Would this create a "balance" of sorts?

[atemu1234]

For a sci-fi setting I'm working on, I completely dropped core classes, and replaced them with Psionics and Tome of Battle. Any thoughts? Balance issues?

[lytokk]

Only one I can think of off hand is the lack of out of combat healing. I don't think any powers allow you to heal anyone except yourself, but I could be wrong.

[atemu1234]

Only one I can think of off hand is the lack of out of combat healing. I don't think any powers allow you to heal anyone except yourself, but I could be wrong.

Well, my group rarely had a cleric anyways.

[lytokk]

Well, I mean no clerics, bards, rangers, paladins, druids. Basically any of those classes able to use a wand of CLW without a UMD check. But its also a scifi setting, so you can always cook up something like nanites which make some fast healing for a few rounds or some such.

[atemu1234]

Well, I mean no clerics, bards, rangers, paladins, druids. Basically any of those classes able to use a wand of CLW without a UMD check. But its also a scifi setting, so you can always cook up something like nanites which make some fast healing for a few rounds or some such.

Ooh! Me like!

[AmberVael]

For a sci-fi setting I'm working on, I completely dropped core classes, and replaced them with Psionics and Tome of Battle. Any thoughts? Balance issues?

Psionics is honestly not far behind spellcasting, and indeed, at the highest optimization it can be even more powerful. Tome of Battle is obviously much better than any of the base combat classes, though its still tier 3 and will fall behind some of the psionic classes. Its better than core, obviously, but that doesn't say a lot. Generally I guess you'd be fine though.

Also, you'd better do something like replace Rogue with Factotum so there is a more skilled sort of class. Probably wouldn't be too hard to retool Factotum to be psionic (in fact you could probably just keep its spell system as is and just replace all spellcasting stuff with its psionic equivalent).


Only one I can think of off hand is the lack of out of combat healing. I don't think any powers allow you to heal anyone except yourself, but I could be wrong.

Complete Psionic has some powers that can do it. Also, the sangehirn (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040625c) can help out too.

[Karl Aegis]

You still have Spell-to-Power Erudites in the same game as Divine Minds, Lurks and Soulknives.

[atemu1234]

You still have Spell-to-Power Erudites in the same game as Divine Minds, Lurks and Soulknives.

Did you not hear the no spells bit? Erudite yes, StP Erudite no.

[eggynack]

Did you not hear the no spells bit? Erudite yes, StP Erudite no.
Still, you're only really shrinking the tier gap from one to six to something like two to five or six, depending on the broader availability of classes. A party of psions and warblades would be alright, but when you add something significantly worse than a warblade to the mix, things get problematic.

[Karl Aegis]

Did you not hear the no spells bit? Erudite yes, StP Erudite no.

This is the first time spells were mentioned in this thread. I must not have heard.

[lytokk]

Still, you're only really shrinking the tier gap from one to six to something like two to five or six, depending on the broader availability of classes. A party of psions and warblades would be alright, but when you add something significantly worse than a warblade to the mix, things get problematic.

With psionics, the lowest tier is what, a soulknife? I'd think some adjustments to the class could pretty easily fix that.

And with the spells, he said no core classes, which made me think no core spells or spellcasters was inferred. Not directly stated, but I figured there'd be no arcane or divine casting.

[defiantdan]

With the setting being sci fi you could use d20 future and modern heal checks and surgery rules for out of combat healing. It requires more downtime then spells but it helps the players understand the gravity of their injuries.

[atemu1234]

This is the first time spells were mentioned in this thread. I must not have heard.

Whoops. Sorry, I drafted this post about four times before actually making the thread.

[eggynack]

With psionics, the lowest tier is what, a soulknife? I'd think some adjustments to the class could pretty easily fixed.
Once you're going into classes to balance them, you're really talking about a different sort of fix. And, y'know, balancing soulknife with psionics isn't impossible, but it's certainly not trivial.

[Taveena]

Are other non-core classes allowed? There are a ton of other classes with healing.

[Flickerdart]

Sangehirn and Ardents with the Life mantle have limited ability to heal other people, and between Swordsages and Psychic Rogues, the skills niche is pretty well covered.

[lytokk]

Another thought. While its not necessary, the ability to hand out buffs is going to be limited. I have to admit again, my experience with psionics is limited, but from what I understand is that it's not the best class for raising the stats of allies, mostly of just the psion in question. Its going to come down to the Crusader for bringing up the allies, which makes crusaders the primary damage soakers, healers, and buffers.

[Flickerdart]

Another thought. While its not necessary, the ability to hand out buffs is going to be limited. I have to admit again, my experience with psionics is limited, but from what I understand is that it's not the best class for raising the stats of allies, mostly of just the psion in question. Its going to come down to the Crusader for bringing up the allies, which makes crusaders the primary damage soakers, healers, and buffers.
You don't really need a dedicated buffer when everyone has their own fair share of special abilities already. But a manifester with vigor shared with their psicrystal can soak damage more effectively than a crusader can even dream of.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Balance gets a lot better, since most of the classes that people would actually use (psion, psychic warrior, ardent, psychic rogue, swordsage, crusader, warblade) are within a tier or two of each other. (Forget about things like Divine Mind; no-one will touch them anyway). I might suggest creating "psionic cure X wounds" and "psionic restoration," to avoid healing problems with a minimum of work, but overall it's a big improvement.

If you were to expand it, Magic of Incarnum would be a nice secondary magic system (and can easily be refluffed as some kind of cybernetic enhancement, with the different soulmelds as different modules/configurations, and essentia as power).

[GreyBlack]

Overall, yes? But I'd like to clarify that 3.5/pathfinder are not designed with balance in mind. Rather, they are tooled to give players choice without limiting builds. Is it more fun to have a huge range of possible characters, the majority of which are utter [REDACTED], or a system you can't play whatever you want,but things are on a more even playing field? There's no right answer, just saying.

If I were you, though, I would look into retooling the Factotum in some capacity, or just straight up allowing Rogue. As is,your skill monkey will be either a ninja who can't find traps, or psychic. What if I wanted to play a dedicated trapfinder or guy like Sokka from Avatar the Last Airbender/Asami from Legend of Korra/Han Solo from Star Wars? Those archetypes are right out, even though they might make sense in setting.

[Telok]

Healing is covered by Crusader, Empathic Transfer, Body Adjustment, and Hostile Empathic Transfer.

Soulknife is redeemed by full BaB, access to all weapon enhancements, and the player's intelligence to use them. For an actually fun soulknife give them a couple more skill points and let then switch weapon enhancements with five minutes of concentration. For a good power level take all of the above improvements and let the +# mindblade and the mindblade enhancement +# be a single pool of bonuses that the character can apply to hit/damage or special abilities in any ratio they wish. Example: A 10th level soulknife has a +2 modblade with +2 of special abilities, this becomes a +4 pool that the soulknife can use to have a +4 weapon, a +2 Holy weapon, or a Keen Collision Bane(undead) weapon.

I don't really see any major problems with it. You may want to work up some psi/ToB prestige classes and limit some of the cheese specific psion builds can have with the CPsi stuff. Higher level psions may end up looking pretty similar in power choices because of the limited selection, I don't know of you find that to be an issue or not.

[Coidzor]

For a sci-fi setting I'm working on, I completely dropped core classes, and replaced them with Psionics and Tome of Battle. Any thoughts? Balance issues?

So you have Psions (T2), Wilders(T3 bordering on T2, IIRC), Soulknives(T5 without adjustments), Crusader+Warblade+Swordsage(T3), Psionic Rogue (T3 or High T4), Psychic Warrior (High T4T3), Lurk (T4ish?), Ardent (T3), Divine Mind (T5?), and, uh... probably something else I'm forgetting.

Edit: So disregarding the scrub classes that's one T2, one class that's almost T2(or maybe 2, depending, considering Ardent), a bunch of T3s, and maybe a single T4.

[Pluto!]

Balance is, as always, going to be more on the players than the classes. Ardents, Erudites and Psions can still break the game in half if they so incline. Even Psychic Rogues will flail around uselessly if their players aren't fluent enough with the system to consistently enable SA.

But everyone (besides the Soulknife and low-level Divine Mind) should at least have a special ability or two, which should be fun at the very least.

[Zweisteine]

Balance is, as always, going to be more on the players than the classes.
Well said.

Atemu, if you want to enforce balance against optimizing players, nothing will work. You'll either get cleverer optimization or fewer players, and there are better ways to do both.

But if it's for fluff and your players aren't min-maxing, there's no need to eliminate anything that fits the fluff. Why not keep rogues? They have their place in most settings as the skilled tricksters in the dark. The same argument can be extended to most other non-casting classes.

And, of course, if balance isn't the matter, there's a very, very big homebrew project (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?320298-My-Little-Gramarist-SCIENCE!-is-Magic-Gramarie-Discussion) out there for magitek. It may well be the biggest homebrew project ever. To the best of my knowledge, it certainly is the biggest on these forums.

[eggynack]

So disregarding the scrub classes that's one T2, one class that's almost T2(or maybe 2, depending, considering Ardent), a bunch of T3s, and maybe a single T4.
True, but you do get about that mix if you disregard the scrub classes in normal 3.5. Basically, this change may increase balance, but it's unlikely to create it.

[Chronos]

Going by the actual definitions of the tiers, Wilders are definitely no-question Tier 2. They're a significantly weaker Tier 2 than the psion, but the tiers aren't just a matter of power.

[Troacctid]

Wilders are just worse versions of Psions. I don't think they're well-balanced at all.

[eggynack]

Going by the actual definitions of the tiers, Wilders are definitely no-question Tier 2. They're a significantly weaker Tier 2 than the psion, but the tiers aren't just a matter of power.
They aren't just a matter of power, but it's a significant factor, as is versatility. The wilder quantity of powers known is low enough to likely pull the class into tier 3, as you're not necessarily getting more magical power than, say, a beguiler, bard, or factotum. Looking at beguiler, for example, you may be restricted to a couple of schools for the most part, but having only five powers at level nine is going to likely restrict the range of effects even more. Hell, a ninth level psion has 5th level spells of more schools than the wilder has powers overall. You can go pretty low in a field of casting without getting a tier dip, but that drop in powers known likely justifies it.

[atemu1234]

Well said.

Atemu, if you want to enforce balance against optimizing players, nothing will work. You'll either get cleverer optimization or fewer players, and there are better ways to do both.

But if it's for fluff and your players aren't min-maxing, there's no need to eliminate anything that fits the fluff. Why not keep rogues? They have their place in most settings as the skilled tricksters in the dark. The same argument can be extended to most other non-casting classes.

And, of course, if balance isn't the matter, there's a very, very big homebrew project (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?320298-My-Little-Gramarist-SCIENCE!-is-Magic-Gramarie-Discussion) out there for magitek. It may well be the biggest homebrew project ever. To the best of my knowledge, it certainly is the biggest on these forums.

I'm actually not attempting to thrust balance on optimizers, though the subject of this thread may be balance. None of my players optimize on their own to begin with.

I started this with a simple goal in mind, to fit the flavor of a sci-fi setting. It seems to do so. Secondly, I wanted to figure out any glaring flaws player's might stumble into. For example, the healing issue. It's as much a balance issue as anything, though it seems(!) to be fixable.

[Karl Aegis]

What healing issue? Psionics has plenty of healing, some of which is actually resourceless healing. Anyone who claims that healing is an issue isn't familiar with psionics. Resurrection may be more of an issue because the powers are either time sensitive or high level.

[Telok]

Earth Sense, Earth Power, Educated Wilder 5/PrC out, Bestow Power: Spend 1 pp, get 2 pp 95% of the time and lose 5 pp 5% of the time.
Empathic Transfer & Body Adjustment for the healing.

The character loses combat ability in exchange for unlimited out of combat healing and the ability to start any encounter at full pp if given enough time and the correct environment. It will take around three minutes for a 5th level wilder to recharge. Actually rechecking the math it looks like having only one level of wilder would be best. Multiclass out as fast as possible.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Atemu, if you want to enforce balance against optimizing players, nothing will work. You'll either get cleverer optimization or fewer players, and there are better ways to do both.

But if it's for fluff and your players aren't min-maxing, there's no need to eliminate anything that fits the fluff. Why not keep rogues? They have their place in most settings as the skilled tricksters in the dark. The same argument can be extended to most other non-casting classes.
I actually think that these sort of adjustments are more important in inexperienced groups/groups that don't really care about the mechanics of their characters, not less. For all that we talk about god-wizards and CODzilla, D&D has way more trap options than it has overpowered ones. I'd expect to see much greater power disparities in a group of inexperienced/nonoptimizing players than one where everyone is optimizing*. Limiting the game to classes with a high optimization floor is only an improvement, in my eyes.


*For an example, you don't need to look any farther than the PHB. Player A likes animals, so he picks a druid. He grabs a wolf animal companion, because it's the most dangerous sounding default companion, and at 6th level he takes Natural Spell, since it's a druid-focused feat. In combat he becomes a bear, because bears sound like they should be scary, and casts flashy spells like call lightning and flaming sphere. Player B wants to play a badass swordsman, so he picks fighter. He grabs a rapier and a dagger, because that was a real fighting style, and goes down the weapon focus chain, since they're fighter-focused feats. In combat he charges the first round and spends the rest of the time full attacking. What is balance?