Why the favoritism toward Divine Casters?

[CrazyYanmega]

I've noticed that, at least for Core, Divine full-casters are the only ones with medium BAB and decent class features. Now, I can understand Wizard being 1/2 BAB, but why does Sorcerer have 1/2 BAB and no real class features?

Furthermore, all of the Divine half-casters I can think of have Full BAB, while Arcane only gets Medium BAB. Heck, the "Uber Broken" Psionic Classes have only 1/2 BAB for their full Casters and 3/4 for their half Casters.

Anyone care to debate on the developer's reasoning?

[A.A.King]

You're comparing the wrong half-casters. It seems you are comparing Paladin/Ranger with Bard, their difference in BAB can partly be explained by their different spell progressions. Bards get way more and better spells.

If you compare a Paladin with a Hexblade, two classess who have a very similiar spell progression, then you'll see that they have the same BAB.

[HammeredWharf]

Arcane spells are stronger, especially offensively.

[Eldaran]

It's largely a legacy of earlier editions, and also the archetype of the warrior priest wading into battle alongside knights.


Heck, the "Uber Broken" Psionic Classes have only 1/2 BAB for their full Casters and 3/4 for their half Casters.

I think very few people who have actually used psionics, and understood the rules, finds it to be broken.

[CrazyYanmega]

It's largely a legacy of earlier editions, and also the archetype of the warrior priest wading into battle alongside knights.

I think very few people who have actually used psionics, and understood the rules, finds it to be broken.

That doesn't explain Druid. Also, I am aware that Psionics isn't broken, thus the quotes.

[Karnith]

That doesn't explain Druid.
There are stories, possibly apocryphal, that the Druid playtesters early in 3E's run had no idea what they were doing (or, rather, they played the class exactly as it was played in 2E, even though the rules had changed drastically). So the Druids went into melee with a scimitar, used Wild Shape exclusively for scouting, didn't use Animal Companions for combat, didn't cast very many spells, etc.

And if you play a Druid that way, then the 3/4 BAB becomes kinda necessary - it certainly isn't something you'd cut from the class, especially given the way that designers overvalued full BAB early on.

Of course, there are also stories that one of the designers just really liked Druids and purposefully tried to make them OP, so who really knows why they did it?

[weckar]

There's also the explanation that Druids have such a tough RP tax, that their power is justified.

On a related note, you'll find that Arcane magic has a far greater variance in support material outside of core than Divine.

[jaydubs]

I've always thought about it as a matter of incentive, at least in terms of full divine casters. Despite what is written on the forums, it's still a pretty common conception that cleric/druid = healer. And most people would rather play something more exciting or heroic than the healer, so they put a bunch of really nice features on these types of classes to have enough people want to play them.

To pull an example from another source, the medic class in team fortress 2 is one of the most important to have on the team. More often than not, the team with the more medics wins. Despite this, they're always scarce, because most players have more fun killing things than playing support.

While I've never gotten into any MMOs, I'v heard there are similar problems in those types of games. I.e., people prefer playing DPS vs playing a healer.

My intuition says these types of preferences apply to tabletop RPGs as well. And consequently, getting enough players to want to willingly choose these classes involved giving them lots of nice things.

[TypoNinja]

I've noticed that, at least for Core, Divine full-casters are the only ones with medium BAB and decent class features. Now, I can understand Wizard being 1/2 BAB, but why does Sorcerer have 1/2 BAB and no real class features?


The playtesters/devs massively over value the benefit of spontaneous casting, thats why the Sorcerer loses feats and gets spells slower. When designing their product they assumed spontaneous from a limited list would be a more powerful option than prepared casting. Its really really not. Just look at Favored Soul. Slower progression of spells, no domains(HUGE), no turn undead, (MY TU POWERED FEATS! FIEND!), lose the heavy Armour prof, and the class features they did give it are terrible, and spread way out.

Sorcerer is objectively a terrible class because there is literally no reason to stay in it. You PRC out as fast as you possibly can because Sorcerer provides nothing but spellcasting and any full casting PRC will give you casting AND class features. Sorcerer has no class features, 2+int skill points, the worst BAB, only one good save and d4 HD. There is literally nothing keeping you in that class that any other full casting PRC doesn't offer better of.

So in exchange for spontaneous casting (compared to a wizard) the Sorcerer gets a very limited list and loses; metamagic, bonus feats, the ability to specialize, some really amazing ACF's, and access to some PRC's. That's how much they over valued Spontaneous.

Now, don't get me wrong, both Favored Soul and Sorc are still full casting classes. We are arguing degrees of Awesome, not Good and Bad. But when you can point at a class that is literally useless past 5th level (assuming no early entry cheese) you've made a design error.

[Tengu_temp]

I've always thought about it as a matter of incentive, at least in terms of full divine casters. Despite what is written on the forums, it's still a pretty common conception that cleric/druid = healer. And most people would rather play something more exciting or heroic than the healer, so they put a bunch of really nice features on these types of classes to have enough people want to play them.


You have the cause and effect here backwards. In AD&D, clerics were pretty much healers and buffers - they had heavy armor, but they were much worse in melee than fighters and other fighter-like classes, even with lots of self-buffs. Because of this, many people didn't want to play the cleric, because the class was seen as a walking band-aid and not much more.

To give incentive to play the class, in 3e WotC gave it a lot of goodies - better melee ability and lots of good self-only buffs, and spontaneous casting so you don't have to spend 90% of your spell slots on healing. But they went too far with those incentives, and as a result cleric and druid became the most powerfuls core melee classes when played correctly. This is where CoDzilla came from. Some people don't catch on, because they still play those classes as mostly bandaids.

[HunterOfJello]

As far as pure hp damage is concerned, arcane casters usually have the advantage over divine casters. Giving a slightly higher BAB to the divine casters so that they can also do damage in melee allows the divine casters to do regular hp damage too.

That is one way of thinking about it.

It's important to remember that the people who wrote 3e were ingrained in the mindset of 2eAD&D and would likely not have written the game in the same way if they had playtested the game differently.

We can sit back today and exclaim how much stronger a wizard is than a sorcerer regardless of the fact that wizards get bonus feats and access to spells earlier. However, at the time the creators thought that sorcerers would be the most powerful spellcaster around so they nerfed their progression, gave them no other features, and made their metamagic usage take longer.