Why would anyone want to play a non-spellcaster?

[RoboEmperor]

Just asking. Not a single person in my group wants to play a non-spellcaster. At best it's a gish with 1 or 2 levels of fighter, but it's usually melee clerics and druids who fill that role until they're replaced later by summons.

How about your tables? Does anyone voluntarily play a mundane?

[frogglesmash]

Different strokes for different folks. I personally have always had a soft spot for Rogues and more recently for Scouts.

[RoboEmperor]

Different strokes for different folks. I personally have always had a soft spot for Rogues and more recently for Scouts.

I like to do a lot of weird things, and they're only possible with spells. So what makes you enjoy rogues? Why do you like rogues? Why do you like playing scouts?

[Kelb_Panthera]

To answer the question posed by the thread title; simplicity of play, flavor, heightened challenge, etc.

I personally love to build a decent fighter, yes straight classed fighter, just for the sheer badassery I have to step up to if I want my character to survive. Any half decent optimizer can crush an adventure with a sorcerer. It takes some serious stones to do it with a T5 class, straight.

[Kazyan]

If I play a spellcaster, I'm expected to live up to the hype. If I play a "lesser" class, I can just hit things with a greatsword or a skill check until loot comes out.

[heavyfuel]

Everyone has their preferences. Personally, I've always liked both stealthy characters or sword and magic.

I also really sword and board, but it's so unbelivably difficult to play one decently in 3.5 that I just gave up on the concept.

Thing is, mundanes outside ToB are somewhat boring in 3.5. All you do is full-attack after full-attack, and if you can't also do things outside of combat like a Rogue can, you just end up doing nothing for longs periods of time, and then when you finally do something, you just do the same thing over and over again.

[RoboEmperor]

To answer the question posed by the thread title; simplicity of play, flavor, heightened challenge, etc.

I personally love to build a decent fighter, yes straight classed fighter, just for the sheer badassery I have to step up to if I want my character to survive. Any half decent optimizer can crush an adventure with a sorcerer. It takes some serious stones to do it with a T5 class, straight.

So YOU like it because it's a challenge, kind of like "I'm gonna beat this game with only my fists!" or "I'm gonna beat this game without ever dealing even 1 hp of damage" in some other rpg PC game.

I see. XD


I also really sword and board, but it's so unbelivably difficult to play one decently in 3.5 that I just gave up on the concept.

Thing is, mundanes outside ToB are somewhat boring in 3.5. All you do is full-attack after full-attack, and if you can't also do things outside of combat like a Rogue can, you just end up doing nothing for longs periods of time, and then when you finally do something, you just do the same thing over and over again.

Exactly why I'm asking why people would play them.

[frogglesmash]

I like to do a lot of weird things, and they're only possible with spells. So what makes you enjoy rogues? Why do you like rogues? Why do you like playing scouts?

I like the sneaky/skill monkey flavour those classes bring to the game. There's also a lot of character concepts where using magic feels like cheating. I mean sure, I could play a wizard who can invalidate every trap and locked door I come across with just a wave of my hand but it just wouldn't feel the same.

[Riculf]

Short answer: Yes

Slightly longer answer: Some of the abilities of certain melee classes are "cinematic" (e.g. Barbarian for the Conan-on) and still have a place at the table. :smallwink:

[Extra Anchovies]

Me? I hate limited resources. Hate hate hate. Especially if they're my primary class feature (so I'm okay with secondary or tertiary things like Ki pools and whatnot). Even if I have enough spells that they'll last all day, I still won't like the fact that I need to use them up.

But a sword? Swords can be swung all day. Bows only stop working when you run out of arrows. Skill modifiers are there no matter how many times you make a check. Maneuvers recover every encounter.

[Waddacku]

Character concept, bookkeeping issues, preferences in resource management, other gripes with the magic system in question.

[RoboEmperor]

Me? I hate limited resources. Hate hate hate. Especially if they're my primary class feature (so I'm okay with secondary or tertiary things like Ki pools and whatnot). Even if I have enough spells that they'll last all day, I still won't like the fact that I need to use them up.

But a sword? Swords can be swung all day. Bows only stop working when you run out of arrows. Skill modifiers are there no matter how many times you make a check. Maneuvers recover every encounter.

Reserve feats like fiery burst lets your wizard deal comparable damage as sneak attack rogues at level 3, except at range and infinite times :P

So it seems people play mundanes for the role play? Or to mimic what badass warrior they saw on TV?

[frogglesmash]

Reserve feats like fiery burst lets your wizard deal comparable damage as sneak attack rogues at level 3, except at range and infinite times :P

So it seems people play mundanes for the role play? Or to mimic what badass warrior they saw on TV?

It is a Role Playing Game.

[Extra Anchovies]

Reserve feats like fiery burst lets your wizard deal comparable damage as sneak attack rogues at level 3, except at range and infinite times :P

Good point regarding reserve feats, I could pick those up to toss out damage all day long. But at that point I might as well play a Warlock :smalltongue:


So it seems people play mundanes for the role play? Or to mimic what badass warrior they saw on TV?

In large part, it's the second one. Casters are often still game-changers in fantasy stories, but they're rarely the protagonists, and the protagonists get all the coolest moments.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Reserve feats like fiery burst lets your wizard deal comparable damage as sneak attack rogues at level 3, except at range and infinite times :P

The DPR on reserve feats is -much- lower than sneak attack or even the much more comparable eldritch blast.



So it seems people play mundanes for the role play? Or to mimic what badass warrior they saw on TV?

Or book or comic or even just their own imagination. A mundane warrior plays -very- differently in social situations than a caster or even a gish, unless the DM is more focused on encounter design than world buiilding anyway.

[Milo v3]

My current groups party has a gunslinger/magus as the closest thing to our "caster" and paladin/monk as our "healer". Other than that, no spells. My players are more interested in warriors than stickfigures, and as a result all the characters in the group ended up being some form of warrior class.

[Red Fel]

Various reasons, including: Flavor Simpler mechanics Less bookkeeping Challenge Variety Avoiding an angry DM after playing CoDzilla in the last game
Among others.

[Necroticplague]

Personally? Because I hate the spellcasting system, and hate playing what type of characters are made by it. The entire vanvian casting system is ridiculously contrived and unintuitive, I hate being limited to /day abilities, I hate the paperwork that comes from having to keep track of the spell slots, and even more so for having to keep track of prepared spells, I hate how they have the least HP in a system where HP bloat can be a big issue at higher levels, I find it incredibly annoying how many trap options there are.

[Extra Anchovies]

Personally? Because I hate the spellcasting system, and hate playing what type of characters are made by it. The entire vanvian casting system is ridiculously contrived and unintuitive, I hate being limited to /day abilities, I hate the paperwork that comes from having to keep track of the spell slots, and even more so for having to keep track of prepared spells, I hate how they have the least HP in a system where HP bloat can be a big issue at higher levels, I find it incredibly annoying how many trap options there are.

This pretty much sums it up for me, too.

Also, I like the avatar. Tentacles + spare eyes = yes pl0x.

[With a box]

Dose psion count as spellcaster?

[RoboEmperor]

Personally? Because I hate the spellcasting system, and hate playing what type of characters are made by it. The entire vanvian casting system is ridiculously contrived and unintuitive, I hate being limited to /day abilities, I hate the paperwork that comes from having to keep track of the spell slots, and even more so for having to keep track of prepared spells, I hate how they have the least HP in a system where HP bloat can be a big issue at higher levels, I find it incredibly annoying how many trap options there are.

I find it puzzling why anyone not playing a spellcaster play d&d in the first place, as there are a lot of PC games with great hack and slash stuff. I had fun with a gish first, but got tired of how horrible meleeing anything in this game became.

So what keeps you playing d&d? Is it the community? Is it the gameplay? Do you enjoy turn based strategy games over real-time games?


Dose psion count as spellcaster?

Yes! Psionics is magic!

[Waddacku]

I don't understand why you assume the alternative to (a particular edition of) D&D is video games and not one of the myriad other systems around.

[ILM]

Just asking. Not a single person in my group wants to play a non-spellcaster. At best it's a gish with 1 or 2 levels of fighter, but it's usually melee clerics and druids who fill that role until they're replaced later by summons.

How about your tables? Does anyone voluntarily play a mundane?
Because it's a game, not a puzzle, and it's not about doing everything and winning everything all the time. In your threads over the past few weeks you've basically approached this as a thesis in RAW, and to be honest I kind of stopped reading your threads after you started dismissively answering every problem with "oh, I'll just Planar Bind a few Efreeti" and explaing how its better to Flesh to Stone / Fabricate / Stone to Flesh corpses instead of PAOing them to raise your own personal army of any monster ever published. You're not the first one to tread the line between PO and TO here and I appreciate that different groups have different optimization levels, but you don't seem to be aware that basically everything you've discussed in the past few weeks would get you a DMG to the face in about 90% of tables out there, most of which are content playing a straight fighter, rogue, and evoker around a pizza and a beer.

So, short version: people play mundanes for the same reason Han Solo is more popular than Luke Skywalker. If D&D was only about finding the most advantageous, obscure, text-over-intent set of rules for any situation, they'd have called it tax law.

[Elricaltovilla]

Check my sig for 5 different guides on why someone wouldn't want to play a spellcaster. Or follow this handy link (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war) to read the source material yourself.:smalltongue:

I have a player at my RL game who just wants to hit things and "pretend" to be drunk the entire time we play. He's not into roleplay (beyond roleplaying the dangers of being a constantly inebriated dwarf), and he jumped at the chance to be able to hit some guy 11 times in a round.

I've played barbarians a few times, they're a blast. With rage powers you can get most everything you'd need a caster for just by getting angry. Brawler and Martial Master fighter finally have the flexibility to be viable in multiple combat situations instead of being forced to be a one trick pony. I like playing Ninjas as well, their ki pool abilities are fun and they make excellent assassins.

In a more general sense, if I play a fighter (or fighter type) its because I want to. I want to be the tough guy with the big sword, or the exotic weapon master who disables and brutalizes his enemies with a scorpion whip, or whatever martial style catches my eye at the time. I normally play gishes, and I hate full casters, I find them too annoying at low levels and too easy at high levels. But I only play gishes because I can't always get the level of power and versatility I look for in a character by going straight martial. But now that I can, I'll take a martial class any time.

[Abd al-Azrad]

If D&D was only about finding the most advantageous, obscure, text-over-intent set of rules for any situation, they'd have called it tax law.

My game table occasionally enters a state like this, which one of our players, disgusted with the phenomenon, has dubbed "Competitive Accounting."

IMO, there are frankly some things that a mundane can do that a full caster... I won't say "can't," but perhaps, "shouldn't." The direct damage game, for instance. Yes, a well optimized caster can dish out single- or multi-target damage like the best. But when they're focusing their whole build and effort on this, they're not doing all the "caster" stuff like reality manipulation, preventative healing (a.k.a. stopping enemies from killing them), etc.

There is a clarity of purpose in playing a Shock Trooper or Charge-adin or whatever. You have a job. You are good at the job. Your job is necessary and valued. You need not feel guilty for using your turn to deal 1d12+567 damage. There is almost no hard counter to raw physical damage, as well; your primary attack nearly always works.

[Necroticplague]

I find it puzzling why anyone not playing a spellcaster play d&d in the first place, as there are a lot of PC games with great hack and slash stuff. I had fun with a gish first, but got tired of how horrible meleeing anything in this game became.

So what keeps you playing d&d? Is it the community? Is it the gameplay? Do you enjoy turn based strategy games over real-time games?

How is the existence of other media in any way related to how I play dnd? I play dnd because I find the game fun. I don't play spellcasting-focused characters because I find it tedious and annoying (occasionally, I end up with spellcasting as a side effect of, say, going MoMF/warshaper). This isn't exactly complicated.

[crankykobold]

Because Hank>Presto.

That and who want's to play the same character repeatedly. I know there are a lot of variations of "I'm a guy who casts spells and can do anything I want", but it all breaks down to the same basic thing.
There is a whole other world of fun to be had with a Mundane character. I hate that term by the way. My job is mundane. Going to the grocery store is mundane. A raging barbarian pouncing a 10-headed cryohydra is not mundane. It may be non-magical, but not mundane.

[Heliomance]

Thematically, I love playing skillmonkeys. I love getting by on skill and the skin of your teeth. They're my favourite archetype - not so limited that they can't do anything, but limited enough that they have to be creative to manage to do everything.

Plain old God Wizards? They're boring. They can do everything. There is no challenge, there's just a snap of their fingers. There's no limitations, they're just Superman.

I've played a Wizard once, though, and I had immense amounts of fun - she was one of my favourite characters. Because I specialised. I specialised hard. I voluntarily limited myself - she was an Illusionist. She was an unbelievably good illusionist, but she was just an illusionist. I think I had four schools banned, in the end, and knew roughly four spells that weren't illusion. Oh, and had caster level penalties to anything that wasn't Illusion.

She was fun because there were still so many things she couldn't just go "yeah, I have a spell for that". What she could do - battlefield control - she could do really well, and her save DCs were through the roof, but she wasn't Angel Summoner.

I'd quite like to do that again - pick a school of magic, and focus it hard. But I don't think I'll ever play a generalist. Too easy.

[AnonymousPepper]

Because there's something just so wonderful about rolling like 20 skirmish dice that become energy damage dice (Swift Hunters with the right build and feats).

Or smashing people in wonderful different ways as a Warblade.

Or giving out mad buffs and stupid numbers of extra d6s of sonic damage to the party as a DFI Bard.

Or tripping everything in sight with (insert martial class here).

Or being the righteous fist of vengeance of my god as a paladin (who, with enough optimization, can still kick the crap out of a fighter).

Or my favorite - though I suppose this is cheating: snapping wealth by level over my knees as an Artificer like it only adopted the darkness and I was shaped and molded by it.

[RoboEmperor]

Because it's a game, not a puzzle, and it's not about doing everything and winning everything all the time. In your threads over the past few weeks you've basically approached this as a thesis in RAW, and to be honest I kind of stopped reading your threads after you started dismissively answering every problem with "oh, I'll just Planar Bind a few Efreeti" and explaing how its better to Flesh to Stone / Fabricate / Stone to Flesh corpses instead of PAOing them to raise your own personal army of any monster ever published. You're not the first one to tread the line between PO and TO here and I appreciate that different groups have different optimization levels, but you don't seem to be aware that basically everything you've discussed in the past few weeks would get you a DMG to the face in about 90% of tables out there, most of which are content playing a straight fighter, rogue, and evoker around a pizza and a beer.

I never said I planar bind efreetis. o_o. I specifically said the only acceptable usage of wish is manning up and paying the 5k xp costs. I avoid efreetis like the plague, and used to avoid PaO until recently. When have I ever said I'd use efreetis to solve anything o_o.

Reasons for my other posts

I want to play a non-combatant magical engineer who relies solely on his creations to win his encounters. That's why in skyrim I play a sneak/illusion/conjuration mage.

Golems cost massive XP to craft, and aren't that great. Same with effigies, so creating a playstyle revolving around these guys is gonna fail, and I will not enjoy the experience one bit. I'd say about 70% of my posts were trying to find a way for me to "create" soldiers that are viable in game so I can play the style I want. I seriously considered crossing over to pathfinder solely for the no xp cost golems. Then I learned about PaO and runic guardians + simulacrum, so now I finally found a way to use golems reliably in a game that won't screw me over with XP costs.

I hate undead, especially zombies. I never played a zombie shooter in my life because of this. I also hate undead because of it's unreliability. I've danced heavily around finding and killing dragons for their corpses, but skeletal dragons are just too frail, and dragon hunting after every encounter is bad, so I was about to give up when I read that stone to flesh description, and suddenly, I have a way of creating expendable skeletal dragons reliably without begging my party to go dragon hunting again and again and again :P

I also like demons. They represent ultimate power. All the other video games, you're some fighter killing demons, but I want to be the evil overlord who commands an army of horrors! That's why every single one of my builds has planar binding. Because I want to use demons in combat, but I don't want to break the game, so I intentionally limit myself to 1, don't kill it when its duration is up, and allow the DM to let the demon attempt take vengeance on me.

So again, what I want to do is play a non-combatant magical engineer who specializes in creating minions, so naturally I'd try to find ways to do it. That and I like having an army of constructs, demons, and cool-undead-that-aren't-disgusting, which is why I play a wizard, because no other class lets me do what I want. Unfortunately the only ways of playing my style is doing some high-op stuff T_T.

So non-spellcasters can't do stuff like this. They can't create many, many unique ways to play the game, which is why it puzzled me why anyone would not want to play a spellcaster. You want to be like Bowser and grow insanely in size to smash stuff? Wizard or gishes can do that. You want to play a power-armored soldier who shoots stuff with his machine gun? A gish with the right enchantments on their armor and crossbow can do that! You want to be a badass warrior who kills everything in seconds and have no weakness? A gish can do that where as a fighter would be stumped v.s. spellcasters.

The rest of my posts were getting around fluff I don't like. I don't like wizard's dependence on civilization until level 17, I don't like sorcerer's dependence on ancestry not effort, I don't like cleric's dependence on deities in forgotten realms, I don't like druid's dependence on nature (I HATE nature), so I post like a lot of threads asking if there are ways around these fluffs so I could play these classes without hating it.


I've played a Wizard once, though, and I had immense amounts of fun - she was one of my favourite characters. Because I specialised. I specialised hard. I voluntarily limited myself - she was an Illusionist. She was an unbelievably good illusionist, but she was just an illusionist. I think I had four schools banned, in the end, and knew roughly four spells that weren't illusion. Oh, and had caster level penalties to anything that wasn't Illusion.

She was fun because there were still so many things she couldn't just go "yeah, I have a spell for that". What she could do - battlefield control - she could do really well, and her save DCs were through the roof, but she wasn't Angel Summoner.

I'd quite like to do that again - pick a school of magic, and focus it hard. But I don't think I'll ever play a generalist. Too easy.

Main reason why I really wanted to play a sorcerer who is limited to only the minion creation spells. Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the sorcerer fluff T_T.

So a lot of people actually do enjoy smashing things over and over again with a club XD. I thought only a few existed. I guess I too would enjoy hitting people 1.83 times per second.

[Necroticplague]

So a lot of people actually do enjoy smashing things over and over again with a club XD. I thought only a few existed.

Not playing a spellcaster =/= 'smashing things over and over again". None of MoMF, half-goristro monk, horizon tripper, binder, or totemist are spellcasters, and all of them have the ability to both do several different things competently, and be distinct from each other.

Funny thin is, I've actually had a conversation fairly similar to this before, with my parent who played in the 1st ed day. As far as he cared, the only thing non-casters did was 'hit things with a sword', with all the other things they did being 'just a different type of sword-hitting'.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Ever play video games on hard mode? Yeah.

[RoboEmperor]

Not playing a spellcaster =/= 'smashing things over and over again". None of MoMF, half-goristro monk, horizon tripper, binder, or totemist are spellcasters, and all of them have the ability to both do several different things competently, and be distinct from each other.

Funny thin is, I've actually had a conversation fairly similar to this before, with my parent who played in the 1st ed day. As far as he cared, the only thing non-casters did was 'hit things with a sword', with all the other things they did being 'just a different type of sword-hitting'.

I didn't mean it negatively. I enjoy playing assassin type characters in other media that can land like 10 hits in a second, so I tried it in d&d, except two-weapon fight is really bad >.<, and it's the one thing gishes can't do better than rangers due to the crazy dex requirements of the feats. If only two-weapon fighting wasn't so incredibly inferior to a fighter who uses STR...

But then again this is for fun so I should give it a try again XD.

[StoneCipher]

For fun.

That is the only answer you need.

[RoboEmperor]

For fun.

That is the only answer you need.

So why is it fun for you? :P

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I didn't mean it negatively. I enjoy playing assassin type characters in other media that can land like 10 hits in a second, so I tried it in d&d, except two-weapon fight is really bad >.<, and it's the one thing gishes can't do better than rangers due to the crazy dex requirements of the feats. If only two-weapon fighting wasn't so incredibly inferior to a fighter who uses STR...

But then again this is for fun so I should give it a try again XD.TWF can work. You just have to pump the crap out of Dex, catch opponents flatfooted and grab DEX-to-damage stuff and sneak attack and craven. You don't have the same raw numbers as a shock trooper, but while he has a giant "MURDER ME" sign on his back with his -2 AC a sneaky TWFer is quite hard to pin down.

[Red Fel]

So a lot of people actually do enjoy smashing things over and over again with a club XD. I thought only a few existed. I guess I too would enjoy hitting people 1.83 times per second.

Well, that's just a grotesque oversimplification.

Look, there are a lot of reasons one might choose to play a non-caster. I gave several earlier in the thread. DPR is only one, and frankly it didn't even make my list. Let me offer you some illustrative quotes.

"Yeah, I could go through seventeen books to compile the best spells, make index cards so I know what they do, and track material components. Or I could hit things with my sword. Know how many books I need to reference for that? None. Here's my d20."

"Sure, you have fun with your fireballs and your sparkling rainbow beams. That's cute. Hey, did you ever see The Seven Samurai? Because I'm totally playing all of them as one dude."

"No, I get it. Battlefield control spells are awesome. Trust me, I know. It's just that the last time I played a caster, I locked down the BBEG and his entire army in one round, and the DM had a minor seizure. So now I'm playing a Barbarian."

Hitting things with your non-dispellable pointy bit is only one feature that makes non-casters appealing. Just one. And if it's the only one you can see, then it's no wonder if you don't find non-casters terribly appealing.

Here's the thing. A lot of posts on this forum deal with the fact that casters are more optimal than non-casters, and that's true. Anything a non-caster can do, a caster with the right spells can do better. That doesn't make casters better than non-casters, it just makes them more optimal at any given task. "Optimal" is an objective quality indicating ability to accomplish a given feat. "Better" is a subjective quality, mostly in the eye of the beholder. And for some people, non-caster is just better, full stop.

[AnonymousPepper]

Ever play video games on hard mode? Yeah.

Hah, this.

Playing a 3e Wizard/Cleric/Druid/Archivist is like playing CoD4 on Recruit with all the beneficial cheats turned on. Veteran is playing as a Truenamer. There's a whole range in between; class selection functions as a difficulty setting.

[Extra Anchovies]

I find it puzzling why anyone not playing a spellcaster play d&d in the first place, as there are a lot of PC games with great hack and slash stuff. I had fun with a gish first, but got tired of how horrible meleeing anything in this game became.

So what keeps you playing d&d? Is it the community? Is it the gameplay? Do you enjoy turn based strategy games over real-time games?

Surely you must be joking.

[Psyren]

Challenge. I optimize, many of my friends don't, so playing a martial (I dislike the term "mundane" because nobody really is past level 5 or so) is a way to self-limit.

The Brawler is probably the only mundane martial I'd ever play though.

[AnonymousPepper]

Surely you must be joking.

...ngl, my troll sensors are sort of winking on and off as if to say "not sure if troll." :smallannoyed:

[RoboEmperor]

My biggest qualm about mundanes is they got no course of action against spellcasters. At least gishes have spells to dispel or put up some spell defenses. I don't mind being weaker and need a team to take down a spellcaster, but I do mind having achilles heels >.<.

But I guess this never happens in a game focused on party teamwork :P

Oh and the fact mundanes stand around and do nothing against the toughest foes, like dragons and whatnot.

I guess I'm the only person who is bothered by these things and can't enjoy a good fighter T_T.

[Psyren]

You say "spellcasters" like they are all these homogenous Tippy!Raistlin entities. Yeah an optimized and prepared one can be a terror to behold, but outside of messageboards those tend to be pretty rare on both sides of the table.

[RoboEmperor]

You say "spellcasters" like they are all these homogenous Tippy!Raistlin entities. Yeah an optimized and prepared one can be a terror to behold, but outside of messageboards those tend to be pretty rare on both sides of the table.

You're probably right! I've been hanging around high-op-ish crowd because no low-op guy would allow my minion creation plays >.<

So it is fun to play non-spellcasters? o_o.
Maybe I should really give TWF a try!

[Magikeeper]

I've personally found running around with knockback/shocktrooper/improved trip/reach/pounce/battlejump/etc to be some of the most fun I can have in combat. It sort of turns battles into a complicated game of pool where the enemies are the balls and you are the pool cue*. Toss in maneuvers to rapidly move around the battlefield and you get all the joy of complex calculations and strategic action without having to worry about limited resources [and most reserve feats for combat are just boring attacks]. I sometimes take a level in duskblade or something so that might count as a gish, but not really to the extent one imagines a "gish" being.
*Specifically talking about the other tactical abilities shocktrooper grants - the ones where you are bullrushing foes into each other at unusual angles, tripping them, etc. I feel they are very overlooked.

I've wanted to play a counterattack build but that needs to be fairly high level before you can start forcing your enemies to usually hit themselves/nearby allies(Not yours) while being able to deal enough damage to still be a threat. Although that would probably end up as a mild gish, I think.

Aside from those strategies I usually prefer Casters/Ozodrin though, with a tendency to gish.

---
If leadership is on the table the first build is fun to pair with some build that is completely focused on non-combat utility / not dying.

[RoboEmperor]

I see, so you optimize with feats and enjoy the "spells" it gives you.

Ok, I think i get the picture now :)

[StoneCipher]

I particularly like my characters dying, so much as they look cool doing it. Winning D&D isn't fun. The journey is the fun part.

[GreatDane]

Because it's a game, not a puzzle, and it's not about doing everything and winning everything all the time. In your threads over the past few weeks you've basically approached this as a thesis in RAW, and to be honest I kind of stopped reading your threads after you started dismissively answering every problem with "oh, I'll just Planar Bind a few Efreeti" and explaing how its better to Flesh to Stone / Fabricate / Stone to Flesh corpses instead of PAOing them to raise your own personal army of any monster ever published. You're not the first one to tread the line between PO and TO here and I appreciate that different groups have different optimization levels, but you don't seem to be aware that basically everything you've discussed in the past few weeks would get you a DMG to the face in about 90% of tables out there, most of which are content playing a straight fighter, rogue, and evoker around a pizza and a beer.
This, honestly. The level of optimization at which wizards break the game is either unacceptable or unreached at most gaming tables. Most people who play spellcasters do it because they want to aid their party as a healer, or enjoy the archetype of know-it-all wizard who can turn people into toads. Generally, class choice has more to do with how cool the class is than how strong it is.


Winning D&D isn't fun.
EDIT: Also this. Playing Pun-Pun or Clericzilla isn't a fun way to spend time rolling dice with friends for most groups.

[Necroticplague]

You say "spellcasters" like they are all these homogenous Tippy!Raistlin entities. Yeah an optimized and prepared one can be a terror to behold, but outside of messageboards those tend to be pretty rare on both sides of the table. He also seems to assume 'mundane' is an equally homogenous group of incompetents.


My biggest qualm about mundanes is they got no course of action against spellcasters. At least gishes have spells to dispel or put up some spell defenses. I don't mind being weaker and need a team to take down a spellcaster, but I do mind having achilles heels >.<.

But I guess this never happens in a game focused on party teamwork :P

Oh and the fact mundanes stand around and do nothing against the toughest foes, like dragons and whatnot.

Depends on the build. I've had some builds that would cripple a dragon to the point on uselessness before shanking it to death, others that could simply strangle it to death in a grapple, and yet others that could easily sneak by it unnoticed. Not all noncasters are the same.

[StoneCipher]

One of my PCs makes the best characters and they are all terrible mechanically. He made a fighter that used only a stump knife, an Orc Rogue that tried to be a stealthy rogue. A ranger that was hell bent on exterminating rats because they beset upon his small town of 8 (which he named himself king of) and always tried to bribe people into joining his town because they had extravagant fairs.

I'd rather be a gimp that has a struggle to live than a Wizard who yawns at the very idea of "encounters" and "danger."

[DoomHat]

My problem with non-casters isn't power, it's meaningful choices.

With all but the best DMs, being allowed to confront a problem with any action other then "hit it with a stick" is like pulling teeth.

Looking through the Pathfinder core, there's a long list of things you are strongly discouraged from trying without just casting a spell. Every maneuver requires one feat to overcome the Attack of Opportunity punishment, then several others (counting prerequisites) to become any good at just one of them. Then, once you've poured in all that specialization, none of them work against must anything anything that isn't Medium sized and non-flying.

There's dozens of walls between mundanes and the ability to do much anything creative. The hamstring on non-casters goes way beyond "casters can do the impossible, they should be expected to be capable of more". Mundanes struggle to do even things that are possible, never mind the vanishingly few and rare extraordinary abilities.

[Earthwalker]

See I play casters and non-casters and don't notice much difference.

Both of the groups I play in are playing Pathfinder and are very low-op. No one has seen anything past lvl 9. (We are so low op I am worried about getting Path of War as that will raise the optimization ceiling of the group, and maybe ake it everyone wants to play a class from PoW)

So the whole casters can do everything just is not an issue.

I know the tier system and understand it, I just don't care about it in play.

No matter what character I play my GM is going to create a challenge for me. So I don't feel the need to optimize and do everything the best I can do it.

I guess some of the background of playing other non-dnd games effects how I feel about character choice and weather to be a spell caster or not.

[Bob]

I like to play non-spellcasters specifically because spellcasters are so popular.

Say I am playing a barbarian in a party that includes a wizard. At some point, hopefully, we should find ourselves at level 7, at which point, you have this conversation, "sure, you can cast flame trap, or you could have a treant with 7 levels of barbarian running around the battlefield."

Mundane types are really good targets for spells. It is additive vs. multiplicative scaling.

[torrasque666]

My biggest qualm about mundanes is they got no course of action against spellcasters. At least gishes have spells to dispel or put up some spell defenses. I don't mind being weaker and need a team to take down a spellcaster, but I do mind having achilles heels >.<.

But I guess this never happens in a game focused on party teamwork :P

Oh and the fact mundanes stand around and do nothing against the toughest foes, like dragons and whatnot.

I guess I'm the only person who is bothered by these things and can't enjoy a good fighter T_T.

Oh no my friend. If that is what you think then either you are engaging in too high-op play and should take a try at Tippy's table, or you have never known how to play one right. Take my Warforged Crusader for example. Did I gimp his crusader abilities a bit by taking the 5 levels of Juggernaut and a level of warblade? Probably. But guess what? While the rest of my team is throwing out saves against the caster's spells, I'm advancing toward him with a bigass falchion in my hand. Stuns? Immune. SoDs? Immune to about 75% of them. Most things that a caster can throw at me I'll just shrug off and keep going. His only real option? Either try to hit me with enough HP damage that I die(which is difficult with good rolls and a high con on a mostly d12 base), run, or try to hit me with one of the few saveless Save or Dies he has. Because he knows, and I know, that if I can get withing range he's not moving. 5 foot step? Provokes, and I got Stand Still. Casting? Provokes, and I'm hitting for 2d6+35 minimum. Most casters have crappy Fort saves and I'm causing them to lose their standard action half the time. Dragon? I may have a bit of difficulty against them, but if my War Weaver buddy gets me fly I can afford to lose out on half my maneuvers if that means that I can smack the dragon in the face for 2d6+22d8+105 over the course of every 3 turns, while healing my self for, lets say 3d6+15.

And I'm not a caster, just a guy who knows how to use his weapons to the best of his ability.

[Gwendol]

As others have noted, there are a lot reasons for playing non-spellcasters. Tippy himself likes monks.

Rogues are a hoot to play, if a bit fragile.

[Magikeeper]

To add to torrasque666's post, I tend to play in high-op groups where melee is generally expected to be dealing triple digit damage a round (or at least a few dozen con damage) by the double digit levels. A martial PC that can't outfight what a caster can summon is a sad martial PC indeed.

Last really high-op group I was in had PO uberchargers fill the beatstick roll. Gotta be able to deal hundreds a round while completely naked in an antimagic field in difficult terrain and all that. Although it was a gestalt game where one of the uberchargers was also a full caster, so eh.

-----

Anyway, although I would agree that complete mundanes need to at least rely on heavy magic item use to take on well-played casters it sounds like your group doesn't optimize martial characters very much. I admit that most really strong martial PCs are also using templates to some extent, which is something casters often cannot afford to do.


Actually, how high-op IS your group? Are you all basking in fast-time planes with ice assassin armies running around? Do you refrain from infinite loops?

[AvatarVecna]

Why do I play non-spellcasters? Let me go off on a tangent...

I'm currently doing another run-though of KotOR on my PC. In one of my previous run-throughs, I went full-on Consular; by the end of the game, my combat tactics were "Walk into room, casting Force Storm (Super Force Lightning) two or three times, loot the pile of bodies". It was effective. It was also incredibly boring. It wasn't any challenge, it wasn't exciting. It was like picking a fight with an anthill while armed only with twin cans of Raid. It was like challenging a baby to a fist fight. It's like in Return of the Jedi: Luke's fight with Vader was interesting to watch in the "climactic duel" sense; Sideous lightning'ing Luke into a coma was interesting to watch in the "poor kid didn't stand a chance" sense. One is like a scene from an action film, the other is like a scene from a horror film.

There are times when I'm in the mood to play a character that completely obliterates the competition; when I'm playing PC, that's when I turn on the cheat codes and just go to town. In many of the video games I play, I will often grind my skill until I can perform reasonably well on the highest difficulty. Once I feel I've mastered that difficulty, I will set the difficulty as low as possible, and go to town. The "completely obliterate your foes" part is a reward for slogging through the harder routes. But if you only ever play on Easy mode, you can't ever get much better. Tippy may be the go-to source for TO caster builds, but they also know some powerful tricks for optimizing non-casters.

And it's the same in D&D: optimizing a caster is easy, and there's lots of people who've done the harder parts of the work for you already, spread across the internet; optimizing a non-caster to the point that it's fun is a challenge, especially when you're trying to make a specific concept work without making the character too weak. And while all casters are some variation of "I cast a half-dozen spells, and the encounter will now end with us winning", mundanes have a great deal of variety in both how they can assist in defeating encounters and what they can do outside of combat.

I could be the blacksmith ex-soldier who makes their own arms and armor (Fighter).

I could be the general who's studied all of the martial paths (Swordsage/Warblade/Master of Nine).

I could be an elven assassin, who takes out their targets via arrows fired with deadly accuracy and covered with deadly poison (Elf Rogue/Assassin).

I could be a hippie dwarf who got drafted into the army (Fighter/Monk/Fist of the Forest/Dwarven Defender).

I could be the honorable ogre with a tendency towards pacifistic combat and grappling (Monk/Apostle of Peace).

Ubercharger, Swift Hunter, Ascetic Rogue, Sword-and-Board, Whirling Barbarian...so many methods, so many interesting builds, so many mechanical aspects reflecting the character's personality.

Or, you know, I could just wish myself to Godhood, or bind an Efreeti to grant my wish for a Rod of Infinite Wishes, or Ice Assassin the Aleax of the...something, I don't know. It's just buzzwords at this point. Whatever pointless trick you're pulling, you win the game. It's only a question of how far you're willing to go to avoid having to try, to avoid the possibility of failure.

[incarnate236]

I have RP focused players. Paladins give a nice flavor for them. So do Rangers. Rogues can be really fun in a sandboxy campaign. Never saw anyone play a fighter though that wasn't a new player.

[Magesmiley]

My table gets non-casters pretty frequently, usually about a third of the party is non-casters, a third are primary casters, and another third are somewhere in-between.

In my games, I play NPCs as if they were PCs. That means using all the dirty tactics that PCs use to neutralize casters. My NPCs will deliberately target casters, ready actions to disrupt casting, and even use counterspells at times. Being a caster in my games is a very hazardous occupation, particularly given their tendency towards lower hit points.

I'm not talking about using knowledge that the NPCs don't have, but simply going for the most effective targets based on what they know and can observe. And I don't pull punches when this happens either.

At a lot of tables the DMs pull punches and don't target the casters when appropriate for the NPCs. And I think that has a lot to do with why a lot of players favor them.

[kernal42]

D&D doesn't need to be a game about dispatching the most powerful enemies as fast as possible, so it doesn't need to be a game in which you build the most powerful characters your DM will let you get away with.

Most games (in my experience) also don't reach level 20. The lower the level cap, the lesser the disparity between magical & mundane.

Cheers,
Kernal

[Curmudgeon]

1) I don't want to overshadow everybody else at the table. I do want to have fun optimizing my character. Those two goals are close to mutually exclusive, and pretty much completely at odds for primary spellcasters. So I much prefer to start with a lower-powered base, like a Rogue or Monk; that way my creative energies don't need to be constrained.

2) The Vancian mechanics (limited resources) that Extra Anchovies also hates.

[Oddman80]

If you like playing a mundane in a world without magic - then sure... maybe then, D&D is not for you... but 'Mundane' does not mean you have taken Vow of Poverty. We Martials love us some Magical Bling.

Immunity to Fear - there's an item for that (Ring of Mental Fortitude)
Immunity to Negative Levels/Energy/Effects - there's an item for that (Soulfire Armor)
Improved Mettle - there is an item for that (Tabbard of Valor).

and so on, and so forth...

Yes - if you have not shored up ANY of your defenses/weaknesses - sure, your martial character might suffer when he comes face to face with a Dragon. Or depending on which feats and classes you took - you might increase your size, pick up a giant boulder and brain the flying lizard.

I wrapped up a 20 level 3.5 campaign a few months ago with a Half-Orc barbarian that would start humming Ring Around the Rosie before Flying up and into the middle of a Battlefield full of Enemies (Travel Devotion/Animal Devotion), Whirlwind Attacking every foe within 45' of him (inhuman reach, and enlarge person made permanent) with a Whirling Brilliant Energy Spiked Chain - Ignoring Shield/Armor bonuses. Everyone he hit, he would trip (Knockdown) and anyone that died triggered an extra attack (Greater Cleave), usually aimed at those poor souls laying confused on the ground. Anyone who tried attacking him or casting a spell within those 45' would get hit with an AoO (Mage Slayer/ Robilar's Gambit).

I currently am in a Level 5 Pathfinder campaign with a sharp-tongued Dex-based Halfling Barbarian, who has a bad habit of trying to try to ride the various things he is fighting, before sending his rapier down through their heads. He is a risk taker, but he has the AC & HP to handle most problems... He's totally going to get mentally dominated one of these days and get turned against his allies... He has no clue that is a weakness of his, but I have already picked which one of the allies he will try to ride first.... Meanwhile - the Sorcerer and Wizard in our party run away from danger to the farthest imaginable corner - and try not to pay much attention to the fact that they didn't put enough points into DEX to even be able hit these creature's Touch AC with those Rays... oh well - guess the'll have to settle for magic missile AGAIN...

[LoyalPaladin]

Both the table I play at and the table I DM at are extremely low on full spell casters. We've struggled a lot simply because we lacked detect magic.

[Sith_Happens]

Because I feel like it.

(I most certainly will never play a straight Fighter or Barbarian, though, with the possible exception of a Dungeoncrasher Zhentarim Soldier. I want to actually do things in combat, not mindlessly roll dice at the enemies until they're gone.)

[Honjuden]

Sometimes you just want to play a Totem Rager, or a Swift Hunter. Spellcasters are fun, but if you play in groups that aren't as keen on or good at optimizing as you then you play down to their level.

[Flickerdart]

Honestly, I don't feel like "dude who punches things and makes the peoples fall down" is a fair characterization of the martial side of the martial/magic divide. It's just as ineffective (and just as satisfying) to build an artillery guy who blows things up all day erry day. Similarly, it can be very effective to put together a Batman who casts nary a spell, and whip out the right tool for the job whenever it's called for. It's just easier with a caster.

[Threadnaught]

Monks are cool... At least that's how I view it. :smalltongue:

There's challenge in being one of the lower Tier Classes that you don't get when you play as Tier 1-2 all the time.

I thought it would be amusing for anyone who had seen Tome of Battle banned or under threat of ban, to play a Swordsage with every single Counter, a Throw from Setting Sun and some Maneuvers that won't see the light of day. In a party with a Wizard who is as untouchable as any of Emperor Win's creations.



Also, I like the avatar. Tentacles + spare eyes = yes pl0x.

Looks like an Ozodrin to me.

You already have Bone Knight and I couldn't bring myself to take away from your uniqueness, so I'm considering getting a character with a rather inappropriate nickname immortalized as an avatar.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

You're probably right! I've been hanging around high-op-ish crowd because no low-op guy would allow my minion creation plays >.<

So it is fun to play non-spellcasters? o_o.
Maybe I should really give TWF a try!I had a pretty long conversation with eggynack in one of the anti-mage threads a few months ago about this sort of thing. Basically as long as you optimize a good chunk more than the magical character, you'll be more powerful/effective, and the example used was a sneaky dex-based character. Optimized stealth can pretty much only be overcome with specific countermeasures or brute-force optimization of passive defenses... or bag o' rats + persistent linked perception. Man, that spell.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Golems cost massive XP to craft, and aren't that great. Same with effigies, so creating a playstyle revolving around these guys is gonna fail, and I will not enjoy the experience one bit. I'd say about 70% of my posts were trying to find a way for me to "create" soldiers that are viable in game so I can play the style I want. I seriously considered crossing over to pathfinder solely for the no xp cost golems. Then I learned about PaO and runic guardians + simulacrum, so now I finally found a way to use golems reliably in a game that won't screw me over with XP costs.

Lol wut?

The XP cost is pitiful and even if it weren't XP is a river. Once you've fallen a level behind the rest of the party the extra XP you'll get will be way more than enough for pretty much any crafting need you could have. Also, item familiar gives you an extra 10% XP which should -also- cover anything you might want to craft including, especially, effegies.


So non-spellcasters can't do stuff like this. They can't create many, many unique ways to play the game, which is why it puzzled me why anyone would not want to play a spellcaster. You want to be like Bowser and grow insanely in size to smash stuff? Wizard or gishes can do that. You want to play a power-armored soldier who shoots stuff with his machine gun? A gish with the right enchantments on their armor and crossbow can do that! You want to be a badass warrior who kills everything in seconds and have no weakness? A gish can do that where as a fighter would be stumped v.s. spellcasters.

Your lack of creativity is showing again.

Bowser: goliath barbarian with mountain rage and hidden talent (expansion) going into war hulk. Pick up knockback and shocktrooper for the ability to bat enemies all over the battlefield.

Iron man: combat class into battlesmith. Alternately: warlock with crafting feats.

Tough as nails warrior that can survive (most) anything: diamond mind focused warblade or swordsage. Killing dedicated casters without being one yourself -is- extraordinarily difficult but not impossible, especially with a party along to help out.


So a lot of people actually do enjoy smashing things over and over again with a club XD. I thought only a few existed. I guess I too would enjoy hitting people 1.83 times per second.

This is such a gross oversimplification of what a non-caster can do that it makes me sad for you. :smallfrown:

[RoboEmperor]

Your lack of creativity is showing again.

Bowser: goliath barbarian with mountain rage and hidden talent (expansion) going into war hulk. Pick up knockback and shocktrooper for the ability to bat enemies all over the battlefield.

Iron man: combat class into battlesmith. Alternately: warlock with crafting feats.

Tough as nails warrior that can survive (most) anything: diamond mind focused warblade or swordsage. Killing dedicated casters without being one yourself -is- extraordinarily difficult but not impossible, especially with a party along to help out.

This is such a gross oversimplification of what a non-caster can do that it makes me sad for you. :smallfrown:

You're right, I do lack creativity with "mundanes" because I didn't really study them XD. I guess it's my bad that I didn't really research them before posting this topic.

As for golem XP stuff, in one of my other posts, someone gave me like a bajillion reasons why golems suck, which gave me the impression they have to be expendable Q_Q

So I was thinking, if golems die too quickly with their massive HP, and don't deal enough damage with massive attack and damage, what chance do mundanes have?

But now I realize it's the feats that make them much more superior.

A lot of people took offense to the bashing club statement I made. i'm sorry, I was intentionally trying to make it sound funny. there's nothing not-cool about completely mutilating a corpse with an insane attack speed, as this was my main playstyle in other video games where magic didn't have summons. If I said sword or knife instead of a club, would that have made it sound better? Cause hitting a guy 11 times per round is outstanding! At least to me.

[Red Fel]

But now I realize it's the feats that make them much more superior.

No. It's not the feats. At least, not alone. If feats made all the difference, Fighter would be far more respected as a class, instead of as a dip.

You're keeping your mind in a relative optimization mode. That is to say, "I can do the same thing more effectively with Class X, therefore there is no reason to do it with Class Y." And that's not it.

You need to stop looking at it in terms of relative ability. Get past the fact that Tier 1s, by definition, can do anything more effectively than a class designed to do that thing, and then some. Because it's not about raw (or RAW) mechanical ability.

It's about fun. It's about imagery. It's about flavor and taste. It's about convenience and simplicity. It's about the coolness factor. It's about challenge. It's about any of these things, and you seem to keep overlooking them and coming back to the purely mechanical advantages and disadvantages.

You can optimize anything. Others have mentioned frighteningly optimized Barbarians, Paladins, Rogues, Monks. You can make anyone effective with enough access to books and feats and magic items and errata. That's not the big point. That's all mechanics. It's numbers. And it's distracting you from the big point.

D&D is a game. And a game should be fun. If it's not, as a certain pair of ice cream makers would say, why do it? And for some people, a non-spellcaster is fun. There are any number of reasons, most of which have been recited ad nauseam, but it all comes back to that. It's not about feats, or damage per round, or relative power. Or maybe it is, in part. But the focus is the fun.

[RoboEmperor]

D&D is a game. And a game should be fun. If it's not, as a certain pair of ice cream makers would say, why do it? And for some people, a non-spellcaster is fun. There are any number of reasons, most of which have been recited ad nauseam, but it all comes back to that. It's not about feats, or damage per round, or relative power. Or maybe it is, in part. But the focus is the fun.

It kind of shows I'm somewhat of a power gamer right? XD. I don't mind being inferior, as I preferred sorcerers over wizards a lot of times in my past, but I had this misconceived notion that mundanes are worse than summons, and get useless after the low levels.

Now I know optimized "mundanes" are actually more powerful than a lot of my builds.

The reason why I had trouble understanding at the start is because everything I found fun required at least some form of spellcasting, but my tastes for fun is different than other people's, so I wanted to know how people play their "mundanes" so to see if I can find a fun way for me to play it. Like Kelb's bowser barbarian. Tempted to try that.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Surely you must be joking.

Maybe when he says "D&D" he means Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

"For the roleplay" is not just a valid answer. It's the most valid answer there is. D&D is a roleplaying game. And not one of those video games that have the label "RPG" slapped onto them where it just means "Stat Accumulation Game", it is a true roleplaying game. And I don't like roleplaying a scientist with extra power or dogmatic priest, I like roleplaying a gifted warrior or magitech cyborg.

[Kelb_Panthera]

You're right, I do lack creativity with "mundanes" because I didn't really study them XD. I guess it's my bad that I didn't really research them before posting this topic.

Indeed. It's usually in bad form to say untoward things on subjects you're not familiar with.


As for golem XP stuff, in one of my other posts, someone gave me like a bajillion reasons why golems suck, which gave me the impression they have to be expendable Q_Q

They don't -have- to be expendable. Given the not insignificant cost of golems you'll want to arm and armor them beyond their base stats but effegies and other less expensive constructs can be expendable and quite cheap. You're seriously balking at 80xp per HD?


So I was thinking, if golems die too quickly with their massive HP, and don't deal enough damage with massive attack and damage, what chance do mundanes have?

A golem's attack is -not- massive. Not even close. They have a scoche more HP's than most equal CR warrior classes but not much and even sometimes less in the cases of barbarians or totemists and the like.


But now I realize it's the feats that make them much more superior.

Feats go a long way but class features are also important. Very important. Knights, for example, can move normally in heavy armor and have one of the few aggro mechanics in the game and neither of these is easily replicated.


A lot of people took offense to the bashing club statement I made. i'm sorry, I was intentionally trying to make it sound funny.

Why did you think it would be funny?

[RoboEmperor]

Why did you think it would be funny?

I didn't mean it ha-ha funny, but more like being non-serious. I said I'm sorry! D:

[Necroticplague]

I didn't mean it ha-ha funny, but more like being non-serious. I said I'm sorry! D:

Yeah, its not gonna really come across as such when some people (like my parent, as I mentioned earlier) use the exact same argument in complete seriousness.

[Averis Vol]

Casters are boring, is the main reason. They are so stale and easy to play, there's absolutely no fun in playing them for me. I also don't like being the scrawny dweeb in the background, I practice historical swordsmanship, so I tend to appreciate the complexity of a warrior, that I can understand, over the random ramblings of a bookworm, that make zero sense to me.

[Marlowe]

Casters are boring, is the main reason. They are so stale and easy to play, there's absolutely no fun in playing them for me. I also don't like being the scrawny dweeb in the background, I practice historical swordsmanship, so I tend to appreciate the complexity of a warrior, that I can understand, over the random ramblings of a bookworm, that make zero sense to me.

I think, your bookwormage could, stand a bit of practice, myself.

[Flickerdart]

Casters are boring, is the main reason. They are so stale and easy to play, there's absolutely no fun in playing them for me. I also don't like being the scrawny dweeb in the background, I practice historical swordsmanship, so I tend to appreciate the complexity of a warrior, that I can understand, over the random ramblings of a bookworm, that make zero sense to me.
>Literally thousands of spells - stale and boring
>Full attack every round - complexity

[Honjuden]

>Literally thousands of spells - stale and boring
>Full attack every round - complexity

I think he means actually having to worry about positioning, and managing actions rather than the usual use spell, win combo.

[aleucard]

Maybe when he says "D&D" he means Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

"For the roleplay" is not just a valid answer. It's the most valid answer there is. D&D is a roleplaying game. And not one of those video games that have the label "RPG" slapped onto them where it just means "Stat Accumulation Game", it is a true roleplaying game. And I don't like roleplaying a scientist with extra power or dogmatic priest, I like roleplaying a gifted warrior or magitech cyborg.

Just to be clear, though, it's possible to have some fun with nearly any concept you can imagine. For instance, I know of a few scientists with (https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/458794690867761152/IMn9gg6K.jpeg) extra power (http://www.fightersgeneration.com/np5/more/doom-mvc3.jpg) and dogmatic (http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120923182450/hellsing/images/3/3e/Alexander-1-.gif) priests (http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/10500000/Imhotep-The-Mummy-high-priest-imhotep-10543052-720-540.jpg) that would be interesting to play.

The question is not if the class is the strongest choice possible, at least in any game that pays attention to roleplaying at all. The question is if that class (or build, if you multiclass) is the best fit for the character you want to play. T1's may be able to fill any mechanical role you'd need or even make it obsolete, but they can't be realistically expected to fill every character role you may ask of it. Sometimes, a concept just has its own particular class. This exact thing is part of why people are so pissed off at whichever moron wrote (and even worse, QC'd) the bits on the Truenamer; because while you can probably beat several different classes into the shape of a character that makes their spoken word into natural law, this was supposed to be the class that was the concept incarnate.

[Kazyan]

>Literally thousands of spells - stale and boring

If I wanted 100 ways to say "I win" with the only difference being presentation, I would just use Google Translate.

[Flickerdart]

If I wanted 100 ways to say "I win" with the only difference being presentation, I would just use Google Translate.
Isn't it great how not every single spell is an auto-win button, then?

[Marlowe]

And so, yet another thread about differences in playstyle morphs seamlessly into Fighters vs Wizards.:smallsmile:

[OldTrees1]

Just asking. Not a single person in my group wants to play a non-spellcaster. At best it's a gish with 1 or 2 levels of fighter, but it's usually melee clerics and druids who fill that role until they're replaced later by summons.

How about your tables? Does anyone voluntarily play a mundane?

Personally I tend to see the texture of mechanics and have personal preferences based on those textures.

I don't like casting. The idea of incompetence by default modified by a limited amount of competence per day does not mesh with my suspension of disbelief. This is true for Magical and Mundane forms of casting.

As a result I prefer Necromancers(Minionmancer), Warriors and Thieves because those characters are not defined by a limited competence per day. Instead they are defined by their minions, their attack options, and their skills respectively.

[Flickerdart]

Personally I tend to see the texture of mechanics and have personal preferences based on those textures.

I don't like casting. The idea of incompetence by default modified by a limited amount of competence per day does not mesh with my suspension of disbelief. This is true for Magical and Mundane forms of casting.

As a result I prefer Necromancers(Minionmancer), Warriors and Thieves because those characters are not defined by a limited competence per day. Instead they are defined by their minions, their attack options, and their skills respectively.
What about truenamers, who have incompetence modified by an unlimited amount of incompetence?

[aleucard]

What about truenamers, who have incompetence modified by an unlimited amount of incompetence?

Truenamers as written are less of a class and more of a demonstration of what you get when you publish the works of people whose brains were installed on opposite day. It is one of the few classes so unbelievably does-not-work-at-all broken that it makes perfect sense for them to not be tiered. It's a similar reason why Big Rigs wouldn't be put on a "Worst Game Ever" list; you don't judge a product by its alpha, not even if the developers were retarded enough to put the alpha to market.

[OldTrees1]

What about truenamers, who have incompetence modified by an unlimited amount of incompetence?

Lol. Darn WotC. Why you no check your math? Why. (I loved that 3rd of ToM until I finished reading it.)

One of the Truenaming laws does restrict their total amount of competence per day. However it is much more subtle and thus easier for me to ignore.

Maneuvers(ToB) have a shorter amnesia period and thus are also easier to tolerate.

These systems do not fit my preferences but they make a very good try at it. I use ToB for a dash of ablative defenses for my Warriors/Theives but I focus on other systems.

[Marlowe]

It occurs to me that if the dynamic of "incompetent by default modified by a certain amount of competence a few times per day" is the problem (and fair enough); then plenty of mundane classes are far worse at this than any spellcaster.

Unless of course, you're in combat all the time by default.

[tadkins]

Personally I love spellcasters. I just enjoy the flavor and making sparklie sparklies as my method of function.

At the same time though, I follow a few channels on Youtube related to medieval weaponry and martial arts. Playing a fighter type definitely has its appeal, and in the end people will play what they enjoy.

In my opinion though, there's a difference between playing a spellcaster and being an optimized spellcaster. I personally don't mind the former, and can be a lot of fun and non-gamebreaking in the average group. I don't mind playing the evoker, or the dread necromancer, or any flavor of wizard that's not a god/batman wizard. A character I'd like to play at some point is a dwarven druid that focuses on earth magic; elemental summoning and whatnot. Simple and fun. I plan on ignoring Wildshape and any other spells I don't feel fits the character completely.

[OldTrees1]

It occurs to me that if the dynamic of "incompetent by default modified by a certain amount of competence a few times per day" is the problem (and fair enough); then plenty of mundane classes are far worse at this than any spellcaster.

Unless of course, you're in combat all the time by default.

The solutions non caster characters find to the frailties of their classes tend to not result in amnesia. The Diplomatic Fighter will not lose 1 rank of diplomacy every time he opens his mouth. The Charming Enchanter will lose 1 spell each time they cast. One is a case of assuming competence but the designers misunderstood what competence entailed(system mastery helps correct this). The other is a case of assuming incompetence with a limited amount of competence granted per day.

Unless I was misunderstood and you were talking about mundane casting like Rages/day.

[With a box]

"incompetent by default modified by a certain amount of competence a few times per day"
Why not play a psion with pp recharge tric?
x_x

[Marlowe]

"Diplomatic Fighter"? What.

In that case, surely the Enchanter has the choice of NOT casting a spell, NOT expending resources, and being no more (or less) effective at this than the Fighter. Casting classes are not inherently worse at using mundane skills than mundane classes.

[OldTrees1]

"incompetent by default modified by a certain amount of competence a few times per day"
Why not play a psion with pp recharge tric?
x_x

I certainly consider it a nice option. It doesn't fit many of my character concepts at the OP level of my group(pp recharge itself doesn't fit the OP level).


"Diplomatic Fighter"? What.

In that case, surely the Enchanter has the choice of NOT casting a spell, NOT expending resources, and being no more (or less) effective at this than the Fighter. Casting classes are not inherently worse at using mundane skills than mundane classes.

Are you seriously surprised that Fighter can get max ranks(HD+3) in social skills? I did mention system mastery right? IIRC Enchanters need to go to Dragon Magazine to catch back up.

And are you using a non casting caster to refute my "I don't like casting" preference? Agreeing with me is not going to change my mind (see non casting Necromancer example above).

[Jowgen]

Full casting progression is the simple, easy, and possibly even intended path to power. I don't like the idea of following a neatly paved path, in part because the game designers probably foresaw it and likely did what they could to keep it "balanced".

I enjoy to searching the nooks and crannies of books for bits and pieces in attempt to create alternative paths to power, perhaps even in ways that push the boundaries of what full casting can accomplish in certain critical situations. I gain a satisfaction from knowing that by achieving power through these alternative hidden paths, I have not only beaten the game, but the game-designers themselves to some extent, by finding a way out of the shackles they placed the mundanes in.

Long story short: coming up with powerful non-caster builds strokes my ego.:smallbiggrin:

[Marlowe]

[QUOTE=OldTrees1;18521570]I

Are you seriously surprised that Fighter can get max ranks(HD+3) in social skills? I did mention system mastery right? IIRC Enchanters need to go to Dragon Magazine to catch back up.
[\QUOTE]

You know there's a LOT of casting classes that get social skills and more, right? Turning this into Fighters vs Wizards is a false dicotomy.

[OldTrees1]

Are you seriously surprised that Fighter can get max ranks(HD+3) in social skills? I did mention system mastery right? IIRC Enchanters need to go to Dragon Magazine to catch back up.


You know there's a LOT of casting classes that get social skills and more, right? Turning this into Fighters vs Wizards is a false dicotomy.

Considering I was making a dichotomy over casting and non casting, I think it is fine to credit skills where skills are due. Skills are not prone to the amnesia mechanics that make me dislike casting. It doesn't matter if it is a non casting Dread Necromancer or a non casting Fighter. The point is a) casting vs non casting and b) non spellcasters rely on non casting(and can reach competency with system mastery).

You are right that I should have focused on point A to refute your argument.

[Malroth]

Social Variant Enchanter can Vastly outskill a Fighter at mundane Diplomacy without any spell use and can easily fill in the party scout role as well with a mindbender dip for Mindsight. Fighter in contrast is relying on cross class ranks and Two Tertiary stats.

[OldTrees1]

Social Variant Enchanter can Vastly outskill a Fighter at mundane Diplomacy without any spell use and can easily fill in the party scout role as well with a mindbender dip for Mindsight. Fighter in contrast is relying on cross class ranks and Two Tertiary stats.

I am having trouble finding a variant called "Social Variant". I assume you mean an Enchanter that found some means of matching the Fighter's full class skill ranks in social skills?

However as Marlowe reminded me, my point was about casting vs non casting and not about non casting casters vs non casting fighters.

[ILM]

You guys.

You know what my first game was like, back in 1999? (I started late, 'kay?) One of us nerds - obviously nerdier than the rest of us, since we played proper video games instead of play-acting in our heads - offered to DM a game and since we had no prior social obligations and craved pizza, we said yes. So he whipped up a quick pre-gen module around level 3 I think, and asked us who wanted to be the fighter, who wanted to be the thief, who wanted to be the archer and who wanted to be the healer (lolcleric). Then he handed us pre-filled character sheets, spent 5 minutes explaining rolls to those who hadn't wasted hours on Baldur's Gate, and then set us off in a tavern with a guy who wanted us to investigate some disappearances in Podunk-ville, population: more sheep than people.

I was the archer; the character was an elf lady called Brune, and she had a Quiver of Elhonna which was the most overpowered thing ever because I could have so many arrows. By the end of the session, she was established as a snarky lady with an interest in local woodworking and smoked beef jerky. The orcs died hard; I remember critting once and dealing stupid amounts of damage (like, 3d8 with a single arrow!), and we brought the vile necromancer wannabe to metallic, pointy justice. Much fun was had, and we decided to do it again. Nobody asked why the necromancer had a bunch of orcs on his payroll, even though it made no sense, but I remember that the fighter got a +1 sword out of it and I was really jealous.

The DM read from the module as things unfolded, and said things like "the mayor tells you three children have disappeared, and that since it started there have been reports of light in the old castle ruins to the north", "the orcs look at you in surprise before grabbing their axes and standing" and "the cowled wizard whispers dark incantations, and tendrils of darkness shoot towards you!" and then we rolled dice. The way we did diplomacy was by saying "I try explaining to the orcs that we just want the kids back, we don't need to fight" and rolling a d20 (probably with a -3 mod, in Brune's case), instead of launching in a passionate in-character tirade.

Today, it's all custom and detailed world-building, plots that Einstein would have trouble wrapping his head around, roleplaying level: Actors' Studio ("I'm pretty sure your Mulan accent slipped into Rashemi for a few sentences so I'm docking you 500 xp"), and dozens of books, hundreds of classes and thousands of spell all tied together by a PhD in optimization. And sure we've grown up and the simple game we started with may not be enough anymore, but we remember it fondly.

Sometimes I miss the simple fun, and not wondering who, of the fighter and the wizard, could obliterate an army with the fewest actions. I miss playing Brune, sharp-tongued elf archer, and getting a kick out of putting an arrow clean through an orc's head because come on, 3d8! Beat that, wizard.

[Necroticplague]

Some people mentioned psionics earlier, so I do have to say: while I don't really like them for many of the same reasons as vancian spellcasters, I find them slightly more palatable because the mechanics actually bear some resemblance to what magic feels like it should be: you have a pool of power, which you can burn up, with more potent ones needing more power. Its just like every other magic system out there, except it replaces the need to know 3 gradually stronger but more MP intensive version of the same spell with dumping more MP into the base power (something which I believe should be in more RPGs, as an aside). Meanwhile, the vancian spellcasting is more akin to chemistry or quantum mechanics then anything resembling magic. Why is it that spells are discrete? How come you can't use the large amount of energy in higher spell slots to fuel weaker ones (as in, split it into multiple slots, like reverse versatile spellcasting)?Why does preparing spells always take one hour, regardless of how many you have to prepare? How the heck does one have the energy to fuel a spell, the knowledge of how to cast it, but mysteriously be unable to cast it because they cast it earlier? All these kinds of questions make spellcasting very immersion-breaking, because it means having to interact with things that cant really be rationalized in-world.

[With a box]

Some people mentioned psionics earlier, so I do have to say: while I don't really like them for many of the same reasons as vancian spellcasters, I find them slightly more palatable because the mechanics actually bear some resemblance to what magic feels like it should be: you have a pool of power, which you can burn up, with more potent ones needing more power. Its just like every other magic system out there, except it replaces the need to know 3 gradually stronger but more MP intensive version of the same spell with dumping more MP into the base power (something which I believe should be in more RPGs, as an aside). Meanwhile, the vancian spellcasting is more akin to chemistry or quantum mechanics then anything resembling magic. Why is it that spells are discrete? How come you can't use the large amount of energy in higher spell slots to fuel weaker ones (as in, split it into multiple slots, like reverse versatile spellcasting)?Why does preparing spells always take one hour, regardless of how many you have to prepare? How the heck does one have the energy to fuel a spell, the knowledge of how to cast it, but mysteriously be unable to cast it because they cast it earlier? All these kinds of questions make spellcasting very immersion-breaking, because it means having to interact with things that cant really be rationalized in-world.

like I said before, why not play a psion with pp recharge trick? MoI/Bestow Power abuse/etc....

And I heard that at alpha version of dnd, wizard was a catapult and spells are enchanted rock for them...

[Necroticplague]

like I said before, why not play a psion with pp recharge trick? MoI/Bestow Power abuse/etc....

Remember how that entire rant is complaining about how there's no real way to explain that stuff in IC terms that makes sense? PP recharging tricks are even more so. I don't know what MoI trick you're using, but the recharge trick I know is is a trick that requires very high level to work (affinity field+ fission), meaning it may not become available. In addition, I like playing monstrous characters, who don't normally play too well with the progression of a psionic or casting class, while the more linear progression of martial benefits allows me to weigh the value of a template vs. class level more easily.

[Psyren]

The "MoI trick" involves Midnight Augmentation, either filled with essentia normally, or filled temporarily via Psycarnum Infusion. No matter which interpretation of Midnight Augmentation you use, you can combine it with Bestow Power targeting yourself to gain unlimited power points.

It's also possible to explain fluffwise - you are channeling the power of unborn psion souls - but that makes it no less broken.

[Milodiah]

It is a Role Playing Game.

This.

I play as my character. Including when combat comes up. I optimize my characters as well as they would optimize themselves...a Cloistered Cleric who's almost always a pacifist and dislikes fighting isn't going to turn into a number-crunching violence accountant whose every move is the epitome of slaughter. Likewise, I'm not going to build my characters based on the bottom line of their killing-stuff spreadsheets. Even if that means not being a spellcaster if I damn well feel like it.

That's actually one of the main problems I have with 3.x, there's so much variety in the combat system and so much measurable inequality between individual setups that there is an optimal build for what you're trying to do, and therefore people pop right out of character when combat comes up because they're straining towards that optimal instead of doing what their character would actually do.

But I'm the weird kind of person who sometimes enjoys playing characters who don't live to murder things.

[Flickerdart]

violence accountant
That's a shame, they have pretty sweet robes:

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130812030928/finalfantasy/images/3/31/FFT_Arithmetician_I_Artniks.PNG

[Tryxx]

I am having trouble finding a variant called "Social Variant". I assume you mean an Enchanter that found some means of matching the Fighter's full class skill ranks in social skills?

It's a variant in Unearthed Arcana:



Social Proficiency (Ex)
Enchanters using this variant are as proficient at manipulating others through mundane means as they are at influencing their minds magically. Add the following skills to the character's list of wizard class skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, Intimidate, and Sense Motive. The enchanter also gains a +2 competence bonus on checks involving one of these skills (player's choice) every five levels (5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th). This bonus can only be applied once to each skill.

An enchanter using this variant does not gain bonus feats for advancing as a wizard.


As for why I choose to play non-spellcasters - I simply feel there's less pressure with mundance characters. After browsing these kinds of boards and theorycrafting all the time, with spellcasters it feels like the only right way to play is the "optimized" way (whatever that word happens to mean to you). Where as going into character creation for a mundance character, you know there's going to be holes you can't fill - and that's perfectly OK.

[Lathund]

In my last party, I was the only caster out of five players. Well, we had a dragon shaman with one level of sorcerer and a DFA with some invocations, but that was it. Myself, I was an Archivist, primarily focussed at dispelling. I also did some BFC and damage (Knowledge Devotion is quite nice), but all in all I'd say I was pretty unoptimized because I tried to fill too many niches and had too little experience playing a caster. Still, I got some really nice RP out of him at times and I greatly enjoyed the character.

I guess that in my party, few people enjoy playing a caster. Our new campaign has just begun, in which I'm a beguiler/shadowcraft mage. And my main goal is not 'winning the game' but 'being creative with illusions'.

[SiuiS]

Why would anyone want to play a caster?

I've been thinking about this and I think is honestly a matter of system design and desire. The optimized caster works like a character from apocalypse world; you have every tool available, so when you set yourself to do something, you just say "I do X" and it happens, unless there's a damn good reason otherwise. The fun is in the consequences of X and the fact that X also happens to you unless you set up damn good reasons. Hubris, arrogance and a separation from the mortals around you are part of the system.

People play blaster casters or mundane characters because when they say "I do X", the answer is "okay, how?". The fun is in the ingenuity and the engineering. You cannot just do X, you must control the world around you to allow X to be possible and within your reach. This is why feats are so weird; good feats give a limited ability to say "I do x" and succeed, where bad feats increase your odds to do X in some situations by a small amount.

It's the same as 'why play a game about wizards when you're just going to get wrapped up in politics, philosophy and themes of hubris and pride? Why not just be an awesome wizard?". The question in the OP is a loaded one, because it presupposes playing a caster is good or better. The question is really "why don't you like to play how I like to play?" And is a valid question, but is the same question as 'why doesn't the OP play world of darkness instead of dungeons and dragons?'.

[LoyalPaladin]

If I wanted 100 ways to say "I win" with the only difference being presentation, I would just use Google Translate.
This is the best thing I have read all day. Haha.

[Blackhawk748]

Well, i like playing casters, mostly Sorcerers but any Spontaneous works for me, but i also love playing mundanes. Theres just something about going toe-to-toe with a crazy supernatural thing with nothing more than your weapon and armor to protect you that i find appealing. And when i say nothing but my armor and weapon i mean it, my group doesnt generally buff. We charge in, beat the crap out of everything and call it a day. Is this optimal? Hell no. Is it fun? Ya, otherwise we wouldnt do it.

Now this doesnt mean we dont buff. Currently we have a player playing a cleric with a KoK ACF, it turns him into the greatest heal monkey that has ever lived and the rest of his spells are buffs like Animalistic Power or Entropic Shield for me, as i am the party's wall as the Dwarven Knight. Then we have Blasty McBlaster (note not his actual name) who lobs Kelgore's Grave Mist, Lesser Orbs of Acid and Scorching Rays into whatever im not fighting and has his zombies (he uses Fell Animate) to protect my flanks. All in all its a party.

[Azoth]

I have to echo others. I do it because full casters are boring for me. With the new group I joined for games IRL I also do it because the DM can not handle my level of optimization if I use a caster. Even if I resign myself to buff master general or healbot there is little he can do to stop the party yet alone me.

Now if I keep myself mundane, I am still a headache for him. More so than our druid, alchemist, and bard...but he can still challenge me or make me rely on the party for aid. It keeps it from ending up as my wizard having an audience while I slay the multiverse one plane at a time.

[natos4unlife]

This.

I play as my character. Including when combat comes up. I optimize my characters as well as they would optimize themselves...a Cloistered Cleric who's almost always a pacifist and dislikes fighting isn't going to turn into a number-crunching violence accountant whose every move is the epitome of slaughter. Likewise, I'm not going to build my characters based on the bottom line of their killing-stuff spreadsheets. Even if that means not being a spellcaster if I damn well feel like it.

That's actually one of the main problems I have with 3.x, there's so much variety in the combat system and so much measurable inequality between individual setups that there is an optimal build for what you're trying to do, and therefore people pop right out of character when combat comes up because they're straining towards that optimal instead of doing what their character would actually do.

But I'm the weird kind of person who sometimes enjoys playing characters who don't live to murder things.

Thank you x1000. This whole premise of "why would you play as a non-caster" nonsense seems to completely ignore the core of what the game is. Yes, combat happens. Yes, dice get rolled to determine outcomes of certain situations. At the core of it all, though, is a story being told, characters living in a fictional world. My characters are more than just statistics on a piece of paper. They are personalities shaped by the world they live in. Sure, I could make each one of them a supreme cast-o-matic capable of raining death down upon those who would oppose me... but that's only fun every now and again.

[RoboEmperor]

Thank you x1000. This whole premise of "why would you play as a non-caster" nonsense seems to completely ignore the core of what the game is. Yes, combat happens. Yes, dice get rolled to determine outcomes of certain situations. At the core of it all, though, is a story being told, characters living in a fictional world. My characters are more than just statistics on a piece of paper. They are personalities shaped by the world they live in. Sure, I could make each one of them a supreme cast-o-matic capable of raining death down upon those who would oppose me... but that's only fun every now and again.

I don't play a caster to optimize. It's just that in my past experience you needed to be at least a gish to do something you want. But through this thread I learned you could do a lot of things with a "mundane" as well, even better than gishes.

I play caster to create soldiers that fight for me. Unfortunately to create minions that actually do something required some pretty high-op RAW stuff, at least from my research. Currently, I just make a sorcerer that revolves around charming a single planar bound demon and buffing it (because I like demons and using them in combat), and don't do any of the crazy stuff until I reach PaO, and even then all my minions are used only off-combat, like laying siege to wizard towers and don't engage in direct combat with me.

When i did want to play a fighter, back in the days when I played only core or almost core, I had to be a gish to do half the things I wanted, like craft my own gear, get respectable AC and damage output, be not a complete worthless waste of space against high CR monsters that can either one hit you or dominate/kill you outright with their spells, or even something simple as not get outshined by a summoner's single summon in terms of physical damage.

But that's because it was core. Out of core, as people showed me in this thread, fighters can do a lot of crazy things and be superior than gishes in many areas.

I didn't ask this question because I was a power-gaming optimizing monster, but because it confused me why people wanted to play very un-customize-able class (a misconceived notion on my part), especially since everyone in my group had that sentiment and played clerics for the melee role.

[ILM]

I don't play a caster to optimize. It's just that in my past experience you needed to be at least a gish to do something you want.
No, you need at least a gish to do everything you want. I mean, even in core you can get your AC sky-high on a non-caster - but you probably won't hit anything. Or you can optimize your attack roll, or your damage. Splatbooks give more and better options, of course, but I think the core (haha) of it hasn't really changed since the PHB: you can make a caster that does everything; you have to choose what your non-caster is going to be good at. That's what resonates with people, because your weaknesses (aka everything else) gives room for others to shine, gives opportunities for challenge and dramatic situations (i.e. possibly good stories), and makes it that much more satisfactory when you get to tell everyone "move - I got this" and show them how it's done. :smallwink:

[Malroth]

But that's because it was core. Out of core, as people showed me in this thread, fighters can do a lot of crazy things and be superior than gishes in many areas.

I didn't ask this question because I was a power-gaming optimizing monster, but because it confused me why people wanted to play very un-customize-able class (a misconceived notion on my part), especially since everyone in my group had that sentiment and played clerics for the melee role.

Casters Can, with the right resources, do anything Mundanes can do, either as well or better but there are some areas where a mundane character spends much fewer of its resources to accomplish the same things and can therefore can excel at unless their casters are showboating jerks.

[HyperDunkBarkly]

Have you seen what a Trip Knight can do for battlefield control in a low-powered setting? it's very active as long as you keep your dex mod high for maximum AoO.

my DM banned ToB and I'm not yet ready to throw a dungeoncrasher into the mix. we have a buff/ray-specced sorcerer and a cleric already...so somebody's gotta be the conduit for the buffs. we have my knight and a barbarian.

other than that, I also came into D&D hearing stories like
http://youtu.be/WKgmhmEtgx4
http://youtu.be/Y8ZarCRE2g0
which are awesome and set up my expectations hoping for more mundane settings than high-magic. once you start sapping/blasting/punching gods, my ability to care just kind of plummets. I can really get intimate and relate to a mundane campaign, much more so than a magic one.

[Arbane]

Because sometimes I'd rather play Conan than Harry Potter.

[Averis Vol]

>Literally thousands of spells - stale and boring
>Full attack every round - complexity

The games about more than combat. Spells are a lame cop out to solve a problem, and normally invalidates any sense of brainwork needed to solve a problem. I'm not saying this is wrong or even a bad thing, but it's boring to me.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The games about more than combat. Spells are a lame cop out to solve a problem, and normally invalidates any sense of brainwork needed to solve a problem. I'm not saying this is wrong or even a bad thing, but it's boring to me.

The funny thing is; I see this attitude a lot. I feel this response is warranted: if a single spell is a "lame cop out" solution to a problem then your DM is presenting your casters with the wrong problems.

[bigerxman]

some of my favorite characters were non spell casters, i really have no interest in memorizing what my spells do, or learning specific spells to actually write in a spellbook because technically a wizard doesnt have every spell unless he carries a personal library around. I only play spontaneous casters and spam a specific spell or two because its got some really good usage. Fighter builds are usually more interesting for me, whether i get templates or not because scouring the books can be fun. When i was desperate once I had an elf get a str of like 60 or so because lycanthropic half golems really dont like to deal with epic leveled succubi without some sort of plan. (you learn the first lesson the hard way and never repeat the mistake....lvl 11 was hard)

[evilserran]

I like monks. I have made super grapple monks, super trip monks, super high defense monks, crazy offensive monks, mobile monks, you name it i have done it. They are by far my favorite? Why? Because, why use magic to climb that wall, when you can leap over it? Why cast water breathing instead of enjoying the potential, albeit low, chance of drowning? Why rely on magic to go unseen? IMO magic is to be used when it's the only way to get a job done. Almost every story/lore (not in D+D tho) magic has a "cost". Why is that? Because it is just that, magic, it breaks the laws of nature. I don't wanna go full neo on "reality" that's too easy, i wanna Morpheus that **** til it's head spins. My Favorite monk ever made a 42' vertical leap onto a balcony with a ki point, his own skill, and a grappling hook to throw the last ten feet. Sure, fly would have been easier, but then, i wouldn't be able to brag about a 42' vertical leap now, would I?

[Jak]

Full casting progression is the simple, easy, and possibly even intended path to power. I don't like the idea of following a neatly paved path, in part because the game designers probably foresaw it and likely did what they could to keep it "balanced".

I enjoy to searching the nooks and crannies of books for bits and pieces in attempt to create alternative paths to power, perhaps even in ways that push the boundaries of what full casting can accomplish in certain critical situations. I gain a satisfaction from knowing that by achieving power through these alternative hidden paths, I have not only beaten the game, but the game-designers themselves to some extent, by finding a way out of the shackles they placed the mundanes in.

Long story short: coming up with powerful non-caster builds strokes my ego.:smallbiggrin:

Reading this just led me to a rather ironic thought.

"I will search the Tomes of Character Creation, and acquire many feats, and forge a melee character!"

Vs.

"I'll beat it senseless with a full caster."

Just a thought, not saying that full casters aren't creative when they want to be, this is just my experience.

[Milodiah]

Reading this just led me to a rather ironic thought.

"I will search the Tomes of Character Creation, and acquire many feats, and forge a melee character!"

Vs.

"I'll beat it senseless with a full caster."

Just a thought, not saying that full casters aren't creative when they want to be, this is just my experience.

Agreed. Even the non-killing-people spells aren't all they're cracked up to be in the ingenuity department. Wizard casting Knock, Rogue picking the lock...the only difference is the Wizard suddenly forgets how afterwards. I mean, I'm all for blowing an eighth-level spell slot just to be able to turn the door into a squid and kick it out of the way, but...still. You'd have to want to waste your time like that.

Personally I rather avoid magic because it makes me think about it too much. And when I think about it too much, settings get broken.

Note I said setting as opposed to system. I'm not a damage/save-or-die combat-oriented munchkin, I could honestly care less if a Maximized Fireball wasn't the mathematically best choice for the situation if my character couldn't care less. I'm the guy who tries as hard as I can to contort my magic into millions, which (as firmly established by this board) is shockingly easy. And more importantly, it's in character. Screw the people who insist that all wizards inexplicably have an aversion to wealth and success, that makes no sense. I've spent my life studying how to wiggle my hands, yell something incoherent, and suddenly solve all my problems. I'm not about to not use that skill to...say...pay my rent, or get me the down payment for my new bed & breakfast stereotypical wizard tower fortress!

[OldTrees1]

Reading this just led me to a rather ironic thought.

"I will search the Tomes of Character Creation, and acquire many feats, and forge a melee character!"

Vs.

"I'll beat it senseless with a full caster."

Just a thought, not saying that full casters aren't creative when they want to be, this is just my experience.

Hmm ...
Wow, that is ironic.

It isn't necessary to design an RPG to be like that, but that is how 3.5(and D&D in general) turned out.

[NWA]

Just asking. Not a single person in my group wants to play a non-spellcaster. At best it's a gish with 1 or 2 levels of fighter, but it's usually melee clerics and druids who fill that role until they're replaced later by summons.

How about your tables? Does anyone voluntarily play a mundane?

Because one might want to play a character with temper that doesn't fit in with one of the spellcasting casters.

[Jak]

By the way, I just want to say that on the flip side, some of the most creative ideas I've ever heard of came from using low level spells, cantrips even, combined with "mundane" equipment or even other characters. Like the classic, "cast father fall and delayed enlarge person on the barbarian," and then shoot her out of a cannon at the enemy ship. Or prestidigitation (aka: minor wish). I think that one of the reasons so many creative ideas come from low level spells, as well as low level characters is because of necessity. After all, why would George if the Jungle swing from vine to vine if there were a perfectly good road available?

The thing is, we live in a "high-technology" setting where there actually is a gadget for everything. Don't need a locksmith, we have have bump keys now. Fire? Lol, if you want to take a vacation from reality and live like you're poor, sure; but we have central heating and air now. Cannon balls? Are you kidding me? Try an atom bomb! And don't even get me started on bows and arrows, we have ****ing machine guns, dude.

One of the reasons we play DND is so we don't have to deal with technology. We can have our swords, and our bows, and our castles, and our kung fu masters, and technology can take a back seat for once while WE do the thinking and problem solving. Why? Because we're bored.

So why is George in the Jungle? Because there aren't any roads there. It's an interesting story that has a unique problem that most people wouldn't know how to deal with nowadays. This character is amazing. He fights lions and swings on vines and has a gorilla friend.

It's possible for spell casters to make wonderfully interesting characters. Case and point, V, from OOTS. But her best work (imo) was done when she was WAY out of her league, and only had a few low level spells left.

So that's why we play non full casters, because we want to see what happens when we don't have that many luxuries available to us. We want a challenge, we want something interesting, and the way some of us like to accomplish that is without the high magicks, or, in some cases, without any magic at all.



-.- whew...

/rant

But, like wizards are cool and everything, so long as they appreciate what the rest of the party brings to the table, I can appreciate them. I'm not an anti-wizardist or a fighter-supremacist or anything. I have a friend that played a wizard before.

[ILM]

But her best work (imo) was done when she was WAY out of her league,
Oh hey, so finally that's settled? I stopped reading back when there was a weekly forum war about wheter V was male or female :smalltongue:.

[Jak]

Oh hey, so finally that's settled? I stopped reading back when there was a weekly forum war about wheter V was male or female :smalltongue:.

Nah, I just calls 'em as I sees 'em. :smallbiggrin:

Oh that reminds me, one more reason to play a barbarian. Immunity to explosive runes. :smalltongue: