Rewriting rules to balance magic and combat.

[maniacalmojo]

So i find the fact that combat characters end up getting shafted after a certain point in D&D compared to full casters to be somewhat frustrating especially when thematically non casters feel so much cooler then wizards and equivalant. So if you had to find a way to balance D&D rule wise or spell wise to make everyone balanced and fun to play how would you go about doing it.

Do not say have everyone play a wizard. That kind of thinking makes people not want to play with you.

[Gavinfoxx]

Play Legend, it did this.

http://www.ruleofcool.com/

[LordBlades]

especially when thematically non casters feel so much cooler then wizards and equivalant.

Not everybody feels that way. On the contrary, I'm willing to betquite a lot of people play D&D because they find 'wizards and equivalent' cool. There's a pretty obvious draw to classes that delve into the supernatural and/or the impossible. As a friend of mine ( who plays casters/manifesters exclusively): I can swing a sword and punch people in RL too, but I can't cast Fireball'

[maniacalmojo]

Well yeah you can make any charecter fun and interesting and enjoyable to play. But it does not hit home when a charecter who designed their rogue to be considered a master thief and plays it careful and thematically be outclassed because the wizard can cast knock, fly, invisibility and teleport. Or a barbarian who is considered one of the strongest men around be outclassed when the wizard cast a few buffs on himself and is now stronger then the barbarian.

Honestly i would not have any problem with casters if they did debuffs and damage as a primary form of spells and did not have any utility abilities that make entire classes mostly pointless.

[Eldan]

Go to Morphbark's Homebrew Tier thread. YOu can find it by googling. Ban all core classes that are not in tiers 3 and 4, add homebrew classes that are tier 3 and 4.

[John Longarrow]

maniacalmojo,

Have multiple encounters per day. The game is somewhat balanced for the idea of 4 per day, but if you up that to 10-12, the spell casters can't keep up casting all the time.

Likewise have dungeons that involve a variety of encounter/traps/puzzles that have a built in time limit. Make the casters do some resource management and you'll see that the "At will" abilities become much more in demand.

[Eldariel]

If I had the time for a comprehensive rewrite? I would:
- Change combat mechanics covering melee threat and mobility (remove ways to avoid melee threat such as 5' steps & Tumble, enable non-reach melee to control a larger area, etc.). This would enable more martial archetypes and make martial types more relevant in combat.
- Move spells to work primarily on one round cast time as opposed to standard action. This would force spellcasters to put a bit more effort into protecting themselves.
- Rewrite a bunch of spells (Planar Binding/Gate have few stupid clauses that don't make sense and break the spells wide open, Polymorph-line, Simulacrum & al. are just too powerful, etc.). I would also make save-or-Xs a bit more modal á la 4e with partial success and partial failure for different effects.
- Rewrite a bunch of feats and classes that make it too easy to have a ton of different spells on you at all times. Magical protection is fine but being permabuffed with 20 spells is kinda excessive. Also rewrite the useless martial feats.
- Make martial classes by default much more hardy; give them more good saves, give them magic resistance/immunity with levels, double or triple the amount of HP they gain from bonus Constitution, etc.
- Give non-casters more skill points, better skill lists and overall, focus more of them around skills. And I'd take the opportunity to rewrite the skill system while at it.
- Move non-casters to use maneuver systems á la ToB, give some room for improvisation thus enable called shots and the like.

That's the rough of it. Of course, it'd be way too much work at this point for me to actually start on it, and none of the existing remakes match my vision. The remade errata on Minmaxboards are probably the closest.

[LordBlades]

maniacalmojo,

Have multiple encounters per day. The game is somewhat balanced for the idea of 4 per day, but if you up that to 10-12, the spell casters can't keep up casting all the time.

Likewise have dungeons that involve a variety of encounter/traps/puzzles that have a built in time limit. Make the casters do some resource management and you'll see that the "At will" abilities become much more in demand.

Pushing casters to 10-12 encounters per day occasionally works. Pushing casters toward 10-12 encounters per day regularly just causes them to switch to spells like Animate Dead or Planar Ally/Binding.

[CombatOwl]

So i find the fact that combat characters end up getting shafted after a certain point in D&D compared to full casters to be somewhat frustrating especially when thematically non casters feel so much cooler then wizards and equivalant. So if you had to find a way to balance D&D rule wise or spell wise to make everyone balanced and fun to play how would you go about doing it.

Do not say have everyone play a wizard. That kind of thinking makes people not want to play with you.

There are plenty of other systems suited for fantasy games which effectively balance the two. Including 4e.

[JeminiZero]

Or a barbarian who is considered one of the strongest men around be outclassed when the wizard cast a few buffs on himself and is now stronger then the barbarian.
Actually, the real threat is not from the Wizard. It is from the Druid, who has a bear Animal Companion. Who then transforms into a bear, while buffing himself with bite of the WereX, and summoning MORE bears...

In general, the variable polymorph effects (that is, those that let you choose from a wide variety of forms, such as Alter Self, Polymorph, Polymorph Any Object, Shapechange) tend to be really REALLY broken, and should not be used.


Go to Morphbark's Homebrew Tier thread. You can find it by googling. Ban all core classes that are not in tiers 3 and 4, add homebrew classes that are tier 3 and 4.

Its here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?245701) by the way. There is a section in post #4 on Homebrew Fix Classes. My own Trissociate is listed as Variable Tier, but it should be fairly balanced, so long as you don't pick more than one Association that grants Level 9 spells/powers/spell-like-abilities.

[Jormengand]

If you don't trust random homebrew, another option is to drop wizard, cleric and sorcerer spellcasting by a bit (make it go at normal rate until sixth class level, then drop off suddenly and only ever go up to seventh level), drop druid casting by a lot, and allow fighters to use things like Dungeoncrasher and Zhentarim Soldier. Shove Ranger and Paladin casting back down to first level, and consequently hand out fifth-level spells to them at high levels. Give Monks Vow of Poverty only without actually forcing them to follow the rules of it. Rogues and Barbarians can probably survive where they are, but you might give them some minor thematic boost to their abilities.

That's a quick, and not very well thought-out, way of doing it, but a "Quick fix" like that can work if you don't want to run homebrew.

Alternatively, force all your people who want to play as spellcasters to play truenamers instead, present the fighter-types with the Tome of Battle, and see what happens.

[tenbones]

It depends on what you want as a conceit of the game. Mages *are* more powerful mechanically if you consider the fact that spells are essentially really powerful Feats by themselves, and at a certain point a Mage can usually end most types of combat much faster than any of their non-spellcasting companions.

As duly pointed out, a Mage can out-rogue any rogue with a few spells. A Druid can out-fight a Fighter with a simple Shape-Shift and maybe a buff or two.

If mechanically you adhere to these conceits (3.x/PF) you'll invariably find non-caster players feeling sidelined. This has been my personal opinion. It's not that they didn't love their Fighters and Rogues - it's that the spellcasters in the party mechanically were far more efficient and versatile. Going by standard conceits of 3.x/PF - this is fairly consistent.

I know that was never the intent, but there's some basic mechanical issues with 3.x/PF that reinforce this problem.

1) Feats are not balanced. They're too weak in terms of what they allow for non-casters to do. Fighters get Weapon Specialization - which has Weapon Focus as a pre-req. The combined total for two, generally indispensable Feats, is +1 to hit and +2 to damage. So let's keep the parallel here: Feats = Spells because Feats are what allow non-casters to do their "thing" in a normative sense. Meanwhile - comparatively a Wizard will get Fireball/Lightning bolt which is auto-hit with scaling damage (up to level 10, for 10d6). And this is talking purely about just dealing damage - not about the utility spells that a caster can bring into play to stop fights cold.

2) Forced Hyper-specialization through Feat Taxes - Not only to non-casters get too few Feats, but the Feats they need in order to attempt to do the "schtick" they want, requires a ridiculous amount of Feats to get and be sub-par. Consider being a Mounted Character... sure you can be a Cavalier in Pathfinder, but is that enough to encompass all the possibilities and vagaries of an entire campaign? No. Sure you'll buy all the mounted Feats, and Feats dealing with you lance etc. but all that does is pigeon-hole players into gluing themselves into their saddle and never leaving their mount... OR they will not play that class/schtick. There is no incentive to since Feats come in too few number to justify it. This is reinforces "System Mastery" where players rely on creating ridiculous "optimum builds" in lieu of playing a 'realistic' concept. "Go 4 levels Fighter, 3 levels Monk, 2 levels Mage, 3 levels Druid and BAM!" ugh...


3) Magic Itemization AS balance. The idea that in order to "balance" a class it requires magic-items is bad design. Again, it promotes downstream effects like rampant magic-item economy that cheapens magic and only creates a wider gap between caster and non-caster. A class should be self-contained and solid on its own merits without the assumption of having some fixed and necessary magical economy to justify a class's existence. Magic-Item inflation impacts almost every other aspect of the game - including the conceits about Monsters and their powers who are assumed to be dealing with PC's suitably equipped.

Magic items should scale and be kept relatively rare.

4) Class abilities do not scale. Again, casters are frontloaded with spellcasting writ-large being the entire weight upon which they excel beyond all mechanical pursuits of non-casters. Most Mages at around 10th level can bypass the vast majority of skills (another issue) with spells. Non-caster abilities normally enhance existing skills available to other classes and rarely to the level attainable by spellcasting.

5) Skills points are too low. If the normal assumption is PC's are heroes, their skillpoints are simply too low. Even spellcasters are not immune to this - though they have ways to bypass the problem that other classes do not.

6) Tiered gameplay theory. The emergent notion that at specific breakpoints by level that certain styles of play were more appropriate. Unfortunately classes are all built equal, and neither are the conceits of the game designed in 3.x/PF designed to support this idea beyond 6th level because it just gets worse from that point forward.

7) Lack of Stat distribution - Dumpstatting is something largely ignored by the mechanics of the system. There should be more distribution of mechanics as needed by Stats. Case in point - again - casters have a distinct advantage. Mages need as much Int as they can get. *all* other stats are secondary. Meanwhile- Fighters *need* all the physical stats they can nab to do sub-par performance. Same with Rogues.

How to fix these things?

Well you could start by beefing up Feats, OR giving non-casters MORE Feats. Sounds crazy? But consider there ARE 3rd party d20 systems that did this: Swashbuckling Adventures (d20 7th Sea) had these remarkably 5-level PrC's that loaded your non-casters down with Feats and abilities to fully round out a particular "style". I remember a lot of people in my gaming circles thought it was crazy to allow Fighters and non-caster to have access to these styles because it was "too powerful". And I thought - compared to what? "Normal" Fighters and Rogues? The answer was - well "That world is low-magic so that's WHY they're so loaded up!" And I gave it a whirl - and never did any of my caster players feel threatened by the new ferocity of their non-caster counterparts. Quite the opposite. It had the effect of galvanizing my groups into something closer to what I enjoyed in 2e (with houserules).

It closed the gap.

There ARE other solutions to this d20 issue that are in print. So you wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel. I'd be happy to recommend some of them to you if you're interested.

The IDEA shouldn't be about downplaying casters. But raising non-casters UP.

[Doug Lampert]

maniacalmojo,

Have multiple encounters per day. The game is somewhat balanced for the idea of 4 per day, but if you up that to 10-12, the spell casters can't keep up casting all the time.

Likewise have dungeons that involve a variety of encounter/traps/puzzles that have a built in time limit. Make the casters do some resource management and you'll see that the "At will" abilities become much more in demand.

Lots of traps and a time limit? Take the damage, use SPELLS to heal, and keep going, JUST LIKE THE PARTY WITH A ROGUE! Have you LOOKED at how long actually searching everything takes?! Seriously, traps + time limit is a reason to ditch the crap rogue and take a second druid or third cleric instead. That suggestion if actually played out is a perfect example of mundanes not being competitive. The rogue can't actually do his job in a situation DESIGNED to try to make him necessary!

Low Op: Casters have better endurance than mundanes because the mundanes need the Cleric to have plenty of spells and are out as soon as the cleric is.

Medium Op: The caster runs out of spells and EVERYONE wants to stop while he recovers because the beatsticks can't function without spell support in a game where they don't all have fly from their own resources.

Higher Op: Casters have equal or better endurance than mundanes because of reserve feats and the like, and the caster can actually deal with a tough encounter as well as the easy ones.

Basically, there is NEVER a time in actual games past level 5 or so where the party continues to face down the big bad once the casters are actually out of useful spells unless the GOAL is a TPK. Hence limits on spells per day are almost completely meaningless as a balance mechanism in this game too. Limited spells per day is ALMOST enough of a balance factor to match the versatility of having dozens of different spells rather than 1 or 2 decent combat maneuvers, it is totally inadequate to balance spells actually being better than those one or two maneuvers.

If lots of encounters are common, the casters adjust and still don't run out of spells (and they don't adjust by being weaker than the mundanes, they get wands or scrolls or pearls or reserve feats or persistent spells or the Druid simply lets his AC eat the monster's face).

It isn't actually hard to be ready for 20 relatively easy encounters a day in party "all caster", and yet those 20 relatively easy encounters a day still TPK party "balanced" as the cleric runs out of healing because there's only one of him and no one has any animated undead or other expendable minions like animal companions.

[Eldan]

maniacalmojo,

Have multiple encounters per day. The game is somewhat balanced for the idea of 4 per day, but if you up that to 10-12, the spell casters can't keep up casting all the time..

The problem with that? Mundanes frequently run out of hitpoints before casters run out of spells. What gives hitpoints back? Spells.

[LordBlades]

There is no incentive to since Feats come in too few number to justifymelee-eris is reinforces "System Mastery" where players rely on creating ridiculous "optimum builds" in lieu of playing a 'realistic' concept. "Go 4 levels Fighter, 3 levels Monk, 2 levels Mage, 3 levels Druid and BAM!" ugh...



I'm prety sure it's not hard to create an interesting story for pretty much any class combination. Regardless, the 'need to dip is caused mainly by 2 major flaws in class design:
-many classes stop granting interesting abilities faily quickly so there's no incentive to continue. Take cleric/sorcerer: past level 1 they grant absolutely nothing new.
-many classes lack abilities that have proven so immensly useful and/or necessary in practice that dips in classes that grant them have become pretty much mandatory. For example Pounce. A melee-er without pounce is so handicapped compared to a meller with pounce that, barring specific circumstances, spirit lion totem barb is an almost mandatory dip.

[John Longarrow]

maniacalmojo
2 quick questions;
1) Is this for a game you are DMing?
2) Have you tried E6?

[tenbones]

I'm prety sure it's not hard to create an interesting story for pretty much any class combination. Regardless, the 'need to dip is caused mainly by 2 major flaws in class design:
-many classes stop granting interesting abilities faily quickly so there's no incentive to continue. Take cleric/sorcerer: past level 1 they grant absolutely nothing new.
-many classes lack abilities that have proven so immensly useful and/or necessary in practice that dips in classes that grant them have become pretty much mandatory. For example Pounce. A melee-er without pounce is so handicapped compared to a meller with pounce that, barring specific circumstances, spirit lion totem barb is an almost mandatory dip.

Sure! I agree with you.

What you're describing is one of the trees in the Optimization forest that, imo, shouldn't exist. All those abilities/Feats/Spells etc. should be balanced mathematically/mechanically UPWARDS - getting closer to the Spellcasters in terms of performance.

Of course it also begs the question of "What kind of Fantasy are you going for?" Some would argue that D&D/Pathfinder is its own brand of fantasy by itself, acknowledging that it has its roots in various fantasy-literature forms. But the emergent gameplay from the rules as written is "unique". GM's doing their own home-brewed worlds or even running published settings have to modify these mechanics to suit their needs.

I think the problem with 3.x/PF is that the systems are so tightly bound and dependent on the underlying math, that when you have abilities/spells/Feats/skills that are not balanced, it creates these emergent faultlines that forces players to do hyper-optimization *as* the game itself.

Dipping is the visible portion of that iceberg.

I'm a GM primarily... so you're giving a wonderful example, but I'd cite that as a common player perspective. I'll do you one further and try to use your example too.

So let's say I come to you as a GM and tell you - "We're going to play Pathfinder. And the campaign is going to be set in Avistan or wherever, a place that is very civilized." And you decide you wanna play a Barbarian with a Spirit Lion totem because you want Pounce. What if as a GM I recognize that you just want the Pounce ability, but mechanically, the only means for you to get it is to play a class that doesn't really "exist" per se in the context of the campaign setting?

Is it a problem? Not really, we can just "ignore" that fluff. But let's up the complexity a bit. Let's say you want to play a Martial Artist that *isn't* a Monk? You wanna be a Fighter-type that fights like a monk, but isn't a monk. You'd have to dip, etc. and even then you'll end up with abilities that you didn't really want.

Worse - the conceits of the campaign could shift, and it goes to being something that your character is *not* optimized to deal with. Then what? That's the weakness of the system right?

So then there's Fantasy Craft. It's d20 stripped own and totally rebalanced. Casters aren't dumbed down. Melee and Social Character classes are raised up. They do this by rebalancing everything and allowing you to fully customize your character to do what you want, have what you want, without having to do things like dipping JUST to get an ability you think makes you "optimal". When in reality you're saying "Optimal" vs. other "sub-optimal" melee-choices that the system creates by not balancing abilities/Feats/skills.

Try for example to create what you envision a Spartan from 300 would be like in Pathfinder. Spear, Shield and Gladius are his weapons. What class/Feat combinations would satisfy you? Give it a shot. (it's pretty weak concept mechanically in 3.x/PF - that's why I chose it. When in reality, Spartans should be pretty damn formidable). As a side - if it interests you - what would do for a "martial artist" assuming you didn't have to create a homebrewed class?

[John Longarrow]

Lots of traps and a time limit? Take the damage, use SPELLS to heal, and keep going, JUST LIKE THE PARTY WITH A ROGUE! Have you LOOKED at how long actually searching everything takes?! Seriously, traps + time limit is a reason to ditch the crap rogue and take a second druid or third cleric instead. That suggestion if actually played out is a perfect example of mundanes not being competitive. The rogue can't actually do his job in a situation DESIGNED to try to make him necessary!

Low Op: Casters have better endurance than mundanes because the mundanes need the Cleric to have plenty of spells and are out as soon as the cleric is.

Medium Op: The caster runs out of spells and EVERYONE wants to stop while he recovers because the beatsticks can't function without spell support in a game where they don't all have fly from their own resources.

Higher Op: Casters have equal or better endurance than mundanes because of reserve feats and the like, and the caster can actually deal with a tough encounter as well as the easy ones.

Basically, there is NEVER a time in actual games past level 5 or so where the party continues to face down the big bad once the casters are actually out of useful spells unless the GOAL is a TPK. Hence limits on spells per day are almost completely meaningless as a balance mechanism in this game too. Limited spells per day is ALMOST enough of a balance factor to match the versatility of having dozens of different spells rather than 1 or 2 decent combat maneuvers, it is totally inadequate to balance spells actually being better than those one or two maneuvers.

If lots of encounters are common, the casters adjust and still don't run out of spells (and they don't adjust by being weaker than the mundanes, they get wands or scrolls or pearls or reserve feats or persistent spells or the Druid simply lets his AC eat the monster's face).

It isn't actually hard to be ready for 20 relatively easy encounters a day in party "all caster", and yet those 20 relatively easy encounters a day still TPK party "balanced" as the cleric runs out of healing because there's only one of him and no one has any animated undead or other expendable minions like animal companions.

Odd... I've not had this problem when DMing or playing with the groups I've been in. Maybe the DMs are just better at making challenges that spell casters can't just cast through? You may want to find a better DM if this is what you are always seeing. If you are the DM, maybe I can teach you how to have an adventure that isn't easy for spell casters to walk through. They tend to be a lot more fun than the average "Go in, save or die, I win" scenarios.

[Hiro Quester]

The game I'm playing has balanced this by DM-granted superpowers. Many levels include extra feats and ability bumps ("the Gods reward you and help you in your mission" bonus), that the DM selects.

So in our group the fighter, paladin and whisper-knife are getting many attacks a round, each character doing far more damage in a round than most un-metamagiced spells could do.

As the buffer bard/sublime chord for the group, spending a round to haste the group and sing inspire courage (for +6 to attack and damage) dos far more damage in the long run than any single spell I could cast.

So while the casters have flexibility, debuffs, battlefield control, and so on, much of the time we casters stay away from direct-damage spells. A well placed baleful poymorph or disintegrate might help sometimes. But the fighter-types certainly have a strong role to play.

Edit: BTW most of us are level 16, 17, 18 now.

[pilvento]

My only suggestion is to limit casters to play over specialized roles, just like mundane characters.

Warmage, Beguiler, Dread necromancer, Warlock.

Play specialist Wizards at costs of aditional schools.

Play spontaneus casters like sorcerer, shaman or favored souls.