can Hop part of something, so making the door part of a much larger mechanism (or creature!) could potentially require Hopping the whole thing.

The entire building is a Mimic. The roof? Yep. The floor? Yep. The walls? acidic ooze. The air itself? Nigh-invisible Gelatinous Cubes.

[Togo]

None of that was what you originally claimed. You said that all the rules for spellcasting are in the spell's entry, and I showed that to be false.

I'm happy to conceed that spellcasting also involves other rules common to all characters, if that's important in some way. I'm just pointing out that in suggesting that combat is simpler than magic, quoting rules that are needed for both doesn't help.


Also, you're wrong - not only do spellcasters have to know the rules about casting in a grapple, very often they have to know all the grapple rules in general thanks to broad schools like summoning/shapeshifting (knowing which creatures are good at grappling helps you know, as well as spells that grapple targets directly like black tentacles, telekinesis and grasping hand.

Sure, and paladins and rangers have to know all the spellcasting rules, and everyone has to know how individual spells work if they want to use most items, or work in the same party as a caster.

And that's not including the problem that you have to face all of these abilties from opponents.

None of this makes playing a combat character somehow easier in terms of rules knowledge than a primary spellcaster.



Being bad at melee however has less dramatic consequences than being bad at magic... True, and a good point. In that sense for playing an intentionally ineffective character, some choices are better than others. That's why I cited a blaster sorceror, since they don't have much of a catastrophic downside either.


It's highly improbable to achieve those levels of skill without interacting with the community in some way, even a passive exercise like reading a handbook. This is part of the reason public playtesting is so effective; if two heads are better than one, a hundred or a thousand heads are better still.

Interaction /= internet. There isn't one single community, there are hundreds, some of which aren't primarily on-line. And that doesn't change the point I was making, which is that people in internet forums aren't necessarily the bees knees, nor do such forums necessarily feature the best of tabletop.

I'm not convinced we actually disagree on most of these points.


The Lorecall line of spells was an interesting experiment. I liked it, in theory, though it definitely came too late in the cycle (and too far after other effects which were already "perfect" effects) to be an effective paradigm-shift. I think, though, their biggest flaw is that they actually were restricted to self only. They were designed, if I remember right, to be good for mix-builds who use magic to augment skills.

I suspect they were designed as a mix of items and spells, and then got crossed over into both in a fit of 'all item effects should be spells' fervour that was popular at the time. But yes, we'd need to make them touch range.



Silence has its own drawbacks. I'd like to see something that allowed those with Move Silently (or Stealth) make better use of it.

Yes. Maybe something more like iron silence, where a particular kind of modifier is negated, or a particular bonus gained, but the overall result is based on skill.

Another possibility is to make silence a bard-only spell.


Knock, on the other hand, is a poster boy for the kinds of problems we have.

I don't know... You're right in that it does everything you're suggesting we prevent. But on the other hand, I don't find it much of a problem except at high level. It takes up a spell slot, if you want to obviate entirely you just use multiple locks suitably spaced (so a series of three locked doors), rather than a single complex lock. At low level it's just too expensive to keep memorised. It's really only a problem as a wand (which a rogue can use almost as well as a wizard) and at high level, when the whole lock-picking thing tends to break down anyway. A bigger threat to lock-picking is adamantine weapons (aka the barbarian's lock pick), which can destroy barriers and locks relatively quietly, with no expenditure of resources, using an item that's useful in any case.

I think what this really highlights is the problem with some of the speciality areas that so-called 'low tier' characters claim, which is that they aren't that useful to begin with. A rogue would be invaluable, and knock almost useless, in an environment filled with locks, traps, and similar. But the reason why that's not an advantage is that such environments rarely occur, because skill challenge encounters don't really involve anyone except the one with the skill. There's no real design difference between a locked door and an adventure where you can't progress without a suitably high knowledge check. In practice you don't see it happen, because it involves one party member, and derails the adventure unless they succeed. So such challenges are always either trivial, or precisely tailored to the capabilities of the party, and mysteriously disappear when the party loses the capability, or are limited to side quests, extra treasure, or bonuses rather than the main story.

The reason why T1's are claimed to obviate rogues and fighters, is not because they're better at picking locks or at hitting monsters, but because they can pull out effects that mean you don't need to hit the monsters, or pick the locks.

So, yes, carving out territory for other classes would help, but I'm not sure it would solve the problem by itself. You need a combination of specialisation, which we've been discussing, and somehow surpressing the perceived tendency of high tier characters to ignore certain challenges entirely.



In the vein of working from solid guidelines, perhaps we should further identify the "disadvantages of spellcasting" that we don't want spells to mitigate, rather than naming specific spells first. (I'm sure you had some ideas in mind, but naming them explicitly always helps.)

A start on such a list might be: inability to shift your spell load-out in surprise situations (so you must either be prepared for all eventualities already or have prepared well for this specific circumstance); vulnerability to spell interruption (whether by being hit by an attack or by counterspelling or other distractions)...I'm drawing a blank for more at the moment.

Requiring uninterrupted rest, spending WBL to activate class features (wizards), sharply limited uses per day and/or sharply limited variety of spells, spell are far more specialist and specific than other class abilities, and frequently have built-in limits or disadvantages, duration issues, sensitivity to dispel or antimagic, radiates a detectable magical field, requires line of effect, etc. etc.



The other area that is, perhaps, the biggest sinner in terms of "replacing mundanes" is Planar Binding (and, to a lesser extent, Summon Monster/Nature's Ally). These literally can replace party members. Why have an elven ranger when you can have a hound archon or a Solar? Especially if the latter are loyal to you by magical binding, while the elf has to be treated as an equal. Downsides for summoning monsters and "nature's allies" include the casting time and short durations, but Planar Bindings can be cast last week.

It can, but it costs a huge amount of money - a reasonable portion of WBL if I remember correctly. Most abuses of it handwave the cost by assuming it can be negated or removed in some way.



Finally, I think I should probably say one more thing: I don't entirely disagree with those who say magic should be needed. I do disagree with those who say "WBL is the solution." "I need to depend on the existence of spellcasters, but they don't need to depend on mine" is frustrating. (I like PF's approach to this, empowering non-casters to make magic items with nothing but feats and skills.)

That's really more of a background thing than a mechanical problem.


But if magic is so ubiquitous and powerful that all serious adventurers need it, then one solution is to make magic accessible to every class. Not necessarily spells and spellcasting (though feat-granted access to limited varieties of this might not be inappropriate), but ability to have spell-like or supernatural abilities even as a "mundane" may be wise.

Most classes already have spellcasting or magical abilities. Barbarians, fighters, and rogues are it as far as non-magic-using base classes in the PHB, as opposed to cleric, druid, wizard, sorcerer, bard, paladin, ranger, monk. Similarly, most prestige classes have magical abilities. Affordable equipment is often magical, the availability of magical items is assumed in balancing the game. It's important not to fall into the trap of assuming that magical=wizard or that not being a primary spellcaster means no magic. Magic is part of the universe, several races get them irrespective of class.

[Yvanehtnioj]

JaronK - Oops. Sorry about that. I meant to say that the problem trying to balance the classes (esp. caster / non caster) is that an assumption is made that a level 1 fighter is equivalent to a level 1 mage.
(Thank you for catching that. Sometimes the words in my head don't translate well to type.)

TuggyNE - has an important point that economic costs do help provide limiting. Material spell components are an example, I think.

On a different note, I know that 3e uses a single xp chart (tho I wished they didn't). However, classes of the same total level are not equal in power (unless they happen to be identical (and then they would just be the same character).

Muttazoia - I would like spell factors brought back from 2e too.
Spell factor would be the level of the spell cast, and weapon factor would be the weight of the weapon. Add the number (-x) to someone's initiative and things would a bit more fair.

Segev - Would something akin to the different roles / classes from Team Fortress 2 be what you were talking about? Different specific roles and / or abilities with a shared pool of items mundane and otherwise?

This thread is neat.

[TuggyNE]

TuggyNE - has an important point that economic costs do help provide limiting. Material spell components are an example, I think.

They don't have to be economic, as long as they continue to cost something as long as they are used. For example, suppose a Psion had to charge their headband of intellect +2 with a certain number of pp every day to keep it running, and a +4 or +6 cost more pp/day correspondingly.


On a different note, I know that 3e uses a single xp chart (tho I wished they didn't). However, classes of the same total level are not equal in power (unless they happen to be identical (and then they would just be the same character).

They don't have to be precisely equal, as long as they're close enough that determining which one is more useful in general is basically undecidable. I'm not convinced that 2e got to that point even with its differing XP charts, but it may have been closer, and therefore, it is certainly possible for a game to be substantially more equal than 3.x, without falling into the trap of sameness that 4e arguably hit.

Or, in the words of Meg Murry on Camazotz in A Wrinkle In Time, "Like and equal are not the same thing!"

[Hurnn]

They don't have to be precisely equal, as long as they're close enough that determining which one is more useful in general is basically undecidable. I'm not convinced that 2e got to that point even with its differing XP charts, but it may have been closer, and therefore, it is certainly possible for a game to be substantially more equal than 3.x, without falling into the trap of sameness that 4e arguably hit.

Or, in the words of Meg Murry on Camazotz in A Wrinkle In Time, "Like and equal are not the same thing!"

It didn't not even close anyone who says otherwise is wearing rose colored glasses. The Exp chart made a wizard 1-2 sessions behind you most the time. Sure back then a fighter or rogue had a chance against a wizard in a head on fight mostly due to interrupts on damage. No concentration checks just blown spells. then again you had to kill him with a toothpick. If you weren't using a crazy fast weapon he was going to get a spell off first, and the second he got off a spell you still died. Hold person had a 3 speed mod, dagger a 2 two handed sword 10; initiative counted up 1d10 + dex mod + weapon/spell speed.

That said I think the only way to balance is:

a) improve the mundanes, fighters get more skills and points per level maybe even more feats, rogues maybe more skills or innate skill bonuses bonus skill focus feats every 4th lvl?

b) tone down casters, you can have all the options but make them have to choose them, like wizard ok you get all schools and generals till 3rd level spells, then you have to give up a school on 4th and higher, and then another at 5th. In the end a regular wizard has 2 schools and general he can cast 9th lvl spells in. specialists its 1 and generals. Are they going to still be super powerful sure, but unstoppable gods? Probably not.

You could do something similar to clerics where you can only cast from your gods domain lists and general, you pick one of their 4 domains (any god with only 3 domains and you can have healing as your 4th) and that's the only spells you can spontaneously cast. If your god does not have the healing domain you can add it but you cast at -1 level or have to give up a domain, and can never spontaneously cast heals.

[Togo]

b) tone down casters, you can have all the options but make them have to choose them, like wizard ok you get all schools and generals till 3rd level spells, then you have to give up a school on 4th and higher, and then another at 5th. In the end a regular wizard has 2 schools and general he can cast 9th lvl spells in. specialists its 1 and generals. Are they going to still be super powerful sure, but unstoppable gods? Probably not.

I quite like this idea. Link the number of schools you can cast to how far below the max level you can cast that you are. So a 11th level caster has the same spell slots, but can choose 5th level spells only from his chosen specialist school, 4th level spells from neighbouring schools, and 3rd level spells from a choice of 5 schools, and so on around the wheel.

Makes wizards flexible, but their most powerful effects are limited to a particular discipline.

[Lans]

No it doesn't solve it, and the cleric is still potentially better and can do all his class stuff plus anything else he can think of to use his spells for. I'm fine if a spell caster can buff and do what another class can do but better, as long as its not everything that he does.


Maybe if you gave a fighter 6 skill points per lvl and a few more class skills and a feat every other level, took away the tax feats which are generally useless or something a fighter should just be able to do. Then maybe the fighter will be a better combatant, and have a use other than "Mongo hit xxx with big stick". God that would almost make him t 3....



I agree with the skill point thing, I'm fine with feat taxes especially if we are giving fighters more bonus feats. I may not of been clear on what I was doing, i was adding a few separate progressions of 4-5 more feats like the rangers combat styles. Which would add diversity and a power boost.

Letting the fighter ignore ability and skill prereqs would be good too

[Hurnn]

I'm fine if a spell caster can buff and do what another class can do but better, as long as its not everything that he does.



I agree with the skill point thing, I'm fine with feat taxes especially if we are giving fighters more bonus feats. I may not of been clear on what I was doing, i was adding a few separate progressions of 4-5 more feats like the rangers combat styles. Which would add diversity and a power boost.

Letting the fighter ignore ability and skill prereqs would be good too


Thats the thing any t 1 class can do what a rogue or fighter does and do it better plus everything else, and feat taxes make bonus feats pointless not to mention half of them are things that a fighter should just know how to f***ing do. Power attack seriously, a fighter doesnt already know how to just swing as hard as he can? Combat expertice, trading offence for defence really, anyone who has trained for more than 5 minutes should know how to do that let alone a guy who has dedicated his life to it; and to make it more insulting it has an 13 int requirement. Then there are the stupid ones point blank shot leads to far shot??????

[Gemini476]

Thats the thing any t 1 class can do what a rogue or fighter does and do it better plus everything else, and feat taxes make bonus feats pointless not to mention half of them are things that a fighter should just know how to f***ing do. Power attack seriously, a fighter doesnt already know how to just swing as hard as he can? Combat expertice, trading offence for defence really, anyone who has trained for more than 5 minutes should know how to do that let alone a guy who has dedicated his life to it; and to make it more insulting it has an 13 int requirement. Then there are the stupid ones point blank shot leads to far shot??????

I once read a post by someone that said that the transition from 2E to 3E and the introduction of feats limited the options of player characters. You want to swing your sword recklessly to do more damage? Nope, you need Power Attack. You want to slice through a mook and the guy next to him? Do you have Cleave?
The specific example used in the post was if, for instance, there was a feat that let you swing from ropes/chandeliers/support beams: where before you might have been able to roleplay that out, now you needed feats to be capable of doing your, well, feats.
I found it kind of funny since I've heard the exact same complaints regarding 4E's system for powers, but still. I guess edition warriors will always keep warring. (4e=WoW, 3E=Diablo, and 2E=Dragon Warrior, incidentally.)

Just thought it seemed a bit relevant to your post.

[Endarire]

My 3.5 rewrite, Taste of Power (with an intro module here (http://campbellgrege.com/work-listing/the-metaphysical-revolution-dd-3-5-module/) for 3.5) takes this approach:

-All classes get spells, spell-like abilities, psionic powers, or maneuvers as standard. All of them. (If I include Incarnum or Binders or some similar class, it'll have something comparable.)

-HP differences between classes are much more pronounced than in 3.5. In 3.5, a Barbarian (a d12 class) and a Wizard (a d4 class), when taking average HP, end up being only about a 300% difference. In my system, a Crusader gets 20 + CON mod HP per level while a Wizard gets 5 + CON mod HP per level. Mundanes also get at least 2 good saves while casters usually only get 1.

-The martial classes can get the vital effects of flight, true seeing, death ward (duality ward in this version), mind blank, and freedom of movement either as class features or as stances. Martial characters usually get either CHA bonus to saves (and have a CHA focus for other class features) or the Diamond Mind maneuvers which use Concentration checks instead of saves.

-Martial classes are more than just hitting things. A Swordsage20, for example, can cast gate as a spell-like ability, but only between the material plane and Plane of Shadow. He can only call creatures of the Shadow Plane.

-Full attacking (including charging) is a standard action for everyone. This helps mundanes more than casters. Considering the damage a mundane can (and is somewhat expected to deal), he'll probably drop any CR-appropriate foe in one turn, assuming everything hits.

-Martial adepts also get to swap all their maneuvers and stances known daily, just like a Cleric swaps his spells. Why? Because it's cool and effective. It is blade "magic" after all! (See also balance.)

-Some martial adepts also get the ability to imbue their weapons, shields, and armor with hour/level enhancements. For example, a Swordsage10 can treat 10 items as +3 weapons (either a straight +3 or some variety of enhancements totalling +3) for 10 hours each. No, this Swordsage isn't a caster nor an Arcane Swordsage.

-All classes get bonus feats. Normally, martials get them fastest, at levels 5, 9ish, 13ish, and 17ish. Casters also get bonus feats, but at 5, 10, 15, and 20. And in this system, feats scale much better.

[The Insanity]

I once read a post by someone that said that the transition from 2E to 3E and the introduction of feats limited the options of player characters. You want to swing your sword recklessly to do more damage? Nope, you need Power Attack. You want to slice through a mook and the guy next to him? Do you have Cleave?
The specific example used in the post was if, for instance, there was a feat that let you swing from ropes/chandeliers/support beams: where before you might have been able to roleplay that out, now you needed feats to be capable of doing your, well, feats.
In my games you can do whatever you want. It's just harder because you're not trained in it, thus you get penalties. Feats remove or lessen those penalties, that's all. It's kinda like when using a weapon you're not proficient with gives you -4 penalty and getting proficiency removes it. The only difference with this is that you have to make rulings/houserules/homebrew on the spot, because the designers didn't bother creating a rule for every little thing.
There's a lot of things in D&D that don't have rules, but you still do them just fine.

[Lans]

Thats the thing any t 1 class can do what a rogue or fighter does and do it better plus everything else,
That is as much a problem of with the upper tier classes, who should be nerfed as it is with raising the other tiers.

and feat taxes make bonus feats pointless not to mention half of them are things that a fighter should just know how to f***ing do. Power attack seriously, a fighter doesn't already know how to just swing as hard as he can?

I agree on power attack, but as a feat I think it gives enough of a boost. So maybe a 1/2 PA be standard ability would be in line

Combat expertise, trading offence for defence really, anyone who has trained for more than 5 minutes should know how to do that let alone a guy who has dedicated his to it; Anyone can trade offense for defense. Just not as well, and itis called fighting defensively and total defense options


and to make it more insulting it has an 13 int requirement. Then there are the stupid ones point blank shot leads to far shot??????

True, ability taxes and non progressions are an issue. My personal preference would be for there to be a gateway feat like with twf that gives you an additional attack for every Two weapon fighting feat you have for each attack you get from base attack bonus. If you have more two weapon fighting feats than attacks granted by your base attack bonus you may take an additional attack with your off hand from another source such as haste or flurry. Obviously the wording needs to be much better. Then the other TWF feats branch from that one. Maybe TW Rend does Xd6+1.5 stat, and TW defense adds 1 to ac for each feat, etc

[lunar2]

one way to make the casters more balanced is to take the spells that replace other characters, like knock and invisibility, and make them so that they instead enhance those characters.

for example:

blur, second level spell, gives concealment.
invisibility, third level spell, gives concealment and 1/2 caster level bonus to hide. concealment can't be used to hide while observed.
displacement, 4th level spell, gives total concealment.
greater invisibility, 5th level spell, gives total concealment and caster level bonus to hide. can be used to hide while observed.

now, a 5th level wizard with good dex might be able to sneak past a low level guard with invisibility and a little luck, but he can't really do anything with it. a 5th level rogue, on the other hand, can use it to get right up to the guard, and stab an eye out, with no one being any wiser. and a rogue will always be able to better use this type of invisibility than a wizard, since he has the hide and move silently to take advantage of the concealment granted.

or knock, which could grant a bonus equal to caster level on open lock checks, and allow rushed checks without penalty. because of the nature of open lock DCs, only a very high level wizard can really take full advantage of this knock spell, while even a low level rogue appreciates the help in getting through doors faster.

spells written this way enhance the lower tier classes, rather than replace them.

[1pwny]

Very easy way to fix everything: give all fighters uncanny dodge, and allow better dispels.

Right now, the only effective way to dispel things (for a fighter) is to hit them with a dispelling weapon. But I think the rules for dispelling should be changed to be something more like this:
"When a dispelling weapon comes into contact with a spell or the product of a spell, that spell or spell product is dispelled."

Then, give fighters a reflex save for any spell, and BAM! Fireball? Sliced in half, and dispelled. Simalcrum? Diced and gone. Mage Armor? Not anymore!

I feel like reflex saves are really underused. Really, if your character has uncanny reflexes, that "react to danger before her senses would normally allow her to do so", then why can't you jump out of the way of a spell? Or slice it in half with a sword?

[TuggyNE]

Very easy way to fix everything: give all fighters uncanny dodge, and allow better dispels.

Right now, the only effective way to dispel things (for a fighter) is to hit them with a dispelling weapon. But I think the rules for dispelling should be changed to be something more like this:
"When a dispelling weapon comes into contact with a spell or the product of a spell, that spell or spell product is dispelled."

Then, give fighters a reflex save for any spell, and BAM! Fireball? Sliced in half, and dispelled. Simalcrum? Diced and gone. Mage Armor? Not anymore!

I feel like reflex saves are really underused. Really, if your character has uncanny reflexes, that "react to danger before her senses would normally allow her to do so", then why can't you jump out of the way of a spell? Or slice it in half with a sword?

Fighters have bad Reflex progression, and are not fluffed as especially good at dodging, so this would be strange (to say the least). Auto-dispelling with no check is a terrible idea, especially since casters can use weapons just as easily as non-casters can, and can thus use this to auto-dispel fighter buffs or magic items. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, after all.

What's more, allowing Instantaneous spell effects (like simulacrum) to be dispelled thoroughly breaks the system's assumptions. How do you distinguish between the effect of cure light wounds and the effect of wall of iron, both of which are instantaneous Conjurations? Can you instantly auto-defeat many undead, all summons, all called creatures, and many constructs by simply hitting them once with a dispelling weapon?

Finally, of course, this does nothing to help against spells that prevent the Fighter from targeting the caster/effect in the first place, or don't offer a Reflex save (i.e., most of the truly brutal spells), such as fly, invisibility, mirror image, enervation, fear, or dominate person.

To the extent that this approach is useful and makes sense, it already exists in the form of Pierce Magical Protection/Concealment.

[Hurnn]

Fighters have bad Reflex progression, and are not fluffed as especially good at dodging, so this would be strange (to say the least). Auto-dispelling with no check is a terrible idea, especially since casters can use weapons just as easily as non-casters can, and can thus use this to auto-dispel fighter buffs or magic items. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, after all.

What's more, allowing Instantaneous spell effects (like simulacrum) to be dispelled thoroughly breaks the system's assumptions. How do you distinguish between the effect of cure light wounds and the effect of wall of iron, both of which are instantaneous Conjurations? Can you instantly auto-defeat many undead, all summons, all called creatures, and many constructs by simply hitting them once with a dispelling weapon?

Finally, of course, this does nothing to help against spells that prevent the Fighter from targeting the caster/effect in the first place, or don't offer a Reflex save (i.e., most of the truly brutal spells), such as fly, invisibility, mirror image, enervation, fear, or dominate person.

To the extent that this approach is useful and makes sense, it already exists in the form of Pierce Magical Protection/Concealment.

That is becasue fighters got really hosed with the 2 bad one good save thing. Honestly I think saves should have been +2 +1 +0 for every class Fort Ref Will for fighters as an example.

[maniacalmojo]

A good way to balance the wizard is to have them roll a spell craft every time they want to cast a spell. It would cause the reliability of spell casting to be skewed so they are not all powerful.

[The Insanity]

A good way to balance the wizard is to have them roll a spell craft every time they want to cast a spell. It would cause the reliability of spell casting to be skewed so they are not all powerful.
Already done. It's called Trunamer.

[lunar2]

A good way to balance the wizard is to have them roll a spell craft every time they want to cast a spell. It would cause the reliability of spell casting to be skewed so they are not all powerful.

nah. for one, spellcraft is too easily optimized. for another, this doesn't change the power of the spells at all. if you have to try 3 times to get the polymorph cast, you still got the polymorph cast. it just means you start trying to cast your game breaker spells before combat actually begins (because a wizard is totally able to find out when the combat is going to happen, before it happens).

[Lans]

Already done. It's called Trunamer.

On a similiar vein you can go the shadowcaster route and severely limit uses and versitility