Addressing Caster/Non-Caster Disparity

[Cosi]

Someone posted a thread claiming that PF solved caster/non caster disparity (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?507860-Fact-Pathfinder-has-solved-the-Caster-Non-Caster-Disparity-of-3-5). The response that was a resounding descent into a morass of overlapping arguments that I've been away too long to bother trying to unravel, despite having posted in that thread previously. But the actual question implied by that thread (how do we solve Caster/Non-Caster Disparity) is an interesting one. So let's talk about that. Also, related topics like "how should we balance classes" and "what kind of abilities should people get".

Some guidelines/ground rules/disclaimers/requests:

1. If you think Caster/Non-Caster Disparity isn't real, don't post in this thread. How can you possibly make a valuable contribution to a discussion attempting to solve a problem you don't think exists?
2. If you think Caster/Non-Caster Disparity isn't a problem, don't post in this thread. Again, how are you supposed to help solve something you don't think it is a problem?
3. In general, I will be using the terms Wizard and Fighter to broadly mean "casters" and "non-casters".

Some opening thoughts to get the ball rolling:

The Tier System

I don't like the Tier System terribly much in general. But I think it's particularly unhelpful when discussing how things ought to be, because it's entire paradigm is organized around how things are in a system that is deeply (perhaps even fundamentally) flawed. The Tiers conflate casters ability to directly alter the narrative (with abilities like teleport, plane shift, or raise dead) with their high optimization ceiling. If you're trying to evaluate the power of classes within a given game, this is a useful simplification. After all, it's not possible to pick one without the other if the game has conflated them. But when discussing the issue of how to fix imbalance, it is no longer necessarily the case that "able to influence the game" and "able to break the game" overlap. Indeed, while the first is clearly desirable, the second is clearly not. Asking that characters have abilities that are able to dramatically influence the narrative flow of the game, while still having relatively focused combat abilities is a reasonable and achievable goal. But it doesn't neatly correspond to anything on the tier system.

Focused Casters

I think focused casters (e.g. Beguiler, Warmage) are a better design paradigm than unfocused ones (e.g. Wizard, Cleric). But I think that has basically nothing to do with game balance. If you can balance "a bunch of Summoner abilities", "a bunch of Necromancer abilities", and "a bunch of Transmuter abilities", you can balance the guy who gets some abilities from each of those lists. In fact, you are very likely to do that to one degree or another regardless as you introduce new classes. The Warlock is not terribly different (conceptually) from a Summoner/Necromancer/Warmage. He can summon demons, curse people, or cause explosions. He's probably losing something in return, but so is any caster that doesn't have infinite spell slots.

This is not to say that versatile casters are totally safe. If you print eight times as many abilities, that's eight times as many chances to print planar binding. This is also not to say there's no reason to print specialist casters. There is, but it's about conceptual space rather than balance. If you have one guy who does "magic", you can only sell people one magic class. If you have one guy who does "fire magic", one guy who does "death magic", and another guy who does "plant magic", that's three times as many classes. Plus, you can combine those abilities or add new options like "light magic" or "ice magic".

Which Classes?

Part and parcel with the idea of focused casters is the reality that you are going to have to limit what options are available. If "magic guy" isn't a class, some particular magic users are going to be difficult (or impossible) to build in the core rules. If your core casters are Warmage, Beguiler, Necromancer, and Summoner, no amount of multiclassing or grabbing off class abilities is going to get you a Transmuter. As a result, the average core class is probably going to be substantially broader than the average class. You should print the Elementalist before the Fire Mage, the Knight before the Paladin, and the Rogue before the Ninja. Also, you should avoid printing overlapping classes like Berserker and Barbarian or Warlock and Occultist. Finally, classes need to be conceptually balanced. If one player is a Squire and the other is an Archmage, things are unlikely to work out well.

Resource Management Systems

3e has a lot of resource management systems. Warlocks can use all the abilities they know whenever they want. Wizards can prepare a certain number of spells from their spellbook. Sorcerers have a list of spells known they can freely choose between. Incarnates shuffle tokens around into different sized piles. Crusaders have a random list of available options which refreshes when they burn through it. That's all super cool. It makes characters more distinctive. The Warlock isn't just a Wizard with a color palette swap, he's got his whole own thing going on. It makes characters more flavorful. There aren't great examples of this in 3e, but you could imagine the Binder or Warlock taking ability penalties or status conditions to use his most powerful abilities as a mechanical representation of "things man was not meant to know". It gives extra hooks for dynamic balancing. You can kind of see this in the "Fighters can go all day" arguments people make, but if that was actually done right it could be a valuable tool for spotlighting individual players.

Rituals

There is a temptation to split spells like teleport away from spells like fireball. To some degree this is good. fabricate goes from good to absurd if you are allowed to use it at-will, while cloudkill doesn't improve much. It also allows you to simplify the process of giving Fighters good abilities. If every 9th level character has fabricate, you don't have to decide what to give the Fighter to match fabricate. He's getting fabricate. It is also dangerous, as it has historically been used as an excuse to disenfranchise players by minimizing their ability to use teleport and similar abilities to avoid railroading.

[Troacctid]

Port in 5e stuff.

[stanprollyright]

Port in 5e stuff.

Yeah, 5e did a really good job balancing the classes. To be fair, a big part of that balance is the horrid bounded accuracy system, which makes it so that the dice decide every encounter.

[Troacctid]

Yeah, 5e did a really good job balancing the classes. To be fair, a big part of that balance is the horrid bounded accuracy system, which makes it so that the dice decide every encounter.
Okay, but you realize that the dice decide every encounter in every edition of D&D? Like, that's kind of the point. :smalltongue:

[John Longarrow]

Biggest way to balance the game is to have a DM who balances face time between players. If the DM makes sure that everyone is having fun and having the amount of in game face time they want, the game is balanced. Doesn't matter what the classes are, more who the players are and who their characters are.

[ryu]

Label the power of everything, only allow things within a tier of each other to appear in the same game. You've cut out a minimal amount of content, and sidestepped the people feeling useless/held back that was the actual reason people have a problem with the power disparity. We can expand to within two tiers if discussing newbies who need something simple but effective like a warblade just to learn the basics.

[Troacctid]

Label the power of everything, only allow things within a tier of each other to appear in the same game. You've cut out a minimal amount of content, and sidestepped the people feeling useless/held back that was the actual reason people have a problem with the power disparity. We can expand to within two tiers if discussing newbies who need something simple but effective like a warblade just to learn the basics.
JaronK's tier system is overly simplistic and doesn't accurately represent the relative power of classes except at a very coarse, broad-strokes level, skewed towards the lategame. His rankings are also based on an outdated understanding of optimization, underrating some classes and overrating others.

[digiman619]

*obligatory Spheres of Power (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/) and Path of War (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war) comment*

[Cosi]

Port in 5e stuff.

I think 5e's balance is to a very large degree a fugazi. Bounded accuracy ensures that the game never progresses past a play-space that corresponds to 4 - 8 in 3e, and that part of the game is fairly well balanced.


Biggest way to balance the game is to have a DM who balances face time between players. If the DM makes sure that everyone is having fun and having the amount of in game face time they want, the game is balanced. Doesn't matter what the classes are, more who the players are and who their characters are.

Yes, the DM can address imbalance. But that doesn't make it not a problem. The goal should always be to minimize imbalance, with the understanding that DMs will sometimes have to step in. Knowing that, the game should be designed to make it possible to tailor encounters to the particular strengths of characters. If the Wizard has at-will abilities that deal AoE damage, and the Fighter has encounter abilities that deal heavy single target damage, adjusting the size and length of encounters provides a simple toggle for DMs to address imbalance while still creating a nominally balanced game.


Label the power of everything, only allow things within a tier of each other to appear in the same game. You've cut out a minimal amount of content, and sidestepped the people feeling useless/held back that was the actual reason people have a problem with the power disparity. We can expand to within two tiers if discussing newbies who need something simple but effective like a warblade just to learn the basics.

I've seen various forms of this argument a lot, and I don't really see what it gets you other than the ability to put "level 20" on your character sheet with any class. If you want to divide classes by power level, I think 4e's tiers are a better paradigm than JaronK's. It has the added benefit of giving you a single word descriptor of what you're doing power-wise. Saying "it's a Paragon game" is a lot easier than saying "it's a 7th level mid-tier game". It also forces you to rewrite classes at different tiers. Yes, "mundane Fighter" is not balanced with "phenomenal cosmic power Wizard", but it's balanced with "not a whole lot of cosmic power Wizard". Ultimately, I think you end up retreading a lot of ground for no real gain. It's a necessary component of addressing imbalance in a existing game, but I don't see it as useful for creating a balanced game.

I do agree that you need simpler options for new players, but I don't think those need to be substantially less powerful. Obviously they're going to be somewhat less powerful by virtue of having less opportunity for synergy, but they shouldn't be worse by design on top of that. I think there are three niches you want classes to cover:

Easy to Build/Easy to Play: This is for new players, or players who aren't in it for the mechanical aspects of the game (e.g. roleplayers, people who game socially).
Easy to Build/Complex to Play: This is for established players who want to engage heavily with the mechanical aspects of gameplay, but don't have the patience to dive through books to build a character.
Complex to Build/Complex to Play: This is for the min-maxers who view mastery over the game as an important part of the gaming experience.

There's a fourth category there (Complex to Build/Easy to Play), but I don't know that it appeals to a very wide audience. Most people I know who spend a lot of time building characters also enjoy having complex in-game decisions.

Those shouldn't be power categories, but they also shouldn't concept categories. One of the flaws of 3e was that there weren't really any martial characters that fit into the third category. All the martial characters (that were any good) ended up being one trick ponies, so the people who wanted a complex martial character were essentially out of luck.

[D.M.Hentchel]

The problem I see with it is that a lot of the fantasy of the archetypes creates a disparity. I want my wizard able to command hordes of undead and use magic to teleport across the continent; and I want my fighter to be unable to do that on his own.

But if I say that then I'm left with the disparity between mundanes and magiks. But to a certain degree I'm okay with that wizards have more tools in their box than a fighter and if the player puts in the work should be rewarded.

But where 3.5 falls apart is that everything else is stackes against the mundane. Like how mundanes often need to burn more feats into getting less. And how a fighter must spend a huge chunk of his wealth just getting his numbers high enough. The fighter was given no way to target Fort, Ref, or Will saves or even Touch AC.

My solution arises in fixing these failings.
1: Attach more abilities to BaB progression
2: Make feats broader in scope (but not in power)
3: Make magic items priced in favor of mundanes
4: Make many magic items more powerful for those woth relevant class features.
5: Magic items that are stronger with higher BaB
6: Give many mundane classes appropriate interaction abilities
7: Offer non class related access to spell-like magic (e.g. incantations or sacrifice)
8: Re-balance spells that allow you to ignore weaknesses (namely polymorph)

Thats what I got, but it is a long process.

[Troacctid]

I think 5e's balance is to a very large degree a fugazi. Bounded accuracy ensures that the game never progresses past a play-space that corresponds to 4 - 8 in 3e, and that part of the game is fairly well balanced.
No, in my experience, there's a pretty distinct level tier paradigm in 5e. Levels 1–4 are tutorial-tier, 5–10 are mid-tier, 11–15 are high-tier, and 16–20 are essentially epic-tier. You can feel the difference. It's not as pronounced as it was in 4e, but the design philosophy is definitely still there.


Those should be power categories, but they also shouldn't concept categories. One of the flaws of 3e was that there weren't really any martial characters that fit into the third category. All the martial characters (that were any good) ended up being one trick ponies, so the people who wanted a complex martial character were essentially out of luck.
Psychic warriors, totemists, factotums, divine minds, and swordsages are pretty complex. And there are some complex prestige classes too.

[ryu]

I've seen various forms of this argument a lot, and I don't really see what it gets you other than the ability to put "level 20" on your character sheet with any class. If you want to divide classes by power level, I think 4e's tiers are a better paradigm than JaronK's. It has the added benefit of giving you a single word descriptor of what you're doing power-wise. Saying "it's a Paragon game" is a lot easier than saying "it's a 7th level mid-tier game". It also forces you to rewrite classes at different tiers. Yes, "mundane Fighter" is not balanced with "phenomenal cosmic power Wizard", but it's balanced with "not a whole lot of cosmic power Wizard". Ultimately, I think you end up retreading a lot of ground for no real gain. It's a necessary component of addressing imbalance in a existing game, but I don't see it as useful for creating a balanced game.

I do agree that you need simpler options for new players, but I don't think those need to be substantially less powerful. Obviously they're going to be somewhat less powerful by virtue of having less opportunity for synergy, but they shouldn't be worse by design on top of that. I think there are three niches you want classes to cover:

Easy to Build/Easy to Play: This is for new players, or players who aren't in it for the mechanical aspects of the game (e.g. roleplayers, people who game socially).
Easy to Build/Complex to Play: This is for established players who want to engage heavily with the mechanical aspects of gameplay, but don't have the patience to dive through books to build a character.
Complex to Build/Complex to Play: This is for the min-maxers who view mastery over the game as an important part of the gaming experience.

There's a fourth category there (Complex to Build/Easy to Play), but I don't know that it appeals to a very wide audience. Most people I know who spend a lot of time building characters also enjoy having complex in-game decisions.

Those shouldn't be power categories, but they also shouldn't concept categories. One of the flaws of 3e was that there weren't really any martial characters that fit into the third category. All the martial characters (that were any good) ended up being one trick ponies, so the people who wanted a complex martial character were essentially out of luck.

But see here's the thing. For some unfathomable reason there exist people who WANT to write fighter 20 on their sheet and still be able to play a game. I don't understand these people. I don't understand wanting to play a fighter in this game at any level. That said, it's factually verifiable that these people exist, and that my method serves them just as well as everyone else with minimal effort. You can solve this entire issue by simply by enforcing the recommendation of the tier system, and maybe inventing a quick and dirty caster with a sword for people who want those for... some reason. I've seen them too.

[John Longarrow]

Yes, the DM can address imbalance. But that doesn't make it not a problem. The goal should always be to minimize imbalance, with the understanding that DMs will sometimes have to step in. Knowing that, the game should be designed to make it possible to tailor encounters to the particular strengths of characters. If the Wizard has at-will abilities that deal AoE damage, and the Fighter has encounter abilities that deal heavy single target damage, adjusting the size and length of encounters provides a simple toggle for DMs to address imbalance while still creating a nominally balanced game.

Yep, gotta give those wizards SOMETHING to do when the RPing aspect of a melee combatant can outshine them for entire sessions... :smallsmile:

Truth is just because one character can do something others can't doesn't make the game unbalanced. What makes it unbalanced is when one player takes away the ability for others to share in the story. Trying to get every class "Balanced" won't work because what each campaign / table needs is a little different and how each group works is different.

Level 2 wizard is in the back seat to a level 2 warblade when the game focuses on multiple protracted fights per day. Both go to the back seat if its a stealth based game set in a city and there's a level 2 rogue in the party, and all of them sit back and watch the "Bard Show" when it comes to protracted social events.

Higher levels can make these strengths and weaknesses much more pronounced.

[stanprollyright]

Okay, but you realize that the dice decide every encounter in every edition of D&D? Like, that's kind of the point. :smalltongue:

I mean...yeah...but like taking 10 and 20 are a thing, and a high level and/or well optimized character can get their bonuses high enough that there is very little chance of failure for certain tasks. When I make a character I want them to be good at what they do, and reliable at doing it.

Plus, a lot of spells and such just work. You teleport; you fly; there's a thing there now. You don't have to roll at all.


Psychic warriors, totemists, factotums, divine minds, and swordsages are pretty complex. And there are some complex prestige classes too.

You're right, there are a lot of good, complicated, martial classes. The problem is none of them are core classes. They aren't as common, or as well supported, or allowed in as many games, and may or may not exist in other editions.

[Godskook]

Understanding the genre and the scaling helps IMMENSELY with the caster/non-caster disparity. 3.5's biggest problem is that the genre and scaling -create- the problem we're here to solve.

Specifically, 3.5's genre has no concept of post-6 non-casters. Our -best- mundane class 'in-genre' is factotum, and that dude casts spells... Compare to DC, where Superman closer to a monstrous hulking hurler than he is to anything built for PCs, or Anime, or Marvel, or any other setting where Punchy McFist stands next to Wizard Von Spellbook and *REALLY* goes at it.

Compare to 5, where they try to lock everyone into a far more E6-esque setup.

To this end, you have two options, *HEAVILY* rebalance casters around the balance prospects 3.5 gives to non-casters(the 5e solution) or reconceptualize non-casters at higher levels to be less sucky. For this, you basically have to go import "anime" combat to some degree(Tome of Battle).

[Jormengand]

There are four broad ways of doing this:

1: Reduce the power and versatility of the spellcasting classes to the level of the other classes. This is roughly what a Tier 5 balance point is supposed to be, and despite the tier system's flaws, it does make it clearer that this is a difficult process due to the way that, say, rogues are a lot more powerful than samurai and therefore both of them need to be rebalanced too.
2: Reduce the power and versatility of the spellcasting classes to some point in the middle while increasing the mundane classes to the same level. This is roughly what a tier 3 balance point is supposed to be, and also seems to be what Wizards were going for later on in the game.
3: Increase the power and versatility of the non-casting classes to the level of the casters. This is what a tier 1 balance point is supposed to be. This has two major problems: one is making non-casters have realistic (or verisimilar, at least) abilities of appropriate power, and the other is running a game where everyone can make reality their plaything.
4: Try to make the classes good at different things.

The ideal is to give DMs an option for any of these things, by creating more low-power magical classes, mid-power everything classes, and high-power mundane classes.

There are, in addition, some options which I don't think are good ways to solve the problem:

5: Leave DMs to fix the problem. (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Oberoni_Fallacy)
6: Make spellcasting really annoying to use (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?328767-More-realistic-D-amp-D-Economy/page4&p=17613518#post17613518)
7: Use Tome of Battle (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19878688&postcount=111) for "Non-magical" classes. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19879320&postcount=136)

[Korahir]

I mean...yeah...but like taking 10 and 20 are a thing, and a high level and/or well optimized character can get their bonuses high enough that there is very little chance of failure for certain tasks. When I make a character I want them to be good at what they do, and reliable at doing it.

Plus, a lot of spells and such just work. You teleport; you fly; there's a thing there now. You don't have to roll at all.

The part of rolling a dice and things just working to me is the big reason casters come ahead no matter what non casters get. Skills with take ten and twenty can achieve similar effects: "I simply know what the inherent strength and weakness of a black dragon is because my knowledge (arcana) skill check result is 55. No need to roll."
Caster: "Thank god my spell ignores SR and allows no save. It just works. We can all fly now guys."
Non caster: "If I hit and i hit on a roll of 2+, I'll do 512 HP damage and ignore any DR." *rolls a dice* "I rolled a 1."

[Troacctid]

I mean...yeah...but like taking 10 and 20 are a thing, and a high level and/or well optimized character can get their bonuses high enough that there is very little chance of failure for certain tasks. When I make a character I want them to be good at what they do, and reliable at doing it.

Plus, a lot of spells and such just work. You teleport; you fly; there's a thing there now. You don't have to roll at all.
That's all still true under 5e rules.

[The Insanity]

The problem I see with it is that a lot of the fantasy of the archetypes creates a disparity. I want my wizard able to command hordes of undead and use magic to teleport across the continent; and I want my fighter to be unable to do that on his own.
Give the Wizard 20th level and the Fighter 3rd. There, you have what you want.

[DeadMech]

I've never played high level DnD, I've barely played low level DnD, so maybe I'm not the highest authority. Pretty much every time I make a character I get it in my head what I want them to be good at. And pretty much every time I go through creation I find out that the game either doesn't want me to be able to accomplish it or it takes pretty much every build resource I am given to make it a reality if I'm picking something non full caster. I think the descriptions of the lower half of the tiers pretty much describes what I am saying.

Building lower tier characters isn't about making a well rounded person who will contribute somewhat in any situation. It's building a one trick pony and then sometimes you aren't even going to be good at the one trick. Or at least you'll find a wizard or druid who does your trick better if he wants to. As example some of the characters I have played seem to back up what the tier list has to say.

The wizard I made had plans to become a loremaster. My goal was to know all the things. The build resources to get into lore master are a little tight but with a strategic flaw or two I can still fit in flavor feats that appealed to me and the prereqs might not be what I wanted right then but arguable most of them are useful in the long term. Skill points are really tight to cover 10 or 11 knowledge skills but wizard is a int based class, I picked a race with an int bonus. At lower levels I'd have to pick and choose between a smaller number of knowledge skills to excel at or spread it out to cover everything but not exceptionally well. But in time as I gained more int and switched to the prestige class with more ranks per level I would eventually meet my goal of maxing them all and even have some left over points I could throw into decipher script or learn some languages. I as a player didn't get everything right away but I saw the path there and liked what the end result would be. And that doesn't even cover that I had a full casting class I could use to debuff the battle field or solve an obstacle we came to. I was happy with the results of character creation. Unfortunately the gm bailed so I never got to see what combat or a dungeon would be like.

The crusader I played was great fun too. Even though I kind of messed up my build forgetting I'd maybe want multiple attacks of opportunity to take full advantage of a few things. But It had enough skill points and abilities in battle that I could be what I wanted. Contribute to knowledge checks, some of the time. Not be a hindrance to the party when interacting with npcs with our mouths instead of our weapons, check. Keep my party alive, absolutely. The gm in that game threw very difficult encounters at us at pretty much every turn and I don't think if I had been playing any other class I would have survived it. Many chances to be a big damn hero. Wave of enemies ambushes us and one shots me in the surprise round, some of that damage is delayed so I stand long enough to heal myself back into the fight and kill one of them in the same round. Blocking a choke point to keep a horde of kobolds away from my squishy casters while under heavy fire, damage reduction one turn, healing another, more tricks as my maneuvers come online or refresh. I never quite knew exactly what maneuvers I'd have available in any round and there were many clutch moments when I drew the one I absolutely needed the round I needed it. Most of them only take effect when you hit as well so sometimes even then the fall of the dice made for an exciting moment. Favorite moment was face tanking a dragon, getting KO'd by it after the cleric and landing a crusader strike in my final stand. I choose to heal the cleric and told him to finish it as I collapsed. He wasted a healing spell on himself instead after retreating for a turn and then finished it with the very next hit but still a nice moment. Being a bad mofo swordsman who walks back to civilization wearing a dragon as a scarf and having the swagger to make it work pretty much sums up everything I wanted out of that character and everything I wish the paladin had actually been. Despite rolling pretty much as badly as I could for hp rolls I feel like I carried the healbot cleric and summoning arcane caster who wasn't high enough level for their summons to do anything. Both of them had their moments I'm sure and would have continued to but I never felt like I wasn't a valuable member of the party.

A druid I made for a game that didn't get far was also fun to build. I knew what I wanted it to do and I don't think I ever felt constrained by character creation in making it. I wanna be part of the religious caste in my home tribe, done. I wanna be a diplomatic bridge between the natives in the setting and the settlers, done. Surviving the wilderness, of course. Even very quickly I noticed though I was overthinking the problems the dm put infront of us. Our ship is damaged, supplies low and the only port available is hostile. Clearly the answer is navigate to an inlet or bay somewhere on the coast, close it off to the ocean with stone shape, hide the boat with plant growth, Shape wood to fix the holes, feed everyone with survival checks until the work was done.... I think the dm just wanted us to sail to port and get the ship impounded by the local authorities... When you're a tier one caster every problem looks easily solvable with the creative application of a few spells.

Meanwhile I've never sat down to make a rogue and felt like I enjoyed the process. Int as primary stat, int bonus race, still only just enough skill points that I can do all the roguey things I think I should be able to. Party face, all the way. Traps and locks, pfft. sneaky sneaky and detecting the sneaky sneaks, yeah. tumbling and other mobility things, probably starting to stretch farther than I want. And I again don't know what this character would have done in combat. Game never got there but my stats the way they are I don't think I would have enjoyed the trying to hit people in melee parts of the game. The trying not to be hit in melee parts not inspiring me with confidence either. The dm's keep falling off the face of the earth though.

But yeah. Every time I built something lower tiered I feel the pinch in options. Feats tend to require pricey chains and concrete synergistic builds. There are never a number of skill points I'm happy with. where as when I play higher tiered classes I usually feel like I have options. I've never played tier 5. I've tried to make character sheets for them on occasion. A fighter or a paladin or something but each time I look at other higher tiered classes and think I'd just rather play a crusader or something. I'm not helped in that the best paladin builds mix in bard or something similar that I just do not jive with. I want to play religious zealot who crushes his enemies. I'm not helped in that the lower the tier list you go the more MAD you get. I don't want to dump charisma and int. I like playing a character who has some option of getting what they want in a social setting, I like having skill points to increase the number of options I have. I still want to have the con to survive the way too swingy low level combat and the strength to actually hit the thing in front of me and carry a pile of mundane gear. I dump dex and wis more often than is probably healthy in the long run but mostly because I have to. Higher tiered classes even if I build them improperly still function. (Like a crusader who doesn't have multiple attacks of opportunity and too low attack bonus to ever use his power attack safely. Or a wizard who takes a couple feats people sometimes call traps.)

One thing that I heard said once on these forums though I forgot who said it. Fighters, rogues, whatever martial character you have in mind, they live in the world where magic is a fundamental force, but learn or train no personal method to deal with or use it. This makes no sense if you think about it. There exists a force that can either wreck my day or greatly improve everything I do... but I ignore it completely.

It's something that sticks in my mind though i don't know how exactly you fix it. I don't like the idea of kneecapping wizards and druids trying to weaken them to bring everyone else closer to them. Some fixes are of course needed. Not allowing chain gating or other obviously broken infinite loops. Not letting them use wall of salt to break the economy and any semblance of wealth by level. On the other hand things that allot of people complain about like teleportation or scrying are a part of the game and something you can with a little forethought stop from ruining everything. Sometimes that means admitting that by the time long distance teleport becomes possible it's no longer appropriate to plan your adventure's challenges around the trip between two places the party has been before.

Some people suggest letting the non full casters gestalt with something else that isn't a full caster. Never seen it in practice though.

Not going that far I would suggest just all around buff skillpoints. 3.5 has this really interesting skill system that struck a cord with me the first time I saw it but constrains everyone so much with the points and in some cases class skill lists. The game probably isn't going to break just because the fighter can do something more than ride a horse or jump. As it is they have no ability to function in society other than intimidating their way through everything. And that tends to come back to bite them in the backside when they alienate enough npc's.

Maybe slip in house rules that give the non full casters options to early on alleviate the MAD issue. Stuff exists throughout the system to sub int for damage or dex for hit or whatever you can think of. It just tends to require unsightly class dipping everywhere. Paladin is absolutely wrecked by requiring pretty much everything. Or at the very least have a generous point buy or rolling method (I hate rolling for permanent stuff like HP and Base stats. A bad roll on an attack ruins a characters afternoon more often than their entire life.)

Maybe replace some of the class features. A barbarian's damage reduction is nice to have but kinda insignificant in the long run or so I've been told. Maybe instead a certain number of times per day or one turn per encounter they should just get to say no to damage or a spell effect. This gives them a choice to make in combat about the timing of this limited ability and might also shape how you would approach enemy barbarians as well. Makes the players make meaningful choices and probably has far more impact in play when used wisely. Yeah it's not mundane to shake off a compulsion. Yeah a monk that can fire ranged ki attacks or actually fly for a time aren't EX abilities that are realistic. These classes don't live in the real world. They should be able to draw upon something like magic even if it's not spells. Stuff that breaks physics on occasion.

I once played a custom class that was sort of a fighter/knight kind of thing. It had the warblades(?) ability to retrain weapon specific feats with an afternoon of practice with the new weapon. It was kind of interesting. Now if we know what's coming I can pick the best weapon for the job like a good little golf bag fighter and have all sorts of things like improved critical rates, higher attack and the like regardless. Probably could have gone the whole weapon supremacy route and had it apply to literally anything I picked up. That with a scaling wild cohort.

I've heard one person suggest feats should level with the character. A feat part of a chain taken early might gain abilities from the chain further on. Or you could allow more feats than normal on condition that they don't synergisze with the ones taken in regular slots instead meant to broaden a character's options as opposed to just making that one trick they do all the time better.

The problem is though that it looks like no matter what course you take it's not going to appeal to everyone and it's going to require rewriting vast amounts of the game. Nerfing spells or buffing weak classes.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Parity simply cannot happen because there will always be problems that -require- magical solutions that non-caster can only ape with items.

That out of the way, it's just one more refrain of the same old song;

Nerf the casters by banning or nerfing all of the problem spells and limiting their overall access to what's left

Boost the non-casters by giving them more versatile, scaling abilities that amount to more than just "I hit it with my pointy in a -different- way."

Each group has to find its own balance between those two. Inevitably, some degree of both is necessary because bringing non-casters all the way up doesn't leave them as non-casters in any appreciable way and bringing the casters all the way down makes them little more than flashy archers.

Since tastes vary, this is about as detailed an answer as can reasonably be given.

[Lans]

@ Cosi Do you feel any level of disparity is bad or is there a point where its close enough?

[RoboEmperor]

I think the system is "balanced" the way it is right now.

Every level in a noncaster makes you a stronger attacker. Every level in a caster makes you a stronger magic attacker. d&d is all about mixing classes and prestige classing to get what you want. It's not the system's fault that magic is stronger later.

In the real world, lets say martial arts is a noncaster, and a technology-guy is a caster. At first the martial artist will beat up the technology guy no problem. Once the technology guy gets guns, he starts to become stronger. Sure you can argue that an epic martial artist can dodge bullets, or even catch them and throw them back, but at that level, the technology guy will have access to nuclear weapons and computer guided intercontinental ballistic missiles.

What I'm trying to say is primitive methods can only go so far. You can be a master book-copying-monk that copies one book a day, but you still can't compete with the printing press.

You're not supposed to go 20 into fighter. If you do, well, that's your fault.

Still though, just like a gun is better in the hands of a soldier than a computer nerd, buffs and magical equipment is better on the fighter than the wizard. A fighter with UMD and a bunch of money for scrolls is just as strong as a wizard, maybe even stronger, which is like in real life where computer nerds are more focused on inventing equipment that makes soldiers stronger, especially fighter pilots, rather than fighting themselves.

High level d&d I do find mundanes obsolete, but that's how it works. In real life, computer nerds that create their own sentient terminator robots is gonna make soldiers obsolete, but until then, soldier and nerd cooperation is the best. Hell, computer guided nuclear missiles right now made armies obsolete in terms of destruction.

If you want to change the system so that martial artists can cause destruction on par with ICBM nuclear missiles, then I don't think I can participate in the discussion :)

Scientists invented the nuclear bomb, not football players or soldiers. D&D it's the same. The eggheads beat the brutes later in life because the eggheads study the world and use it to change the world, where as brutes just trains their physical body to its limits, which isn't that high. If you choose to spend your life refining your flawed body, it's your fault you're "weaker" than a nuclear physicist.

[Troacctid]

Every level in a noncaster makes you a stronger attacker.
Well, no. It kind of doesn't. Which is, like, a big part of the problem.

[RoboEmperor]

Well, no. It kind of doesn't. Which is, like, a big part of the problem.

Depends on your definition of attacker. My definition is physical attack. The massive BAB boost lets you power attack. Combine that with polymorph hydra and you're going to dance circles around a wizard attempting to do the same.

If you're talking about all attacks not just physical then I'd agree.

[Mordaedil]

You could just polymorph if you want higher BAB.

[Troacctid]

Depends on your definition of attacker. My definition is physical attack. The massive BAB boost lets you power attack. Combine that with polymorph hydra and you're going to dance circles around a wizard attempting to do the same.

If you're talking about all attacks not just physical then I'd agree.
"Massive BAB boost" as in +1 instead of +0.5 instead of +0.75? A quarter of a point isn't really all that massive.

I guess your statement is true if you ignore the existence of opportunity costs, but when you get a bigger boost to your attacks (yes, physical attacks) from a level of wizard than from a level of fighter, it seems disingenuous to imply that fighter levels are better at boosting your attacks.

[bekeleven]

Every level in anything makes you more powerful than you were before you took the level. This is true even for commoner; a Wizard 10 is objectively less powerful than a Wizard 10/Commoner 1 that made all of the same build decisions.

As Troacctid said, the question comes down to opportunity cost (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost). Is taking that level in commoner improving the wizard, relative to other options? No.

Replace "Commoner" with "Fighter" for all a wizard player cares.

On topic. Here are my houserules. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?361894) In order to concisely level the playing field between casters and noncasters, that is to say without rewriting many thousands of words integral to the system, I basically banned the top 90% of caster classes. It's simpler to write, simpler to understand, and led to the type of game I wanted.

[ryu]

Every level in anything makes you more powerful than you were before you took the level. This is true even for commoner; a Wizard 10 is objectively less powerful than a Wizard 10/Commoner 1 that made all of the same build decisions.

As Troacctid said, the question comes down to opportunity cost (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost). Is taking that level in commoner improving the wizard, relative to other options? No.

Replace "Commoner" with "Fighter" for all a wizard player cares.

On topic. Here are my houserules. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?361894) In order to concisely level the playing field between casters and noncasters, that is to say without rewriting many thousands of words integral to the system, I basically banned the top 90% of caster classes. It's simpler to write, simpler to understand, and led to the type of game I wanted.

In a one on one fight with EACH OTHER? Maybe. In terms of actually play you have to talk about gain in power relative to gain in enemy power. I'd contend the build with commoner tacked on is objectively worse due to being forced to face level eleven threats without the appropriate 6th level spells. Like.... Significantly more likely to die than the straight wizard worse.

[Jormengand]

In fairness, yeah, the main problem is that commoner level is making you lose experience (even if wizard is your favoured class) because you get less experience at a higher ECL. However, in fairness, this is also not the point.

[ryu]

In fairness, yeah, the main problem is that commoner level is making you lose experience (even if wizard is your favoured class) because you get less experience at a higher ECL. However, in fairness, this is also not the point.

It's not about not gaining as much experience or not. It's about the fact that character level tends to have a direct correlation with threats faced. The wizard with the added commoner faces harder enemies, and doesn't actually get better tools. It's like how the enemies that leveled with you in oblivion made it disadvantageous to level many non-combat related skills without also increasing your combat skills to an equivalent or greater degree. As you and the enemies both gain health only they are getting more defense, better attacks, and possibly new combat gimmicks to cause you trouble. Now picture that problem only much, MUCH worse.

[Cosi]

\Psychic warriors, totemists, factotums, divine minds, and swordsages are pretty complex. And there are some complex prestige classes too.

Those guys aren't really "martial" in the way that the Barbarian or Ranger is. The Totemist is "the Druid, but for Incarnum", and the rest are similar. Only the Swordsage is even really arguable.


But see here's the thing. For some unfathomable reason there exist people who WANT to write fighter 20 on their sheet and still be able to play a game. I don't understand these people. I don't understand wanting to play a fighter in this game at any level. That said, it's factually verifiable that these people exist, and that my method serves them just as well as everyone else with minimal effort. You can solve this entire issue by simply by enforcing the recommendation of the tier system, and maybe inventing a quick and dirty caster with a sword for people who want those for... some reason. I've seen them too.

Eh. I don't think those people can be won over, and I certainly don't think they'll be happy with being told their precious Fighter is a second class citizen, even if that is objectively true. Honestly, I think they'll probably be happier with Fighter and Wizard both being 10 levels, then having to take a Paragon Path.

Also, I think the additional marginal players you pick up from having more classes overwhelms the players you lose from making Fighter only go to 10. If you're doing tiers, you have to do "low tier Wizard", "mid tier Wizard", and "high tier Wizard" which only ends up covering "Wizard". On the other hand, if you use levels you can have Wizard, Sorcerer, and Warlock.


Yep, gotta give those wizards SOMETHING to do when the RPing aspect of a melee combatant can outshine them for entire sessions... :smallsmile:

I don't understand this line of argument. Are you claiming that RPers are naturally attracted to melee characters?


@ Cosi Do you feel any level of disparity is bad or is there a point where its close enough?

Some level of disparity is probably inevitable. Sometimes, you're going to fight an above average number of undead and Turn Undead will be great while Sneak Attack sucks. Sometimes you'll have to gank a bunch of living enemies silently and the reverse will happen. But the system should avoid the current problem where there are some situations (e.g. high level combat, non-combat at most levels) where some characters (e.g. martials) don't have a reasonable contribution.

[Klara Meison]

I'll just leave this here (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2t6ov?Dispelling-Myths-The-CasterMartial-Disparity)

[Duke of Urrel]

The only real balance against casters is other casters.

Consequently, I think the best way for a dungeon master to deal with the disparity between casters and non-casters is to contrive encounters so that enemy casters single out the players' casters and engage them for short periods of time, thereby tying them up and giving non-casters something to do. (You'll notice that the Giant causes this to happen a lot to the Order of the Stick.)

[Troacctid]

Those guys aren't really "martial" in the way that the Barbarian or Ranger is. The Totemist is "the Druid, but for Incarnum", and the rest are similar. Only the Swordsage is even really arguable.
Not sure if you've never played a totemist or just never played a druid. They play totally differently and their mechanics are nothing alike.

[John Longarrow]

Cosi,

What balances a wizard to a bard for protracted social interactions?
What balances a wizard to a fighter when dealing with political situations?
What balances a wizard to a rogue when it comes time to sell off treasure?

Different characters take on different roles in a party. Magic doesn't mean you are ALWAYS better at EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME.

Magic means for a limited time character with access to spell has a benefit. Skills and class features means you can do what ever all the time. Having different abilities in the game is what balances the classes to each other.

If you have one character that can do everything the rest of the party does, but better, why would they be with the party? What defines importance to those differences is both the group playing the game as well as the DM.

At my table being able to do Gather Info, Diplomacy, and having some kind of perform have proven to be much more useful in several situations than being able to toss high level spells. If we had a mechanical "Balance" where every one was equally good at doing everything we'd find the sessions very boring and go looking for a different game. It is BECAUSE each character has differences, their strengths and weaknesses that the game stays interesting and fun. Change that to be "We make everyone balanced based off of some mechanical formula" and we'd not want to play it.

Of course if you just want to play a war game using mini's and having a point system so everything is balanced there are a lot of options out there for you.

[Der_DWSage]

You know, after several years of playing D&D and knowing about the Caster/Martial disparity, it just feels...ingrained to me. It also feels like it would be acceptable, if the caster's spheres of influence were shrunk.

For example, very few people have a problem with the Beguiler, despite the fact that they have plenty of narrative power the Fighter simply doesn't. Even fewer have issues with the poor Warmage. I feel like they would have been much better off making specific casters, who have a sphere of influence in something like Trickery, Blasting, Necromancy, Abjuration, Healing, etc. than the much more general Wizard and Cleric, whose spheres of influence are 'Everything that Merlin and Mettatron could do, combined.'

This would also have allowed them to come up with more casters for more niches easily, rather than having to compare everything to the Wizard. (Warmage might actually be acceptable, if the only form of blasting beforehand was 'Cleric of Fire.') But instead we have the Wizard whose only limits are 'spells per day.'

Hm. This is actually making me ponder some homebrew, though I'm sure it's been done many times before. I've always felt Sorcerer is an acceptable T2, because he gets his power a level behind and has so few choices comparatively...

[Cosi]

Not sure if you've never played a totemist or just never played a druid. They play totally differently and their mechanics are nothing alike.

They're mechanically different, but they're conceptually similar. They both draw power from nature, gaining abilities based on various natural creatures. They play differently, but so does a Warlock and a Warlock in all but name Wizard who binds demons and prepares spells that are "Warlock-ish".


What balances a wizard to a bard for protracted social interactions?

detect thoughts, charm person, Social Proficiency Enchanter. There's more outside Core (e.g. the Mindbender).


What balances a wizard to a fighter when dealing with political situations?

How is a Fighter supposed to deal with political situations? His class features are "bonus feats" and his only social skills are Handle Animal and Intimidate.


What balances a wizard to a rogue when it comes time to sell off treasure?

Again, what abilities does the Rogue have that make him especially good at selling off treasure? Also, do people actually roleplay selling off treasure?

[Troacctid]

They're mechanically different, but they're conceptually similar. They both draw power from nature, gaining abilities based on various natural creatures. They play differently, but so does a Warlock and a Warlock in all but name Wizard who binds demons and prepares spells that are "Warlock-ish".
Yeah they're really not. And even if they were, what you said would be extremely misleading. It's like saying a warlock is basically a cleric, or an incarnate is basically a paladin, or a beguiler is basically a rogue.

[RoboEmperor]

Also, do people actually roleplay selling off treasure?

Yeah they do, at least the ones I found on roll20. It explains why they have constant openings. It's because people ditch them after a month.

One full hour of roleplaying merchants, asking for directions to find them, selling each piece of loot to a different merchant, all with ridiculously slow roleplay dialogue.

It's no surprise these people never make it past level 8 before the group breaks up.

They also have a **** ton of homebrew. One said d&d is just guidelines, and basically acted like the biggest mega scrub of all time, even with me telling him how to deal with trollbooded characters within the confines of the rules and whatnot. Then he made some homebrew about requiring a discussion amongst peers to level up because he was a fan of some obscure book series.

Another DM made it so that if you critically fail you drop your weapon because it flies off somewhere, with a 1/10 chance of the weapon breaking, cause he found doing that the most fun thing in the game. Mundanes already have a hardtime to keep up with spellcasters without this gamebreaking mechanic.

I'm sharing what they do to illustrate that people who don't know how to play are the ones that roleplay selling loot. You should roleplay quests and politics, not freaking loot selling every single goddamn time. I mean 5 min is plenty for loot selling, not an hour. I'm not exaggerating, I found myself watching through several tv shows with my mic muted every session.

It's a warning sign. If your DM says he has never had high level experience, leave the group, because why is he DMing if he doesn't know how to play half the game. Noob DM = scrub DM = railroad DM = avoid at all costs DM, and I haven't mentioned that they take an entire goddamn month to level the party up because of time wasted on horrible roleplay and pitiful encounters. One of the DMs I mentioned just got lazy and grouped several encounters into one which resulted in party wipe several times.