The Failure of the Fighter Class

[Waker]

I'll just come right out and say it. I really hate the Fighter class. It helped lead to the imbalances of the game and shouldn't even be a PC class.
Whoa, whoa, quite an aggressive claim, huh? My disdain for the class can be centered mostly on two major points.
1. You Should Be An NPC Class- Looking back at the PHB, some of the classes could be described as streamlined and free of clutter. Or if you are less generous they have little going on in their class table. Despite their respective powers, Clerics, Sorcerers and Wizards have rather blank tables. This is misleading of course since they have spells located elsewhere.
Fighters are the king of boring though. The entirety of their class features can be summed up as d10HD, full BAB, good Fort, 2 skill points, equipment proficiencies and feats. This does have one advantage, not for the players, but for the DM. If you need to whip up an NPC super quick, you can do this in under a minute. Because of the easy to remember method of gaining bonus feats, I don't even need to consult the table to know when the class is awarded them.
I mean hell, even the name is about the laziest thing you could call the class (I know this is an artifact from earlier editions), but how can you take yourself seriously as an adventurer when your class is called Fighter. Not Warrior, Soldier, Champion or something with zing, but Fighter, ie a guy who fights. From a viewpoint of mechanics, you are just an upgrade to the NPC Warrior class, similar to how an Aristocrat or Expert could be viewed as upgrades to a Commoner.

2. Feats Are Bad Because You Exist- Take a quick look at the feats in the PHB and try to count how many of them have other feats as prerequisites. Now how many of those feat chains were intended for spellcasters? A whopping two, right? The Greater versions of Spell Focus and Penetration, which didn't exist back when 3rd ed first came out. Every other feat chain is related to mundane combat and can probably be blamed on the Fighter.
This is a theory, but bear with me. When the designers were gathered around making up the rules and were creating the feats, they came to a startling conclusion. Fighters get tons of bonus feats as their sole class feature, meaning they could nab way more feats than anyone else. If left as is, Fighters could utterly dominate the game and rule D&D forever! Ah ha! But what if instead we made mundane feats really stupid and put in a bunch of dumb prerequisites? Like needing Power Attack to Bullrush, Point Blank Shot to Far Shot, making Dodge a prereq for everything and creating a chain of feats for iterative attacks in two-weapon fighting? Now in order to get those super sweet feats, Fighters have to invest in unrelated abilities first. D&D is saved!
And of course once the precedent was set, later splatbooks and editions (3.5 and PF) continued the trend.

Also please don't waste time talking about how things were in 1st and 2nd ed. My griping is focused on how Fighters in 3rd ed make the game bad for everyone.

[stanprollyright]

There never fails to be a Fighter-bashing thread on the first page of this subforum. :amused:

[Grod_The_Giant]

Umm... yes? Pretty sure this has all been commonly accepted* for a while now.


*Insofar as anything is among nerds.

[TheIronGolem]

I'll just come right out and say it. I really hate the Fighter class.

Careful there buddy, you might burn yourself with that hot take.

[Guizonde]

i uh... i'm kind of at a loss for words. it seems you've got more of a beef with the 3.X system than with that class since you could spin that argument to knock on the ranger class just as much.

i've always seen the fighter as a blank slate that allows you to custom-build your vision of a beatstick in armor (unlike the barbarian, who's fighting in his undies). are you fundamentally against the martial aspect of roleplay combat or is the fact that the fighter template is so vast? i don't understand your argument of the fighter being an npc class. why is that? just because it's an easy build for npc's? it's a straightforward build for players, and not all players enjoy playing wizards or rogues. dnd is nothing if not varied, so i challenge by saying "why not"? there are other martial classes, but either by fluff or crunch are leagues away from the fighter. sometimes, you just want to play a hammer. can it be better? obviously, and a lot of threads on this forum are dedicated to that. but just because it could be better is no reason to take it out of the game for players.

i have a problem with feats (and the d20 system in general), so i get where you're coming from, too. however, i don't think it's inherently ruined the game to have feat chains. it's a progression that is understandable fluff-wise (you need to know how to hit hard before you hit so hard you knock down someone), and crunch-wise it gives a power-progression. does it lead to specialization? of course. is that a bad thing? i don't think so. as you've said, most feat chains are for martial adepts, so how did that ruin the game for everyone, since only two (i'll take your figure for it) chains affect casters? do you mean it's ruined the martial classes in general forcing optimizers to go arcane or leave the game?

[ryu]

I mean... Your opinion is objectively correct Waker, but hardly novel. I'd hazard a guess at roughly 90-95% of people on this forum hold it.

[noce]

It could have been a really versatile and powerful class if more fighter-only feats existed, and if they were much stronger.

The problem is not fighter chassis: casters get a spell level every two levels, he gets a feat instead.
The problem is: those feats are weak compared to spells.

(mundanes cannot have nice things)

[Waker]

There never fails to be a Fighter-bashing thread on the first page of this subforum. :amused:
Really? I don't think I recall seeing any thread specifically about the topic. Certainly if someone is talking about ToB it comes up.

I know. My post completely blew your minds. No, I wasn't trying to explain something that you guys have never realized before. Mostly it was a way to have my views stated outright in written form so that whenever I talk to someone about the topic, I can just post a link and say, "There ya go." It can be bothersome having to restate the same points over and over.


i've always seen the fighter as a blank slate that allows you to custom-build your vision of a beatstick in armor (unlike the barbarian, who's fighting in his undies). are you fundamentally against the martial aspect of roleplay combat or is the fact that the fighter template is so vast? i don't understand your argument of the fighter being an npc class. why is that? just because it's an easy build for npc's? it's a straightforward build for players, and not all players enjoy playing wizards or rogues. dnd is nothing if not varied, so i challenge by saying "why not"? there are other martial classes, but either by fluff or crunch are leagues away from the fighter. sometimes, you just want to play a hammer. can it be better? obviously, and a lot of threads on this forum are dedicated to that. but just because it could be better is no reason to take it out of the game for players.
The gripe about the Fighter being an NPC is one part fluff, one part mechanics. The fluff argument was mostly spurious. The mechanics aspect though is due to the fact that a Fighter has nothing going on aside from its chassis and feats. If it had more skill points or a real skill list, some kind of actual class features, practically anything, I could maybe take it seriously.
I'm not a player who likes super complicated builds. And were I introducing the game to a new player, Fighter would be fine just so they could get a feel for the game.


of course. is that a bad thing? i don't think so. as you've said, most feat chains are for martial adepts, so how did that ruin the game for everyone, since only two (i'll take your figure for it) chains affect casters? do you mean it's ruined the martial classes in general forcing optimizers to go arcane or leave the game?
My argument is that the existence of Fighters necessitated the feat chains, which screwed every other mundane class over. Almost any non-skill monkey mundane build practically requires a dip in Fighter to make it work, since getting enough feats is otherwise impractical or outright impossible. Whether you wanna specialize in a combat style or take many PrCs, Fighter is practically a given, which is bothersome.

[Gullintanni]

I mean... Your opinion is objectively correct Waker, but hardly novel. I'd hazard a guess at roughly 90-95% of people on this forum hold it.

...If, perhaps, an iota or two less zealously. :smalltongue:

Fighters are awful, but I've always had a lot of fun playing them. I kind of like them despite their weaknesses.
(That said, I typically played with people who couldn't optimize their way out of a paper bag, while I optimized to reasonably high levels, so I was keeping up with the Tier 1s and 2s in terms of output. Unoptimized Blaster wizards and healbot clerics.)

[Kitsuneymg]

Take a gander at this thread. (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=33294) It's over a decade old, but seems to be what you're getting at. It and its related threads also fix martial characters (if your definition of fix is make them play on the same level as the wizard and sorcerer.)

[Doctor Awkward]

My argument is that the existence of Fighters necessitated the feat chains, which screwed every other mundane class over. Almost any non-skill monkey mundane build practically requires a dip in Fighter to make it work, since getting enough feats is otherwise impractical or outright impossible. Whether you wanna specialize in a combat style or take many PrCs, Fighter is practically a given, which is bothersome.

I think you have that backwards.

For one, feat chains weren't created because Fighters exist. The skills and feats in conjunction with a character's ability scores were designed to attempt to model reality. Two-Weapon Fighting is a huge chain because learning to fight effectively with a weapon in each hand is absurdly difficult (in exactly the same way learning to juggle is difficult). Same thing with learning to fight effectively from the back of a horse while simultaneously keeping it under control in the chaos of battle. And the same thing with learning how to reliably shoot a bow at a mobile aerial target hundreds of feet away.

Two, fighters can't simply take any old feat they feel like. Their bonus feats are limited to the specific Fighter bonus feat list. Now coincidentally the majority of fighter bonus feats are part of combat-related feat chains, but a Soulbow build that wants to dip into Shiba Protector is not going to be at all helped by a Fighter dip because Iron Will is not a fighter bonus feat. Nor will it help the character meet the Dexterity requirements for the higher level archery feats, which brings me to point number three...

Lastly, in most cases it's not prerequisite feats in chains that are the issue. It's the ability score requirements to get them that will hamper builds more often than not having enough feat selections. Improved Trip isn't annoying because it requires Combat Expertise, which itself isn't necessarily a bad feat for a tanky build. It's the fact that Combat Expertise requires an Intelligence of 13 that hampers a build that is already wanting Strength to do good damage, Dexterity for extra attacks of opportunity, and Constitution for not dying. The same thing goes with the aforementioned hypothetical Soulbow build. It's not that there are too many archery feats to take, it's that a Wisdom base character will have a much hard time meeting the Dexterity requirements to take them.

[Calthropstu]

Fighters perform perfectly fine in my games. Always have. Pathfinder fighters do pretty damn well actually.

So if you hate playing fighters, don't play them. Problem solved.

[stanprollyright]

Really? I don't think I recall seeing any thread specifically about the topic. Certainly if someone is talking about ToB it comes up.

Many of them are bashing martials in general, or how to fix the fighter, or how to fix martials, or how to nerf casters so they are closer in power to martials, or why ToB is better, or how to make a fighter build that reaches a desired tier...

I've actually not been here for several months - my post was about how it seemed right and proper for this thread to be the first one I see after a long haitus.

[Calthropstu]

Many of them are bashing martials in general, or how to fix the fighter, or how to fix martials, or how to nerf casters so they are closer in power to martials, or why ToB is better, or how to make a fighter build that reaches a desired tier...

I've actually not been here for several months - my post was about how it seemed right and proper for this thread to be the first one I see after a long haitus.

My response to them is: Go play 4th edition.

[Florian]

That´s more to do with the nature of feats changing. Originally, they were meant to let you specialize a bit in some things, things that were already part of the overall class frameworks, like hitting a bit harder, meta-magic. Feat chains originate from a sense of verisimilitude, like needing to learn to "hit hard" before you can "push hard". Attribute prereqs are part of the same mentality that led to that design decision. This also led to statements like SKR saying that a skill focus is a powerful feat.

[bekeleven]

For one, feat chains weren't created because Fighters exist. The skills and feats in conjunction with a character's ability scores were designed to attempt to model reality. Two-Weapon Fighting is a huge chain because learning to fight effectively with a weapon in each hand is absurdly difficult (in exactly the same way learning to juggle is difficult). Same thing with learning to fight effectively from the back of a horse while simultaneously keeping it under control in the chaos of battle. And the same thing with learning how to reliably shoot a bow at a mobile aerial target hundreds of feet away.
Count the number of feats in the player's handbook 3.0 and realize how many relevant ones the fighter can take: Nearly everything in the combat maneuver tree, power attack tree, archery tree, and probably the weapon focus tree and the endurance tree if he throws his normal feats in and is a human.

I guarantee that feats were added specifically to make sure high level fighters didn't instantly run out of content. For further demonstration of this effect, look at pathfinder, where a level 20 fighter got 3 extra feats and, look at that, improved trip is 3 feats now! And so is improved bull rush!

[Eladrinblade]

I'll admit that in many ways, fantasycraft has done what D&D should have done, including making the fighter into a class that can do more than swing a sword, be athletic, make mundane gear, train/ride animals, and scare people (in addition to unquestioningly being the best at fighting). Put simply, the fighter could be a more adequate class. They also made feats better, like you've mentioned should be the case.

However, in core D&D, I find fighters to be good. Oh sure, you could gestalt them with expert or something to make them a more viable class overall without seriously stepping on toes, but if you want to be the well-armored, strong, tough, meatshield blocker type, the fighter does it well. Especially if you consider that buffing a mundane is often a better use of a spellslot than casting an offensive spell (often, not always). In a delayed gratification sort of way, you'll probably get more damage out of a hasted fighter than a fireballed enemy, and haste is useful in just about any fight whereas fireball is only situationally good, so you're probably better off preparing a haste for your fighter or rogue than a fireball. Likewise, with minimal spell support, many of the fighters weaknessed are overcome: enlarge person fixes many issues, prot vs evil protects him from summoned monsters (including a druids bears) and mind control, grease keeps him from being grappled to death, etc.

Most adventures should contain dungeons, and most dungeons should limit movement (that's the point of a dungeon, right?). A fighter is a godsend in a dungeon. In tight quarters, he can control the battlefield, and hold off strong enemies while the rest of the party prepares or focuses fire. If nothing else, he wastes the enemies actions for a round or two, without much risk to himself (most other classes can't say that).

However, most people don't care for (or don't have patience for) all the rules, especially the nitty gritty ones. Hell, most DM's barely even use dungeons. Many people assume a practically unlimited magic mart economy, assume their spells will always be available when they need them and that they'll always have the right ones somehow, and assume that their spells will always go off without a hitch. Really it all comes down to what kind of game you're playing in, because most games seem like they're trying to be like a movie or a cinematic video game, rather than, well, D&D, and if you're playing in one of those games, fighter is not a good choice for you. Most games also tend not to emphasize party teamwork in more than the most basic ways. I've played in games where classes like fighters and paladins never get to do anything except make maybe one or two basic attacks per fight. I've played in others where the fighter felt like the most important person in the party (though only in dungeons).

All this said, I have to acknowledge it's been argued to death for 17 years and everything has been said a thousand times already. It's like politics where people are just gonna think what they think and there's no convincing them otherwise. I just wish people would be a bit more respectful of those who disagree with them.

[Doctor Awkward]

Count the number of feats in the player's handbook 3.0 and realize how many relevant ones the fighter can take: Nearly everything in the combat maneuver tree, power attack tree, archery tree, and probably the weapon focus tree and the endurance tree if he throws his normal feats in and is a human.

I guarantee that feats were added specifically to make sure high level fighters didn't instantly run out of content. For further demonstration of this effect, look at pathfinder, where a level 20 fighter got 3 extra feats and, look at that, improved trip is 3 feats now! And so is improved bull rush!

I wouldn't be so quick to conflate Paizo's designer intent with the likes of Skip, John and Monte. I would never include Sean Reynolds or Jason Bulmahn on the same list as those three.

Furthermore, when you compare the design choices of 3rd Edition to splat books from the previous edition, the influence and inspiration becomes rather obvious. The fact that the vast majority of feats appear on the fighter bonus list is incidental to the fact that virtually all of the feats in the Player's Handbook increase the effectiveness of combat maneuvers (Trip, Disarm, Bull Rush), are combat related (Dodge, Mobility, Improved Initiative), or otherwise concomitant to things you do in combat (punching, swinging swords, or shooting bows).

[icefractal]

I dislike the "Voltron" model of feats too, but I don't know if you can blame Fighters for it. I think it's something the started in 3.0 for somewhat simulationist reasons without regard to how well it played, and then kept and amplified in Pathfinder because it made splatbooks easy to produce.

To clarify, what I'm referring to is the model where feats are individually small and many of them are crappy, but if you combine enough of them together, maybe with some items for spice, the cumulative effect is reasonably powerful.

As opposed to the model non-damaging spells use - each spell is an individual thing that works on its own, and neither needs to or in many cases can be combined into part of a large combo. Take Web. You cast it, people get stuck, and you don't need any other spells or feats or items to have that happen. Someone can pick spells fairly arbitrarily and the good spells will still be good (as with feats, there are a lot of chaff spells; something that started pretty much by accident and is maintained for commercial reasons). Damaging spells fall into the feat trap, since metamagic becomes a critical factor in their effectiveness.

5E seems to have more the right idea about feats - bigger, more self-contained - but that does come with having less of them. Five feats at 20th level is fine, if those feats all add an entire capability, but having to wait until 4th to get one sucks. IMO, having a half-dozen feats at all levels (maybe barring the first few), and as you level up you replace feats instead of purely adding more would give the best play experience, but it does have some flavor disconnect.

[kinem]

Fighters make the best archers due to the need for feats.

The PF fighter class may not look like much, but once I built one, it made sense. That class allows you to build up your numbers. With the extra feats you can afford things like Iron Will, Shield Focus, Toughness, Weapon Focus, etc. that you wouldn't bother taking with another class.

[ryu]

Fighters make the best archers due to the need for feats.

The PF fighter class may not look like much, but once I built one, it made sense. That class allows you to build up your numbers. With the extra feats you can afford things like Iron Will, Shield Focus, Toughness, Weapon Focus, etc. that you wouldn't bother taking with another class.

Pretty sure that actually belongs to the clerics.

[Jon_Dahl]

I think that there might have been a major boost for the Fighter Class if there had been very powerful fighter-only or 'fighter-oriented' feats through levels 13 to 20. It would have not saved the fighter, of course, but now it just seems to futile to play a fighter beyond 12th level. Pointless. And I'm talking about Core.

[Clistenes]

Well, my theory has always been that the game designers wanted to give players the chance to play both reality-altering demigods and relatively normal guys (well, as normal as somebody who is stronger than a rhino and can survive falling from a plane can be...).

You can roleplay a party of warrior/thief types, or you can have a faerunian party of high Tier munchkins.

D&D is not a competitive game, it's a roleplaying game. You can roleplay guys with different levels of power trying to survive and contribute each in their own way.

It can be frustrating if your are a Fighter in a medium to high level party with high Tiers, but you can just discuss and decide the tier of the game so everybody is roughly at the same level.

[Lans]

Pretty sure that actually belongs to the clerics.

Depends on how you measure it, on one hand the fighter edges out a cleric until level 12 by increasingly smaller margins in the role of archery. On the other you have the full cleric chasis minus 3 spells and domain choices

[Inevitability]

No, the best archers are elven generalists who dipped arcane archer, because 9th-level spells. :smalltongue:

[Waker]

I think you have that backwards.

For one, feat chains weren't created because Fighters exist. The skills and feats in conjunction with a character's ability scores were designed to attempt to model reality. Two-Weapon Fighting is a huge chain because learning to fight effectively with a weapon in each hand is absurdly difficult (in exactly the same way learning to juggle is difficult). Same thing with learning to fight effectively from the back of a horse while simultaneously keeping it under control in the chaos of battle. And the same thing with learning how to reliably shoot a bow at a mobile aerial target hundreds of feet away.

Two, fighters can't simply take any old feat they feel like. Their bonus feats are limited to the specific Fighter bonus feat list. Now coincidentally the majority of fighter bonus feats are part of combat-related feat chains, but a Soulbow build that wants to dip into Shiba Protector is not going to be at all helped by a Fighter dip because Iron Will is not a fighter bonus feat. Nor will it help the character meet the Dexterity requirements for the higher level archery feats, which brings me to point number three...

Lastly, in most cases it's not prerequisite feats in chains that are the issue. It's the ability score requirements to get them that will hamper builds more often than not having enough feat selections. Improved Trip isn't annoying because it requires Combat Expertise, which itself isn't necessarily a bad feat for a tanky build. It's the fact that Combat Expertise requires an Intelligence of 13 that hampers a build that is already wanting Strength to do good damage, Dexterity for extra attacks of opportunity, and Constitution for not dying. The same thing goes with the aforementioned hypothetical Soulbow build. It's not that there are too many archery feats to take, it's that a Wisdom base character will have a much hard time meeting the Dexterity requirements to take them.
1. If you want to model how learning a specified type of combat is difficult, you take a feat. The end. Needing a feat chain is for two-weapon fighting is asinine because you are still taking penalties. And for further insult to injury, if you want to get iterative attacks, you need to take another feat every 5 BAB.
2. That...is not really related to anything I'm talking about. Yes, I am aware that Fighter Bonus feats don't encompass any feat that a character might ever need. However they do include a great deal of the combat feats (and combat is a huge part of the game), not to mention that they help establish a baseline for what could be appropriate for a mundane feat.
3. You aren't really doing anything other than proving my point. Why does Improved Trip need Combat Expertise as a requirement? Combat Expertise is entirely about fighting in a defensive manner, how is that any way related to being able to effectively trip someone? Why is Point-Blank Shot, a feat for shooting at close-range targets, the gateway feat needed for increasing the accuracy of a target far away (Far Shot) or being able to quickly fire successive shots (Rapid Fire)?


One of the biggest motivators for starting this thread wasn't to make you all think I just had an eye-opening moment and suddenly realized Fighters are bad after a decade and a half of playing 3rd ed. Nor was it to recruit anyone on the sidelines still unconvinced. Mostly it was catharsis. Just the need to gripe and blow off some steam after getting in arguments with people who think anything stronger than a Fighter is OP munchkin nonsense and if you like ToB or anything other subsystem than you are a filthy powergamer. Sometimes I just wanna set up a nice strawman and take him out in a joust. Then I remember how bad the mounted combat rules are and instead settle for complaining on the forum.

[stanprollyright]

Archery stops mattering around level 6, so the best archer is whoever is best prior to that. Fighters take the cake there.

[Arbane]

I think you have that backwards.

For one, feat chains weren't created because Fighters exist. The skills and feats in conjunction with a character's ability scores were designed to attempt to model reality. Two-Weapon Fighting is a huge chain because learning to fight effectively with a weapon in each hand is absurdly difficult (in exactly the same way learning to juggle is difficult). Same thing with learning to fight effectively from the back of a horse while simultaneously keeping it under control in the chaos of battle. And the same thing with learning how to reliably shoot a bow at a mobile aerial target hundreds of feet away.


Just for sake of comparison, how difficult is it to THROW A FIREBALL by wiggling your fingers and chanting gibberish?

I think FrankTrollman made a good point about the Fighter's 'concept' in another post:


It's phrased in all kinds of different ways. Fighters shouldn't be too "anime". Or maybe Fighters should be more Conanesque. Or whatever. But it's actually really common that people think of a "Fighter" and they think of some fictional character who is like 4th level. Mad Martigan from Willow, Conan from Conan, Gimli from LotR, or whatever. That's their concept of a Fighter, and they don't want their character to do anything that character does not do.

Where this gets problematic is when it bumps right next to their next demand, that the party is hitting 5th level and they still want to be limited to a benchmark that is essentially 4th level. And while at that point you can in fact keep things kind of hobbling along with the same character with bigger numbers, after a few levels of that it becomes untenable. When the player is asking for their character to be archetypically identical to a 4th level concept and asking to be mechanically balanced with 9th level casters, you're up **** Creek.

That was the horrible revelation that was caused by the Tome Fighter. The harsh reality is that Mad Martigan is a 4th level character and the people who hold up Mad Martigan as the example are seriously not saying that they want higher level abilities that happen to be skinned as guts and luck, they are literally saying that they want to be quintessentially 4th level characters while being balanced with 9th level characters. It's an actually and actively contradictory thought pattern and there is no solution.

Contrariwise, the Tome Monk get accepted with hardly a blip. Some people quibble about it being overpowered. Some people even helpfully informed us that it was more powerful than a Core Monk. But people didn't tell us that any of it was out of theme. Because the Monk theme is one which can in fact continue growing until it's Goku. Similarly, "Wizard" is a character concept that just keeps growing forever. Your summoner summons electric rat, and then he summons a storm crow, and then he's summoning a thunder dragon. No one bats an eye at this poo poo.

But Fighter players seriously do get annoyed and even offended when their character can beat up an elephant with their bare hands. Also they get annoyed and offended when they notice that the other characters are more powerful than they are. It really is cognitive dissonance, and the solution is to force people to abandon the Fighter concept after a few levels. Mandatory PrCs is the only way to get people to accept their own character having level appropriate abilities at high level.


There's also the fact that Fighters kinda suck at doing anything but Fighting. I know, I know, it's right there in their name and all, but consider the capabilities of a competent real-world soldier: They have to be able to get through an obstacle course (Climb, Balance, Jump, Swim), see or hear their enemies coming (Spot, Listen, etc), care for their own gear (Craft), possibly ride a horse (Ride, Handle Animal), march cross-country, build a camp & a fire (Survival, Use Rope)... have fun trying to be good at all of these with 2+int skill-points per level, doofus!

[Gildedragon]

So my thoughts on fighters:
They should be able to draw attacks to themselves and shrug off effects.

To some extent I like the idea of having only 3ish base classes (fighter, expert, spellcaster) with prcs kicking in around lvl 3 for stuff like monk, paladin, ranger, bard, shapeshifter (ie druid)...

[bekeleven]

Just for sake of comparison, how difficult is it to THROW A FIREBALL by wiggling your fingers and chanting gibberish?I've never seen someone fumble it. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303089-The-Guy-at-the-Gym-Fallacy)

Juggling, though, that should probably take 4 or 5 feats.

[Doctor Awkward]

1. If you want to model how learning a specified type of combat is difficult, you take a feat. The end. Needing a feat chain is for two-weapon fighting is asinine because you are still taking penalties. And for further insult to injury, if you want to get iterative attacks, you need to take another feat every 5 BAB.
2. That...is not really related to anything I'm talking about. Yes, I am aware that Fighter Bonus feats don't encompass any feat that a character might ever need. However they do include a great deal of the combat feats (and combat is a huge part of the game), not to mention that they help establish a baseline for what could be appropriate for a mundane feat.
3. You aren't really doing anything other than proving my point. Why does Improved Trip need Combat Expertise as a requirement? Combat Expertise is entirely about fighting in a defensive manner, how is that any way related to being able to effectively trip someone? Why is Point-Blank Shot, a feat for shooting at close-range targets, the gateway feat needed for increasing the accuracy of a target far away (Far Shot) or being able to quickly fire successive shots (Rapid Fire)?

Well seeing as you very clearly stated in your first post that feat chains were created because fighters get tons of feats, so I'm sure you can understand my confusion there...

As a further point of order, you are asking why knowing how to most effectively defend yourself against an enemies attacks translates into a better ability to leverage that person's strength or momentum against them? Or how practicing at hitting something at close range with pinpoint accuracy is a gateway to hitting with that same accuracy at a further distance, or hitting with similar accuracy multiple times in rapid succession?

Erm... because logic?


One of the biggest motivators for starting this thread wasn't to make you all think I just had an eye-opening moment and suddenly realized Fighters are bad after a decade and a half of playing 3rd ed. Nor was it to recruit anyone on the sidelines still unconvinced. Mostly it was catharsis. Just the need to gripe and blow off some steam after getting in arguments with people who think anything stronger than a Fighter is OP munchkin nonsense and if you like ToB or anything other subsystem than you are a filthy powergamer. Sometimes I just wanna set up a nice strawman and take him out in a joust. Then I remember how bad the mounted combat rules are and instead settle for complaining on the forum.

Okay.

You probably should have opened with this then.

Or something similar to this with the question, "Why am I having such a hard time convincing people how bad the fighter is?" I can give you plenty of reasonable counterarguments to help persuade your "people" of your point of view.

This just makes me think your intent was to create a space where folks can flood you with positive feedback and confirm your existing bias. Which is fine, just so long as we are all on the same page.


Just for sake of comparison, how difficult is it to THROW A FIREBALL by wiggling your fingers and chanting gibberish?

I think FrankTrollman made a good point about the Fighter's 'concept' in another post:

Why do you assume that taking a feat is any more or less complicated than scribing and preparing a spell?

Both feats and character levels are abstract concepts that do not exist in the world of the game, representative of your character's accumulated experience in their adventures in which they practice their particular craft to sharpen the skill they have to a razor's edge in order to stay alive.


There's also the fact that Fighters kinda suck at doing anything but Fighting. I know, I know, it's right there in their name and all, but consider the capabilities of a competent real-world soldier: They have to be able to get through an obstacle course (Climb, Balance, Jump, Swim), see or hear their enemies coming (Spot, Listen, etc), care for their own gear (Craft), possibly ride a horse (Ride, Handle Animal), march cross-country, build a camp & a fire (Survival, Use Rope)... have fun trying to be good at all of these with 2+int skill-points per level, doofus!

You are confusing a modern-day armed service member who is specifically trained for a multitude of situations outside of combat depending on their branch, with a Middle Ages pikeman, landed knight, or man-at-arms, who has received extensive training to do precisely one thing exceptionally well. That latter is what the Player's Handbook Fighter represents. Historically, anything that a soldier did outside of the art of war was because it was how they passed the time. A bowman didn't need to know how to fletch his own arrows or carve the limbs for his bow or weave his own drawstring. You had bowyers who lived in your kingdom who did that. Nor did a knight need to know how to forge or maintain his own weapons. That was a smith's job. Soldier's aren't made to run obstacle courses because it will teach them to be better at fighting. They do so because hundreds of years of experience has taught us that physical fitness is paramount to a soldier's survival.

The reason Fighters suck at most anything outside of fighting is because, historically, Fighters frequently sucked at doing anything outside of fighting.

The Fighter does not represent the worldly, well-traveled, jack-of-all-trades swordsmen or warriors from fantasy novels, such as the one's mentioned in your quote from Frank. It was never meant to. Conan, Aragorn, Guts, Achilles, Geralt; none of these people are single-classes fighters. 3rd Edition D&D wasn't designed that way. It was a modular character design system where you grab abilities to meet your concept, not conform your concept to fit the abilities given to you.

[Waker]

There's also the fact that Fighters kinda suck at doing anything but Fighting. I know, I know, it's right there in their name and all, but consider the capabilities of a competent real-world soldier: They have to be able to get through an obstacle course (Climb, Balance, Jump, Swim), see or hear their enemies coming (Spot, Listen, etc), care for their own gear (Craft), possibly ride a horse (Ride, Handle Animal), march cross-country, build a camp & a fire (Survival, Use Rope)... have fun trying to be good at all of these with 2+int skill-points per level, doofus!
Thanks Arbane, you provided me the post I needed to segue into something I forgot to mention in my earlier posts. That idea is "What The Hell Is the Fighter?"
I've said it many times in many threads, but I'm a pretty easy going guy when it comes to fluff. There is one thing that is very important to me though and that is that fluff must be supported or at least not contradicted by mechanics. Regardless of how I try to spin it, if my character has crappy BAB and no proficiencies, he ain't gonna be some amazing swordsman. Rangers can fulfill a number of concepts be they bounty hunters, army scouts or rangers (as in, one who protects a forest, countryside etc.) Rogues can be thieves, thief-catchers, spies, assassins... I could go on with the other classes, but you probably get my idea. The class features, skills and other facets of the class support the concept.
Now let's look at a Fighter. They've got a d10HD, full BAB, good Fort and are proficient with all simple/martial weapons, plus light/med/heavy armor and shields. Ok pretty good, what else? A whole lotta feats. Not much to derive a lot of flavor from, but combined with what else we've seen we can probably come to one of two conclusions. The Fighter is either someone who is very experienced or has received special education. Now onto skills and...huh, that's odd. The class has a total of seven skills. One of which Craft, which is available to every single other class. So let's try to guess what a Fighter actually, shall we?
Arbane already pointed out that Fighters aren't much for soldiering, though I would also point out that a Fighter masquerading as a soldier couldn't even identify the standard for the unit he fights for. How about a Guardsman of some kind? Except they lack Spot/Listen, Knowledge (Local) (knowing laws/customs, identifying local gangs...)or Sense Motive to know when they are being lied to, Search to frisk someone. Mercenary/Bounty Hunter? Naw, they've got zero tracking abilities, no means of finding the information they need (Diplomacy/Gather Information) nor Listen/Spot. Marine? They've got the Climb/Jump/Swim for life on a ship, but Fighter's don't even have Profession (Sailor) available to them! Gladiator? This is one of the few concepts that kinda fits, though having Perform would certainly have helped.
It's weird, Fighters seem to come out prepackaged for fighting and none of the supporting attributes that one would associate with a profession or archetype. Wait, I've got it! Fighters are meant to be Cohorts! Think about it. They've got Craft so they can fix the adventuring parties stuff. They have Handle Animal and Ride for taking care of the animals while the party is in the dungeon. All the physical movement skills so they can trudge after the group, while carrying all of their stuff. And then when combat starts, the boss sics the Fighter after the bad guys like an attack dog.

[Razgriez]

I think with 3.0/3.5 Fighters, I have a few points:

1. It suffers the same general kind of issue as Monks did. What it does well, others can replicate and provide more to the party or with easier access

The fighter is described as *The* combat expert. The master man/woman-at-arms. The problem is, 3.x goes about encouraging and handling this somewhat poorly. As a fighter, you're encourage to essentially marry yourself to one particular weapon or one particular fighting style. But who are you really better than in any particular other physical combat focused class? And I'm not even talking Tome Of Battle. Let's just look at the Core classes:

- Barbarian: Has rage, more HP, more skill points, and can do the "Power attack" build better than you.
- Ranger: Can do the Two-weapon fighting or Bow fighting, equally or possibly even better than you. Has more skills/utility than you.
- Rogues are more than capable of pulling the Finesse fighting style, and *definitely* are better than you at stealthy ambushes and a whole lot of other utility.
- Paladins can do much of what you already do as a fighter, except they're backed up by a decent list of support spells, have fear immunity, excellent resistances, and get an intelligent, leveling mount that makes them as good and/or better Calvary than you.
- The Monk is a better unarmed fighter than you, and at least in the early levels, gets some pretty decent class abilities.
- And lets not even get into what CoDZilla can do.

I struggle to argue in good faith about having better armor or durability. The Barbarian has health, the Paladin has Heavy armor and most shields, and while a Cleric suffers a bit in the HP department, they still have armor and shields as well.

2.The Fighter is however a lot more flexible in terms of Prestige classes and multi-classing.

When it comes to Combat related prestige classes or to multiclass, it's rarely bad to do so. The only things you're really giving up from a Fighter in these cases, is a few bonus feats (if that even), and possibly ease of access to some of the Weapon Specialization tree's benefits (I.E. Ranged/Melee Weapon Mastery). And often times, what you get in exchange is far better, and less limiting.

[Morty]

When you create a heroic fantasy system based on distinct classes with their own flavour and unique abilities, creating one whose defining trait is that it doesn't do anything special isn't going to end with anything good. That's in addition to all the other problems, which get rehashed approximately every month. So, yeah. "Fighters are bad" isn't exactly a revolutionary statement.

[RoboEmperor]

Fighters are awesome.

Wizard wants to create the ultimate fighting machine.
Wizard gets a fighter.
Wizard buffs the fighter to high heck.
Wizard polymorphs the fighter into a mother f***er.
Wizard watches the fighter kill everything in this game.

When i played a fighter, sure he doesn't do much other than attack a target 6 times in a turn, but the sole act of being able to land 6 hits in a turn with ungodly damage is enough to make me happy.

It's like why people play MMORPGS. Character growth/optimization is more fun than actual gameplay.

At least this was the case for me.

[ryu]

Fighters are awesome.

Wizard wants to create the ultimate fighting machine.
Wizard gets a fighter.
Wizard buffs the fighter to high heck.
Wizard polymorphs the fighter into a mother f***er.
Wizard watches the fighter kill everything in this game.

When i played a fighter, sure he doesn't do much other than attack a target 6 times in a turn, but the sole act of being able to land 6 hits in a turn with ungodly damage is enough to make me happy.

It's like why people play MMORPGS. Character growth/optimization is more fun than actual gameplay.

At least this was the case for me.

No the wizard doesn't seek out a fighter to buff. If they seek out a particular class for the job rather than a created minion rogue is still superior for benefiting from higher numbers of attacks more readily.

Why didn't I say another caster? Every caster worth their salt has better things to be doing than wading into combat save cleric or druid if they're built to do that, and they likely don't need someone else giving them floaties for the task.

[martixy]

There never fails to be a Fighter-bashing thread on the first page of this subforum. :amused:

There has to be bla-bla fodder within easy reach. Otherwise the forums would just wither up and die, ya know.

[Arbane]

Why do you assume that taking a feat is any more or less complicated than scribing and preparing a spell?

Because by 10th level, a Wizard can cast 20 spells per day, plus 5 more if they're specialists, plus bonus spells for Int. They can reassign those spells every day, more often with the right feats. Gaining a new spell takes them about a day of writing in their spellbook and some money spent.

A Fighter will have 10 Feats, which can't be reassigned without a great deal of effort, and I sincerely doubt any of them will be as powerful as a single 5th level spell. Gaining a new one will take between one and two levels.


You are confusing a modern-day armed service member who is specifically trained for a multitude of situations outside of combat depending on their branch, with a Middle Ages pikeman, landed knight, or man-at-arms, who has received extensive training to do precisely one thing exceptionally well. That latter is what the Player's Handbook Fighter represents. Historically, anything that a soldier did outside of the art of war was because it was how they passed the time. A bowman didn't need to know how to fletch his own arrows or carve the limbs for his bow or weave his own drawstring. You had bowyers who lived in your kingdom who did that. Nor did a knight need to know how to forge or maintain his own weapons. That was a smith's job. Soldier's aren't made to run obstacle courses because it will teach them to be better at fighting. They do so because hundreds of years of experience has taught us that physical fitness is paramount to a soldier's survival.

The reason Fighters suck at most anything outside of fighting is because, historically, Fighters frequently sucked at doing anything outside of fighting.


Player characters, by definition aren't 'most people'. NPC soldiers are supposed to be Warriors, not Fighters.

And IIRC, Medieval knights got their start as squires doing the scutwork for other knights, and Roman legionaries in the field would build brand-new forts to camp in every night. Just sayin'.

A lot of this is due to 3rd edition finally giving the game a coherent skill system - back in AD&D (1st ed, at least) days, there was a general assumption that all PCs had a general level of competence of whatever they could convince the DM they could reasonably do. So a Fighter could write poetry, ride a horse, tie knots, find herbs, set camp, etc, possibly contingent on the player's having been a Boy Scout or a half-decent poet.

Edit: You know what you call an adventurer who can't deal with "a multitude of situations outside of combat"? DEAD.



The Fighter does not represent the worldly, well-traveled, jack-of-all-trades swordsmen or warriors from fantasy novels, such as the one's mentioned in your quote from Frank. It was never meant to. Conan, Aragorn, Guts, Achilles, Geralt; none of these people are single-classes fighters. 3rd Edition D&D wasn't designed that way. It was a modular character design system where you grab abilities to meet your concept, not conform your concept to fit the abilities given to you.

So fighters are SUPPOSED to be morons. Good to know. They really should've mentioned that in the class description instead of blathering on about how they're "The questing knight, the conquering overlord, the king's champion..." in the PHB.

What classes would you have those guys be? (Guts being on your list amuses me - I mentioned him in another thread and people were coming up with ridiculous gestalt builds for a guy who literally isn't much good at anything but hitting really hard and surviving fights.... because D&D Fighters aren't even good enough at THAT.)

[Vaz]

The Fighter isn't a failure, though.

Fighter 20, +5 Enchantment Bonus Weapon, 18 Str Base, +5 from Levelling, +6 Item, +5 Book

It has a BAB of 20, with let's say Weapon Focus. That's +33 to hit. A Balor has an AC of 35, and 290HP.

Fighter autohits hits on a 2+/7+/12+/17+. Let's say that 3 hit; this deals an average 72pts of damage.

He fights, and hits reasonably hard in combat in line with challenge appropriate challenges.

What are you saying again? Is this where someone says "but it can't pun pun at level 1, so it's a failure of a class"? Get in the bin.

[Guizonde]

The Fighter isn't a failure, though.

Fighter 20, +5 Enchantment Bonus Weapon, 18 Str Base, +5 from Levelling, +6 Item, +5 Book

It has a BAB of 20, with let's say Weapon Focus. That's +33 to hit. A Balor has an AC of 35, and 290HP.

Fighter autohits hits on a 2+/7+/12+/17+, or if he charges, 2+/5+/10+/15+. Let's say that 3 hit; this deals an average 72pts of damage.

He fights, and hits reasonably hard in combat in line with challenge appropriate challenges.

What are you saying again? Is this where someone says "but it can't pun pun at level 1, so it's a failure of a class"? Get in the bin.

i'm not too math inclined, but that sounds like a good beatstick to me. naturally, people will call foul saying a barbarian does it better, or any class from the book of 9 weebs. i say, you want to play a fighter, do it. you want to play a barbarian, do it. i really think there's an overoptimization problem going around the more i stick around, but then again, i mostly play dark heresy and whfrp2e, so it's kind of a moot point. i tried looking for tips and tricks on building a good versatile inquisitor in a future pf campaign, and i could not find a build that included at least 3 dips and finished below level 15...

[Arbane]

The Fighter isn't a failure, though.

Fighter 20, +5 Enchantment Bonus Weapon, 18 Str Base, +5 from Levelling, +6 Item, +5 Book



I don't think anyone's saying Fighters are failures at making a single solid target get dead if they start their turn 5' away from it - it's EVERYTHING ELSE they're bad at.

[Vaz]

I don't think anyone's saying Fighters are failures at making a single solid target get dead if they start their turn 5' away from it - it's EVERYTHING ELSE they're bad at.

It's as if you expect the Fighter to be good at casting magic.

Edit; I'm being Snarky, but seriously. Sure, it might not have the high ceiling that allows it to be a master manipulator or a supreme sneak, but a Fighter is more than capable of doing the Fighting thing, which is kind of what you go their class for.

[Der_DWSage]

You're also comparing a level 20 character to a CR 20 gish creature that's not fighting back or even using his spells, made in core. Of course he's going to do decently there.

The difficulty comes in when the Balor does anything besides 'close into melee and beat the Fighter into dust.' Because the Balor also hits on a 2+, and deals an average of 70 damage with his 4/6 hits, on top of a pretty decent chance to Entangle. And then he explodes when he dies. Assuming the Fighter won initiative, this Balor is dealing 310 damage to the Fighter if he uses only half his abilities.

Throw in a Dominate Person or Quickened Telekinesis, Summons, Insanity...the Fighter's got a +12 to his will save, at best. you get my point. Or even just have the demon fly 15 feet above the Fighter and whip him to death.

Meanwhile, in the Wizard's corner? Banish. Wish him into the sun. Gate in a few Solars to do the fighting for you.

[Vaz]

I never assumed that the Fighter was on his own, nor that the Balor wasn't doing his own thing. I was simply saying that the Fighter is doing the Fighter thing of being able to deal damage. Stop putting words there that weren't there before.

[Lorddenorstrus]

I never assumed that the Fighter was on his own, nor that the Balor wasn't doing his own thing. I was simply saying that the Fighter is doing the Fighter thing of being able to deal damage. Stop putting words there that weren't there before.

Of which the damage is completely subpar and he's basically a meat shield. The only time I see a fighter output acceptable damage is when it's over optimized into an Uber charger. You don't take a regular fighter into a party expecting him to be primary damage out put. You expect them to get hit and hope you aren't hit. Because that's all they can do, and other classes do that role better. nothing the fighter can offer isn't done better by another class.

[ryu]

I never assumed that the Fighter was on his own, nor that the Balor wasn't doing his own thing. I was simply saying that the Fighter is doing the Fighter thing of being able to deal damage. Stop putting words there that weren't there before.

Or inable as was just shown.

[Doctor Awkward]

Because by 10th level, a Wizard can cast 20 spells per day, plus 5 more if they're specialists, plus bonus spells for Int. They can reassign those spells every day, more often with the right feats. Gaining a new spell takes them about a day of writing in their spellbook and some money spent.

A Fighter will have 10 Feats, which can't be reassigned without a great deal of effort, and I sincerely doubt any of them will be as powerful as a single 5th level spell. Gaining a new one will take between one and two levels.

Effect upon physical reality is a really bad metric to decide which of two given activities is harder to learn. Vancian casting is rote memorization and practicing hand gestures, all of which happens "off camera" in the course of a D&D game. Weapon and muscle training to achieve the level of physicality required to execute complex combat maneuvers also requires time and effort, nearly all of which also happens off camera.

All of these things are abstract processes that the rules do not require you to spend any length of time describing in detail.



Player characters, by definition aren't 'most people'. NPC soldiers are supposed to be Warriors, not Fighters.

And IIRC, Medieval knights got their start as squires doing the scutwork for other knights, and Roman legionaries in the field would build brand-new forts to camp in every night. Just sayin'.

A lot of this is due to 3rd edition finally giving the game a coherent skill system - back in AD&D (1st ed, at least) days, there was a general assumption that all PCs had a general level of competence of whatever they could convince the DM they could reasonably do. So a Fighter could write poetry, ride a horse, tie knots, find herbs, set camp, etc, possibly contingent on the player's having been a Boy Scout or a half-decent poet.


Actually, back in the early days of AD&D we had these things called non-weapon proficiencies which governed nearly every possible thing you could think of outside of combat, including stuff like Poetry, but also Alchemy, Pottery, Planar Sense, Falconry, Jousting, Administration, and one of my personal favorites; Ventriloquism. Each class had a certain number of NWP's available to them, and none of them were forbidden based on class. It just cost you extra proficiency slots to select an NWP from outside your class group.

And being a squire was only one way to become a knight. Most knights were members of the nobility, because they could afford to purchase the weapons and armor necessary, who would distinguish themselves in some way on the field of battle.

Additionally, most of the earliest armies were made up of peasants that were forced to fight on behalf of their lord on account of the feudal system and not having rights of their own and whatnot. It wasn't until the 13th or 14th century when formal institutions started to spring up to recruit people with actual skill at arms to train other people on how to be more effective combatants. At that point peasants were relegated to archery duties, backing up the infantry who actually knew what they were doing. This later evolved into the expansion of mercenary forces who held no permanent allegiance to any one lord. Here you find groups like the Swiss pikeman, the German Landsknecht, and the Italian Condottiere. It wasn't until much, much later in the era with all of the expanded campaigns, castle-building, and extended sieges that you saw the introduction of household troops; the elite of the soldiers who were pressed into service as bodyguards for important kings and lords, and taught a variety of skills to be more useful away from the field of battle. Siege warfare also required huge numbers of troops to be in the field for an extended period of time, also necessitating the presence of several noncombat specialists that traveled with the main force.


Edit: You know what you call an adventurer who can't deal with "a multitude of situations outside of combat"? DEAD.
Assuming he decides not to go work for a kingdom that provides him with a roof over his head and three squares a day. Or doesn't find himself some friends that do know things outside of combat, because god forbid we encourage our players to work together.

The reason why the player characters are such a rare breed is because almost no sane person in the campaign settings chooses to be an adventurer for a living. Adventuring is ****ing dangerous.


So fighters are SUPPOSED to be morons. Good to know. They really should've mentioned that in the class description instead of blathering on about how they're "The questing knight, the conquering overlord, the king's champion..." in the PHB.

What classes would you have those guys be? (Guts being on your list amuses me - I mentioned him in another thread and people were coming up with ridiculous gestalt builds for a guy who literally isn't much good at anything but hitting really hard and surviving fights.... because D&D Fighters aren't even good enough at THAT.)

You should probably also note the part in the class description under Other Classes where it says "Fighters might not understand the arcane ways of wizards or share the faith of clerics, but they recognize the value of teamwork."

-Conan is quite obviously a multiclass fighter/rogue/barbarian, and has extremely favorable ability scores across the board on account of being described as physically strong and imposing, tireless, quick on his feet, attractive, keenly aware of his surroundings, and very intelligent what with his ability to speak multiple languages and strategically analyze a situation.

-Aragorn is something of a special case in that he is multiclass fighter/ranger, but he is also a Dunedain; descended from the peoples of Numenor. Recall in the movies when he told Eowyn that he was 87 years old, and how he lived to be 210. He is essentially a human with a template.

-Guts is a guy who does what again? Fights huge swaths of enemies all on his own, subsisting almost entire on rage and vengeance? And he can push himself to beyond human limits, refusing to die no matter how many fatal wounds he receives? Sounds like a fighter/barbarian/frenzied berserker to me

-Achilles is another fighter/barbarian mix, on account of several lines of the Illiad in which Zeus had to send several gods to restrain him after Patroclus was killed so that he wouldn't raze the city of Troy to the ground before the appointed time, which suggests that his unhindered rage is capable to defying the Fates. Then there was also the short blurb about how he wounded Telephus over a misunderstanding, and then somehow mysteriously healed him afterwards so that he would become the Aegeans guide to Troy.

-Geralt is also clearly a human gish with a template, on account of the supernatural powers that supplement his martial abilities.

[Calthropstu]

Of which the damage is completely subpar and he's basically a meat shield. The only time I see a fighter output acceptable damage is when it's over optimized into an Uber charger. You don't take a regular fighter into a party expecting him to be primary damage out put. You expect them to get hit and hope you aren't hit. Because that's all they can do, and other classes do that role better. nothing the fighter can offer isn't done better by another class.

Who can "do it better?" Barbarians who are easy to kill because their ac is invariably lower? The Monk who everyone rags on? The samurai who generally sucks?

Fighters get a fair amount of feat versatility allowing for a wide range of builds. The two handed power attacker, the dual wielder who can output more attacks than almost anyone, the defender, the manuever master... the fighter can be made into just about anything. Few classes have the specialization abilities the fighter has. In fact, I think for some specialties the fighter class may be the only option.

Say the fighter sucks after your gm throws a master sunder fighter at you. Goodbye spell component pouch. Goodbye headband. Goodbye robe. Goodbye belt. All in one round.

[ryu]

Teamwork generally requires you contribute in some meaningful way not easily replicated by a commoner with a rock.

[Seerow]

The Fighter isn't a failure, though.

Fighter 20, +5 Enchantment Bonus Weapon, 18 Str Base, +5 from Levelling, +6 Item, +5 Book

It has a BAB of 20, with let's say Weapon Focus. That's +33 to hit. A Balor has an AC of 35, and 290HP.

Fighter autohits hits on a 2+/7+/12+/17+. Let's say that 3 hit; this deals an average 72pts of damage.

He fights, and hits reasonably hard in combat in line with challenge appropriate challenges.

What are you saying again? Is this where someone says "but it can't pun pun at level 1, so it's a failure of a class"? Get in the bin.

You listed literally nothing unique to the fighter class. You could take NPC warrior, put it in the Fighter's place, and get the exact same performance. What exactly are you trying to prove? That a full BAB and high strength is enough to be relevant to the game?


Also, 70 damage per round as a level 20 character on a full attack (which is very far from guaranteed as a Fighter against an intelligent and highly mobile enemy like a Balor), isn't exactly anything to brag about regardless.

[Lorddenorstrus]

Who can "do it better?" Barbarians who are easy to kill because their ac is invariably lower? The Monk who everyone rags on? The samurai who generally sucks?

Fighters get a fair amount of feat versatility allowing for a wide range of builds. The two handed power attacker, the dual wielder who can output more attacks than almost anyone, the defender, the manuever master... the fighter can be made into just about anything. Few classes have the specialization abilities the fighter has. In fact, I think for some specialties the fighter class may be the only option.

Say the fighter sucks after your gm throws a master sunder fighter at you. Goodbye spell component pouch. Goodbye headband. Goodbye robe. Goodbye belt. All in one round.

I have had fighters thrown at my Wizards, however short of level one I've never actually been hit by one. Because lvl 2 + Wizards had Jaunt. Then at higher levels you one shot them before they move.

This is because everyone in my regular group is good enough at optimizing that we don't actually use fighters. Currently I'm DMing now though, and the group is Wizard, Druid, Cleric, Warblade. I feel bad for our party Warblade and I'm definitely gonna have to give him some compensation buffs in the form of some item or crap once he starts to feel out scaled.

[Vaz]

You listed literally nothing unique to the fighter class. You could take NPC warrior, put it in the Fighter's place, and get the exact same performance. What exactly are you trying to prove? That a full BAB and high strength is enough to be relevant to the game?


Also, 70 damage per round as a level 20 character on a full attack (which is very far from guaranteed as a Fighter against an intelligent and highly mobile enemy like a Balor), isn't exactly anything to brag about regardless.

Like, I'm lost here at what you're trying to say. Dickswinging away because you can optimise better. If I wanted to throw Pun-Pun at the Balor, I would do, but I don't. I'm not saying that it's not the weakest tier of classes. I know that a Duskblade, Paladin, Ranger, Knight, or even (shock horror) CW Samurai can do exactly the same. And that's the point I'm making. A Fighter can do what it needs to do. A Fighter, as a member of a 4 person party can

D&D is a group game. I've literally given you the lowest optimize a fighter can be, using assumptions from the typical ruleset in regards to magic items, and it dealt 1/4 of the damage to an ECL20 encounter, and an assumption that another member of the party can help you get that Fighter in place that it needs to; such as Greater Teleport. You know, that thing where a party works together? You know, D&D?

A lot of the problems with discussing this is that a lot of members of websites are up their own arses about how well they can optimize, that they actually forget what the actual base game is like.

Sure, I CAN run around and trivialise everything with an Ardent running with the Mad Minute and Save Point Skill Trick abusing the presence of Spell to Power Erudites and Substitute Power ACF to get Dark Chaos Shuffle for every single spell in the game, or run a character with a NI Charisma who can make a rushed diplomacy and instantly make the target not only friendly, but then talk again over the next few turns, and have it drop its immunity to mind control before making it a fanatic follower. I can make Pun Pun.

Who gives a ****? Literally, no-one, outside of the golf clap, congrats you've optimized. You've made a powerful character. Big well done. Bravo. Like, at least 3 ****s given.

The Fighter is a failure apparently, because the OP doesn't like it's lack of class features, when the class features means it can use the Feats presented, but not how it actually can operate as part of a party, and what it can actually do; despite, you know, doing a 1/4 damage to a target of its level. I'd consider that rather well balanced for something that is just a BSF, and uses other individuals within the party to do things it can't.

The Fighter IS undeniably underpowered, and can be surpassed. Doesn't mean it's a failure. The Fighter isn't a failure because the OP cannot select feats, because as we've already shown, the feats are independent of the Fighters ability to operate. A Fighter doesn't need XYZ Feat. The Fighter isn't a failure by any standard, unless you're saying that someone who is playing Conference Football is a failure, because there are Premier League players.

[Calthropstu]

I have had fighters thrown at my Wizards, however short of level one I've never actually been hit by one. Because lvl 2 + Wizards had Jaunt. Then at higher levels you one shot them before they move.

This is because everyone in my regular group is good enough at optimizing that we don't actually use fighters. Currently I'm DMing now though, and the group is Wizard, Druid, Cleric, Warblade. I feel bad for our party Warblade and I'm definitely gonna have to give him some compensation buffs in the form of some item or crap once he starts to feel out scaled.

Prolly because you play with permissive gms who allow a fairly "magic mart" mentality. The group I am gming for has learned otherwise. The star of my pf campaign is our magus, who alone has dealt nearly 65% of all lethal damage in the last 6 encounters... nearly all of it with sword damage. A fighter would have outperformed him greatly in that regard.
The wizard is severely limited due to serious spell shortage, resorting to multiple castings of magic missle.

This is actually written into the module I am running too... money and equipment are extremely difficult to come by for this section, and the spell casters feel it.
It is also a built in weakness to the wizard class that few gm's exploit in my experience... and one I intend to drive home hard in the future.
What wizard is going to let a rival research his spellbook for a few pieces of metal? Especially high level or highly abusable spells like planar binding or gate?
Yeah right... some random nobody comes into my tower asking for that? "Yeah I'll teach you the gate spell... ok so first you start out like this..."
"Hey, that's the same as the opening to plane shi... ****."

[Gildedragon]

What wizard is going to let a rival research his spellbook for a few pieces of metal? Especially high level or highly abusable spells like planar binding or gate?
Yeah right... some random nobody comes into my tower asking for that? "Yeah I'll teach you the gate spell... ok so first you start out like this..."
"Hey, that's the same as the opening to plane shi... ****."

so spells are traded tit for tat.
Descriptions of the spells are read and there's an exchange arrangement. Each scribe a copy of their own spell. They demo it. They trade scrips.

Collaboration is the fastest way to grow one's spell collection and power.

[Jack_McSnatch]

Honestly, I really like the fighter. Almost as much as I like rangers and duskblades. Not as a 1-20, god no, but then I rarely take any class all the way to 20. Even my wizards multiclass and prestige class, and are sometimes fighters. But that's what makes D&D fun. You can make YOUR character. Any way you like. You want to build a wizard who eschews magic in all but the most dire of circumstances, prefering instead to run headlong into battle howling at the top of his lungs? Go for it, there's even a prestige class for it. There is an orcish bard in a published monster manual. I wouldn't enjoy a game where everyone was a God, Batman, or CoDzilla. That'd get very old very quick. And I mean, truth be told, sometimes all you need is a guy in armor with a big sword.

[Cosi]

The problem with the Fighter is very simple: "Fighter" is a bad concept. In combat, it's too broad. Combat is fighting, so being a "Fighter" tells me nothing about what you bring to the table. Do you want long fights or short ones? Do you fight at range or up close? Do you want to face one enemy or many? I don't know, because the concept is so broad as to be meaningless. Outside combat it's even worse, because a "Fighter" has nothing to bring to the table there.

The first thing you have to do to fix the Fighter is stop calling it a "Fighter". You can make Rangers, Paladins, Berserkers, Champions, Soldiers, or any number of other concepts viable. But you can't do it with Fighter because it is a bad concept.


This is actually written into the module I am running too... money and equipment are extremely difficult to come by for this section, and the spell casters feel it.
It is also a built in weakness to the wizard class that few gm's exploit in my experience... and one I intend to drive home hard in the future.

Fighters are vastly more gear dependent than Wizards. Wizards also have the ability to just make gear ex nihlo with magic (e.g. wish). Also, a Wizard with just his on-level up spells still spanks the pants off a Fighter.

Trying to make Wizards hurt by lowering the frequency of magic items doesn't work. Or rather, it works as well as Wizards let it work.


I never assumed that the Fighter was on his own, nor that the Balor wasn't doing his own thing. I was simply saying that the Fighter is doing the Fighter thing of being able to deal damage. Stop putting words there that weren't there before.

Yes you did. The Balor can summon another Balor, and has an at-will AoE no-save daze. What is the Fighter doing to get actions at all?


I wouldn't enjoy a game where everyone was a God, Batman, or CoDzilla. That'd get very old very quick. And I mean, truth be told, sometimes all you need is a guy in armor with a big sword.

Okay. Don't play that game. But if I want to play that game, shouldn't I be able to play Sword Guy in it? No one is saying that there should never be mundane sword wielders in the game. All people are saying is that eventually the mundane sword wielders of the world need to learn some magic.

[Vaz]

The Fighter has 3+ other party members who are there to help him do his job, like in every D&D game. If the Balor is using his Standard to Daze, and stop the fighter, then the fighter is doing his job by stopping the rest of the party being attacked by at least one Balor.


Okay. Don't play that game. But if I want to play that game, shouldn't I be able to play Sword Guy in it? No one is saying that there should never be mundane sword wielders in the game. All people are saying is that eventually the mundane sword wielders of the world need to learn some magic.

So don't play a Fighter Class then? The Failure of the Fighter Class is that it lacks having a ceiling that allows it to compete at the level of said CoDzilla's, and by that understanding, cannot compete in a game which requires the use of multiple CoDzilla/God Wizard/Ardent Overdeity etc. Doesn't mean that the fighter is a failure.

[Lorddenorstrus]

Prolly because you play with permissive gms who allow a fairly "magic mart" mentality. The group I am gming for has learned otherwise. The star of my pf campaign is our magus, who alone has dealt nearly 65% of all lethal damage in the last 6 encounters... nearly all of it with sword damage. A fighter would have outperformed him greatly in that regard.
The wizard is severely limited due to serious spell shortage, resorting to multiple castings of magic missle.

This is actually written into the module I am running too... money and equipment are extremely difficult to come by for this section, and the spell casters feel it.
It is also a built in weakness to the wizard class that few gm's exploit in my experience... and one I intend to drive home hard in the future.
What wizard is going to let a rival research his spellbook for a few pieces of metal? Especially high level or highly abusable spells like planar binding or gate?
Yeah right... some random nobody comes into my tower asking for that? "Yeah I'll teach you the gate spell... ok so first you start out like this..."
"Hey, that's the same as the opening to plane shi... ****."

No I play with competent DMs who don't intentionally try to **** over their players. Magic mart doesn't exist in the sense that every item ever made is there. What items are in shops depends on the shop location and local needs. And, most of the items generally cater to the martials to since they need the most help. Sadly a wizard with no items except his spellbook is still better than a fighter. Basic conjuration spells summon monsters that are better than a fighter. That's downright sad. Also Magus is a Gish dude, you're basically saying I'm right and gave the martial spellcasting. That's why the Tome of Battle had to be made, a martial that DOESN'T use spells but isn't garbage. Shocking concept for some close minded people apparently.

[ryu]

The Fighter has 3+ other party members who are there to help him do his job, like in every D&D game. If the Balor is using his Standard to Daze, and stop the fighter, then the fighter is doing his job by stopping the rest of the party being attacked by at least one Balor.



So don't play a Fighter Class then? The Failure of the Fighter Class is that it lacks having a ceiling that allows it to compete at the level of said CoDzilla's, and by that understanding, cannot compete in a game which requires the use of multiple CoDzilla/God Wizard/Ardent Overdeity etc. Doesn't mean that the fighter is a failure.

Oh indeed that doesn't on its own. Having a hard time matching versatility with a warlock isn't a good sign though.

[Vaz]

No I play with competent DMs who don't intentionally try to **** over their players.

Okay mate, stop making ridiculous insinuations or snide comments.

I'm currently DMing a game in Rokugan. The Wizard and Wu Jen in the party are gaijin and seriously hamper the party. They cannot be observed preparing their spells lest they arouse supsicions, and cannot be a part of the main clans. Getting chased out of the Scorpion Clan's capital at Kyuden Bayushi because they attempted to bluff their way past the guards and getting outed as both gaijin and non-shugenja essentially put a bounty on their heads for the insults to the Samurai Caste.

Am I incompetent then, because the players insist on rolling a non-typical character for the setting?

[ryu]

Okay mate, stop making ridiculous insinuations or snide comments.

I'm currently DMing a game in Rokugan. The Wizard and Wu Jen in the party are gaijin and seriously hamper the party. They cannot be observed preparing their spells lest they arouse supsicions, and cannot be a part of the main clans. Getting chased out of the Scorpion Clan's capital at Kyuden Bayushi because they attempted to bluff their way past the guards and getting outed as both gaijin and non-shugenja essentially put a bounty on their heads for the insults to the Samurai Caste.

Am I incompetent then, because the players insist on rolling a non-typical character for the setting?

No, but they're pretty suspect for not responding by simply winning. Nothing and no one in Rokugan is a threat to a competent wizard. Not even a high level wizard either. They could solo the setting at level 10.

[Yondu]

IMHO it is not the class that failed, it is the system of 3.x that failed, it give too many penalties to mundane combat in comparison of magic combat.
Fighter only demonstrate the fact, and the dominance of magic in the system is only the consequences of the choices made by developers...
Few examples :
- mundane combat attack only AC, magic combat attack every defence a opponent has.
- With one feat, magic user can sent two spells in a round, a mundane must stay in place in order to have multiples attacks in one round or sacrifice severals feats to do the same and with hefty penalties.
- The non linear progression of spells is opposed to the linear progression of feats, when a 2nd level spell (gained around 3rd to 4th level by a magic user) can get down a opponent , a mundane may have a +2 to damage of making a additional attack with a penalty but is unlikely to neutralise the opponent.
- In order to be versatile, a magic user can select a lot of differents options with spells, a mundane has to be specialized to be efficient.
- Magic users can do specials actions pretty easily in the midst of battle (concentration checks are so easy), a mundane must have a feat or feat chain in order to do special actions (Trip, bull rush...)
That's why every system based on 3.x shows a failure of the fighter because of the restrictions made on mundanes by the systems.
Pointing the class has a failure is for me not seeing what is the root of the problem : the failure of the combat system of 3.x, no more no less...

[ryu]

IMHO it is not the class that failed, it is the system of 3.x that failed, it give too many penalties to mundane combat in comparison of magic combat.
Fighter only demonstrate the fact, and the dominance of magic in the system is only the consequences of the choices made by developers...
Few examples :
- mundane combat attack only AC, magic combat attack every defence a opponent has.
- With one feat, magic user can sent two spells in a round, a mundane must stay in place in order to have multiples attacks in one round or sacrifice severals feats to do the same and with hefty penalties.
- The non linear progression of spells is opposed to the linear progression of feats, when a 2nd level spell (gained around 3rd to 4th level by a magic user) can get down a opponent , a mundane may have a +2 to damage of making a additional attack with a penalty but is unlikely to neutralise the opponent.
- In order to be versatile, a magic user can select a lot of differents options with spells, a mundane has to be specialized to be efficient.
- Magic users can do specials actions pretty easily in the midst of battle (concentration checks are so easy), a mundane must have a feat or feat chain in order to do special actions (Trip, bull rush...)
That's why every system based on 3.x shows a failure of the fighter because of the restrictions made on mundanes by the systems.
Pointing the class has a failure is for me not seeing what is the root of the problem : the failure of the combat system of 3.x, no more no less...

I mean yes mundanes in general do suck in 3.5. Most of them are still quantifiably superior to fighters though.

[Calthropstu]

The problem with the Fighter is very simple: "Fighter" is a bad concept. In combat, it's too broad. Combat is fighting, so being a "Fighter" tells me nothing about what you bring to the table. Do you want long fights or short ones? Do you fight at range or up close? Do you want to face one enemy or many? I don't know, because the concept is so broad as to be meaningless. Outside combat it's even worse, because a "Fighter" has nothing to bring to the table there.

The first thing you have to do to fix the Fighter is stop calling it a "Fighter". You can make Rangers, Paladins, Berserkers, Champions, Soldiers, or any number of other concepts viable. But you can't do it with Fighter because it is a bad concept.



Fighters are vastly more gear dependent than Wizards. Wizards also have the ability to just make gear ex nihlo with magic (e.g. wish). Also, a Wizard with just his on-level up spells still spanks the pants off a Fighter.

Trying to make Wizards hurt by lowering the frequency of magic items doesn't work. Or rather, it works as well as Wizards let it work.



Yes you did. The Balor can summon another Balor, and has an at-will AoE no-save daze. What is the Fighter doing to get actions at all?



Okay. Don't play that game. But if I want to play that game, shouldn't I be able to play Sword Guy in it? No one is saying that there should never be mundane sword wielders in the game. All people are saying is that eventually the mundane sword wielders of the world need to learn some magic.

Try using wish in one of my games. I dare you. Seriously... never EVER use wish. Any time you use wish, you are giving the gm open permission to ultimately screw you. "I wish for a ring of protection +1" "ok your cloak of resistance +5 turns into a ring of protection +1" "I wish for a cloak of resistance +5" "Your headband +6 turns into..."
"I wish for my wishes to never have been cast." "Ok. You never existed. Roll a new character with the same gear you had before wishing."
I laugh at you idiots who seem to think infinite wishes is a GOOD thing.

[Lorddenorstrus]

Try using wish in one of my games. I dare you. Seriously... never EVER use wish. Any time you use wish, you are giving the gm open permission to ultimately screw you. "I wish for a ring of protection +1" "ok your cloak of resistance +5 turns into a ring of protection +1" "I wish for a cloak of resistance +5" "Your headband +6 turns into..."
"I wish for my wishes to never have been cast." "Ok. You never existed. Roll a new character with the same gear you had before wishing."
I laugh at you idiots who seem to think infinite wishes is a GOOD thing.

That's just poor DMing. Infinite wishes, would be chain gating Solars or just wishing for a ring of infinite wishes. Using the spell as written and paying the Exp penalty to get a +5 inherent stat bonus or a generic magic item is quite normal. So long as the exp paid for and it isn't an abusable item that the DM should've banned before the game started.. there isn't an issue. The issue presented here is a super passive aggressive DM. Just ban wish if you aren't going to deal with it correctly.

[Calthropstu]

That's just poor DMing. Infinite wishes, would be chain gating Solars or just wishing for a ring of infinite wishes. Using the spell as written and paying the Exp penalty to get a +5 inherent stat bonus or a generic magic item is quite normal. So long as the exp paid for and it isn't an abusable item that the DM should've banned before the game started.. there isn't an issue. The issue presented here is a super passive aggressive DM. Just ban wish if you aren't going to deal with it correctly.

That IS dealing with it correctly. What the hell do you think happens with wish? It's not YOUR will shaping the wish, it is something else. Your character literally is asking some other entity to do something for you... and who is most likely to answer such? A patron deity maybe, a god or goddess of magic possibly... but most likely?
Well, I refer you to the movie wishmaster for the answer. Most likely it is something with something to gain from granting it, or something wanting to cause mischief. So use a few wishes, and something is ultimately going to go horribly horribly wrong.
And with the sheer number of malign entities capable of granting wishes, compared to the relatively much fewer beneficient creatures, casting wish is like playing russian roulette with 5 bullets chambered instead of 1.

[Florian]

@Yondu:

It´s not so much that 3E has failed, but there´s a marked difference between the PHB and the DMG.
The PHB lists options that are available in the game, but doesn´t tell you what the game is and how it is to be played. That somehow gives the impression that all things are available, equal and somehow balanced all along the 20 levels.
Meanwhile, the DMG paints a totally different picture, going into how the game should work, what the gm needs to adjust, how to tailor-make rewards and so on.
It´s always interesting to re-read the original 3E DMG: PrC were part of world building and gm material, spell availability should be pre-filtered by the gm, and there was one passage like: "If a trick or combinations seems overpowered, allow in once or twice, then take it away to preserve game balance".

Contrast that with talk in some forums: It´s all about pure player entitlement and seeing the PHB as the game. Sometimes I wonder if people even bother to read the DMGs.

[ryu]

@Yondu:

It´s not so much that 3E has failed, but there´s a marked difference between the PHB and the DMG.
The PHB lists options that are available in the game, but doesn´t tell you what the game is and how it is to be played. That somehow gives the impression that all things are available, equal and somehow balanced all along the 20 levels.
Meanwhile, the DMG paints a totally different picture, going into how the game should work, what the gm needs to adjust, how to tailor-make rewards and so on.
It´s always interesting to re-read the original 3E DMG: PrC were part of world building and gm material, spell availability should be pre-filtered by the gm, and there was one passage like: "If a trick or combinations seems overpowered, allow in once or twice, then take it away to preserve game balance".

Contrast that with talk in some forums: It´s all about pure player entitlement and seeing the PHB as the game. Sometimes I wonder if people even bother to read the DMGs.

Oh I've read them all cover to cover. I just think the game WotC actually created is a superior game to what they intended to create. There are still flaws, like fighter existing, but those are rather easily and efficiently ignored.

[Yondu]

@Yondu:

It´s not so much that 3E has failed, but there´s a marked difference between the PHB and the DMG.
The PHB lists options that are available in the game, but doesn´t tell you what the game is and how it is to be played. That somehow gives the impression that all things are available, equal and somehow balanced all along the 20 levels.
Meanwhile, the DMG paints a totally different picture, going into how the game should work, what the gm needs to adjust, how to tailor-make rewards and so on.
It´s always interesting to re-read the original 3E DMG: PrC were part of world building and gm material, spell availability should be pre-filtered by the gm, and there was one passage like: "If a trick or combinations seems overpowered, allow in once or twice, then take it away to preserve game balance".

Contrast that with talk in some forums: It´s all about pure player entitlement and seeing the PHB as the game. Sometimes I wonder if people even bother to read the DMGs.
Florian,
I've read the DMG, and you're right it provide nice guidelines for balancing the game, however, houserules does not solve the issues, I've tried, making full round actions for spells, concentration checks for spellcasting, increased the difficulties of Concentration DDs, but when you load the scales of balance in one side, the game became to hard to manage, I've even try to release the boundaries of the mundane combat and it is too much to adapt...

[Sayt]

Try using wish in one of my games. I dare you. Seriously... never EVER use wish. Any time you use wish, you are giving the gm open permission to ultimately screw you. "I wish for a ring of protection +1" "ok your cloak of resistance +5 turns into a ring of protection +1" "I wish for a cloak of resistance +5" "Your headband +6 turns into..."
"I wish for my wishes to never have been cast." "Ok. You never existed. Roll a new character with the same gear you had before wishing."
I laugh at you idiots who seem to think infinite wishes is a GOOD thing.

In 3.5 this is just being an abusive GM. 3.5 Wish explicitly allows the creating and upgrading of magical items.

In the context of 3.5 what you're describing is similar to ad-hoc forward-porting the rule from prior editions that Haste accelerates your ageing. It's penalizing classes for using their class features.

"Lol I'm penalising you don't exist because you cast a spell I don't like" Is just being a ****. My GM doesn't like the disjunction, time stop and celerity spells, he had a mature, adult conversation with us about why and we agreed that we wouldn't use those spells, and that they wouldn't be conventionally available in the setting.


That IS dealing with it correctly. What the hell do you think happens with wish? It's not YOUR will shaping the wish, it is something else. Your character literally is asking some other entity to do something for you... and who is most likely to answer such? A patron deity maybe, a god or goddess of magic possibly... but most likely?
Well, I refer you to the movie wishmaster for the answer. Most likely it is something with something to gain from granting it, or something wanting to cause mischief. So use a few wishes, and something is ultimately going to go horribly horribly wrong.
And with the sheer number of malign entities capable of granting wishes, compared to the relatively much fewer beneficient creatures, casting wish is like playing russian roulette with 5 bullets chambered instead of 1.

What happens when you cast wish? The caster cast the spell, states their intentions and the GM fairly adjudicates it. Fairly.

What you're describing is more like a creature binding/calling a Glabreezu or Pit Fiend and asking for it's Wish. Wizards and Sorcerers are rewriting reality through their own grasp of magic, be in academic or innate, and it's only dangerous if you exceed the bounds of what Wish states it can do. Wish isn't Miracle, and if you're casting it under your own power, and doing the 'work' yourself.

[Mordaedil]

Try using wish in one of my games. I dare you. Seriously... never EVER use wish. Any time you use wish, you are giving the gm open permission to ultimately screw you. "I wish for a ring of protection +1" "ok your cloak of resistance +5 turns into a ring of protection +1" "I wish for a cloak of resistance +5" "Your headband +6 turns into..."
"I wish for my wishes to never have been cast." "Ok. You never existed. Roll a new character with the same gear you had before wishing."
I laugh at you idiots who seem to think infinite wishes is a GOOD thing.

So you didn't read the spell, because it's not supposed to be a monkey's paw of a spell unless it exceeds the power equivalent of the scenarios printed inside the spell. Creating a magic item is a part of casting the spell and already comes with a cost of 5000xp, which isn't insignificant even at high levels. It's already screwing you and it sounds like you just make it even worse.

Who on Earth would cast Wish to create a ring of protection +1 anyway? It's capable of creating any magic item of value up to 25,000gp. Sounds like a waste of 5000xp to me. And screwing the player over even further by taking away his other stuff cements you firmly into the realm of awful DM's.

That's even before you decide to just straight up kill the PC without a saving throw, which is just straight up outside the power of a Wish spell.

[Florian]

Oh I've read them all cover to cover. I just think the game WotC actually created is a superior game to what they intended to create. There are still flaws, like fighter existing, but those are rather easily and efficiently ignored.

I think it is more correct to say that you´ve found out that the tools they created (PHB) to work with the intended game (DMG) could also be put to different uses, because by itself, the PHB is not a game.

@Yondu:

The problem is, that you seem to look at it from a purely mechanical perspective. "It exists, it must be dealt with". The DMG describes a game that is "Combat as Sports" and wants to be clear on every participant being on board with the concept. Ok, it´s horrible at explaining this, because walls of useless text. The last book that actually tried to explain it at length, was "Book of Challenges".
Now looking at the published material, like, say, the "Expedition to"-series, it´s pretty obvious that they consistently used the concept and environments that didn't support using the full range of tools they themselves provided.

Edit: It´s a bit like the difference between a tactical and a strategical game using the same rules. It will end with very different expectations, so people either see no problem with the Fighter or see it a a flawed part of the game. Me, I´ve been never in a game with battlemaps that would actually allow for using long range spells for the fullest or made flight and range the all important factor. Same as talk about Gelugons and stuff: they teleport out, encounter finished, done, off you go to the next one.

[ryu]

I think it is more correct to say that you´ve found out that the tools they created (PHB) to work with the intended game (DMG) could also be put to different uses, because by itself, the PHB is not a game.

@Yondu:

The problem is, that you seem to look at it from a purely mechanical perspective. "It exists, it must be dealt with". The DMG describes a game that is "Combat as Sports" and wants to be clear on every participant being on board with the concept. Ok, it´s horrible at explaining this, because walls of useless text. The last book that actually tried to explain it at length, was "Book of Challenges".
Now looking at the published material, like, say, the "Expedition to"-series, it´s pretty obvious that they consistently used the concept and environments that didn't support using the full range of tools they themselves provided.

It's not just the PHB. The books, plural, have a default state of RAW which is in the majority of cases clearly applicable without especially complex adjudication or rulings. The minority of cases where this isn't clear are actually vanishingly small considering the sheer amount of written content. Do keep in mind that was as opposed to RAW which isn't clear not RAW that people understand a meaning and deliberately alter with houserules. The latter is way way WAY more common than actually unclear RAW.

[Vaz]

No, but they're pretty suspect for not responding by simply winning. Nothing and no one in Rokugan is a threat to a competent wizard. Not even a high level wizard either. They could solo the setting at level 10.

Sure. I'd be intrigued to see how that would go. But at the same time, how does that make a Fighter a failure?

[Yondu]

I think it is more correct to say that you´ve found out that the tools they created (PHB) to work with the intended game (DMG) could also be put to different uses, because by itself, the PHB is not a game.

@Yondu:

The problem is, that you seem to look at it from a purely mechanical perspective. "It exists, it must be dealt with". The DMG describes a game that is "Combat as Sports" and wants to be clear on every participant being on board with the concept. Ok, it´s horrible at explaining this, because walls of useless text. The last book that actually tried to explain it at length, was "Book of Challenges".
Now looking at the published material, like, say, the "Expedition to"-series, it´s pretty obvious that they consistently used the concept and environments that didn't support using the full range of tools they themselves provided.

Edit: It´s a bit like the difference between a tactical and a strategical game using the same rules. It will end with very different expectations, so people either see no problem with the Fighter or see it a a flawed part of the game. Me, I´ve been never in a game with battlemaps that would actually allow for using long range spells for the fullest or made flight and range the all important factor. Same as talk about Gelugons and stuff: they teleport out, encounter finished, done, off you go to the next one.
Florian,
To be honest, I love fighters and love to play them, I see a lot of differents options to have fun and be efficient, all is matter of GMing, I love as a GM to have a fighter in the group.
What makes me sad, is when you are mundane, you're facing such difficulties linked to the game mechanics, that, without the collaboration of the GM, it is difficult to be an active part in the game, I've played Warblades, DMM Clerics, Daring swashbucklers, and, I really want to play a fighter, a weapon master, I know that it'll be challenge because I've the feeling that I'll be fighting against the game before the opponents...
You cannot remove the boundary of the Game Mechanics, if you do this, it is no longer the same game...
I've loved the fighter in 1st and 2nd editions, played a lot of, and really enjoyed it, even with caster disparities, house rules, but I have difficulties having the same pleasure to play them in 3.PF games ...

[ryu]

Sure. I'd be intrigued to see how that would go. But at the same time, how does that make a Fighter a failure?

That's not what makes fighters failures. That was a response to a tangent. What makes fighters failures is that most of tier 4 laughs at them just as hard as everyone else by being at least competent in a fight and doing also other things novel as it may be. Not being able to stack up to a trap monkey in utility is pretty poor.

[RoboEmperor]

No the wizard doesn't seek out a fighter to buff. If they seek out a particular class for the job rather than a created minion rogue is still superior for benefiting from higher numbers of attacks more readily.

Why didn't I say another caster? Every caster worth their salt has better things to be doing than wading into combat save cleric or druid if they're built to do that, and they likely don't need someone else giving them floaties for the task.

Doesn't need to be a fighter, any mundane will do.

Point is, best way to deal damage is by buffing a fighter, not with direct damage spells, and BFC accomplishes absolutely nothing without a fighter killing stuff.

Sure endgame you can do some epic crazy stuff, but normal people don't do that. I had a fighter complain to me that my planar bound demon/devil is stronger than his character, so I just bound a BFC demon/devil instead. Anyways, up until that point (levels 1-11) fighter was essential.

Who cares if fighters are outclassed, good enough is good enough. Same reason people play rogues, because they like being a stealthy ninja even though wizards can completely replace them with a summon monster spell.

Game is PvM or PvE, which means playing a horribly gimped character for laughs and challenge is a good thing. My buffed fighter killed a Balor so good enough.

[ryu]

Doesn't need to be a fighter, any mundane will do.

Point is, best way to deal damage is by buffing a fighter, not with direct damage spells, and BFC accomplishes absolutely nothing without a fighter killing stuff.

Sure endgame you can do some epic crazy stuff, but normal people don't do that. I had a fighter complain to me that my planar bound demon/devil is stronger than his character, so I just bound a BFC demon/devil instead. Anyways, up until that point (levels 1-11) fighter was essential.

Who cares if fighters are outclassed, good enough is good enough. Same reason people play rogues, because they like being a stealthy ninja even though wizards can completely replace them with a summon monster spell.

Game is PvM or PvE, which means playing a horribly gimped character for laughs and challenge is a good thing. My buffed fighter killed a Balor so good enough.

Perhaps you aren't getting my point. Both the fighter and the rogue are completely superfluous to the chances of victory in most fights. The wizard could just as easily fill the slot with a commoner to buff, a skeleton minion, his own familiar, reserve feats, or power word pain. They are not, and never have been, ''essential.'' As a matter of fact all else equal a party with four PCs and a fifth PC fighter is strictly worse off in most cases to the same original four with the extra loot share of a mysterious fifth member that doesn't exist.

[Florian]

@ryu:

(I hate the imprecision of the english language)

You seem to confuse "rules used during the game" and "rules governing the game". Only if you combine those two (and setting, and scenario, and social contract), you have "a game".

The "d20 system" provides a solid rules skeleton, then shows what "a class" is an balanced this to the skeleton, then shows what (self contained) discreet rules elements are, groups these together (feats, spells, equipment) and ranks those in relation to each other (feat chains, spell levels). It is quite explicit that the ranking method only exists in the group those discreet elements are lumped together, explain the logic why that happened (CR system) and advise you to adjust things for your actual game (Rule Zero, House Rules).
"System" means that it always tries to work with the same baseline rules and always uses the same ranking method, so you can consistently keep using the new additions of discreet rules elements with or without the need to adjustments. That is your "RAW" and we still don´t have "a game".

Now I´m fine if you say: "I´ve looked at spells and I want that to be my balancing point for the system".
In that case, I´d agree with you that a lot of things are inadequate compared to this, but so is the basic rules skeleton and ranking method, especially the CR system. At that point, you actually have to do what the DMG tells you and adjust everything else by hand to fit your new balancing point. Still wanting to stick with "RAW" is, well, excuse my language, bloody stupid, because you´ve decided to leave RAW behind.

[ryu]

@ryu:

(I hate the imprecision of the English language)

You seem to confuse "rules used during the game" and "rules governing the game". Only if you combine those two (and setting, and scenario, and social contract), you have "a game".

The "d20 system" provides a solid rules skeleton, then shows what "a class" is an balanced this to the skeleton, then shows what (self contained) discreet rules elements are, groups these together (feats, spells, equipment) and ranks those in relation to each other (feat chains, spell levels). It is quite explicit that the ranking method only exists in the group those discreet elements are lumped together, explain the logic why that happened (CR system) and advise you to adjust things for your actual game (Rule Zero, House Rules).
"System" means that it always tries to work with the same baseline rules and always uses the same ranking method, so you can consistently keep using the new additions of discreet rules elements with or without the need to adjustments. That is your "RAW" and we still don´t have "a game".

Now I´m fine if you say: "I've looked at spells and I want that to be my balancing point for the system".
In that case, I´d agree with you that a lot of things are inadequate compared to this, but so is the basic rules skeleton and ranking method, especially the CR system. At that point, you actually have to do what the DMG tells you and adjust everything else by hand to fit your new balancing point. Still wanting to stick with "RAW" is, well, excuse my language, bloody stupid, because you've decided to leave RAW behind.

Ah. You know what I hate? People deliberately hiding behind the English language excuse to continue arguing with someone despite having had repeated attempts at explanation thrown at them. Sometimes even going so far as to demand the presence of things in arguments which actually already exist in the books mentioned, or have already heavily implied states in the conversation. Worse still when a point is made about hating language imprecision then not taking five seconds to check the post for spelling errors as simple as unnecessary spaces. If you're gonna language snob at least have the decency to put the work in.

[Florian]

Ah. You know what I hate? People deliberately hiding behind the English language excuse to continue arguing with someone despite having had repeated attempts at explanation thrown at them. Sometimes even going so far as to demand the presence of things in arguments which actually already exist in the books mentioned, or have already heavily implied states in the conversation. Worse still when a point is made about hating language imprecision then not taking five seconds to check the post for spelling errors as simple as unnecessary spaces. If you're gonna language snob at least have the decency to put the work in.

I think you´re misreading me then. My quip at the english language has more to do with the repeated use of the same word for multiple things and then needing to depend on added context to make it understandable. I´m not used to that, because that can´t happen in my native language.

[ryu]

I think you´re misreading me then. My quip at the english language has more to do with the repeated use of the same word for multiple things and then needing to depend on added context to make it understandable. I´m not used to that, because that can´t happen in my native language.

Ah. Did you know that English snobbery is actually a very common thing that will in a majority of situations get people peeved at you, and likely have them point out grammatical/spelling/improper word usage of yours in retaliation? Humans are pattern machines. Stare at them long enough and you'll gain some very real predictive power.

[Vaz]

Ah. Did you know that English snobbery is actually a very common thing that will in a majority of situations get people peeved at you, and likely have them point out grammatical/spelling/improper word usage of yours in retaliation? Humans are pattern machines. Stare at them long enough and you'll gain some very real predictive power.

Did you know that **** you're annoying to talk to.

You're ignoring the fact that despite the Wizard being able to do better solo, it doesn't make the Fighter a failure, just because the wizard can solo.

[Elderand]

The problem of the fighter, isn't the fighter, it's the fundamental design of dnd that has some put the separation between schmuck and demigod between classes rather than be a function of levels.

If there is to be a situation were schmuck are a thing, then any class of low level should be it, if the game is to have immortal gods of absolute power, all high level classes should be able to reach that.

The other problem of dnd is that it has no niche protection as far as magic is concerned. If magic can do everything, everyone should do magic. If you're going to have non magical classes then magic shouldn't be able to replace them.

Is the fighter poorly designed? yes, but it's not THAT bad, give him better high level option and a few extra skill and you have a competent class.
Full caster are just far too good for the good of the game.

[RoboEmperor]

Perhaps you aren't getting my point. Both the fighter and the rogue are completely superfluous to the chances of victory in most fights. The wizard could just as easily fill the slot with a commoner to buff, a skeleton minion, his own familiar, reserve feats, or power word pain. They are not, and never have been, ''essential.'' As a matter of fact all else equal a party with four PCs and a fifth PC fighter is strictly worse off in most cases to the same original four with the extra loot share of a mysterious fifth member that doesn't exist.

You actually missed my point.

PvM or PvE means Player versus Monsters/Environment.

Unlike PvP (player versus player), in PvM/PvE you can play subpar characters just for fun, so it doesn't matter what tier a class is in, as long as it can do its job in the party it's good enough.

A properly built fighter in a party can become strong enough to kill the strongest monsters in the game so they are good enough.

A player might want to play a fighter for a great deal of reasons. I knew a guy who wanted to be Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, for one.

You're wrong about fighters being useless. Low levels they are an absolute mandatory entity in core d&d.

You're right in that Fighters are lackluster higher levels and drop off, and might even be dead weight in a party of t1 classes and can be completely replaced by minions at that point in the game. But that doesn't matter. They are strong enough to take out the endgame monsters and that's good enough.

If you're complaining fighters should be buffed to the point they can rival level 20 wizards, that's another argument altogether. Fighters are the best class at dealing physical damage without using any resources. It's not the fighter's fault that d&d endgame, magic is superior to physical damage, but they still are the best physical damage dealers and they can contribute to any fight that isn't super-high-end-optimization.

You feel like one of those min/maxers in video games, and say anything that isn't the best of the very best is worthless. Some people play games for fun, to play things they want to play, which d&d relies on. If you min/max d&d you get level 1 pun-pun characters exclusively. In that sense all characters that isn't a lawful good kobold is a failure.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The Fighter isn't a failure because the Wizard is better, it's a failure because it does a poor job of filling its intended roles.
It's not a great "mundane bad***" because, well, feats don't stack up well against actual class features and it can't do anything outside of said feats. You're left with the same tricks everyone else has, more or less. Maybe slightly better or earlier, but still, there's not a lot to build an identity on. And while you can be effective with proper feat choice, well...
It's not a great newbie class because picking feats is possibly the single most frustrating part of character creation and the Fighter makes you do more of that than anyone else-- and gives you even less of a starting point than most. There's no major class feature to go build around ("oh, I'm a Barbarian. I'll take a few of these feats with "rage" in the prerequisites"), and the Fighter-only feats are crap. You're left with a lot of stuff to invest, and very little guidance on what to do with it. Add in the Sturgeon's Law "90% of feats are crap," and obnoxious prereqs and feat-chains, and it's just painful for a newbie.

[Morphic tide]

That IS dealing with it correctly. What the hell do you think happens with wish? It's not YOUR will shaping the wish, it is something else. Your character literally is asking some other entity to do something for you... and who is most likely to answer such? A patron deity maybe, a god or goddess of magic possibly... but most likely?
Well, I refer you to the movie wishmaster for the answer. Most likely it is something with something to gain from granting it, or something wanting to cause mischief. So use a few wishes, and something is ultimately going to go horribly horribly wrong.
And with the sheer number of malign entities capable of granting wishes, compared to the relatively much fewer beneficient creatures, casting wish is like playing russian roulette with 5 bullets chambered instead of 1.

That's Miracle which contacts an extraplanar entity. Wish is all self-managed. There's a reason why Pazazu and many other Wish granting entities specifically spell out that they will screw you over. Because that is not a default feature of Wish.

There's also the matter that Wish has defined things it can do without any risks. Here's the exact list of things that the spell can do by RAW without risk:



-Duplicate any wizard or sorcerer spell of 8th level or lower, provided the spell is not of a school prohibited to you.
-Duplicate any other spell of 6th level or lower, provided the spell is not of a school prohibited to you.
-Duplicate any wizard or sorcerer spell of 7th level or lower even if it’s of a prohibited school.
-Duplicate any other spell of 5th level or lower even if it’s of a prohibited school.
-Undo the harmful effects of many other spells, such as geas/quest or insanity.
-Create a nonmagical item of up to 25,000 gp in value.
-Create a magic item, or add to the powers of an existing magic item.
-Grant a creature a +1 inherent bonus to an ability score. Two to five wish spells cast in immediate succession can grant a creature a +2 to +5 inherent bonus to an ability score (two wishes for a +2 inherent bonus, three for a +3 inherent bonus, and so on). Inherent bonuses are instantaneous, so they cannot be dispelled. Note: An inherent bonus may not exceed +5 for a single ability score, and inherent bonuses to a particular ability score do not stack, so only the best one applies.
-Remove injuries and afflictions. A single wish can aid one creature per caster level, and all subjects are cured of the same kind of affliction. For example, you could heal all the damage you and your companions have taken, or remove all poison effects from everyone in the party, but not do both with the same wish. A wish can never restore the experience point loss from casting a spell or the level or Constitution loss from being raised from the dead.
-Revive the dead. A wish can bring a dead creature back to life by duplicating a resurrection spell. A wish can revive a dead creature whose body has been destroyed, but the task takes two wishes, one to recreate the body and another to infuse the body with life again. A wish cannot prevent a character who was brought back to life from losing an experience level.
-Transport travelers. A wish can lift one creature per caster level from anywhere on any plane and place those creatures anywhere else on any plane regardless of local conditions. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.
-Undo misfortune. A wish can undo a single recent event. The wish forces a reroll of any roll made within the last round (including your last turn). Reality reshapes itself to accommodate the new result. For example, a wish could undo an opponent’s successful save, a foe’s successful critical hit (either the attack roll or the critical roll), a friend’s failed save, and so on. The reroll, however, may be as bad as or worse than the original roll. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.

Interestingly, magic item creation isn't specified with a value limit, so it looks like the 25k GP is lifted from the mundane limit, even though it logically should be lower. The DM's actual role with Wish is to decide the ambiguities of this list and decide things not on the list.

And here's a bit more from the rules text:


You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)

Duplicated spells allow saves and spell resistance as normal (but save DCs are for 9th-level spells).

Greater effects. Anything in line with an 8th level spell or creating 25,000 GP of mundane material is explicitly allowed without backfiring. And this section from the XP costs brings up a bit more limiting:


When a wish creates or improves a magic item, you must pay twice the normal XP cost for crafting or improving the item, plus an additional 5,000 XP.

You pay extra over the crafting cost. Under the 25k GP item limit interpretation, you pay 7,000 XP to make an item that would have taken 25 days to make otherwise.

[Lucas Yew]

I always believe in this conspiracy, that someone influential in the 3E dev team had a serious grudge against a jock back in school, and as a form of some particularly somber wish fulfillment decided to ruin mundane warriors in a fictional fantasy roleplaying game by tampering with the rules badly.

Just a conspiracy theory, yeah.

[Calthropstu]

That's Miracle which contacts an extraplanar entity. Wish is all self-managed. There's a reason why Pazazu and many other Wish granting entities specifically spell out that they will screw you over. Because that is not a default feature of Wish.

There's also the matter that Wish has defined things it can do without any risks. Here's the exact list of things that the spell can do by RAW without risk:




Interestingly, magic item creation isn't specified with a value limit, so it looks like the 25k GP is lifted from the mundane limit, even though it logically should be lower. The DM's actual role with Wish is to decide the ambiguities of this list and decide things not on the list.

And here's a bit more from the rules text:



Greater effects. Anything in line with an 8th level spell or creating 25,000 GP of mundane material is explicitly allowed without backfiring. And this section from the XP costs brings up a bit more limiting:



You pay extra over the crafting cost. Under the 25k GP item limit interpretation, you pay 7,000 XP to make an item that would have taken 25 days to make otherwise.

I was being a bit dramatic with the ring example, and I'm honestly not that extreme. But a wish being able to create any magic item in the game? Yeah, I get the increased crafting xp. But the moment "I spend that xp by using this and that and... so I don't actually spend any xp lol." No. And infinite wishes WILL screw you no matter how you use them.
As for the description of how wish works, it doesn't actually say in the spell itself.
But I know I read somewhere something about "while clerics are more likely to get their miracles because the being they contact is their own deity, wishes are more dangerous because it sends out a general call to the cosmos." Or something along those lines. I forget where.

[Morphic tide]

I was being a bit dramatic with the ring example, and I'm honestly not that extreme. But a wish being able to create any magic item in the game? Yeah, I get the increased crafting xp. But the moment "I spend that xp by using this and that and... so I don't actually spend any xp lol." No. And infinite wishes WILL screw you no matter how you use them.
As for the description of how wish works, it doesn't actually say in the spell itself.
But I know I read somewhere something about "while clerics are more likely to get their miracles because the being they contact is their own deity, wishes are more dangerous because it sends out a general call to the cosmos." Or something along those lines. I forget where.

It doesn't specify cost limits on the magic item. Although one might argue that the doubled XP cost is an attempt to balance making any magic item imaginable, most people say that the limit is 25k GP. Probably because instantly

And if your players are allowed to use XP cost bypasses... Why are you letting them even have access to Wish at all? Because the 5k XP cost is a large chunk of what holds Wish back when you are actually casting it. If they are using it without actually casting it, just don't let them.

Screwing them over because of a ****ing houserule/bit of fluff you ran into when there are active precedents and text suggesting otherwise because you don't like Wish, even though Clerics and Druids, the classes that get Miracle, are considerably easier to break the game with than Wizards, is being dishonest or blatantly assholish.

Here's the line about going for a greater effect than Wish normally does:


You may try to use a wish to produce greater effects than these, but doing so is dangerous. (The wish may pervert your intent into a literal but undesirable fulfillment or only a partial fulfillment.)
The Wish may pervert your intent. Not an extraplanar entity, the spell. And partial fulfillment is a thing mentioned. And it's specifically for effects greater than the specified list. Which includes 8th level spells. And permanent, non-magical, ability score increases. And creating 25,000 GP of mundane material, with no restrictions on rarity or duration.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I always believe in this conspiracy, that someone influential in the 3E dev team had a serious grudge against a jock back in school, and as a form of some particularly somber wish fulfillment decided to ruin mundane warriors in a fictional fantasy roleplaying game by tampering with the rules badly.

Just a conspiracy theory, yeah.
It's not that hard to explain. Both martial and magical design was lifted from the western cannon, particularly the classics that existed at the time the game was originally being designed. So the archtypical fighter-types were guys like Conan, Aragon, Balinor, Lancelot, and Roland. And the game... honestly, it fits them decently well.

And the archtypical magic-types were... well, harder to pin down, I guess, because it seems to me that any wizard-type thing they could find from fairy tales and pulpy fantasy and such became an entry in the spell list-- controlling the weather, starting plagues, foretelling the future, turning into animals, bargaining with demons, dominating minds... you can find fictional characters who do all those things, even subsets of those things. They just... tend to do it via vague rituals or magic items, and they never get to do all of it at once. But in the interests of simplicity, I guess, basic war-magic got combined with snazzy ritual-type effects, and a decreased (and, I'd argue, overall healthy) emphasis on weaknesses, the whole thing spiraled out of control even before the specific rules came into play.

So... yeah. Mundanes were based on grit-and-steel protagonists who are pretty deliberate underdogs when facing magicians; casters were based on intentionally-neutral-supporting characters or out-and-out villains, both of whom were pretty deliberately set up to be stronger than the mundane protagonists. Is it any wonder that the finished game came out the same way?

[Cosi]

The Fighter has 3+ other party members who are there to help him do his job, like in every D&D game. If the Balor is using his Standard to Daze, and stop the fighter, then the fighter is doing his job by stopping the rest of the party being attacked by at least one Balor.

The daze effect (blasphemy) is an AoE. It's negating the Fighter in addition to the rest of the party.


So don't play a Fighter Class then? The Failure of the Fighter Class is that it lacks having a ceiling that allows it to compete at the level of said CoDzilla's, and by that understanding, cannot compete in a game which requires the use of multiple CoDzilla/God Wizard/Ardent Overdeity etc. Doesn't mean that the fighter is a failure.

Why shouldn't I be able to play whatever class I want in my game? Maybe the character I envision is a very powerful martial character. There should be an option for that, and "high level Fighter" seems like the place to put it.


That's just poor DMing. Infinite wishes, would be chain gating Solars or just wishing for a ring of infinite wishes. Using the spell as written and paying the Exp penalty to get a +5 inherent stat bonus or a generic magic item is quite normal. So long as the exp paid for and it isn't an abusable item that the DM should've banned before the game started.. there isn't an issue. The issue presented here is a super passive aggressive DM. Just ban wish if you aren't going to deal with it correctly.

Honestly, I think wish used with the XP cost is kind of underpowered. You have to go pretty deep before "the best 8th level spell for this situation" is better than "a very good 9th level spell."


Oh I've read them all cover to cover. I just think the game WotC actually created is a superior game to what they intended to create. There are still flaws, like fighter existing, but those are rather easily and efficiently ignored.

Most of the problems with 3e are things it doesn't contain, not things it does. There are no rules for kingdom management or mass battles, but there definitely should be. There is no Wizard-level (or even Sorcerer-level) martial class, but there definitely should be. There are no explicit guidelines for how the game is expected to look at various breakpoints, but there definitely should be. Most of the problematic stuff in 3e is either underpowered (which should be removed, but is not crippling) or falls into like three categories of content. You could also mess with various math things, but that's a lot less critical.


I was being a bit dramatic with the ring example, and I'm honestly not that extreme. But a wish being able to create any magic item in the game? Yeah, I get the increased crafting xp. But the moment "I spend that xp by using this and that and... so I don't actually spend any xp lol." No. And infinite wishes WILL screw you no matter how you use them.
As for the description of how wish works, it doesn't actually say in the spell itself.
But I know I read somewhere something about "while clerics are more likely to get their miracles because the being they contact is their own deity, wishes are more dangerous because it sends out a general call to the cosmos." Or something along those lines. I forget where.

wish, by RAW, is broken when you don't have to pay the XP cost. But the solution is to fix it not crap on anyone who tries to use wish.

[Psyren]

Just for sake of comparison, how difficult is it to THROW A FIREBALL by wiggling your fingers and chanting gibberish?

I think FrankTrollman made a good point about the Fighter's 'concept' in another post:


*snip*


There's also the fact that Fighters kinda suck at doing anything but Fighting. I know, I know, it's right there in their name and all, but consider the capabilities of a competent real-world soldier: They have to be able to get through an obstacle course (Climb, Balance, Jump, Swim), see or hear their enemies coming (Spot, Listen, etc), care for their own gear (Craft), possibly ride a horse (Ride, Handle Animal), march cross-country, build a camp & a fire (Survival, Use Rope)... have fun trying to be good at all of these with 2+int skill-points per level, doofus!

I agree with all this, but here's the thing. Cognitive dissonance is at the end of the day intrinsic to the human condition (See for example the JC Penney Effect. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfkWZPAUg4)) So for a designer to just wish upon a star that their playerbase will one day wake up and stop wanting dissonant things like Gimli and Conan-style fighters in high-level games when they should really be asking for Saitama is a fool's errand. It's just not gonna happen, not to any degree that is lucrative. The best we can do instead is to make Conan but slip in enough abilities that he can go toe-to-toe with that dragon or balor provided he has some magical backup (from his friends, gear or both.) Both 5e and PF realized this, and they seem to be both well-received and baseline capable.

[Florian]

@Psyren:

Part of the dissonance is taking a "class concept" and stretching it out over 20 levels and relying on itemancy to fill in the blanks. There was some interesting talk in another thread that a chain of 3x7 escalating classes would have been better, both for the game an the audience. A progression from Fighter > Knight > Paladin would have made acceptable changes to the mechanic and overall feeling way more acceptable.

[Calthropstu]

Honestly, I think wish used with the XP cost is kind of underpowered. You have to go pretty deep before "the best 8th level spell for this situation" is better than "a very good 9th level spell."

wish, by RAW, is broken when you don't have to pay the XP cost. But the solution is to fix it not crap on anyone who tries to use wish.

I DO fix it.
And personally, I use PF now which has removed "create magic items" from wish so it isn't much of an issue, and xp costs are gone.

[Psyren]

@Psyren:

Part of the dissonance is taking a "class concept" and stretching it out over 20 levels and relying on itemancy to fill in the blanks. There was some interesting talk in another thread that a chain of 3x7 escalating classes would have been better, both for the game an the audience. A progression from Fighter > Knight > Paladin would have made acceptable changes to the mechanic and overall feeling way more acceptable.

This sounds like 4e with its progression of standard class -> Paragon Path -> Epic Destiny. For the record, I don't think this is a bad thing - I think it has the potential to be done quite well. I would love it for instance if Shadowdancer, Assassin and Chameleon were simply "rogue paths" that the rogue could choose to get for free after 10th level without losing any base features. (I don't agree with Fighter -> Knight -> Paladin though, there's too much specific fluff/baggage in that direction.)

When I say dissonance though, I didn't mean the designers; they are merely responding to what people want, i.e. what is proven to sell. They make a Conan/Gimli fighter that needs a magic sword after a certain point because that's what people (not necessarily on this particular forum) want to play. Personally, I think all the Fighter needs as a baseline is Advanced Weapon Training and maybe Stamina. If you wanted to get fancy, you could even add some Mythic abilities to it at higher levels, from one of the martial paths, while the higher-tier classes don't get anything.

[Waker]

I started a thread about how the existence of Fighters may have led to feats being crappy and somehow the thread devolved into talk of how much damage Fighters can do and an argument about the Wish spell. That sounds about right. I really don't feel like sorting through the thread again to find specific quotes, so I'll just try to reply as best I can to the comments I want to address.
I am well aware of the huge imbalances inherent in the system. Frankly it would be easier to list what portions of the game aren't screwy. So yes, I know magic is crazy strong, combat rules often screw mundanes and the attribute system (SAD vs MAD) often rewards casters. None of that is especially pertinent to what I'm talking about however since my biggest gripe in the first post was talking about the theory that Fighters being present during the formative period of 3rd ed led to other mundanes getting the shaft. Even if everyone could each post a half dozen builds showing a Fighter dealing a million damage per hit, it wouldn't matter because my gripe is that combat feats suck when you can't get all the various ones you need to function as a non-Fighter character. The fact that many mundane builds are practically obligated to dip into Fighter just to get the feats they need just showcases that the feat system is flawed.
The other issue that I addressed before as well is that from a story perspective, Fighters are anomalous. Like my previous point highlighted, it is jarring that a character could have such a degree of combat prowess yet can't seem to fit into any of the archetypes due to a lack of class features and skills. Yes, I'm aware that many soldiers might not historically have been educated or worldly, but those would best be represented by the Warrior npc class. Fighters are supposed to be the creme de la creme of combat. The lack of anything that contributes to a backstory makes it seem more like they burst full formed from the ether for the sole purpose of adventuring.

[Psyren]

I started a thread about how the existence of Fighters may have led to feats being crappy and somehow the thread devolved into talk of how much damage Fighters can do and an argument about the Wish spell. That sounds about right. I really don't feel like sorting through the thread again to find specific quotes, so I'll just try to reply as best I can to the comments I want to address.

I can't speak for everyone, but Florian, Grod and I aren't talking about either of those things.



I am well aware of the huge imbalances inherent in the system. Frankly it would be easier to list what portions of the game aren't screwy. So yes, I know magic is crazy strong, combat rules often screw mundanes and the attribute system (SAD vs MAD) often rewards casters. None of that is especially pertinent to what I'm talking about however since my biggest gripe in the first post was talking about the theory that Fighters being present during the formative period of 3rd ed led to other mundanes getting the shaft. Even if everyone could each post a half dozen builds showing a Fighter dealing a million damage per hit, it wouldn't matter because my gripe is that combat feats suck when you can't get all the various ones you need to function as a non-Fighter character. The fact that many mundane builds are practically obligated to dip into Fighter just to get the feats they need just showcases that the feat system is flawed.

While there is indeed a lot of chaff, I'd argue that there are more than enough good combat feats and good fighter-only feat, at least in PF, to build several fun and interesting fighters.

Grod is correct though, feats are weak compared to class features - but PF's creation of Variant Multiclassing to let you trade the former for the latter was a nice touch, and few classes can take better advantage of it than the Fighter can.



The other issue that I addressed before as well is that from a story perspective, Fighters are anomalous. Like my previous point highlighted, it is jarring that a character could have such a degree of combat prowess yet can't seem to fit into any of the archetypes due to a lack of class features and skills. Yes, I'm aware that many soldiers might not historically have been educated or worldly, but those would best be represented by the Warrior npc class. Fighters are supposed to be the creme de la creme of combat. The lack of anything that contributes to a backstory makes it seem more like they burst full formed from the ether for the sole purpose of adventuring.

To this one all I can say is that PF pretty much addressed it. I would port that Fighter (AWT and all) back into 3.5.

[Elderand]

@Psyren:

Part of the dissonance is taking a "class concept" and stretching it out over 20 levels and relying on itemancy to fill in the blanks. There was some interesting talk in another thread that a chain of 3x7 escalating classes would have been better, both for the game an the audience. A progression from Fighter > Knight > Paladin would have made acceptable changes to the mechanic and overall feeling way more acceptable.

This remind me of both star wars saga edition and Dragonlance were you had something like this for prestige classes in some way with Jedi -> Jedi knight -> Jedi master for exemple.

This always pleased me for a reason I can't explain, maybe because it offers a real sense of progression that just leveling up doesn't.

[ryu]

I don't so much desire fighters to be wizard competitive. I wish for them to be competitive with almost literally anything at all. There is no PC class in the entire game besides some variant of samurai that is less useful. Even monks have a higher utility ceiling. I don't want a class to exist that I look at it and immediately realize that whatever it's being built for I'd rather have almost literally anything else. Even his extra share of loot and no character so we could pay for some expendable fodder NPC help in dungeons. At low levels more bodies will mean actually relevant battlefield control and more damage per round. Also we get to save gold in getting to loot any that die to pay the others for longer. These don't even have to be ''fighting'' NPC classes. I have literally used commoners with rocks to exactly this purpose.

[Waker]

I can't speak for everyone, but Florian, Grod and I aren't talking about either of those things.

I know not everyone is running off talking about unrelated topics, you guys are doing what you can to stay on point.


While there is indeed a lot of chaff, I'd argue that there are more than enough good combat feats and good fighter-only feat, at least in PF, to build several fun and interesting fighters.

Grod is correct though, feats are weak compared to class features - but PF's creation of Variant Multiclassing to let you trade the former for the latter was a nice touch, and few classes can take better advantage of it than the Fighter can.

That isn't really my point though. I know Fighter is a playable class. Lemme put it another way.
In any game that I play, whether you are talking about card games like Magic, MMOs, or pen & paper like D&D if you have a card/equipment/spell/whatever that is so universally required, almost irregardless of build, then I view it as a bad thing. It doesn't have to be game-breakingly powerful, just indispensable. And trying to play any number of mundane builds becomes impractical without dipping into Fighter for a few feats.
I also made an earlier statement about Fighters possibly bringing about feat chains and the precedence of PrCs needing unrelated feat prerequisites ended up creating a demand for feats that only the Fighter could supply. It's existence made it a necessity. Many times players are forced into taking levels in a class not because it is in any way part of the characters' identity, but rather from the purely mechanical aspect of "Gotta grab a couple feats".

[Psyren]

That isn't really my point though. I know Fighter is a playable class. Lemme put it another way.
In any game that I play, whether you are talking about card games like Magic, MMOs, or pen & paper like D&D if you have a card/equipment/spell/whatever that is so universally required, almost irregardless of build, then I view it as a bad thing. It doesn't have to be game-breakingly powerful, just indispensable. And trying to play any number of mundane builds becomes impractical without dipping into Fighter for a few feats.

I view this as a problem with 3.5 independent of the Fighter itself. They simply did not give out enough feats in this game. Even the caster builds are running around grabbing flaws whenever possible; they just suffer a lot less when they can't. Fighter is valued not because it is indispensable but because getting enough feats to qualify for {thing you actually want} without it is hard to do in many builds.

Beyond the dearth of feats is also the necessity of PrCing. Many base classes, even crazy powerful ones like Sorcerer, get no incentive to stay in-class in 3.5. This makes PrCs feel necessary, and getting into one ASAP feel equally necessary.

While you can certainly lay some of this at the Fighter's doorstep, it is by no means solely (nor. I would argue, even primarily) their fault.



I also made an earlier statement about Fighters possibly bringing about feat chains and the precedence of PrCs needing unrelated feat prerequisites ended up creating a demand for feats that only the Fighter could supply. It's existence made it a necessity. Many times players are forced into taking levels in a class not because it is in any way part of the characters' identity, but rather from the purely mechanical aspect of "Gotta grab a couple feats".

If this were truly intended, all the sample PrCs would be running around with Fighter dips and flaws to get in as fast as possible. The truth of the matter is we like entering sooner because we are optimizers, but that's not necessarily what WotC had in mind, even if that makes them suboptimal. In other words, nobody is forcing us to enter PrCs at the first available opportunity, even if our base classes have no real reason to stay in longer.

[Waker]

While you can certainly lay some of this at the Fighter's doorstep, it is by no means solely (nor. I would argue, even primarily) their fault.
Nope, I can't lay the entirety of the problem at the feet of the Fighter. I would definitely argue that it did play a role in the development of the flawed feat system that 3.5/PF inherited.



If this were truly intended, all the sample PrCs would be running around with Fighter dips and flaws to get in as fast as possible. The truth of the matter is we like entering sooner because we are optimizers, but that's not necessarily what WotC had in mind, even if that makes them suboptimal. In other words, nobody is forcing us to enter PrCs at the first available opportunity, even if our base classes have no real reason to stay in longer.
Oh man, I gotta tell you, I almost never look at the sample builds they post in the books. And I'm a guy who's read the majority of the splatbooks several times. Some of those sample builds are just so bad.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I agree with all this, but here's the thing. Cognitive dissonance is at the end of the day intrinsic to the human condition (See for example the JC Penney Effect. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfkWZPAUg4)) So for a designer to just wish upon a star that their playerbase will one day wake up and stop wanting dissonant things like Gimli and Conan-style fighters in high-level games when they should really be asking for Saitama is a fool's errand. It's just not gonna happen, not to any degree that is lucrative. The best we can do instead is to make Conan but slip in enough abilities that he can go toe-to-toe with that dragon or balor provided he has some magical backup (from his friends, gear or both.) Both 5e and PF realized this, and they seem to be both well-received and baseline capable.
Ehhh... perhaps. I agree that it would be controversial to have mundane types reach the sort of "jump across the planet and cut a mountain in half" level that sometimes gets brought up in discussions like this-- if nothing else because you'd probably half to hide that sort of power behind sheets of inferior options and strategies like spellcasting does, or else you'd have cries that the balance goes the other way not. But I do think there's room for reasonably superhuman capabilities-- the Fighter who can rip a portcullis out of its frame, the Rogue who can cross a crowded room without being seen, that sort of thing. Especially if paired with fluff that's more explicit about the characters' increasing power and role at high levels. You don't need 4e Paragon Paths, but making the "tiers of play" thing more explicit was a smart move, methinks.


I view this as a problem with 3.5 independent of the Fighter itself. They simply did not give out enough feats in this game. Even the caster builds are running around grabbing flaws whenever possible; they just suffer a lot less when they can't. Fighter is valued not because it is indispensable but because getting enough feats to qualify for {thing you actually want} without it is hard to do in many builds.
I mean, we're optimizers, we always want more, but with casters it does feel like you're getting something extra, whereas with mundanes it feels more like playing catch-up. Perhaps it's a tomato/tomato thing, but I feel like the problem is less "not enough feats" and more "too many things require feats."

I mean, take combat maneuvers-- in theory they should all be viable options against roughly equivalent opposition, with feats and suchlike serving to make them better. But instead they provoke AoOs (and monsters usually have outsized modifiers), meaning they're neigh-useless without specific, multi-feat investment. Moving and attacking, the most fundamental part of combat, requires investment, usually of levels as well as feats. Punching a guy, even if he's unarmed, requires a feat investment, for Kord's sake.

My feeling is that if things like combat maneuvers, movement, TWF and the like were largely de-coupled from the feat system, and maybe skills were a little better, you wouldn't feel so starved.

[Florian]

Funny. I used the Fighter > Knight > Paladin progression, because for me personally, there´s some culture-based meanings attached to the words that form how some "supernatural" things would not break verisimilitude, at least not for me.
The myths and legends I grew up with, "Fighters" handles the brute beast like demons and dragon by pure force, "Knights" learned to handle ghosts and fey by guile and power of will, "Paladins" learned to handle Witches and Heresy by pure faith.

I´m not into anime or comics, without some few exceptions, so anything that reaches power level like in Shonen or so simply makes me lose my interest.

[Arbane]

I'm currently DMing a game in Rokugan. The Wizard and Wu Jen in the party are gaijin and seriously hamper the party.(SNIP)

Am I incompetent then, because the players insist on rolling a non-typical character for the setting?

I have to ask - did you warn them ahead of time that Rokugan is really xenophobic?


Try using wish in one of my games. I dare you. Seriously... never EVER use wish. Any time you use wish, you are giving the gm open permission to ultimately screw you.

For you Youngs in the crowd, this was pretty much encouraged in AD&D times - Grod's Law hadn't been discovered yet, so the accepted wisdom was that if the players had access to something overpowered, KILL THEM WITH IT. Making all Wishes Monkey's Paw-Style was pretty much standard Gygax-Approved DMing then.

(Which reminds me of that Knight of the Dinner Table comic where the resident rules-lawyer gets hold of a wish and pulls out a 50-page wish worded by a law student that he'd had prepared for just such an occasion. The GM has to call three other GMs over to try to interpret the legalese.)


I DO fix it.
And personally, I use PF now which has removed "create magic items" from wish so it isn't much of an issue, and xp costs are gone.

Do you still brutally murder any PCs so naive as to not scream and run away at the sight of a wish?


No I play with competent DMs who don't intentionally try to **** over their players.

(Just sayin'.)


I always believe in this conspiracy, that someone influential in the 3E dev team had a serious grudge against a jock back in school, and as a form of some particularly somber wish fulfillment decided to ruin mundane warriors in a fictional fantasy roleplaying game by tampering with the rules badly.

Just a conspiracy theory, yeah.

I've heard that joke a lot (mostly while reading through Grognards.txt), but I suspect the problem might be the reverse - the devs overvalued melee fighting ability so much that they felt the need to nerf it excessively. (See also: Half-orc racial stat adjustments.)


Both 5e and PF realized this, and they seem to be both well-received and baseline capable.

PF still has the same problems, although recent sourcebooks have given Fighters some Nice Things they can get. (But again, this requires having those books and/or a fair bit of system mastery.)


I mean, take combat maneuvers-- in theory they should all be viable options against roughly equivalent opposition, with feats and suchlike serving to make them better. But instead they provoke AoOs (and monsters usually have outsized modifiers), meaning they're neigh-useless without specific, multi-feat investment. Moving and attacking, the most fundamental part of combat, requires investment, usually of levels as well as feats. Punching a guy, even if he's unarmed, requires a feat investment, for Kord's sake.

My feeling is that if things like combat maneuvers, movement, TWF and the like were largely de-coupled from the feat system, and maybe skills were a little better, you wouldn't feel so starved.

Agreed - making 'you can do maneuvers without provoking AoOs' a class feature (or just something anyone with a high enough BaB can do) would be a good start. The problem is still that most maneuvers still generally aren't as good as just stabbing your opponent in the hitpoints again.


I´m not into anime or comics, without some few exceptions, so anything that reaches power level like in Shonen or so simply makes me lose my interest.

Not a big fan of the Knights of the Round Table (http://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/127347909207/on-legendry), I take it? :smalltongue:

[Calthropstu]

Do you still brutally murder any PCs so naive as to not scream and run away at the sight of a wish?

Only those who try to abuse wish to be honest. Pathfinder got rid of the xp requirements, but also got rid of the "can create items" thing too. Wish works as printed, but too many of them and the universe starts wondering who the hell keeps rewriting stuff.

As for feats, I love feats. I love feats, skills and all sorts of other things introduced in 3.0/3.5/pf. I remember going into town in 2nd edition and saying "ok, I want to build my own shop..." and realizing there were no rules for anything other than combat. And each gm would handle it completely different.

And there was no disarm, trip, grapple rules on 2nd either. You could bind a wizards hands, gag him and take away his compinents... but only after you beat him with swords and spells. There was no sunder either.

3.x really revamped and revitalized the genre in amazing ways, and the fighter was a huge part of that. I don't care about the microscopic portion of overly optimized super wizard players here who want to break the game. Most tables, fighters and martials do far better than people here want to believe.

[Vaz]

The daze effect (blasphemy) is an AoE. It's negating the Fighter in addition to the rest of the party.
It's a 20ft Aura. The Fighter is the one close to the Balor. Not to mention you can pick up the Quick Recovery feat or Mark of the Dauntless in that case.


Why shouldn't I be able to play whatever class I want in my game? Maybe the character I envision is a very powerful martial character. There should be an option for that, and "high level Fighter" seems like the place to put it.
There is, though. Warblades, Crusaders, Paladins, Barbarians, are all very powerful martial characters. Why does it have to be called the Fighter - it's just a meta concept naming convention? And that doesn't get onto Prestige Classes like Shadow Pouncers etc. This just seems like you're raging against the machine of D&D, but blaming the Fighter for being a Failure, despite the fighter very well being able to do what a fighter does, and that's hit things.

Can it be better? Sure. Anything that's not able to ascend to Pun-Pun at Level 1 "can be better". It doesn't fail at doing its job.

Let's say I have three guys building a wall. 1 can build the wall in 3 hours, the other can build it in 1 hour, while the other is a quadriplegic and cannot build the wall. Of those, 2 individuals have built the wall. The Fighter is the one who built it in 3 hours, but there exists another who can built it in 1. The quadriplegic is the failure, and you're dragging hyperbole by the balls through fields of broken glass if you consider the Fighter a quadriplegic. The quadriplegic instead is more equivalent of the Truenamer, who literally struggles to work out of the box against level appropriate challenges.

Edit; @Arbane - yes. Because of the setting change, we had a Session 0 and a Session 0.5 to make sure that people were involved and new what that it was RP heavy, and that the RP had certain rules based on your social status; which as an arcane magic user meant that they were outside of the Rokugani base. They were insistent, which was annoying, because truth be told, I'd much rather have had the players use something that would allow me to focus on the actual story, rather than having gaijin arcane magic users forced to not use their magic lest they be arrested or attacked for using magic that was otherwise used mostly by Iuchiban followers/bloodspeakers, and only have 2 people in the party actually be able to participate in social interactions.

[Psyren]

Ehhh... perhaps. I agree that it would be controversial to have mundane types reach the sort of "jump across the planet and cut a mountain in half" level that sometimes gets brought up in discussions like this-- if nothing else because you'd probably half to hide that sort of power behind sheets of inferior options and strategies like spellcasting does, or else you'd have cries that the balance goes the other way not. But I do think there's room for reasonably superhuman capabilities-- the Fighter who can rip a portcullis out of its frame, the Rogue who can cross a crowded room without being seen, that sort of thing. Especially if paired with fluff that's more explicit about the characters' increasing power and role at high levels. You don't need 4e Paragon Paths, but making the "tiers of play" thing more explicit was a smart move, methinks.

You can build that very Fighter and Rogue right now in PF. So... problem solved?



I mean, we're optimizers, we always want more, but with casters it does feel like you're getting something extra, whereas with mundanes it feels more like playing catch-up. Perhaps it's a tomato/tomato thing, but I feel like the problem is less "not enough feats" and more "too many things require feats."

I mean, take combat maneuvers-- in theory they should all be viable options against roughly equivalent opposition, with feats and suchlike serving to make them better. But instead they provoke AoOs (and monsters usually have outsized modifiers), meaning they're neigh-useless without specific, multi-feat investment. Moving and attacking, the most fundamental part of combat, requires investment, usually of levels as well as feats. Punching a guy, even if he's unarmed, requires a feat investment, for Kord's sake.

My feeling is that if things like combat maneuvers, movement, TWF and the like were largely de-coupled from the feat system, and maybe skills were a little better, you wouldn't feel so starved.

I completely agree there is feat bloat. It's one reason I keep this article (http://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/) in my sig, and allow it in games I run.



PF still has the same problems, although recent sourcebooks have given Fighters some Nice Things they can get. (But again, this requires having those books and/or a fair bit of system mastery.)

PF lessened the problem in other places too. Blasphemy is being discussed for instance - that's a will save in PF, whereas it was No Save in 3.5 - and Fighters can get a pretty decent will save in PF.

Also, nah you don't need books, the whole system is OGL remember? SRD is free.

[lunaticfringe]

Stop playing 3.X? I'm not trying to bash the system but it 2017. Why are you playing a system not in print that you have problems with? Heck Pathfinder is basically free & just way better. You can actually play an Archer.

[RoboEmperor]

Stop playing 3.X? I'm not trying to bash the system but it 2017. Why are you playing a system not in print that you have problems with? Heck Pathfinder is basically free & just way better. You can actually play an Archer.

Pathfinder is not way better.

[Calthropstu]

Pathfinder is not way better.

Actually it is. In almost every possible way. The combats are better, the class design is better, the variety is better, third party support is better, feat selection is better, most spells are better worded and most abuses are curtailed.
The only people with reason to groan are the TO people who want to become gods where the game can't touch them.

[Psyren]

Pathfinder certainly has its flaws (the feat bloat, particularly for maneuvers, basically offset the extra feats we got - for martials anyway), but for the OP's particular grievances I see it as nearly all upside. The Fighter chassis changes, the crafting changes, the spell changes, the CR changes, the race changes - all of it works in the Fighter's favor.

[RoboEmperor]

Actually it is. In almost every possible way. The combats are better, the class design is better, the variety is better, third party support is better, feat selection is better, most spells are better worded and most abuses are curtailed.
The only people with reason to groan are the TO people who want to become gods where the game can't touch them.

1. Class design = straight 20 in a class, 0 PrC.
2. You can only play the standard way, as in 4-6man party playing their character like every other person in the world.

People who want to play lord of the rings like adventures will like pathfinder more then d&d 3.5. People who want to do something different hate pathfinder. Pathfinder stunted creativity, customization options, and character uniqueness.

I rather play Skyrim or Neverwinter Nights than pathfinder.

Same reason people prefer 3.5 over 5e. Mundane lovers love 5e, but demon masters, shadow masters, thrall masters, or chicken bombers all prefer 3.5 because you can't do these things in 5e, and in pathfinder too in fact.

The PrCs in 3.5 is the only thing that makes it worthwhile to do everything by pen and paper for me.

It's all just comes down to preference, but to claim one system is superior to another flat out is stupid.

[Psyren]

Why the heck are you in a Fighter thread talking about people who want to play "shadow masters" and "chicken bombers?" :smallconfused:

[RoboEmperor]

Why the heck are you in a Fighter thread talking about people who want to play "shadow masters" and "chicken bombers?" :smallconfused:

He said pathfinder is better, not better for fighters D:

It's his fault D:<

edit: I might've misread his post. If he was saying fighters are better in pathfinder than in 3.5 then... I misread.

[TheIronGolem]

1. Class design = straight 20 in a class, 0 PrC.
2. You can only play the standard way, as in 4-6man party playing their character like every other person in the world.

People who want to play lord of the rings like adventures will like pathfinder more then d&d 3.5. People who want to do something different hate pathfinder. Pathfinder stunted creativity, customization options, and character uniqueness.

I rather play Skyrim or Neverwinter Nights than pathfinder.

Same reason people prefer 3.5 over 5e. Mundane lovers love 5e, but demon masters, shadow masters, thrall masters, or chicken bombers all prefer 3.5 because you can't do these things in 5e, and in pathfinder too in fact.

The PrCs in 3.5 is the only thing that makes it worthwhile to do everything by pen and paper for me.

It's all just comes down to preference, but to claim one system is superior to another flat out is stupid.

I could have sworn I liked Pathfinder. Thanks for letting me know I hate it.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Meh. Pathfinder eeks out some marginal superiority in terms of class design (better than Core + Completes, on par with late-game stuff, and inferior to the well-designed subsystems) and less TO potential, but the games are still about 99% the same. It's not even apples to oranges; it's comparing two different apples. And not even different strains of apples; we're talking two honeycrisps here. There's no real reason to switch from one to the other, and any parts you like from one can be imported to the other with about thirty seconds worth of thought.

Can this thread maybe not devolve into those old arguments? Next thing you know we're going to get onto Monks and it'll be a D&D forum hat-trick.

[Knaight]

A lot of this is due to 3rd edition finally giving the game a coherent skill system - back in AD&D (1st ed, at least) days, there was a general assumption that all PCs had a general level of competence of whatever they could convince the DM they could reasonably do. So a Fighter could write poetry, ride a horse, tie knots, find herbs, set camp, etc, possibly contingent on the player's having been a Boy Scout or a half-decent poet.

It's more that they made a coherent skill system then decided to skimp on skill points per level. 2+int per level is maybe acceptable on a wizard or other high int class. There's no reasonable justification for doing that to the Fighter.

[Scots Dragon]

It's more that they made a coherent skill system then decided to skimp on skill points per level. 2+int per level is maybe acceptable on a wizard or other high int class. There's no reasonable justification for doing that to the Fighter.

This is easily one of the biggest things that ought to have been addressed with Pathfinder, but wasn't. Instead we got a lot of focus on armour training and weapon training, most of the feats were nerfed, and it really doesn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things.

[Fizban]

I do find the statement of "feats are underpowered" followed by "I need to take Fighter to get all these feats for my build to work" rather amusing. If the feats are so bad, why do you need them?

Dare I say, the system is working as intended. I may not have been around for it, but I think it's pretty easy to see: you may not like to acknowledge it, but the baseline coming into 3.0 was not expecting people to have class features at every level that allow them to single handedly survive fighting ancient supernatural beings. It was that higher level fighters got tougher and fightier but that's about it, while higher level mages got the spells needed to match the supernatural beings, and higher level thieves got better at . . picking locks and backstabbing?

All those "crappy" feats that are still somehow required give bonuses to fighting. Not all characters are supposed to be good at fighting, in fact only characters trained in fighting are supposed to be good at fighting (and indeed, in real life people who are not specifically trained in fighting, suck at fighting). Fighters get bonus feats, which allow them to fight better. You want your build to be good at fighting even though it's not centered on a fighting class, so you cram in some Fighter levels in order to fight better. What part of the system isn't working? (The part that isn't working is where magic, which is intentionally more powerful, also has feats, which as part of the magic system are objectively more powerful, which is working as intended. Magic just makes everything else look bad.)

As for combat maneuvers specifically: no seriously, if you are not trained in martial arts and you try to grapple or push around someone with a weapon, or attack the weapon instead of the wielder, you're gonna get stabbed. Training in maneuvers is represented by feats, which most people don't have, because most people are barely trained in which end of the sword is the pointy one let alone martial arts.

[Mordaedil]

Actually it is. In almost every possible way. The combats are better, the class design is better, the variety is better, third party support is better, feat selection is better, most spells are better worded and most abuses are curtailed.
The only people with reason to groan are the TO people who want to become gods where the game can't touch them.

The only reason is the one I giveth, yes this is not confrontational or inflammatory at all. It's the only reason. It's a fact. God descended from the heavens, parting the skies as he did and declared unto man, thou shallt accept Pathfiner as thy savior or I will condemn thee to the confines of Hell and the grognard exclaimed "Eh. It's not for me" and he was thus smote.

[Florian]

It's more that they made a coherent skill system then decided to skimp on skill points per level. 2+int per level is maybe acceptable on a wizard or other high int class. There's no reasonable justification for doing that to the Fighter.

That´s the type of complaint to always happens in a vacuum and will at some point use "being able to contribute" as a be-all, end-all argument.

Some time back, for a heated discussion, I actually took the time and fine-combed through eight APs to see what skills are actually used, more important, which ones are necessary.
The result was amusing. Besides player activated skills, it was mostly four and two, the later when campaign-specific subsystems went into it, like Profession: Soldier for the mass combat rules.

So, skills are vastly overrated, unless you deviate from the example Paizo gives how a module should look and begin building more complex encounters or scenarios.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I do find the statement of "feats are underpowered" followed by "I need to take Fighter to get all these feats for my build to work" rather amusing. If the feats are so bad, why do you need them?
Be...cause...the biggest reason they're considered "underpowered" is that you need multiple feats to pull off one schtick?


in fact only characters trained in fighting are supposed to be good at fighting (and indeed, in real life people who are not specifically trained in fighting, suck at fighting).
Except that this isn't real life. Every character in a D&D game is expected to be good at fighting. It's what they do day-in and day-out. But even beyond that, there's a quite definite thing that says how good you are at combat-- your BAB. Claiming that somehow the Fighter is supposed to be the only class that knows which end of a sword is which is nonsensical.


That´s the type of complaint to always happens in a vacuum and will at some point use "being able to contribute" as a be-all, end-all argument.
Err... And it's not? Beyond that, looking only at passive skill use in pre-written modules is hardly representative. You said it yourself-- "ignoring player activated skills," AKA "ignoring the player's attempts to do things." Of course skill points are overrated if you don't use skills, but I imagine most of us do.

[Florian]

@Grod:

It´s a fairly educated guess that when the creators of a rules system offer a module/scenario for that system, things will work as intended, rules-wise.

That gives a fairly good overview which skills are used and how high the actual use frequency should be. Based on this, you´ll get a pretty good feeling how many skill points are adequate do get the job done, wondering what actually do do when way above that number.

With "player activated", I mean skills that are not used unless the player wants to bring it into play. Ride is not used unless you want to ride, Acrobatics is not used unless you want to be mobile in combat, and so on. If, or not, something like Profession: Merchant will ever come into play even if the player has it, is an entirely different discussion.

In the end, it´s a thing that every gm has to know for himself. Ramping up the variety and frequency of skill use beyond the standard that seems apparently to be intended will have consequences that will have to be solved by house rules, not wanting an errata, because the problem is at the individual table.

[Fouredged Sword]

Honestly I don't get all the fighter hate. I mean seriously, the class is pretty good. I mean you are not a wizard, but getting int to reflex saves is nice, as is the access to multiple full schools of strikes and counters. I know, I know, the ability to do 250 damage in a single action isn't much compared to what wizards are doing at level 17, but you have to accept SOME power differential between classes in an imperfect system.

The only real problem is the typo in the class name on the reprint. Simple fix really.

[Guizonde]

@Grod:

It´s a fairly educated guess that when the creators of a rules system offer a module/scenario for that system, things will work as intended, rules-wise.

That gives a fairly good overview which skills are used and how high the actual use frequency should be. Based on this, you´ll get a pretty good feeling how many skill points are adequate do get the job done, wondering what actually do do when way above that number.

With "player activated", I mean skills that are not used unless the player wants to bring it into play. Ride is not used unless you want to ride, Acrobatics is not used unless you want to be mobile in combat, and so on. If, or not, something like Profession: Merchant will ever come into play even if the player has it, is an entirely different discussion.

In the end, it´s a thing that every gm has to know for himself. Ramping up the variety and frequency of skill use beyond the standard that seems apparently to be intended will have consequences that will have to be solved by house rules, not wanting an errata, because the problem is at the individual table.

isn't that s.o.p to use those skills outside of their predefined areas? i've seen acrobatics used more outside of combat than in, for example. ride i've seen used when a halfling monk was trying to stay on top of my charging cleric, professions checks came frequently in play (and not just for making money on the side).

iirc, the pathfinder module "return of darkness" specifically listed alternate uses for skills applicable in that campaign along with alternative traits and racial features. i thought it was common practice in dnd at large.

[Florian]

isn't that s.o.p to use those skills outside of their predefined areas? i've seen acrobatics used more outside of combat than in, for example. ride i've seen used when a halfling monk was trying to stay on top of my charging cleric, professions checks came frequently in play (and not just for making money on the side).

iirc, the pathfinder module "return of darkness" specifically listed alternate uses for skills applicable in that campaign along with alternative traits and racial features. i thought it was common practice in dnd at large.

It´s sop to go for the next best thing that comes to mind if you don´t have actual rules that cover a topic. What´s not covered is what to go for. In your example, you could as well have gone for a CMB roll instead of acrobatics, which would have been the more elegant solution.

[Cosi]

I DO fix it.
And personally, I use PF now which has removed "create magic items" from wish so it isn't much of an issue, and xp costs are gone.

"If you try anything, I'll gank your character" isn't a fix.


I started a thread about how the existence of Fighters may have led to feats being crappy

But feats aren't crappy. Natural Spell is a feat. Greenbound Summoning is a feat. Divine Metamagic is a feat. Arcane Disciple is a feat. Spontaneous Divination is basically a feat. Those are all quite good. Fighter feats are mostly crappy, but that's because the designers didn't want to give martials nice things. The feats for Barbarians and Rangers are crappy too.


I do find the statement of "feats are underpowered" followed by "I need to take Fighter to get all these feats for my build to work" rather amusing. If the feats are so bad, why do you need them?

Feats are crappy because they don't cover enough ground. If you want to fight with two swords, you have to sink something like half your total feats into doing that. That's absurd. There should be one TWF feat -- Perfect Two Weapon Fighting.


Dare I say, the system is working as intended. I may not have been around for it, but I think it's pretty easy to see: you may not like to acknowledge it, but the baseline coming into 3.0 was not expecting people to have class features at every level that allow them to single handedly survive fighting ancient supernatural beings.

Yes it was. The game says you should be able to beat an Ancient White Dragon fairly easily at Level 20. It does not say that you need to be a Wizard to do so. PC class levels provide equal CR and are expected to create equally powerful characters. I understand that you are unwilling to accept the possibility that designers could fail, but you could at least pick an adjective that didn't make your claim trivially false.


Not all characters are supposed to be good at fighting, in fact only characters trained in fighting are supposed to be good at fighting (and indeed, in real life people who are not specifically trained in fighting, suck at fighting).

Yes they are. One of the three core rulebooks is comprised (almost) entirely of "stuff for you to fight". The idea that "fighting" is somehow optional for characters in Dungeons and Dragons should be so obviously wrong that no one would ever think to suggest it.

[Guizonde]

It´s sop to go for the next best thing that comes to mind if you don´t have actual rules that cover a topic. What´s not covered is what to go for. In your example, you could as well have gone for a CMB roll instead of acrobatics, which would have been the more elegant solution.

we'll chalk that up to my relative unfamiliarity with the system, in that case. could also be a mistranslation on my part, for one, it was years ago, and second i've got half my ressource documents in english, the other half in french, and i play in french where oddly enough, there are no synonyms used either (just like in the english versions).

is cmb combat manoeuver bonus?

but really, i thought that skills covered multiple facets of one general area, unless said area was divided among skills (appraise and barter come to mind). live and learn, i guess.

[Psyren]

This is easily one of the biggest things that ought to have been addressed with Pathfinder, but wasn't. Instead we got a lot of focus on armour training and weapon training, most of the feats were nerfed, and it really doesn't add up to much in the grand scheme of things.

It was addressed in Pathfinder actually. Not initially (they were too focused on making core backwards compatible to make that change baseline) but AWT and archetypes gave the Fighter a lot more effective skill ranks to work with.


The only reason is the one I giveth, yes this is not confrontational or inflammatory at all. It's the only reason. It's a fact. God descended from the heavens, parting the skies as he did and declared unto man, thou shallt accept Pathfiner as thy savior or I will condemn thee to the confines of Hell and the grognard exclaimed "Eh. It's not for me" and he was thus smote.

No ones smiting anyone, but if you make a thread complaining about X from 3.5 then people are well within their rights to chime in and say "actually, PF fixed X and it's free of charge, have you tried that?" It's an honest attempt to help.

Unless one is not actually looking for solutions and just wants to vent and rant. But this is a discussion forum, not a rants & raves board à la Craigslist.

[Scots Dragon]

It was addressed in Pathfinder actually. Not initially (they were too focused on making core backwards compatible to make that change baseline) but AWT and archetypes gave the Fighter a lot more effective skill ranks to work with.

Glancing at Advanced Weapon and Armour training, yeah, those are actually really damn good features and I retract some of what I said. I haven't been keeping up too much with Pathfinder lately, but that is some good stuff.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It was addressed in Pathfinder actually. Not initially (they were too focused on making core backwards compatible to make that change baseline) but AWT and archetypes gave the Fighter a lot more effective skill ranks to work with.

To be fair, you can build a pretty nice Fighter in 3.5 with sufficient ACFs too. (Thug + Zhentrim +dead levels, say, Dungeoncrasher optional)

[Psyren]

Glancing at Advanced Weapon and Armour training, yeah, those are actually really damn good features and I retract some of what I said. I haven't been keeping up too much with Pathfinder lately, but that is some good stuff.

The best part is that Fighters get these automatically, no feats required. (There are however feats you can take to accelerate the bonuses, or restore them if you took an incompatible archetype.) They're also PFS-legal.


To be fair, you can build a pretty nice Fighter in 3.5 with sufficient ACFs too. (Thug + Zhentrim +dead levels, say, Dungeoncrasher optional)

I mostly agree, but my understanding of the stuff you listed is that it just gives you more of what the Fighter already had (damage.) Okay, Thug gives you some skill points, but the additional skills it gives you aren't too useful (Bluff, Knowledge, GI and Sleight are best left to other people in the party for example.) This combination doesn't help you build, say, an archer, or a master smith, or a sentry, or a number of other concepts that people would think of Fighter for in the first place.

EDIT: It's only Knowledge Local too, which means you can't even use it for KD really.

[Beheld]

It's a 20ft Aura. The Fighter is the one close to the Balor. Not to mention you can pick up the Quick Recovery feat or Mark of the Dauntless in that case.

It's not. It's a 40ft radius, it's an 80ft diameter. Unless you are fighting on an open field for some reason, chances are very good it will fill the entire room this fight is occurring in.

[Nightcanon]

I think you have that backwards.

For one, feat chains weren't created because Fighters exist. The skills and feats in conjunction with a character's ability scores were designed to attempt to model reality. Two-Weapon Fighting is a huge chain because learning to fight effectively with a weapon in each hand is absurdly difficult (in exactly the same way learning to juggle is difficult). Same thing with learning to fight effectively from the back of a horse while simultaneously keeping it under control in the chaos of battle. And the same thing with learning how to reliably shoot a bow at a mobile aerial target hundreds of feet away.

Two, fighters can't simply take any old feat they feel like. Their bonus feats are limited to the specific Fighter bonus feat list. Now coincidentally the majority of fighter bonus feats are part of combat-related feat chains, but a Soulbow build that wants to dip into Shiba Protector is not going to be at all helped by a Fighter dip because Iron Will is not a fighter bonus feat. Nor will it help the character meet the Dexterity requirements for the higher level archery feats, which brings me to point number three...

Lastly, in most cases it's not prerequisite feats in chains that are the issue. It's the ability score requirements to get them that will hamper builds more often than not having enough feat selections. Improved Trip isn't annoying because it requires Combat Expertise, which itself isn't necessarily a bad feat for a tanky build. It's the fact that Combat Expertise requires an Intelligence of 13 that hampers a build that is already wanting Strength to do good damage, Dexterity for extra attacks of opportunity, and Constitution for not dying. The same thing goes with the aforementioned hypothetical Soulbow build. It's not that there are too many archery feats to take, it's that a Wisdom base character will have a much hard time meeting the Dexterity requirements to take them.
There's some logic to the existence of feat-trees, as you suggest; the problem is that the same logic is not applied to spellcasting-it makes sense that Two-Weapon Fighting is required for Two Weapon Defence, but by the same logic perhaps Shocking Grasp should be a prerequisite to learn Lightning Bolt, or SM1, 2&3for SM4, and so on.
The other issue is that despite what the game designers believed, one feat is not remotely equal to one level of spells.

[Florian]

There's some logic to the existence of feat-trees, as you suggest; the problem is that the same logic is not applied to spellcasting-it makes sense that Two-Weapon Fighting is required for Two Weapon Defence, but by the same logic perhaps Shocking Grasp should be a prerequisite to learn Lightning Bolt, or SM1, 2&3for SM4, and so on.
The other issue is that despite what the game designers believed, one feat is not remotely equal to one level of spells.

Well, sure, because most spells have an auto-scaling effect, that is lacking with feats or weapons.
I´ve always thought of ToM/Bo9S as testbeds for possibly new mechanics. Shadowcasters are interesting because they force "spell chains". In a sense, the Truenamer is interesting as their spell mechanics are closer akin to fighting.

[lunaticfringe]

if you want to play a Spellcaster and do ridiculous things 3.X is great at that. It also pretty much requires Optimization and multiclassing (which RAW it taxes you for?) so if that is your kink...

But this is a Fighter sucks in 3.5 thread. Well Duh. It's been over a decade, this isn't news. And there is a free system the is stylistically​ very similar that is far less punishing on Mundane classes (to an extent).

Different Systems are better at Different things and Pathfinder just does a better Fighter, that was my point. My previous statement about Pathfinder being better was Contextual because this is a Fighter Thread. I was merely trying to help.

Playing RPGs is supposed to be fun, and it is voluntary (I hope, if someone is forcing you find an adult). I tend to not waste my free time on things that piss me off when I could do something else, but hey that's me.

Apologies, I could have been clearer.

[Psyren]

Apologies, I could have been clearer.

You were perfectly clear to me and I agree 100%. It goes back to my earlier post - are threads just for bellyaching or are they for finding solutions? I much prefer the latter, and we're not going to get any official fixes to 3.5 material at this point, we just aren't.

[bekeleven]

The only people with reason to groan are the TO people who want to become gods where the game can't touch them.
The only reason is the one I giveth, yes this is not confrontational or inflammatory at all. It's the only reason. It's a fact. God descended from the heavens, parting the skies as he did and declared unto man, thou shallt accept Pathfiner as thy savior or I will condemn thee to the confines of Hell and the grognard exclaimed "Eh. It's not for me" and he was thus smote.No ones smiting anyone, but if you make a thread complaining about X from 3.5 then people are well within their rights to chime in and say "actually, PF fixed X and it's free of charge, have you tried that?" It's an honest attempt to help.

Unless one is not actually looking for solutions and just wants to vent and rant. But this is a discussion forum, not a rants & raves board à la Craigslist.Doesn't read like an honest attempt to help to me. I don't think disagreeing with "The only people who prefer 3.5 to PF are powergaming munchkins" are those that want to rant and vent.

[Psyren]

Doesn't read like an honest attempt to help to me. I don't think disagreeing with "The only people who prefer 3.5 to PF are powergaming munchkins" are those that want to rant and vent.

I didn't say a word about "powergaming munchkins," so I'm not sure why you quoted me. :smallconfused:

[Waker]

There's some logic to the existence of feat-trees, as you suggest; the problem is that the same logic is not applied to spellcasting-it makes sense that Two-Weapon Fighting is required for Two Weapon Defence, but by the same logic perhaps Shocking Grasp should be a prerequisite to learn Lightning Bolt, or SM1, 2&3for SM4, and so on.

There is a sort of logic to feat trees, but the issue is that when implemented they look funny. The problem being that many feats don't interact with the feats that they unlock. They look like they fit together, but mechanically they don't mesh. Here are a few examples.
Power Attack gives you the ability to sacrifice accuracy for power. But it doesn't work with Improved Bullrush since Bullrush doesn't deal damage (outside of Dungeoncrasher) nor does Improved Overrun.
Combat Expertise exchanges your BAB for a Dodge Bonus. It can't work with Improved Feint (which is an opposed skill check) and would work poorly if used in conjunction with Improved Trip, Improved Disarm or Whirlwind Attack (since you have worse to-hit).
Dodge, Mobility and Spring Attack are another example. The target of Dodge doesn't need to be the same as your Spring Attack target, whom you also wouldn't need Mobility against because Spring Attack negates the AoO. These feats are all related of course, but they don't actually need to work together and could honestly just be different ways to do similar things.
Point Blank Shot can only be used with Far Shot if you are using a weapon with short range increments.
And so on. The only feat chain (as a whole) that makes sense is Two-Weapon Fighting, since you are building on what the previous feat did. However since it's something that works in conjunction with BAB and is about granting extra attacks, simply granting iterative attacks when they become available would be nicer. Two-weapon Fighting already has enough issues.

[Karl Aegis]

In 5e they realized their mistake that requiring a feat or class feature to do something really basic like knocking someone's shield out of the way was a really bad idea. If only they printed what they homebrewed up as things anyone could attempt to do instead of printing them as feats things would look a whole lot better for everyone. Like, really, I don't think there are any rules for throwing sand in someone's eyes anywhere. Maybe it just doesn't do anything. But, they have a ton of feats for things like pinning someone's shield with your off-hand weapon, sundering weapons with a ranged attack, pinning someone to a wall, among other things. We really didn't need feats for those. They come up so infrequently they are better off as house rules for when they do come up. Printing them as official feats just lowered options for every class in the entire game, not increased anyone's available options.

[Florian]

I can accept it when it adds anything useful in the end. Lately tried an Unchained Monk with the full Brute Style feat chain (8 feats in total) and it was a blast. Haven´t had that much fun with combat maneuvers in a while.

[Fizban]

Except that this isn't real life. Every character in a D&D game is expected to be good at fighting.
Except they're not, otherwise every class would have full BAB+all weapons+bonus feats.

It's what they do day-in and day-out.
It's what they do when there's adventuring that needs to be done. Nothing says adventurers are actually supposed to fight monsters every day, and it's quite well observed that if they do you'll hit 20th in just a few months.

But even beyond that, there's a quite definite thing that says how good you are at combat-- your BAB. Claiming that somehow the Fighter is supposed to be the only class that knows which end of a sword is which is nonsensical.
BAB gives you more accuracy and attack speed as you level up, not which end of the sword is pointy. That's weapon proficiencies. Notice how the full BAB classes have all the martial weapons, and the classes with all martial weapons have full BAB, and the full BAB classes have more bonus combat feats, and the lower BAB classes don't? 3/4 BAB classes are not supposed to be as good in a straight fight, so complaining they don't have enough feats to fight means the feats are correctly priced. 1/2 BAB classes don't attack with weapons past the lowest levels and claiming their BAB represents actual combat skill is what's absurd. The claim only stands among core classes for Barbarian and Paladin- except the Barbarian's rage is considered equivalent to multiple feats before their other class features, and the Paladin has what the designers considered to be rather significant supernatural abilities.

There is a difference between expecting every adventurer to contribute to a monster fighting team, and expecting every adventurer to personally punch those monsters in the face. There is no requirement to have all those fighter feats to participate, people just want it because they want their characters to do everything. They want their rogues to be TWF blenders, even though it's not required. They want trip builds with every trip feat printed from every book, even though it's not required. In short, they want a higher powered game than it was originally written at, usually starting from a caster perspective and based on the most powerful feats printed later rather than any of the non-casting core classes. It's what most complaints actually boil down to.

[Guizonde]

Except they're not, otherwise every class would have full BAB+all weapons+bonus feats.
There is a difference between expecting every adventurer to contribute to a monster fighting team, and expecting every adventurer to personally punch those monsters in the face. There is no requirement to have all those fighter feats to participate, people just want it because they want their characters to do everything. They want their rogues to be TWF blenders, even though it's not required. They want trip builds with every trip feat printed from every book, even though it's not required. In short, they want a higher powered game than it was originally written at, usually starting from a caster perspective and based on the most powerful feats printed later rather than any of the non-casting core classes. It's what most complaints actually boil down to.

sooooo, you're saying that the grumps should be playing gestalt builds? because what you're describing is not even reachable by epic levels without some serious cheesemongering. don't get me wrong, playing a swiss-army knife is awesome, but by those rules, wouldn't casters be even more broken than they already are compared to martials? straight-20 paladins respawn, but aren't exactly a one-man army, they're a team-booster. a straight-20 cleric is a borderline demigod and that's just using their spell list. giving out ways to make every rogue capable of out-attacking a whirling dervish seems to me a surefire way of making the powergaming wizard wet himself with glee.

i'm all for some overlap in skills between party-members, but if everyone can do everything, somebody's gonna get bored unless the dm manages player time really closely.

[Fizban]

sooooo, you're saying that the grumps should be playing gestalt builds? because what you're describing is not even reachable by epic levels without some serious cheesemongering. don't get me wrong, playing a swiss-army knife is awesome, but by those rules, wouldn't casters be even more broken than they already are compared to martials? straight-20 paladins respawn, but aren't exactly a one-man army, they're a team-booster. a straight-20 cleric is a borderline demigod and that's just using their spell list. giving out ways to make every rogue capable of out-attacking a whirling dervish seems to me a surefire way of making the powergaming wizard wet himself with glee.

i'm all for some overlap in skills between party-members, but if everyone can do everything, somebody's gonna get bored unless the dm manages player time really closely.
Have you seen how many people play gestalt around here? Gestalt build optimization is a fairly common topic. Followed by non-gestalt build optmization, which is usually dominated by either gishes that have the highest BAB possible without losing 9th level spells, and non-caster builds that demand the ability to solo everything they meet in combat while also cramming as many skills as possible so they can solo as many non-combat encounters as possible. And recommendations to use Pathfinder, in which everyone has more feats and the classes have more features, making it easier to do all of that.

It's not what I'm saying they want, it's what many people actually say they want. And then they complain when a game that is specifically designed with four roles split between four characters is making it too hard for them to take multiple roles with one character, that when a party of characters who are each optimized to be twice as strong as normal everything is too easy and anyone playing a build that isn't on the same level can't keep up. That's not a problem with the game, it's a problem with the players.

[Mordaedil]

No ones smiting anyone, but if you make a thread complaining about X from 3.5 then people are well within their rights to chime in and say "actually, PF fixed X and it's free of charge, have you tried that?" It's an honest attempt to help.

Unless one is not actually looking for solutions and just wants to vent and rant. But this is a discussion forum, not a rants & raves board à la Craigslist.

Pathfinder is an honest to god great improvement on D&D 3.5 systems, but the poster I was quoting was posting as if there was no other reasons someone would still play 3.5 edition, which is neither helpful nor productive to conversation, hence my flippant response. Also why you were quoted later in the thread, because you seemed to miss that bit.

[Psyren]

Pathfinder is an honest to god great improvement on D&D 3.5 systems, but the poster I was quoting was posting as if there was no other reasons someone would still play 3.5 edition, which is neither helpful nor productive to conversation, hence my flippant response. Also why you were quoted later in the thread, because you seemed to miss that bit.

I never said there was no reason to play 3.5 edition. Is all this drama necessary?

[Mordaedil]

I never said there was no reason to play 3.5 edition.

Nobody made the claim that you did. Calthropstu did.


Is all this drama necessary?

I dunno, is it? You're the one making a mountain out of a molehill.

[Knaight]

That´s the type of complaint to always happens in a vacuum and will at some point use "being able to contribute" as a be-all, end-all argument.
Two things:
1) There's also a major argument in terms of how characters explicitly described by the fighter class have a use for significantly more than two skills.
2) This is also the type of complaint that comes from playing games that aren't just a series of fights one after each other, where things covered by other skills are relevant often. Said games are usually not D&D, and when they're not D&D they consistently work fine*. Meanwhile when it is D&D 3.x a handful of classes inevitably end up weirdly incompetent in a lot of non combat situations.

Fortunately, it's also a really easy house rule, so fixing it isn't hard.

*With the obvious caveat that the set of relevant games here isn't "not D&D games" but "not D&D games that were popular enough to show up on my radar, were read, and were liked enough from the reading to actually see play".

[Psyren]

Nobody made the claim that you did. Calthropstu did.

You said it was "why I was quoted" yet you agree that it had nothing to do with me. Which is it? :smallconfused:


I dunno, is it? You're the one making a mountain out of a molehill.

Pretty sure that's you. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22022235&postcount=122)

[Cosi]

To be fair, you can build a pretty nice Fighter in 3.5 with sufficient ACFs too. (Thug + Zhentrim +dead levels, say, Dungeoncrasher optional)

Pretty much. PF is "more content roughly equivalent to late stage 3e" plus "a bunch of little changes that don't do enough to justify their existence". It doesn't fix the vast majority of problems, it just produces more shovelware content. I'm sure there are additional marginal improvements to the Fighter, because if you write enough content there obviously will be, but it's not worth learning a new system or trawling through all of the chaff to find them. Just use Tome of Battle (or Races of War if you're comfortable with homebrew) and don't waste your time, money, or effort on PF.


There's some logic to the existence of feat-trees, as you suggest; the problem is that the same logic is not applied to spellcasting-it makes sense that Two-Weapon Fighting is required for Two Weapon Defence, but by the same logic perhaps Shocking Grasp should be a prerequisite to learn Lightning Bolt, or SM1, 2&3for SM4, and so on.

Chains are bad. They make it hard for your character to pick up new things in gameplay, and the reduce the usability of content. If I write a feat that requires six other feats, either that feat has to be insane enough to justify spending all your feats getting it (and therefore probably broken) or it's only going to see use on the .000001% of characters who organically have those feats.


Except they're not, otherwise every class would have full BAB+all weapons+bonus feats.

First, those things don't make you good at melee. The Fighter has those. The Cleric doesn't. Remind me which class is better at melee combat?

Second, "fighting" doesn't just mean "with a sword". You can tell, because we're using the word "fighting" and not the phrase "fighting with a sword". Rogues, Wizards, Clerics, Warmages, and Healers all "fight".


In short, they want a higher powered game than it was originally written at, usually starting from a caster perspective and based on the most powerful feats printed later rather than any of the non-casting core classes. It's what most complaints actually boil down to.

No, they want a game where their characters are as powerful as the game says they are supposed to be. They want 10th levels of Fighter to make you CR 10, because that is what the rules say they do.

[Morphic tide]

Pretty much. PF is "more content roughly equivalent to late stage 3e" plus "a bunch of little changes that don't do enough to justify their existence". It doesn't fix the vast majority of problems, it just produces more shovelware content. I'm sure there are additional marginal improvements to the Fighter, because if you write enough content there obviously will be, but it's not worth learning a new system or trawling through all of the chaff to find them. Just use Tome of Battle (or Races of War if you're comfortable with homebrew) and don't waste your time, money, or effort on PF.
The major rules changes are as follows: Combat maneuvers, as in Trip, Grapple and Feign, have their own seperate attack roll bonus and AC values, rather than being a bundle of different things. You get a feat every odd level. Playing as a monster alters your level based on said monster's CR. A bunch of skills were rolled together. That's it for the changes to the core system. It's very much a pile of variant rules to 3.5, it's close enough that very few things need translating, to the point that most 3.5 classes need only a change to class skills to work in Pathfinder.

Also, Pathfinder is so OGL that all first-party game rules and a lot of third-party game rules are available for free on the Internet. You don't have to pay a single penny to play Pathfinder with a huge amount of splatbook support. D20PFSRD is the site. It's a more complete index of Pathfinder than DnD tools is for 3.X, and PFSRD is Pazio-approved/operated


Chains are bad. They make it hard for your character to pick up new things in gameplay, and the reduce the usability of content. If I write a feat that requires six other feats, either that feat has to be insane enough to justify spending all your feats getting it (and therefore probably broken) or it's only going to see use on the .000001% of characters who organically have those feats.
Feat chains work as a way to have progressing abilities outside of class features and too complicated for a single feat, or would be too strong as a single feat. Like feat access to Incarnum.


First, those things don't make you good at melee. The Fighter has those. The Cleric doesn't. Remind me which class is better at melee combat?
The Cleric is better at melee due to access to the support spells needed for melee to work. That's basically it. A Fighter buffed by a Cleric specialized in buffing is typically better at melee than a Cleric specialized in melee, because that's how the game works.


No, they want a game where their characters are as powerful as the game says they are supposed to be. They want 10th levels of Fighter to make you CR 10, because that is what the rules say they do.
Actually, I think a level 10 character is supposed to be CR 5, as a CR 10 creature is supposed to be a level appropriate encounter for a party of four ECL 10 characters.

[ComaVision]

Actually, I think a level 10 character is supposed to be CR 5, as a CR 10 creature is supposed to be a level appropriate encounter for a party of four ECL 10 characters.

You think a level 10 character will use 25% of the daily resources of a group of 4 level 5s?

In 3.5e, a level 10 character is CR 10. In Pathfinder, a level 10 character is CR 9.

[Morphic tide]

You think a level 10 character will use 25% of the daily resources of a group of 4 level 5s?

In 3.5e, a level 10 character is CR 10. In Pathfinder, a level 10 character is CR 9.

...Okay, level 5 is probably too low. But the mechanics of the game and general functions of it make a four-on-one fight involving daily resources for all characters on both sides makes it so that a 10th level character will barely register as a speed bump to a well organized party with 4th level spells.

And Rogues and Fighters don't have daily resources in 3.5. Like, the stereotypical and "default" party has two characters that don't have any daily resources, and the other two are damn close to all or nothing on their daily resources for the early levels. And ToB makes it so that you can have an almost totally functional party that has no daily resources, only per-encounter and per-round resources. So that judgement of CR is utterly useless.

[ComaVision]

IIRC, hitpoints are considered as part of the resource expenditure.

I'll leaving the defending of the CR system to Cosi. I was stating how it actually works, not how good a measure I think it is.

[zergling.exe]

Also, Pathfinder is so OGL that all first-party game rules and a lot of third-party game rules are available for free on the Internet. You don't have to pay a single penny to play Pathfinder with a huge amount of splatbook support. D20PFSRD is the site. It's a more complete index of Pathfinder than DnD tools is for 3.X, and PFSRD is Pazio-approved/operated.

Pathfinder has 2 "SRDs". One is the PRD, operated by Paizo, and the other is the PFSRD operated by a third party. PFSRD also has third party content which I believe the PRD lacks.

[Florian]

Pathfinder has 2 "SRDs". One is the PRD, operated by Paizo, and the other is the PFSRD operated by a third party. PFSRD also has third party content which I believe the PRD lacks.

It´s a bit different. Paizo maintains a "core" and some "side" product lines. Everything is OGL, so available in the public domain, but they maintain the "core" line with errata and FAQs, the "side" lines are tagged "buyer beware". "Core" always beats "side", unlike the WotC policy of new beats old.
The PRD is always the latest version of "core". The archievesofnethys.com has more of a focus on the "side" lines, especially the setting-specific material, the PFSRD more on the splats and 3pp stuff.

[Psyren]

It´s a bit different. Paizo maintains a "core" and some "side" product lines. Everything is OGL, so available in the public domain, but they maintain the "core" line with errata and FAQs, the "side" lines are tagged "buyer beware". "Core" always beats "side", unlike the WotC policy of new beats old.
The PRD is always the latest version of "core". The archievesofnethys.com has more of a focus on the "side" lines, especially the setting-specific material, the PFSRD more on the splats and 3pp stuff.

I would agree, with the caveat that specific trumps general. So for example, if the core product line has no rules on sailing a ship, you would default to a side splat like Skull & Shackles.

[Calthropstu]

Nobody made the claim that you did. Calthropstu did.



I dunno, is it? You're the one making a mountain out of a molehill.
I never claimed there was no reason to play 3.5. Pathfinder is an all around better game, it is true. But 3.5 has MUCH better flavor a a huge wealth of supporting cast that just wasn't ported into pathfinder. No illithid, no giths, no beholders, the wonderful drow flavor is gone in pf, and mythic is a poor substitute for epic.
But 1-20, pf wins in over 85% circumstances system wise.

[Jormengand]

And Rogues and Fighters don't have daily resources in 3.5.

Oh man, I was waiting to be able to check space (1,5) on my bingo card (http://imgur.com/jNT6Ce6)!

[Psyren]

I never claimed there was no reason to play 3.5. Pathfinder is an all around better game, it is true. But 3.5 has MUCH better flavor a a huge wealth of supporting cast that just wasn't ported into pathfinder. No illithid, no giths, no beholders, the wonderful drow flavor is gone in pf, and mythic is a poor substitute for epic.
But 1-20, pf wins in over 85% circumstances system wise.

Personally I'd much rather have Mythic than Epic. For starters, the math in Mythic actually functions, and you don't have to wait until nosebleed levels to use it.

[Cosi]

The major rules changes are as follows: Combat maneuvers, as in Trip, Grapple and Feign, have their own seperate attack roll bonus and AC values, rather than being a bundle of different things. You get a feat every odd level. Playing as a monster alters your level based on said monster's CR. A bunch of skills were rolled together. That's it for the changes to the core system. It's very much a pile of variant rules to 3.5, it's close enough that very few things need translating, to the point that most 3.5 classes need only a change to class skills to work in Pathfinder.

It's not the major rules changes that are the problem. It's the minor rules changes. There's a lot of little stuff (for example, the settlement rules are different because Paizo couldn't copy them), and that makes it a lot of effort to adapt. Frankly, I have yet to see anything from PF that convinces me to make the switch.


Feat chains work as a way to have progressing abilities outside of class features and too complicated for a single feat, or would be too strong as a single feat. Like feat access to Incarnum.

I can't think of (off the top of my head) any feat chain -- that is a series of feats which each require the previous feat -- that would be broken as a single feat. In fact, the game would probably be better if it took one feat to become good at archer or fighting with two weapons or fighting unarmed.

If you want to repeatedly spend resources to gain access to a class mechanic, that seems like something that should be covered by the multi-classing rules rather than the feat rules.


The Cleric is better at melee due to access to the support spells needed for melee to work. That's basically it. A Fighter buffed by a Cleric specialized in buffing is typically better at melee than a Cleric specialized in melee, because that's how the game works.

That's only true if you believe that martial weapons, 1 HP/level, and bonus feats are better than the Cleric's self only buffs. I think that's probably not true, but I could potentially be convinced otherwise.


...Okay, level 5 is probably too low. But the mechanics of the game and general functions of it make a four-on-one fight involving daily resources for all characters on both sides makes it so that a 10th level character will barely register as a speed bump to a well organized party with 4th level spells.

Well, yes, because that's one CR 10 creature versus four CR 7 or 8 creatures, which are together EL 11 or 12. Also, PCs will tend to be more optimized than monsters.


I'll leaving the defending of the CR system to Cosi. I was stating how it actually works, not how good a measure I think it is.

I mean, this is pretty off topic, but I don't know that it needs a whole lot of defending. I'm pretty sure if you pick a random monster, that monster is within +/- 1 CR of its printed CR 80% to 90% of the time. That's way better than printed classes, printed feats, or printed spells. What kind of accuracy do you think the CR needs to be useful?

[Calthropstu]

Personally I'd much rather have Mythic than Epic. For starters, the math in Mythic actually functions, and you don't have to wait until nosebleed levels to use it.

True, I prefer mythic myself but see the appeal of epic. I reach lvl 20 with my char and then what? No more options for advancement except the starstone and the handing in of my character sheet as an npc. With epic there is pretty much infinite advancement options.
It's at least lateral, and a good argument for 3.5. Sure you can do the whole porting rules over thing and many do, but eh.

[ComaVision]

I don't really buy in to the argument that PF is wholly better than 3.5e. It didn't fix any of the major problems of 3.5e.


I mean, this is pretty off topic, but I don't know that it needs a whole lot of defending. I'm pretty sure if you pick a random monster, that monster is within +/- 1 CR of its printed CR 80% to 90% of the time. That's way better than printed classes, printed feats, or printed spells. What kind of accuracy do you think the CR needs to be useful?

It was a tongue-in-cheek comment. I do think that CR is useful.

[Morphic tide]

Oh man, I was waiting to be able to check space (1,5) on my bingo card (http://imgur.com/jNT6Ce6)!

It's more a criticism of using "daily resources expended" as a measure of CR when a sizable chunk of the classes in the game don't have any daily resources. HP literally does not count as it barely recovers anything on a daily basis.

Swordsage is good enough at enough things to make the lack of daily limits a serious question, by the way. A Swordsage/Crusader can be a scary plot breaker by having most of the tanking of Crusader with a large amount of the mobility of Swordsage. It's not nearly as powerful as a Druid or Cleric, but it's close enough in enough situations that it seriously makes me consider the difference to be an almost fair tradeoff between endurance and power.

Almost. Casually obliterating game balance like a fully kitted out CoDzilla is never able to have fair tradeoffs that give less power.

[Psyren]

True, I prefer mythic myself but see the appeal of epic. I reach lvl 20 with my char and then what? No more options for advancement except the starstone and the handing in of my character sheet as an npc. With epic there is pretty much infinite advancement options.
It's at least lateral, and a good argument for 3.5. Sure you can do the whole porting rules over thing and many do, but eh.

There are "post-20" guidelines (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/coreRulebook/gamemastering.html#beyond-20th-level) which you can combine with PrCs and Mythic to make "Epic" characters whose math is much more manageable. Under the PF guidelines, BAB continues to increase (unlike 3.5 epic), though the 4-attack cap remains.

[Morphic tide]

It's not the major rules changes that are the problem. It's the minor rules changes. There's a lot of little stuff (for example, the settlement rules are different because Paizo couldn't copy them), and that makes it a lot of effort to adapt. Frankly, I have yet to see anything from PF that convinces me to make the switch.
You... are aware that you can just use the 3.X rules, right? Like, you don't have to use only Pathfinder. Mixing Pathfinder and 3.X is quite common because some people like the core system of one but want to use things from the other. The systems take very little work for conversions. And if you see something from Pathfinder you like and want to use, you can port it to 3.X, either 3e or 3.5 rules or whatever mix of the two you use as 3.X.


I can't think of (off the top of my head) any feat chain -- that is a series of feats which each require the previous feat -- that would be broken as a single feat. In fact, the game would probably be better if it took one feat to become good at archer or fighting with two weapons or fighting unarmed.
Fully agreed on having necessities be covered by one feat, but I prefer having 3 feats for each utterly basic way of fighting. As in "shoot lots of arrows" and "shoot one arrow crazy well" each getting three feats, with the two being compatible enough to have getting both be a solid boost to both, making you Master Bow Person by shooting lots of arrows far away and really accurately.


If you want to repeatedly spend resources to gain access to a class mechanic, that seems like something that should be covered by the multi-classing rules rather than the feat rules.
Similar to or derived from class mechanics. Like getting situational Sneak Attack based damage, or the Wild Cohort feat being a slightly-worse Animal Companion.


That's only true if you believe that martial weapons, 1 HP/level, and bonus feats are better than the Cleric's self only buffs. I think that's probably not true, but I could potentially be convinced otherwise.
You can get some really nice stuff with feats. MoI lets you spend two feats on getting a Soulmeld and a Chakra Bind. Fighters get bare necessities covered by bonus feats and can get some Nice Things to improve their abilities further than the feat chains would otherwise let happen, relying on buff spells to make up for what they skipped. You know, teamwork.


Well, yes, because that's one CR 10 creature versus four CR 7 or 8 creatures, which are together EL 11 or 12. Also, PCs will tend to be more optimized than monsters.
...This is circular reasoning. I'm claiming that a level 10 character isn't CR 10, that CR!=level, because it is basically not worth noting the fight to a party of level 7 characters, and your response is... that it's four CR 7 creatures because CR=level. And that players tend to be better optimized than monsters, even though CR is about the objective threat of an encounter.

And, besides that, I'm saying the organized party of ECL 7 characters walks over the level 10 character, as in well under 10% daily resources used. When a party of ECL 10 characters should be using 25% daily resources to pull it off.


I mean, this is pretty off topic, but I don't know that it needs a whole lot of defending. I'm pretty sure if you pick a random monster, that monster is within +/- 1 CR of its printed CR 80% to 90% of the time. That's way better than printed classes, printed feats, or printed spells. What kind of accuracy do you think the CR needs to be useful?
It really isn't accurate, though. There are multiple threads about digging into why printed CRs are wrong, one way or another.

And the one biggest issue is that the value of groups isn't really considered properly. A well organized party consisting of t3 classes can stomp most level appropriate encounters by optimizing as a party, deliberately ignoring niches to let each one focus on their role in the party. A two-person party can hyperfocus one person as a buffer/debugger with sneaking and the other person as Beatstick McHugesword who murders enemies with the schewed stats and roll over a shocking number of combat encounters.

There's a bloody meme about Kobolds, not a single one above level 5 and with little build optimization to the point of being mostly NPC classes, screwing over a party with access to 9th level spells simply because the Kobolds were using good tactics. It's called Tucker's Kobolds.

[noob]

Except that they were not screwing with people with spells of level 9 since they used a whole lot environment and that with levels 9 spells you reshape the dungeon (anyone heard about gate to the sun?) and never go to the battlefield(you instead have an army that spam earthquake on the dungeon)
it was more about giving trouble to unsuspecting high level non wizards(by high I mean level 5 to 10 above that you just stop using terrain and instead carry the terrain you prefer and never ever take a path that was already here(you instead dig through walls))

[Cosi]

You... are aware that you can just use the 3.X rules, right?

So then why are we saying "Pathfinder the system is good"? If you just want to say "there is good content under the PF umbrella", sure, but that doesn't seem to be the position people are defending.


Fully agreed on having necessities be covered by one feat, but I prefer having 3 feats for each utterly basic way of fighting. As in "shoot lots of arrows" and "shoot one arrow crazy well" each getting three feats, with the two being compatible enough to have getting both be a solid boost to both, making you Master Bow Person by shooting lots of arrows far away and really accurately.

Three feats is half to a third of your total feats for most characters. Spending that to be good at one particular style of combat for one particular weapon seems bad. Also incompatible with e.g. Lord of the Uttercold and Divine Metamagic also being feats. This touches on a deeper issue with 3e feats, namely that you get feats as if each was supposed to have a major impact on your character, but feats are written as if they were minor upgrades you got quite frequently. Until that circle gets squared, I'm not sure you can make feats work.


...This is circular reasoning. I'm claiming that a level 10 character isn't CR 10, that CR!=level, because it is basically not worth noting the fight to a party of level 7 characters, and your response is... that it's four CR 7 creatures because CR=level.

(3.5.) RAW is pretty clear that a level 10 Fighter is supposed to be CR 10. I broadly agree that a level 10 Fighter is not as dangerous as a CR 10 monster, but that's a failure of the game to reach the standards it sets, not the Fighter being CR 4.


And, besides that, I'm saying the organized party of ECL 7 characters walks over the level 10 character, as in well under 10% daily resources used. When a party of ECL 10 characters should be using 25% daily resources to pull it off.

Not if they're EL 11. Also, I don't know that I necessarily agree with you to begin with. Do you have anything substantial to back up your assertions?


It really isn't accurate, though. There are multiple threads about digging into why printed CRs are wrong, one way or another.

What level of accuracy would you expect from CR to consider it a good measure?

Suppose you pick ten monsters at random from the five Monster Manuals and compare them to some standard of CR you think is appropriate. How many of them would have to fall into what range (relative to their printed CR) for you to say CR is good?


There's a bloody meme about Kobolds, not a single one above level 5 and with little build optimization to the point of being mostly NPC classes, screwing over a party with access to 9th level spells simply because the Kobolds were using good tactics. It's called Tucker's Kobolds.

I'm pretty sure Tucker's Kobolds predates 3e. Also, the Kobolds employed a bunch of traps that would be factored in, and the party reacted fairly poorly IIRC.

[Morphic tide]

Except that they were not screwing with people with spells of level 9 since they used a whole lot environment and that with levels 9 spells you reshape the dungeon (anyone heard about gate to the sun?) and never go to the battlefield(you instead have an army that spam earthquake on the dungeon)
it was more about giving trouble to unsuspecting high level non wizards(by high I mean level 5 to 10 above that you just stop using terrain and instead carry the terrain you prefer and never ever take a path that was already here(you instead dig through walls))

But doing this all the time is both sufficiently assholish to get you booted to Neutral due to mass property damage and collateral fatalities and there was a lot of dungeon past that so the terrain-reshaping stuff would occupy valuable and needed spell slots for later on.

Doing that is the RAW-exploiting, plot-destroying, way to deal with the situation. It bypasses encounters entirely, and this was a place with some rather high level Outsiders below the Kobolds. So wrecking the place would be quite likely to end up with a Bad End of some kind.

Don't assume that not bypassing all terrain is proof that the party is hypothetically incapable of doing so. This was an actual game, not theory crafting. So the casters may simply not have thought to do so. They may not have prepared the right spells for the job. They may not have had access to those exact spells due to being Wizards who, horror of horrors, didn't have it in their spell books. There might have been in-character reasons to avoid breaking the place or pulling a dungeon bypass. Like not being able to do so in character, because the player decided to be coherent with their character and not optimize to hell and back.

[Beheld]

You... are aware that you can just use the 3.X rules, right? Like, you don't have to use only Pathfinder. Mixing Pathfinder and 3.X is quite common because some people like the core system of one but want to use things from the other. The systems take very little work for conversions. And if you see something from Pathfinder you like and want to use, you can port it to 3.X, either 3e or 3.5 rules or whatever mix of the two you use as 3.X.

So you are saying that there is no reason to be running Pathfinder as evidence that he should be running Pathfinder?


...This is circular reasoning. I'm claiming that a level 10 character isn't CR 10, that CR!=level, because it is basically not worth noting the fight to a party of level 7 characters, and your response is... that it's four CR 7 creatures because CR=level. And that players tend to be better optimized than monsters, even though CR is about the objective threat of an encounter.

And, besides that, I'm saying the organized party of ECL 7 characters walks over the level 10 character, as in well under 10% daily resources used. When a party of ECL 10 characters should be using 25% daily resources to pull it off.

.... No he's saying that a party of level 7 characters is higher EL than a single level 10, so it's supposed to win.

As to your claim that apparently a party of level 7 characters stomp a single level 10 character... more or less than CR 10 monsters? You can, through optimization, and any number of bull**** tricks, break the game and stomp everything, but to the extend you are stomping a level 10 Cleric with Spell Resistance and a bunch combat buffs and some undead minions, or a level 10 in a Windstorm with his Animal Companion and still a level 10 Druid, or a Wizard who uses Scry and Lesser Planar Binding to harass you forever from his Private Sanctum, you are probably also stomping a Greater Air Elemental, or a Vrock, or Zelekaut because you over engineered your party.

And if you aren't stomping those, you probably aren't stomping the level 10 PC classes.


It really isn't accurate, though. There are multiple threads about digging into why printed CRs are wrong, one way or another.

...

There's a bloody meme about Kobolds, not a single one above level 5 and with little build optimization to the point of being mostly NPC classes, screwing over a party with access to 9th level spells simply because the Kobolds were using good tactics. It's called Tucker's Kobolds.

There has never been an even remotely competent showing that CR is inappropriate. It gets asserted without argument a lot, and then never really demonstrated in any way.

Anything can be used with tactics, and if you are the Dungeon Master, you can do all kinds of bull**** when you are making your own monsters and not using monsters with listed CRs, you can abuse templates or PC levels if you want, but that isn't the same thing as saying that printed CRs on monsters are bad, that's just saying you know which templates can be abused, and how to abuse them.

Also, pretty sure tucker's kobolds was not 3e.

[Morphic tide]

So then why are we saying "Pathfinder the system is good"? If you just want to say "there is good content under the PF umbrella", sure, but that doesn't seem to be the position people are defending.
Because there's only one meaningful difference between the two which leaves Pathfinder ahead in many situations for actual fun. The core system itself. And Pathfinder's core system has, in fact, fixed a bunch of problems with 3.5. LA became a direct function of CR, for example.


Three feats is half to a third of your total feats for most characters. Spending that to be good at one particular style of combat for one particular weapon seems bad. Also incompatible with e.g. Lord of the Uttercold and Divine Metamagic also being feats. This touches on a deeper issue with 3e feats, namely that you get feats as if each was supposed to have a major impact on your character, but feats are written as if they were minor upgrades you got quite frequently. Until that circle gets squared, I'm not sure you can make feats work.
When I say three feats, I'm talking three feats on the level of packing the basic Weapon Focus/Specialization chain of attack and damage roll bonuses into a single endlessly scaling feat. Or the TWF chain turned into a single feat with endless scaling.

It's three feats that are easily on the level of class features, if fairly boring ones. But though ought to be boring to start with because they are generic. Things you assume people of a certain proficiency at something to have.


(3.5.) RAW is pretty clear that a level 10 Fighter is supposed to be CR 10. I broadly agree that a level 10 Fighter is not as dangerous as a CR 10 monster, but that's a failure of the game to reach the standards it sets, not the Fighter being CR 4.
As been established for a long time, 3.5 RAW is covered in inconsistencies and bad design choices. The idea that a single character of your level can expect to exhaust a quarter of your daily resources and three other people of your level means that the game is either embracing the insanity that is the 15 minute adventuring day or is confused as to how groups fighting single people work.

This setup assumes resource consumption just gets divided evenly by the number of characters present, which is blatantly wrong. Groups work together, which saves resources. Flanking makes for a 10% accuracy boost for a non-resource-consuming form of attack and several sorts of resource consuming attack. Buffs are small resource expenditures that can significantly increase the contribution of a class that has little to no relevant daily resources, thus schewing the numbers. Encounter resources explicitly ignore previous fights, and cooldowns are another thing entirely for resource management.

The CR system mentioning expected daily resources used on each encounter makes it almost inherently invalid, because the only Core need for daily resources is healing. All other absolutely vital functions can be accomplished with permanent magic items or non-daily resources. Even healing probably has non-daily-resource methods that are practical in Core.


So you are saying that there is no reason to be running Pathfinder as evidence that he should be running Pathfinder?
It's more that there's practically no reason not to beyond personal preference. Which is fine, I'd just prefer that to be the reason rather than not wanting to learn a new system when Pathfinder was specifically designed to retain nearly total compatibility with 3.5. All the things you want from 3.X can be ported to Pathfinder easily and replacements can be ignored, while several things in 3.X which cause problems are gone and Pathfinder's changes don't add any serious new problems with the basic mechanics. It's also noticeably faster due to less checking of numbers because of the consolidation.


.... No he's saying that a party of level 7 characters is higher EL than a single level 10, so it's supposed to win.
He specifically said that 4th level spells means they would be CR 7-8 each, therefore they are CR/ECL 11-12 in total. And a two level/CR difference should not lead to stomping.


As to your claim that apparently a party of level 7 characters stomp a single level 10 character... more or less than CR 10 monsters?
More. Because my position is that a single level 10 character isn't able to make 4 characters of significantly lower level expend a quarter of their daily resources, so the idea that they can get a higher level group to spend more resources is silly, thus making them not meet the definition of being CR 10.


You can, through optimization, and any number of bull**** tricks, break the game and stomp everything, but to the extend you are stomping a level 10 Cleric with Spell Resistance and a bunch combat buffs and some undead minions, or a level 10 in a Windstorm with his Animal Companion and still a level 10 Druid, or a Wizard who uses Scry and Lesser Planar Binding to harass you forever from his Private Sanctum,
All of those are notably overpowered setups for PCs and notable cases where the rules are insane, like letting Clerics permanently control twice their CL in HD of Undead. I'm specifically talking about party optimization, where tactics and synergistic builds make the party as a whole considerable stronger against a very broad range of enemies.


you are probably also stomping a Greater Air Elemental, or a Vrock, or Zelekaut because you over engineered your party.

And if you aren't stomping those, you probably aren't stomping the level 10 PC classes.
...do you have literally no ability to see PCs as anything other than highly optimized cheese piles? And yes, such a party probably would stomp actual CR 10 monsters, because they have access to all of the same tricks as the cheese piles. And are using multiple characters to be able to focus the cheese for each one to perform one subset of activities better than the generalist of cheese does and filing eachother's gaps.

Even without cheese piling, it's 4v1, so you are close to guaranteed to have Flanking and bodyblocking happen.


There has never been an even remotely competent showing that CR is inappropriate. It gets asserted without argument a lot, and then never really demonstrated in any way.
There's certainly a lot of examples of certain creatures being nonsensically CRd through actual number crunching. Like a lot of the optimization board stuff on Dragons, and the Monstrous Crab.


Anything can be used with tactics, and if you are the Dungeon Master, you can do all kinds of bull**** when you are making your own monsters and not using monsters with listed CRs, you can abuse templates or PC levels if you want, but that isn't the same thing as saying that printed CRs on monsters are bad, that's just saying you know which templates can be abused, and how to abuse them.
Tactics almost always favor greater numbers, though. A single creature agains four other creatures with capabilities fairly close to its own us liable to be slain quickly. Four Crusaders against one Crusader, all of equal builds, can lead to zero daily resources expended. For any of them, including the one who died.

Doing it with Paladins leads to the lone Paladin having all their daily resources applicable expended and considerably less than a quarter of the other Paladin's daily resources expended due to the group of four dealing more than four times the damage the lone one does due to flanking modifiers.

[Cosi]

Because there's only one meaningful difference between the two which leaves Pathfinder ahead in many situations for actual fun. The core system itself. And Pathfinder's core system has, in fact, fixed a bunch of problems with 3.5. LA became a direct function of CR, for example.

Could you maybe point me to some rules in the PFSRD (which, as we have so frequently been reminded, is free) instead of giving me one sentence blurbs? I don't care about PF, so I have not bothered to figure out if their rules for things are any good. Having LA at all still sounds pretty bad, because a CR 10 creature is already nominally equivalent to a 10th level character.


When I say three feats, I'm talking three feats on the level of packing the basic Weapon Focus/Specialization chain of attack and damage roll bonuses into a single endlessly scaling feat. Or the TWF chain turned into a single feat with endless scaling.

Both of those seem super terrible as a 1/3 levels feat. Like, Weapon Focus et al is some minor number correction. Having that be a feat people take is probably worse than just baking those things in and giving people one less feat. Even Perfect Two Weapon Fighting is not as transformative as Lord of the Uttercold or Greenbound Summoning. Fundamentally, if you are getting one feat every three levels, it should not ever be "now your ability to deal level appropriate damage works with a different set of weapons". Because that's dumb and terrible.


He specifically said that 4th level spells means they would be CR 7-8 each, therefore they are CR/ECL 11-12 in total. And a two level/CR difference should not lead to stomping.

A two level difference is equivalent to doubling the number of creatures in an encounter. For someone spending the rest of the time ranting about "teamwork", ignoring it here seems like motivated reasoning.


All of those are notably overpowered setups for PCs and notable cases where the rules are insane, like letting Clerics permanently control twice their CL in HD of Undead. I'm specifically talking about party optimization, where tactics and synergistic builds make the party as a whole considerable stronger against a very broad range of enemies.

You wanna write up some builds? Or even citations? I see a bunch of theorycraft coming from you, but zero empirical work. Run the numbers. Don't yammer on about how the numbers "obviously" support your conclusions.


There's certainly a lot of examples of certain creatures being nonsensically CRd through actual number crunching. Like a lot of the optimization board stuff on Dragons, and the Monstrous Crab.

So that's what, two MM entries? Do you know how many MM entries there are in the MM?

[noob]

But doing this all the time is both sufficiently assholish to get you booted to Neutral due to mass property damage and collateral fatalities and there was a lot of dungeon past that so the terrain-reshaping stuff would occupy valuable and needed spell slots for later on.

Doing that is the RAW-exploiting, plot-destroying, way to deal with the situation. It bypasses encounters entirely, and this was a place with some rather high level Outsiders below the Kobolds. So wrecking the place would be quite likely to end up with a Bad End of some kind.

Don't assume that not bypassing all terrain is proof that the party is hypothetically incapable of doing so. This was an actual game, not theory crafting. So the casters may simply not have thought to do so. They may not have prepared the right spells for the job. They may not have had access to those exact spells due to being Wizards who, horror of horrors, didn't have it in their spell books. There might have been in-character reasons to avoid breaking the place or pulling a dungeon bypass. Like not being able to do so in character, because the player decided to be coherent with their character and not optimize to hell and back.
Well 1: tucker kobolds was never said to be in a dungeon with mighty outsiders right below and if that was the case then with the classical divination spells(like eyes of the stone and so on) that the adventurers often cast before going to a location they would have known what was under the dungeon.
Furthermore if you was supposed to go deeper you would have fought the mighty outsiders already and it is better to fight them where you are prepared than doing the reverse.(and the outsiders were probably evil but they might have kept prisoner good ones but then you would probably know due to the divinations spells used before the time for annihilation)
(Yes when I play with my team we just spend days casting divination spells from a safe place and do rarely something else but since we have 3 full casters there is three of them participating)
Those kobolds for giving trouble efficiently would need the following
1:Making tactical voidstone warhead annihilation(and its variants) impossible(for example have multiple prisoners at very distant locations and menace to kill all the prisoners with resurrection preventing weapons instantly if one prisoner is missing or if they spot an attack or anything against them.(but then it could possibly be impossible to save all the prisoners in which case the party will use scry time stop force cage and teleport tactics to save as many prisoners as possible which might be only one or two)
2:Prevent the use of many insanely annoying spells like mirage arcana, picking up all kobolds independently with enough lantern archons(teleport at will and touch attack) and other tricky to counter stuff
3:Restrain time for preventing the team from using divination(for example kill all the prisoners after 10 rounds)
4:Have traps that works against someone that have eyes going through stone trying to spot everything in a wide radius(or mind sight or blindsight) and who constantly protect itself with a sphere of steel(or other similar defence) and who used an illusory team or paoed creatures(or yet another diversion) going through what was normally the entrance as a diversion.(those traps probably involve a lot of lava and acid so making this dungeon go on fire with a portal toward the sun was probably not going to change a lot)
All that is probably possible on a low budget(Probably even lower budget than in 2e with some thinking due to 3e having even more stuff) but it needs to change a lot the tactics compared to 2e tucker kobolds.

[Bucky]

Tucker's Kobolds mostly defended themselves by denying line of effect; if the party wanted to target them, they'd have to advance recklessly.

[ryu]

Tucker's Kobolds mostly defended themselves by denying line of effect; if the party wanted to target them, they'd have to advance recklessly.

Which, again, only works before level ten. Then all of the bets are off.

[Morphic tide]

Could you maybe point me to some rules in the PFSRD (which, as we have so frequently been reminded, is free) instead of giving me one sentence blurbs? I don't care about PF, so I have not bothered to figure out if their rules for things are any good. Having LA at all still sounds pretty bad, because a CR 10 creature is already nominally equivalent to a 10th level character.
CR!=ECL. This is taken as true almost everywhere outside the CR guidelines section, apparently. Monsters have specified LA that often leaves ECL and CR at different values, for one example.



Both of those seem super terrible as a 1/3 levels feat. Like, Weapon Focus et al is some minor number correction. Having that be a feat people take is probably worse than just baking those things in and giving people one less feat. Even Perfect Two Weapon Fighting is not as transformative as Lord of the Uttercold or Greenbound Summoning. Fundamentally, if you are getting one feat every three levels, it should not ever be "now your ability to deal level appropriate damage works with a different set of weapons". Because that's dumb and terrible.
...Is this thread infested with cheesemongers? Because Lord of the Uttercold and Greenbound Summoning are two of the most game shattering feats in the game. Greenbound Summoning in particular gives you the ability to use a rather large number of spells spontaneously out of 1st level slots. With that feat, there is literally never a reason to prepare any of the spells the template grants outside of metamagic.

And why should you be able to do level appropriate damage with anything without feat investment? By definition, if it's already level appropriate damage, any significant damage boost renders it too high for your level, thus breaking game balance. Spending half your feats to keep level appropriate damage is fine if you have plenty of ways to do it. Especially if you make it so the various forms of that fighting don't effect the damage of eachother, instead providing utility bonuses to each other so that you have multiple means of applying level appropriate damage.

Having the Weapon Focus chain as a single scaling feat is giving you an extra point of attack roll bonus for every four levels and an extra point of damage every two levels for one weapon. Endlessly and constantly. Then you take feats based on the type of weapon to get certain benefits that apply to that weapon. You trade versatility for tricks. You trade generic damage for the potential to get effects that let damage be less important.

Effects that can be highly effective non lethal options. Because D&D is a role playing game. You play the roll of a character, who might not want to be a hyperlethal combat machine while still using weapons. So you should have options to enable that. We've got a PRC for skydiving dwarves and a feat to transform Turn Undead into Rebuke Hippos, why not a mundane set of effects to take down level appropriate enemies non-probably?


A two level difference is equivalent to doubling the number of creatures in an encounter. For someone spending the rest of the time ranting about "teamwork", ignoring it here seems like motivated reasoning.
And this is just a more extreme form of the problem I'm stating. Teamwork is massively undervalued. A 2 CR difference doubling enemies is utter nonsense and is a more extreme form of my exact problem with the situation. I seriously doubt that halving all stats of a creature that can be halved without causing weird rules interactions reduces CR by exactly 2. And reducing CR by only 1 when you halve the stats sets the insane assumption that stats should double with every CR.



You wanna write up some builds? Or even citations? I see a bunch of theorycraft coming from you, but zero empirical work. Run the numbers. Don't yammer on about how the numbers "obviously" support your conclusions.
Did you not see the example of four identical Crusaders or four identical Paladins not following the suggested 4 players of a level spending a quarter of their daily resources on a single creature with CR of the shared level, given that creature is exactly mechanically identical to the identical players, citing a fundamental mechanic for why it happens.

I shouldn't have to give exact mechanical details because my point is a fundamental issue with the system. Flanking, action economy and damage rollover's absence outside of Cleave and multiple attacks inherently makes splitting a given amount of stats between two bodies better. And I seriously don't think that halving a creature's stats leads to a CR decrease of 2 or less 3.5.


So that's what, two MM entries? Do you know how many MM entries there are in the MM?
Dragons have dozens of entries. Just the basic Chromatic/Metallic ones have 10 types. Every single one has the issue of Flight that is better than what the PCs can use in practical combat, once the Dragon has its (Ex) flight, and being able to snipe the **** out of PCs from beyond practical range of basic, fundamental options. And they have Sorcerer casting as a Sorcerer of one-third their HD, with additional access to the entire Cleric spell list for spell options.


*snip*

Again, I ask if you are literally incapable of thinking of PCs as something other than hyperoptimized cheese piles. Because that entire post was high OP, tactical plot destroyers and a bit of outright Theoretical Optimization.

[Beheld]

Because there's only one meaningful difference between the two which leaves Pathfinder ahead in many situations for actual fun. The core system itself. And Pathfinder's core system has, in fact, fixed a bunch of problems with 3.5. LA became a direct function of CR, for example.

The core system you have described sounds slightly worse. Why would I have to learn thousands of minor changes to run a system that is worse? That seems like a lot of work for no gain.


More. Because my position is that a single level 10 character isn't able to make 4 characters of significantly lower level expend a quarter of their daily resources, so the idea that they can get a higher level group to spend more resources is silly, thus making them not meet the definition of being CR 10.

Right, I know your position is the thing you keep asserting without evidence, my point is there is no evidence. Fighting a Druid or Cleric of Wizard is easier than fighting CR 10 monsters for that party. I gave some examples of level 10 PCs of those levels versus CR 10 monsters, and it looks like they would be comparably resource use intensive.


All of those are notably overpowered setups for PCs and notable cases where the rules are insane, like letting Clerics permanently control twice their CL in HD of Undead. I'm specifically talking about party optimization, where tactics and synergistic builds make the party as a whole considerable stronger against a very broad range of enemies.

Literally every single one of those was made by me opening up the SRD, going to 5th level spell lists, and picking some 5th level spells. If "any Druid that prepares 5th level prepared spells off the Druid List" is "OP" and "OP" means "exactly as strong as the rules say they are supposed to be" than I might suggest that your problem is not with Druids being OP. Same for Wizards, same for Clerics. These are just the class abilities that such characters already have on their spell list and in their entry. That is why Clerics and Wizards and Druids are equal to CR = level, just like they are defined to be in the rules.


...do you have literally no ability to see PCs as anything other than highly optimized cheese piles? And yes, such a party probably would stomp actual CR 10 monsters, because they have access to all of the same tricks as the cheese piles. And are using multiple characters to be able to focus the cheese for each one to perform one subset of activities better than the generalist of cheese does and filing eachother's gaps.

I don't dispute that you could cheese up a party to stomp CR 10 enemies like level 10 Druids and Clerics and Wizards, but my point is that if you cheese them up, they will stomp CR 10 monsters like Zelekauts, ect. just as hard.


Even without cheese piling, it's 4v1, so you are close to guaranteed to have Flanking and bodyblocking happen.

I mean whatever? You can flank and body block against the Cleric and Druid (both of whom have class features/spell list minions) when you fight them, +2 to attack is probably not worth as much as 5th level spells. You can totally beat them with a party of four level 7s, but not stomp them.


There's certainly a lot of examples of certain creatures being nonsensically CRd through actual number crunching. Like a lot of the optimization board stuff on Dragons, and the Monstrous Crab.

1) The Crab was broken in a web supplement that came out prior to the book, and then when it was published in the book, it was nerfed.

2) Dragons are tough fights, no doubt, they are in fact, tougher than their listed CR every time because the designers thought that was justified by them being boss monsters. This was a mistake. But in it's own way that undermines your argument, because it proves they knew Dragons were slightly too powerful for their listed CR and had a reason to assign that CR anyway.

3) There are a billion monsters, Dragons are all under CRed on purpose, a few of them are over or under CRed on accident in a few places, that is not evidence that CR is broken, that is evidence that CR is very very very good and not perfect.

4) No one ever ever ever does comprehensive CR analysis to see if they are appropriate, with one exception that I know of, where someone did CR analysis of the MM II, as the "worst CRed" book and found that the numbers actually supported CR being pretty decent (considering that book is for 3e, and supposed to be the worst CRed book).


And this is just a more extreme form of the problem I'm stating. Teamwork is massively undervalued. A 2 CR difference doubling enemies is utter nonsense and is a more extreme form of my exact problem with the situation. I seriously doubt that halving all stats of a creature that can be halved without causing weird rules interactions reduces CR by exactly 2. And reducing CR by only 1 when you halve the stats sets the insane assumption that stats should double with every CR.

The vast majority of all monsters have abilities. The numbers don't need to double, because abilities matter. If something is 2 CR higher, it should have better higher level abilities.

[noob]

Again, I ask if you are literally incapable of thinking of PCs as something other than hyperoptimized cheese piles. Because that entire post was high OP, tactical plot destroyers and a bit of outright Theoretical Optimization.
The only things I used was regular spell-casting.
The team doing all this could be wizard clerics and druids with only the spell-casting class feature(no feats and no wild shape and no domains).
So the characters were not more optimized than just taking spell-casting and using some common defences(a steel sphere for example is an easy way to cut the line of sight of the opponents) and scrying spells(like eyes of stone)
Also gate is a quite common spell choice(for ninth level spells you have gate,wish,miracle and time stop as common choices(meteor swarm also but we never use it we just have it and it fills a slot which is never used but it is there) then there is other spells like prismatic sphere is a common panic button) as well as teleport and most divination spells(when me and my team plays it looks approximatively like what I described and yet the gm did not allow retraining and in fact is quite often restrictive of the power level of the team(he is not the kind to allow incantatrixe) but it is just that nuking stuff is way too easy in dnd that is why we mostly adventure in a city full of commoners we do not want to kill and which hate us)

[Calthropstu]

The core system you have described sounds slightly worse. Why would I have to learn thousands of minor changes to run a system that is worse? That seems like a lot of work for no gain.



Right, I know your position is the thing you keep asserting without evidence, my point is there is no evidence. Fighting a Druid or Cleric of Wizard is easier than fighting CR 10 monsters for that party. I gave some examples of level 10 PCs of those levels versus CR 10 monsters, and it looks like they would be comparably resource use intensive.



Literally every single one of those was made by me opening up the SRD, going to 5th level spell lists, and picking some 5th level spells. If "any Druid that prepares 5th level prepared spells off the Druid List" is "OP" and "OP" means "exactly as strong as the rules say they are supposed to be" than I might suggest that your problem is not with Druids being OP. Same for Wizards, same for Clerics. These are just the class abilities that such characters already have on their spell list and in their entry. That is why Clerics and Wizards and Druids are equal to CR = level, just like they are defined to be in the rules.



I don't dispute that you could cheese up a party to stomp CR 10 enemies like level 10 Druids and Clerics and Wizards, but my point is that if you cheese them up, they will stomp CR 10 monsters like Zelekauts, ect. just as hard.



I mean whatever? You can flank and body block against the Cleric and Druid (both of whom have class features/spell list minions) when you fight them, +2 to attack is probably not worth as much as 5th level spells. You can totally beat them with a party of four level 7s, but not stomp them.



1) The Crab was broken in a web supplement that came out prior to the book, and then when it was published in the book, it was nerfed.

2) Dragons are tough fights, no doubt, they are in fact, tougher than their listed CR every time because the designers thought that was justified by them being boss monsters. This was a mistake. But in it's own way that undermines your argument, because it proves they knew Dragons were slightly too powerful for their listed CR and had a reason to assign that CR anyway.

3) There are a billion monsters, Dragons are all under CRed on purpose, a few of them are over or under CRed on accident in a few places, that is not evidence that CR is broken, that is evidence that CR is very very very good and not perfect.

4) No one ever ever ever does comprehensive CR analysis to see if they are appropriate, with one exception that I know of, where someone did CR analysis of the MM II, as the "worst CRed" book and found that the numbers actually supported CR being pretty decent (considering that book is for 3e, and supposed to be the worst CRed book).



The vast majority of all monsters have abilities. The numbers don't need to double, because abilities matter. If something is 2 CR higher, it should have better higher level abilities.

The pathfinder core system is quite superior. Skills were streamlined, aswere combat maneuvers. Rogues sneak attack was vastly improved, if only for the fact that very few things are immune. Spells were altered to no longer allowed godly cheesiness... rules clarifications eliminated much. Errata comes out quickly for things that aren't covered.
The monsters are better flushed out, and provide much more interesting challenges. Feats also became better and more comprehendable (with some admittedly out there exceptions.)
I find pathfinder to be so much better in so many ways.
And the fighter probably gained more than anyone else with pathfinder.
Also, they made it such that 1-20 of a single class was definitely viable with alternate advancement paths for vast variety even amongst same core classes.

[Elderand]

The pathfinder core system is quite superior. Skills were streamlined, aswere combat maneuvers. Rogues sneak attack was vastly improved, if only for the fact that very few things are immune. Spells were altered to no longer allowed godly cheesiness... rules clarifications eliminated much. Errata comes out quickly for things that aren't covered.
The monsters are better flushed out, and provide much more interesting challenges. Feats also became better and more comprehendable (with some admittedly out there exceptions.)
I find pathfinder to be so much better in so many ways.
And the fighter probably gained more than anyone else with pathfinder.
Also, they made it such that 1-20 of a single class was definitely viable with alternate advancement paths for vast variety even amongst same core classes.

There's just one elephant in the room when it comes ot pathfinder; and it's a big one.

You get 30% more feat (yeah!) but combat feats have been split, more than doubling them. End result, feat wise, you actually end up with less stuff you can do than in 3.5

[Florian]

The pathfinder core system is quite superior.

The argument will end like this: PF eliminated Pun-Pun, while most people still sticking to 3.5E are in it because of Pun-Pun.

[Psyren]

There's just one elephant in the room when it comes ot pathfinder; and it's a big one.

You get 30% more feat (yeah!) but combat feats have been split, more than doubling them. End result, feat wise, you actually end up with less stuff you can do than in 3.5

Most martials got feat-equivalents too though. Rage Powers, Rogue Talents, Ranger Combat Styles, Paladin Mercies & Auras, and so on. Fighters were late to the party, but with Advanced Weapon Training and Advanced Armor Training now existing, they are reasonably on par with the rest. So while I'm not totally defending the feat situation (I use this fix) (http://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/) I would say the PF classes still came out ahead even with that paradigm.

[Cosi]

Morphic: When you say "a 10th level character is not CR 10" do you mean "a 10th level character is less dangerous than a CR 10 monster" or "CR is a bad guideline and we shouldn't care about it"?


CR!=ECL. This is taken as true almost everywhere outside the CR guidelines section, apparently. Monsters have specified LA that often leaves ECL and CR at different values, for one example.

Yes, and that's stupid. There is not enough daylight between a 10th level Fighter and a Fire Giant to justify the Fire Giant being anything other than a 10th level character.


...Is this thread infested with cheesemongers? Because Lord of the Uttercold and Greenbound Summoning are two of the most game shattering feats in the game. Greenbound Summoning in particular gives you the ability to use a rather large number of spells spontaneously out of 1st level slots. With that feat, there is literally never a reason to prepare any of the spells the template grants outside of metamagic.

Greenbound Summoning, maybe. Lord of the Uttercold, no way. But that's the point if a feat is something you get seven of over the whole game if it goes to 20th, feats need to be individually game shattering. If that's you're paradigm, the game should have more Natural Spells and less Weapon Focuses.


And why should you be able to do level appropriate damage with anything without feat investment?

Because feats are supposed to be bonuses. If "level appropriate damage with a bow" costs you a feat, all archers will take it, and they will effectively have one less feat. Just give the archers the bonus, and let them get new abilities from their feats.


Dragons have dozens of entries.

Open your MM. How many entries (you know, the underlined header that says "Demon" or "Orc") in the MM correspond to True Dragons? I think it's one -- the one labeled "Dragon, True". Yes, there are lots of monsters under that heading (and even more that can be procedurally generated from the tables it includes), but there is one heading. Should we count each NPC that can be generated from the tables in the DMG as a separate monster?


Again, I ask if you are literally incapable of thinking of PCs as something other than hyperoptimized cheese piles. Because that entire post was high OP, tactical plot destroyers and a bit of outright Theoretical Optimization.

Could you define what you consider to be appropriate optimization?


The pathfinder core system is quite superior. Skills were streamlined, aswere combat maneuvers. Rogues sneak attack was vastly improved, if only for the fact that very few things are immune. Spells were altered to no longer allowed godly cheesiness... rules clarifications eliminated much. Errata comes out quickly for things that aren't covered.

PF also introduced the "Fly" skill, which should probably negate any credit they get for a better skill system. Sneak Attack was buffed, but the best ways of using it no longer work. The spell alterations fixed the problems, but they did so with blunt force rather than real solutions. PF Errata is incredibly bad.


The argument will end like this: PF eliminated Pun-Pun, while most people still sticking to 3.5E are in it because of Pun-Pun.

PF didn't kill Pun-Pun. Insofar as Pun-Pun works at all, it is in non-OGL content, which is nominally included in PF as a result of "backwards compatibility". You can Pun-Pun exactly as hard in PF as you can in 3e, because the people who made PF are hacks who don't know what they're doing.

[Scots Dragon]

PF didn't kill Pun-Pun. Insofar as Pun-Pun works at all, it is in non-OGL content, which is nominally included in PF as a result of "backwards compatibility". You can Pun-Pun exactly as hard in PF as you can in 3e, because the people who made PF are hacks who don't know what they're doing.

Or maybe they thought DMs who wanted to port monsters, classes, races, and other options from the earlier edition in order to fulfil certain material requirements for their campaigns set in stuff like the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk should be allowed to do so, and Pathfinder was intended to be for the most part a continuation of a specific existing game rather than something entirely new and revolutionary.

[Cosi]

Or maybe they thought DMs who wanted to port monsters, classes, races, and other options from the earlier edition in order to fulfil certain material requirements for their campaigns set in stuff like the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk should be allowed to do so, and Pathfinder was intended to be for the most part a continuation of a specific existing game rather than something entirely new and revolutionary.

You can claim that. But you can't claim that and also claim that PF fixed anything outside core. Like, for example, all the save-or-dies that aren't core spells are still just as good as they were in 3e.

[Scots Dragon]

You can claim that. But you can't claim that and also claim that PF fixed anything outside core. Like, for example, all the save-or-dies that aren't core spells are still just as good as they were in 3e.

I'm an AD&D player, so I really don't mind that.

My problem is claiming that Paizo were hacks who didn't know what they were doing, when what they were actually doing was providing a continually supported product for fans of D&D 3.5E who were kinda upset by the fact that their game was being replaced by something that shouldn't even have been called Dungeons & Dragons to begin with. In that Pathfinder succeeded perfectly.

[Cosi]

I'm an AD&D player, so I really don't mind that.

My problem is claiming that Paizo were hacks who didn't know what they were doing, when what they were actually doing was providing a continually supported product for fans of D&D 3.5E who were kinda upset by the fact that their game was being replaced by something that shouldn't even have been called Dungeons & Dragons to begin with. In that Pathfinder succeeded perfectly.

They had a fine business model. But to claim that they are any good at game design is absurd. Consider, for example, their fix to wish. There are reasonable fixes for wish. You can change the wording so you still pay the XP cost for magic item creation even using it as an SLA. You can put back in the cap it had in 3.0. Stuff like that. What they opted to do was just nuke the option to make magic items because they were to lazy to figure out an actual fix. That's hackery, and you can see it strewn across the game they made.

[noob]

I think that is simpler to hack fixes than to try to remake the game.
If you wanted a remade pathfinder you would be thinking very hard and redesigning tons of things.
Why doing that: it is not a good business model compared to what pathfinder do since it costs more development time.
look pathfinder is sold and the final objective of a rpg is being sold what they contain change the likeliness of it being sold but if you need way more development time to fix stuff by rewriting and rethinking deeply everything and that it marginally increase the customer satisfaction then it is probably not worth it.
Do not forget pathfinder is made by professionals who do not wants to die of starvation or make 100 times more work just for increasing sightly customer satisfaction by improving the system.
So if you want to rewrite pathfinder or think it needs a rewrite you are free to do so or to pick the rewriting done by non professionals.

[Calthropstu]

They had a fine business model. But to claim that they are any good at game design is absurd. Consider, for example, their fix to wish. There are reasonable fixes for wish. You can change the wording so you still pay the XP cost for magic item creation even using it as an SLA. You can put back in the cap it had in 3.0. Stuff like that. What they opted to do was just nuke the option to make magic items because they were to lazy to figure out an actual fix. That's hackery, and you can see it strewn across the game they made.

xp costs were retarded. Plain and simple xp costs should never have existed, ever. That is one of the best fixes pf made... no xp cost for item creation. I personally houseruled that crap out in 3.5.
I see no issue with removing the magic item creation line as it is covered in the "may do something stronger" and in my eyes that "any item" magic item creation was FAR stronger than those other options listed as baseline permissible.

[Morphic tide]

The core system you have described sounds slightly worse. Why would I have to learn thousands of minor changes to run a system that is worse? That seems like a lot of work for no gain.
How about being able to use Feigns without them becoming hilariously damaging on Rogues because most enemies have next to no Sense Motive? How about have all the basic combat manoeuvres scale with one single number, with a similar number for defence against said manoeuvres? How about having combat-relevant skills be condensed to the point that a Fighter can use the combat-relevant ones properly? How about not having Concentration as a skill, instead making it a level-based check?

And it's hardly thousands of changes. And, as mentioned, mixing 3.X and Pathfinder is common. Going and picking whatever elements of the two systems you want to use is downright expected of 3.X veterans entering Pathfinder.



Right, I know your position is the thing you keep asserting without evidence, my point is there is no evidence. Fighting a Druid or Cleric of Wizard is easier than fighting CR 10 monsters for that party. I gave some examples of level 10 PCs of those levels versus CR 10 monsters, and it looks like they would be comparably resource use intensive.




Literally every single one of those was made by me opening up the SRD, going to 5th level spell lists, and picking some 5th level spells. If "any Druid that prepares 5th level prepared spells off the Druid List" is "OP" and "OP" means "exactly as strong as the rules say they are supposed to be" than I might suggest that your problem is not with Druids being OP. Same for Wizards, same for Clerics. These are just the class abilities that such characters already have on their spell list and in their entry. That is why Clerics and Wizards and Druids are equal to CR = level, just like they are defined to be in the rules.
You do know that there's been threads about optimizing out of Core only which end up with stomping mid-high Epic encounters by level 15, right? D&D 3.5 has been broken right from the start.



I don't dispute that you could cheese up a party to stomp CR 10 enemies like level 10 Druids and Clerics and Wizards, but my point is that if you cheese them up, they will stomp CR 10 monsters like Zelekauts, ect. just as hard.
You can. But a level 10 Cleric or Druid has multiple inbuilt means of casually screwing CR 10 encounters, with Wizards having the ability to grab arbitrarily overpowered combos of spells. A Druid can screw quite a few CR 10 encounters with just Wildshape and their Animal Companion, for example.



I mean whatever? You can flank and body block against the Cleric and Druid (both of whom have class features/spell list minions) when you fight them, +2 to attack is probably not worth as much as 5th level spells. You can totally beat them with a party of four level 7s, but not stomp them.
A 10th level Cleric or Druid has a grant total of 2 5th level slots they can use freely. Clerics get a third one with much narrower options. Also, spellcasting is a massive pile of insane nonsense even in core. Seriously, you brought up a ****ing scry or die Wizard and Undead minions. Having four times your CL in Undead HD in this case means that the Cleric can have 40 CR 1/3 Human Warrior Skelletons. If doubling the number of monsters means increasing the CR by 2, then just the Undead, who are bottom of the barrel, are already over CR 10. A single ****ing 3rd level spell breaks the CR system here.



1) The Crab was broken in a web supplement that came out prior to the book, and then when it was published in the book, it was nerfed.
The point is that WotC screwed up massively on one occasion and has been known to screw up in the past. Hell, the imbalance of PCs makes the CR system a joke because we don't have a valid group of PCs for the CR system to be judged with. In core, the only good healer is the Cleric, with the other being the Druid. Clerics and Druids can prepare any spell in their spell list, no exception. Druids can completely ignore their own physical stats due to Wildshape and have an Animal Companion with its own actions and progression that can bodyblock separately.


2) Dragons are tough fights, no doubt, they are in fact, tougher than their listed CR every time because the designers thought that was justified by them being boss monsters. This was a mistake. But in it's own way that undermines your argument, because it proves they knew Dragons were slightly too powerful for their listed CR and had a reason to assign that CR anyway.
...Do you have literally zero comprehension of the point of CR? Because having anything be under CRd or over CRd is unacceptable, no matter the reason, because CR is supposed to define how hard a fight is objectively. A boss fight should just be a fight with a CR above the party's level. A 3rd level party can have a lone CR 5 creature as a boss fight, regardless of the CR 5 creature, unless that creature is specifically made to only function in a group. The system uses CR to define XP and GP rewards, so having a boss monster be under CRd is utterly stupid.


3) There are a billion monsters, Dragons are all under CRed on purpose, a few of them are over or under CRed on accident in a few places, that is not evidence that CR is broken, that is evidence that CR is very very very good and not perfect.
Again, any intentional deviation from the CR is unacceptable. Any failure of it greater than one point of CR is unacceptable because it defines so much of how the game is supposed to run. CR is the only measure a fresh DM has for encounter difficulty. CR doesn't properly account for the advantage of numbers, which has always been a massive issue for D&D because the action economy is a bottleneck that makes a single creature have to have lots of area damage available to deal with being out numbered. The Full Attack system just makes this more severe by actually locking out the only means most creatures have of attacking several times per round after you move, which means that getting serious damage requires them to stay still.


The vast majority of all monsters have abilities. The numbers don't need to double, because abilities matter. If something is 2 CR higher, it should have better higher level abilities.
Okay, even if you don't have the higher level abilities, the split still leads to a harder encounter because you have two sets of actions. Natural Attacks don't care about BAB, so a Claw/Claw/Bite combo on something with 6 BAB is considerably less dangerous than two creatures with a Claw/Claw/Bite combo with 3 BAB, because you've doubled the number of attacks and split them between two targets who can pick different PCs to attack, applying pressure that a single creature is literally incapable of. Even if you take something with two attacks and split it into two things with one attack and half the other stats, the two creatures with one attack still win out because the Full Attack mechanic makes it so that the thing with two attacks has to stop moving to get off those two attacks, while the two creatures with one attack lose no damage when they decide to be mobile.


Morphic: When you say "a 10th level character is not CR 10" do you mean "a 10th level character is less dangerous than a CR 10 monster" or "CR is a bad guideline and we shouldn't care about it"?
I'm saying that a 10th level character shouldn't be as dangerous as a CR 10 monster. The monster should be more dangerous because it has power budget tied up in combat and CR is meant to represent the difficulty of killing the creature, whereas a PC is likely to switch to hit-and-run when in danger rather than just run away and should have quite a bit of out-of-combat uses, or have tools that don't fall into the stuff that can be CRd appropriately.


Yes, and that's stupid. There is not enough daylight between a 10th level Fighter and a Fire Giant to justify the Fire Giant being anything other than a 10th level character.
And Fighters are known to be hugely underpowered without severe optimization, thanks to being "blank checks" with piles of horrible options for cashing in said "blank checks." And the biggest thing about ECL is that it almost always gives an ECL higher than CR. Because each hit dice of the creature counts as a level for characters. Again, it seems only the CR system itself thinks CR=ECL, because no other parts of the game even remotely approach that.


Greenbound Summoning, maybe. Lord of the Uttercold, no way. But that's the point if a feat is something you get seven of over the whole game if it goes to 20th, feats need to be individually game shattering. If that's you're paradigm, the game should have more Natural Spells and less Weapon Focuses.
Or maybe feats are meant to just give you a neat little trick or give one good effect rather than redefine your entire playstyle. Because you get seven feats across your 20 levels. So having 7 things that should be massively shifting your playstyle makes the game a huge mess because every X levels, you get a playstyle shift. Even if you don't want it.

And Lord of the Uttercold still warps your playstyle as a user of undead minions or as an undead character because the negative energy cancels out the cold damage for Undead, meaning that there's no reason not to get your minions/yourself/any undead party members in your AoE spells. Having Energy Substitution (Cold) as a requirement makes it so that you can turn basically all your damage spells into much harder to resist and harmless to undead Uttercold spells. Cold immune undead are outright healed by these spells, letting you turn Fireball into undead healing with no spell level adjustment.


Because feats are supposed to be bonuses. If "level appropriate damage with a bow" costs you a feat, all archers will take it, and they will effectively have one less feat. Just give the archers the bonus, and let them get new abilities from their feats.
...It should cost you a feat because otherwise there's absolutely no room for balanced damage increasing feats. And there'd be multiple types of doing level appropriate damage with a bow, each with upsides and downsides and being attached to passives which don't require using that damage dealing method. An archer has at least two options: sniping with one strong shot or loosing a large number of weaker shots. Having it as a feat makes it so that every character can grab it if desired, so you don't have to integrate such things into every class you want to use a bow and the non-archer, or even non-martial, classes can choose to try being an archer with notable competence as a result.

It isn't "level appropriate damage with a bow costs a feat", it's "your third/sixth level feat should be used to make you have level appropriate damage with a bow. Here's a list of feats to do this, each doing it a different way."

Hell, the Ranger's entire thing is having a set of feat taxes for free, even if you fail to meet the requirements. Well, that and having an animal companion worse than the Druid one, even though Animal Companions were originally a Ranger thing, not a Druid one. Oh, also Favored Enemy, which is nice.


Open your MM. How many entries (you know, the underlined header that says "Demon" or "Orc") in the MM correspond to True Dragons? I think it's one -- the one labeled "Dragon, True". Yes, there are lots of monsters under that heading (and even more that can be procedurally generated from the tables it includes), but there is one heading. Should we count each NPC that can be generated from the tables in the DMG as a separate monster?
How many pages do Dragons take up? And the fact is that each type of True Dragon has it's own part of the entry, so they really count as different monsters. Unless you think that having a different type of damage for a Breath Weapon, a different energy immunity, a different statline, different available Domains, a different Alignment marked as Always, a different CR and a different Flight Speed aren't enough to make them different monsters. Or that two different Sorcerer Liches are the same monster when they can have completely different spells known to have utterly different fights.

And funny that you bring up Demons, because that covers everything from Succubus to Vrok to Babau to Balor and a bundle more besides. The big underlined header is clearly a category marker. It says "this is a grouping of creatures." It just happens to be that it is also used for lone creatures that aren't in a large category.


PF also introduced the "Fly" skill, which should probably negate any credit they get for a better skill system. Sneak Attack was buffed, but the best ways of using it no longer work. The spell alterations fixed the problems, but they did so with blunt force rather than real solutions. PF Errata is incredibly bad.
You mean that you have to invest skillpoints to make use of a non-standard form of movement? You know, like Climbing and Swimming? And Flight is notorious for busting assumptions on the way CR works, so having to sink skill points into it for being extremely manoeuvrable is a good idea. It supports not using Flight all the time, no matter the situation, because there's now a real penalty.


PF didn't kill Pun-Pun. Insofar as Pun-Pun works at all, it is in non-OGL content, which is nominally included in PF as a result of "backwards compatibility". You can Pun-Pun exactly as hard in PF as you can in 3e, because the people who made PF are hacks who don't know what they're doing.
Guess what? That argument leaves the only difference Pathfinder has at all from 3.5 as the mechanics changes. All those class and spell changes? Apparently invalid in arguments, because "you can port the 3.X version" is apparently a valid argument for which system is better. It's a valid argument for whether you should play or not, but it isn't one for which system is better.

[Beheld]

The pathfinder core system is quite superior. Skills were streamlined, aswere combat maneuvers. Rogues sneak attack was vastly improved, if only for the fact that very few things are immune. Spells were altered to no longer allowed godly cheesiness... rules clarifications eliminated much. Errata comes out quickly for things that aren't covered.
The monsters are better flushed out, and provide much more interesting challenges. Feats also became better and more comprehendable (with some admittedly out there exceptions.)
I find pathfinder to be so much better in so many ways.
And the fighter probably gained more than anyone else with pathfinder.
Also, they made it such that 1-20 of a single class was definitely viable with alternate advancement paths for vast variety even amongst same core classes.

I get that you are like, super gung ho about pathfinder, but basically all of that is either not improvements, or listing the improvement and ignoring the problems created by the same rule change.
1) Skills: They added a fly skill for no good reason, they merged spot/listen and ms/hide into perception and stealth. These are basically at best neutral, fewer skills isn't bad, but now you get quieter when you cast invis or walk into the fog. Either you track them separately, or you don't, that's a neutral change. Also you don't get +3 at level 1, you get an arbitrary +3 bonus to class skills with ranks (I think that's the system, might be slightly different) literally a system that leaves all characters who don't split points exactly the same, hard to call this an improvement.
2) Rogues don't have to use wands to SA weird types. Con: Rogues aren't allowed to SA anyone anymore because they nerfed all the methods to do that. Solution: add weird items so Rogues can SA again. Result: Rogues can't SA unless they have the right expansion items, just like 3.5.
3) "Spells removed ungodly cheese" is just a lot of assumption. The only spell changes I recall were that they nerfed the ungodly cheese of glitterdust blinding people for a few rounds and replaced save or dies with piles of damage. I consider both of those negative changes. I bet Gate still works as a no save just die or incredible force multiplier. Planar Binding is probably still broken giving you a pet that is stronger than you are supposed to be when you cast it.
4) All those archetypes and traits and stuff is just more busywork. I'd about a billion times over rather have PrCs that you take one of that give you abilities than archetypes that you can mix and match and have 4 different ones, but at the end you get to call yourself Wizard 20.
5) I've seen some Pathfinder Monsters, some are better, some are worse, it's really just a lot of change to get to about the same place, which is the general point. Everything I know about every 3.5 monster has to be thrown out the window, and I have to relearn a whole new set of monsters in order to design encounters for my players, and the end result is a different set of roughly comparable monsters in quality.


So if you want to rewrite pathfinder or think it needs a rewrite you are free to do so or to pick the rewriting done by non professionals.

Why not rewrite a better system like 3.5 though? :smallwink:

[Beheld]

How about being able to use Feigns without them becoming hilariously damaging on Rogues because most enemies have next to no Sense Motive? How about have all the basic combat manoeuvres scale with one single number, with a similar number for defence against said manoeuvres? How about having combat-relevant skills be condensed to the point that a Fighter can use the combat-relevant ones properly? How about not having Concentration as a skill, instead making it a level-based check?

1) Do you mean feints? Feints have never been overpowered ever. No one but Rogues ever use them, and Rogues shouldn't use them because they should get SA some other way.
2) Having all the combat maneuvers based on a single number (that is just going to fail anyway so you never use it) is not an improvement. It gives up the ability to have those do different things. For one, Pathfinder Grapple doesn't do 90% of the things 3.5 Grapple does. There is certainly room for improving 3.5 grapple, but Pathfinders changes aren't improvements, just changes to the status quo that are better and worse in approximately equal measure.
3) So casters get one more skill point per level in return for having a worse chance to maintain their spells? How is that an improvement, oh also, they don't have more skills, because they have to put it in fly anyway.


You do know that there's been threads about optimizing out of Core only which end up with stomping mid-high Epic encounters by level 15, right? D&D 3.5 has been broken right from the start.

I'm not sure how you think that's relevant. I literally addressed that in the post. If you optimize, you will be better at fighting CR 10 monsters as well as level 10 PCs that are CR 10.


You can. But a level 10 Cleric or Druid has multiple inbuilt means of casually screwing CR 10 encounters, with Wizards having the ability to grab arbitrarily overpowered combos of spells. A Druid can screw quite a few CR 10 encounters with just Wildshape and their Animal Companion, for example.

Wait, so now level 10 Wizards, Druids, and Clerics are more powerful than CR 10 monsters? Wasn't your entire argument that they are less powerful?


A 10th level Cleric or Druid has a grant total of 2 5th level slots they can use freely. Clerics get a third one with much narrower options. Also, spellcasting is a massive pile of insane nonsense even in core. Seriously, you brought up a ****ing scry or die Wizard and Undead minions. Having four times your CL in Undead HD in this case means that the Cleric can have 40 CR 1/3 Human Warrior Skelletons. If doubling the number of monsters means increasing the CR by 2, then just the Undead, who are bottom of the barrel, are already over CR 10. A single ****ing 3rd level spell breaks the CR system here.

1) The CR system already explains that a creature using it's abilities to create more minions doesn't effect EL.
2) Yes, they do have limited 5th level slots, but they would use them on a hypothetical party of level 7 characters in order to be a nonstomped challenge, like creating a Windstorm with a Druid, or Spell Resistance and one of their other melee buffs along with whatever else they cast on the Cleric, or to be immune to your Scries, but able to scry you as the Wizard.


The point is that WotC screwed up massively on one occasion and has been known to screw up in the past.

...

...Do you have literally zero comprehension of the point of CR? Because having anything be under CRd or over CRd is unacceptable, no matter the reason, because CR is supposed to define how hard a fight is objectively. A boss fight should just be a fight with a CR above the party's level. A 3rd level party can have a lone CR 5 creature as a boss fight, regardless of the CR 5 creature, unless that creature is specifically made to only function in a group. The system uses CR to define XP and GP rewards, so having a boss monster be under CRd is utterly stupid.

This idea that perfection is required before the system can have any value is mistaken. The system provides its value by being right the vast majority of the time. If it is 90% correct, then 90% of the time it is providing significant value. If the 10% of the time it is incorrect it provides some value by not being a total coin flip, then all the better.


Hell, the imbalance of PCs makes the CR system a joke because we don't have a valid group of PCs for the CR system to be judged with. In core, the only good healer is the Cleric, with the other being the Druid. Clerics and Druids can prepare any spell in their spell list, no exception. Druids can completely ignore their own physical stats due to Wildshape and have an Animal Companion with its own actions and progression that can bodyblock separately.

If the CR system accurately describes power of monsters, but some of the PCs are unbalanced, then maybe the problem is that the PCs that don't do as well as they are supposed to against monsters need to be fixed, rather than apparently that meaning we need to throw away CR.


Again, any intentional deviation from the CR is unacceptable. Any failure of it greater than one point of CR is unacceptable because it defines so much of how the game is supposed to run. CR is the only measure a fresh DM has for encounter difficulty.

Any intentional deviation is a mistake. That doesn't mean it is unacceptable. I don't demand perfection from all written material. In this case, the fact that it is a mistake that they tell you about means you can correct for it. Better they never made the mistake, sure. But that doesn't mean we need to burn down a city because we don't like one building an architect built badly.


Okay, even if you don't have the higher level abilities, the split still leads to a harder encounter because you have two sets of actions.

No, you do have the abilities, that is the point. The CR system takes into account abilities, almost all monsters have abilities. If you don't take account of the higher level abilities, then you aren't accurately understanding the CR system.


You mean that you have to invest skillpoints to make use of a non-standard form of movement? You know, like Climbing and Swimming? And Flight is notorious for busting assumptions on the way CR works, so having to sink skill points into it for being extremely manoeuvrable is a good idea. It supports not using Flight all the time, no matter the situation, because there's now a real penalty.

Actually, it supports using flight all the time, because you have the skill ranks, and sinking skill ranks into it if you are the type of character that might ever need to fly (all of them). It's literally just a mandatory skill point tax on everyone that has no effect on people's decisions to fly.

[Cosi]

Because having anything be under CRd or over CRd is unacceptable, no matter the reason, because CR is supposed to define how hard a fight is objectively. A boss fight should just be a fight with a CR above the party's level.

So to be clear, you think for CR to be useful at all, it has to be perfectly accurate? That's kind of insane. Do you consider levels useless because not all 10th level characters are equally effective?


I'm saying that a 10th level character shouldn't be as dangerous as a CR 10 monster.

Doing that seems really dumb, because it requires you to have a CR:Level conversion chart for no reason.


The monster should be more dangerous because it has power budget tied up in combat

No. This kind of thinking is how you get 4e BS where monsters exist only in combat.


Or maybe feats are meant to just give you a neat little trick or give one good effect rather than redefine your entire playstyle. Because you get seven feats across your 20 levels. So having 7 things that should be massively shifting your playstyle makes the game a huge mess because every X levels, you get a playstyle shift. Even if you don't want it.

Your playstyle is already shifting every two levels because you get a new level of spells. D&D is supposed to have very rapid character progression as levels are gained, because you go from "hobo with a sword" to "world-conquering demigod" over twenty levels. Getting a minor trick every three levels is crap.


And Lord of the Uttercold still warps your playstyle as a user of undead minions or as an undead character because the negative energy cancels out the cold damage for Undead, meaning that there's no reason not to get your minions/yourself/any undead party members in your AoE spells. Having Energy Substitution (Cold) as a requirement makes it so that you can turn basically all your damage spells into much harder to resist and harmless to undead Uttercold spells. Cold immune undead are outright healed by these spells, letting you turn Fireball into undead healing with no spell level adjustment.

Yes, I'm aware what the feat does. And I think if you are getting seven feats max over the course of a campaign, they should be things like that. If you want feats to be small, you should get one every session or something.


...It should cost you a feat because otherwise there's absolutely no room for balanced damage increasing feats.

Damage increasing feats are bad. Either they break the game (if you were balanced without them), or they require you to give up options to be level appropriate (if you're balanced with them). You should just get the numbers you need, then spend resources on actual abilities.


How many pages do Dragons take up?

I could give you the statted up dragons as separate monsters. That seems fair. But counting all the dragons you can procedurally generate warps things absurdly much. You can procedurally generate a dozen different characters of each class at each level from the DMG. Should we assess CR on the basis of the inclusion of all the different levels of Hobgoblin Sorcerer you can create?


Guess what? That argument leaves the only difference Pathfinder has at all from 3.5 as the mechanics changes. All those class and spell changes? Apparently invalid in arguments, because "you can port the 3.X version" is apparently a valid argument for which system is better. It's a valid argument for whether you should play or not, but it isn't one for which system is better.

No, you're totally free to count anything that is explicitly overrided. If you want to talk about e.g. the decision to give Wizards a bunch of class features and less penalty for specialization, we can do that. I am totally willing to hear arguments that wish or planar binding has been fixed. But if you believe in mixing systems, you have not fixed Manipulate Form or cloud of bewilderment.

[stanprollyright]

Fighters: pretty much everyone agrees they could use 4 skill points/lvl. Most people seem to agree they should have some kind of unique class features but no one agrees on what or how powerful they should be. As is, they're good for n00bs and they kick ass at low levels and are good enough for a lot of people, its just us minmaxers and theorycrafters who hate them.

Pathfinder: I'm a full convert. I only go back to 3.5 as a backwards compatibility resource. It's the same game, just updated. D&D 3.75. It's got its own tricks and Pun Puns, if you're in to that. Some of the obviously broken spells have been nerfed, but there are plenty that aren't, and some even got buffed.
The skill system is strictly superior. The split feats are not that bad, and that's only the maneuvers anyway. 90% of the core feats are EXACTLY the same. As for Power Attack? I actually like the PF version better. Sue me.

[Mendicant]

Greenbound Summoning, maybe. Lord of the Uttercold, no way. But that's the point if a feat is something you get seven of over the whole game if it goes to 20th, feats need to be individually game shattering. If that's you're paradigm, the game should have more Natural Spells and less Weapon Focuses.



Because feats are supposed to be bonuses. If "level appropriate damage with a bow" costs you a feat, all archers will take it, and they will effectively have one less feat. Just give the archers the bonus, and let them get new abilities from their feats.


I'm mostly on board with you in this thread, but not here.

First a mostly semantic point, but one that's still important: no feat should be "game shattering," it should be character-defining. There is a world of difference between a build resource which is merely powerful and a build resource that separates a character both thematically and mechanically, which leads directly into my second point:

No bonus should make you anything other than level appropriate. It's right there in the word appropriate. The purpose of a bonus in role playing is to make you distinct, since absolute power is a hamster wheel. If we're talking about archery, there is absolutely nothing wrong with spending a build resource to be an archer, and the build resource you're supposed to spend on being an archer is a feat or feats. You're currently treating the feat as if being an archer is something that necessarily exists prior to the archery feat, which is backwards. You become an archer when you take that feat or feats. Otherwise, everyone with bow proficiency and a decent attack bonus is an archer now, which is not a satisfying level of differentiation.

Now, how you price the "archer" distinction is another question, but I really don't see an issue with Morphic's proposed investment. 3 feats if you want to be Legolas and 1 feat if you want to be Aragorn seems like a good balance.

[Cosi]

First a mostly semantic point, but one that's still important: no feat should be "game shattering," it should be character-defining. There is a world of difference between a build resource which is merely powerful and a build resource that separates a character both thematically and mechanically, which leads directly into my second point:

I agree. IIRC, I was intentionally using the same language as the person I replied to. "Game changing" is better, and IMHO, a more accurate description of the feats.


No bonus should make you anything other than level appropriate. It's right there in the word appropriate. The purpose of a bonus in role playing is to make you distinct, since absolute power is a hamster wheel. If we're talking about archery, there is absolutely nothing wrong with spending a build resource to be an archer, and the build resource you're supposed to spend on being an archer is a feat or feats.

I agree that there should be a feat you can take to make you better at archery. But it should be a feat that opens up new archery-based tactics (like how Lord of the Uttercold supports undead + Evocation combined arms tactics), not something that makes your archery numbers bigger. So Ranged Disarm, sure (though obviously, much better than actual Ranged Disarm). But not Weapon Focus. Something like Rapid Shot I'm in the middle on.

[ComaVision]

PF's skill system is not objectively better. It lets characters have more skills and it's simpler but it lacks the granularity of 3.5e skills. I mean, if simpler is objectively better then none of us should be playing 3.5e or PF.

I don't think PF or 3.5e is better because they are fundamentally the same thing. It's just silly to claim one is superior when they have all the same major problems. If I had any reason to believe that my game's would be better if I fully converted to PF, I would have done it years ago.

(For what it's worth, I like Prestige Classes and multiclassing and PF isn't as friendly to those.)

[Calthropstu]

I get that you are like, super gung ho about pathfinder, but basically all of that is either not improvements, or listing the improvement and ignoring the problems created by the same rule change.
1) Skills: They added a fly skill for no good reason, they merged spot/listen and ms/hide into perception and stealth. These are basically at best neutral, fewer skills isn't bad, but now you get quieter when you cast invis or walk into the fog. Either you track them separately, or you don't, that's a neutral change. Also you don't get +3 at level 1, you get an arbitrary +3 bonus to class skills with ranks (I think that's the system, might be slightly different) literally a system that leaves all characters who don't split points exactly the same, hard to call this an improvement.
2) Rogues don't have to use wands to SA weird types. Con: Rogues aren't allowed to SA anyone anymore because they nerfed all the methods to do that. Solution: add weird items so Rogues can SA again. Result: Rogues can't SA unless they have the right expansion items, just like 3.5.
3) "Spells removed ungodly cheese" is just a lot of assumption. The only spell changes I recall were that they nerfed the ungodly cheese of glitterdust blinding people for a few rounds and replaced save or dies with piles of damage. I consider both of those negative changes. I bet Gate still works as a no save just die or incredible force multiplier. Planar Binding is probably still broken giving you a pet that is stronger than you are supposed to be when you cast it.
4) All those archetypes and traits and stuff is just more busywork. I'd about a billion times over rather have PrCs that you take one of that give you abilities than archetypes that you can mix and match and have 4 different ones, but at the end you get to call yourself Wizard 20.
5) I've seen some Pathfinder Monsters, some are better, some are worse, it's really just a lot of change to get to about the same place, which is the general point. Everything I know about every 3.5 monster has to be thrown out the window, and I have to relearn a whole new set of monsters in order to design encounters for my players, and the end result is a different set of roughly comparable monsters in quality.



Why not rewrite a better system like 3.5 though? :smallwink:

Wrong on most accounts actually. They added a fly skill because it was needed. How do you knock someone out of the air? How do you avoud being knocked put of the air? Now taking damage while flying can be a real hazard as it should be.
For the skill system itself, they ended the split skills. 1 point = 1 rank. And you get a bonus if it's a class skill. A huge boon to characters with low skill points.
Sneak attack is easy to pull off due to flanking rules, how invisibility works, and the streamlined feinting rules. Attacking from stealth doesn't even break stealth anymore with a high enough hide check.
Spells that removed ungodly cheese:
Wish/miracle. No more instant magic items.
Shapechange/polymorph/pao/shapeshift. No more gaining ex or other special abilities when changing shape.
Time stop. No longer able to cast timestop while in time stop. (Let's just umm... ignore mythic augmented time stop.)
Nearly all instant death spells: changed to save or 10 damage/lvl.
There's many more such changes.
Planar binding/greater (but not lesser) can call in creatures about equal in power to you, but is entirely subject to gm adjudication. My gms would seriously crush my character for abusing it.

For your fourth point, that is fair. You still have access to most of those prestige classes in pf. In fact, prestigious spell caster feat will even eliminate the caster level loss giving you full spell progression, and you can wear items to even gain some of the class abilities you give up (such as robes of arcane heritage.)

Your fifth point is a legitimate complaint. But I assure you, it is actually well worth it.

[Scots Dragon]

Wrong on most accounts actually. They added a fly skill because it was needed. How do you knock someone out of the air? How do you avoud being knocked put of the air? Now taking damage while flying can be a real hazard as it should be.

Why not fold it into the existing rules on balance/tumble under acrobatics?

[Morphic tide]

So to be clear, you think for CR to be useful at all, it has to be perfectly accurate? That's kind of insane. Do you consider levels useless because not all 10th level characters are equally effective?
Personally, I like the idea behind having CR be from daily resources expended. I hate actually doing that, but CR should either be perfectly accurate, relying on minimizing ad hoc judgements by itemizing the CR effect of as many things as possible, or it should be guidelines based on the fact of how hard the fight was to the party, with the guidelines going by how close characters got to death, how much GP worth of stuff was lost in the fighting, how many abilities that don't recharge mid-fight or right when a new fight starts/ends were used and benchmarks of weight based on how long the recharge time is and so on.

Again, CR is the only measure a new GM has for how tough an encounter is. It only works as a fixed number in games with fixed party performance, which D&D isn't.


Doing that seems really dumb, because it requires you to have a CR:Level conversion chart for no reason.
...I have been told, repeatedly, that a level 10 character is registered as CR 10. The entire rest of the game system outside the CR guidelines says otherwise, as does basic sense about how action economy works.


No. This kind of thinking is how you get 4e BS where monsters exist only in combat.
Monsters don't need dedicated non-combat abilities for much of anything. Trolls don't need Heal skill checks, Bandits aren't going to have much in the way of Diplomacy and Solars are hardly going to grab Profession. Most types of enemy have very narrow valid non-combat skills, and tying up a bunch of the statblock in stuff that's unneeded and often useless is counterproductive to a game.


Your playstyle is already shifting every two levels because you get a new level of spells. D&D is supposed to have very rapid character progression as levels are gained, because you go from "hobo with a sword" to "world-conquering demigod" over twenty levels. Getting a minor trick every three levels is crap.
A new spell level rarely alters playstyle severely past level 5. Once you hit 3rd level spells, you have something for almost every playstyle and your character's style of play from that point is altered by PRCs and feats, as well as the big game warping spells that really should have lower level versions anyways.


Yes, I'm aware what the feat does. And I think if you are getting seven feats max over the course of a campaign, they should be things like that. If you want feats to be small, you should get one every session or something.
Scarcity does not have to equate to power. What has to equate to power is comparisons. It doesn't matter how powerful feats are as long as they are roughly equivalent. It doesn't matter how much of a character's power is tied into their class levels so long as that amount of power is nearly constant for all classes.


Damage increasing feats are bad. Either they break the game (if you were balanced without them), or they require you to give up options to be level appropriate (if you're balanced with them). You should just get the numbers you need, then spend resources on actual abilities.
Well, then, looks like we have to discard all those extra attack feat ideas, spell duplication metamagic, bonuses to Charges of any sort, Attack of Opportunity improvements and basically every Nice Thing martials can possibly have for combat. Unless you want to give martials an immense pile of rider effects for feats. Because the only thing martials have is their weapon actions. Almost everything you can do with a weapon is going to add damage in some way.

Damage boosting feats need to be a thing you grab on purpose for two reasons. One is to let martials differentiate themselves in how they deal damage without forcing them to grab a specific class to do it, like being able to go sniper or backstab on a rogue. The other is that tying intended damage output to feats means that power budget for utility effects can be a bigger focus of the actual classes, letting classes be more distinct in how they actually act and have more coherent flavor due to getting to focus on utility effects.


I agree that there should be a feat you can take to make you better at archery. But it should be a feat that opens up new archery-based tactics (like how Lord of the Uttercold supports undead + Evocation combined arms tactics), not something that makes your archery numbers bigger. So Ranged Disarm, sure (though obviously, much better than actual Ranged Disarm). But not Weapon Focus. Something like Rapid Shot I'm in the middle on.

Okay, so, let me make my point clear. The point of my desire to see level appropriate damage locked behind feats is so that you can have stuff like Lord of the Uttercold and Greenbound Summoning in a mathematically perfectly balanced game, as well as games that strive to be close to that, but remain fun. Because Lord of the Uttercold creates healing where there was only damage before. So, if you have level-appropriate damage, you now have level-appropriate damage and possibly level-appropriate healing for Undead. Greenbound Summoning should be pushing your damage/debuffing further into your summoned creatures, rather than focusing it on yourself, resulting in the same amount of damage overall with very different feels and potential utility.

Martial-wise, you can have al least have two sets of archery feats for damage. One gives you your level-appropriate damage by giving you a large number of attacks from your low-level featless damage. The other gives you level-appropriate damage by letting you make one really good shot that deals the level-appropriate damage. Utility wise, the attack spam lets you use the stuff like shooting weapons out of people's hands many times per round, while the one big shot increases range and accuracy of those same tricks. If you get both, you can shoot a lot of arrows far away, but aren't getting bonus damage from the sniping-focused feats.

[Beheld]

Wrong on most accounts actually. They added a fly skill because it was needed. How do you knock someone out of the air? How do you avoud being knocked put of the air? Now taking damage while flying can be a real hazard as it should be.

Your personal preference that everyone fall to their death when they take damage isn't super shared. There are already lots of other rules for knocking people out of the air and seeing if they avoid being knocked out. I don't know why a fly skill is supposed to be somehow better than an opposed trip check.


Shapechange/polymorph/pao/shapeshift. No more gaining ex or other special abilities when changing shape.

Polymorphing into a Dragon and breathing fire is a feature, not a bug. If I wanted to cast "Disguise Self IV, Even Bigger Creatures" I wouldn't be casting Polymorph.


Time stop. No longer able to cast timestop while in time stop. (Let's just umm... ignore mythic augmented time stop.)

But doesn't stop them from readying an action to cast Time Stop as soon as the current one ends.


Nearly all instant death spells: changed to save or 10 damage/lvl.

This is just flat worse in every way.


Planar binding/greater (but not lesser) can call in creatures about equal in power to you, but is entirely subject to gm adjudication. My gms would seriously crush my character for abusing it.

So they replaced rules with DM fiat.... and therefore objectively removed content from the game, and this is supposed to be better in some way?


There's many more such changes.

I know, there are tons of minor mostly meaningless, sometimes good, occasionally bad changes that are on average neutral and don't add anything to the game but guarantee that it's a lot of work to learn the system. I realize that. That's the problem!


For your fourth point, that is fair. You still have access to most of those prestige classes in pf. In fact, prestigious spell caster feat will even eliminate the caster level loss giving you full spell progression, and you can wear items to even gain some of the class abilities you give up (such as robes of arcane heritage.)

My point is that the fiddliness is bad. The over complicated option sorting. Not the lack of PrCs.


Your fifth point is a legitimate complaint. But I assure you, it is actually well worth it.

Everything you've said has ensured me it isn't. Your glowing praise of terrible changes tells me the monsters aren't going to be any better.


Personally, I like the idea behind having CR be from daily resources expended. I hate actually doing that, but CR should either be perfectly accurate, relying on minimizing ad hoc judgements by itemizing the CR effect of as many things as possible, or it should be guidelines based on the fact of how hard the fight was to the party, with the guidelines going by how close characters got to death, how much GP worth of stuff was lost in the fighting, how many abilities that don't recharge mid-fight or right when a new fight starts/ends were used and benchmarks of weight based on how long the recharge time is and so on.

Again, CR is the only measure a new GM has for how tough an encounter is. It only works as a fixed number in games with fixed party performance, which D&D isn't.

You clearly missed the point of CR. Do you not DM? The point of CR is not to determine how much XP the players get, it's to tell the DM what encounters to face the PCs with in the first place. You can never be perfectly accurate with giving DM advice, that doesn't mean you don't do it. And anything that tells you CR based on how hard the fight was after the fact fails to do the one thing CR really needs to do, which is tell the DM what opponents and encounters are appropriate.

[stanprollyright]

PF's skill system is not objectively better. It lets characters have more skills and it's simpler but it lacks the granularity of 3.5e skills. I mean, if simpler is objectively better then none of us should be playing 3.5e or PF.

I don't find that kind of granularity adds anything to the game, especially when there are so many situational bonuses in both games that reflect granular aspects. I like it when skill monkeys can do all the things you'd reasonably expect them to do, and others can max out their important skills and have a few to play around with to flesh out their character. Use Rope is about the only skill I miss from 3.5.


I don't think PF or 3.5e is better because they are fundamentally the same thing. It's just silly to claim one is superior when they have all the same major problems. If I had any reason to believe that my game's would be better if I fully converted to PF, I would have done it years ago.

I more or less agree, which is why I allow 3.5 material in the PF game that I run. The other DMs I play with don't, but I haven't been missing it too much. I think the system overall is better for me. Being able to use the best of both systems is part of that.


(For what it's worth, I like Prestige Classes and multiclassing and PF isn't as friendly to those.)

I wouldn't say PF is unfriendly towards multiclassing, it just gives you incentives to stick with your class. Both of my current characters are multiclass, for instance. There are fewer PrCs, but then again, there are fewer books and fewer feats and fewer spells. Plus you can use 3.5 PrCs in PF if you really want to. Even if you can't, archetypes and more intraclass granularity reduces the need for PrCs.

[Mendicant]

I agree that there should be a feat you can take to make you better at archery. But it should be a feat that opens up new archery-based tactics (like how Lord of the Uttercold supports undead + Evocation combined arms tactics), not something that makes your archery numbers bigger. So Ranged Disarm, sure (though obviously, much better than actual Ranged Disarm). But not Weapon Focus. Something like Rapid Shot I'm in the middle on.

I think the disconnect here is I consider "doing level appropriate damage with a bow" a sufficiently new tactic that it's ok to gate it with 1 feat. It's a lateral upgrade as well as a "numbers go up" upgrade. I might be misunderstanding Morphic's intent, but my impression was that the next two in the chain would open up new tactical choices and tricks.

TBH I'm probably overemphasizing our difference here, since in my own feat overhaul I still try to add new stuff even at the bottom of the chain, and almost no feat chain goes three deep.

For instance:
Marksman -- Combines PBS and Precise Shot.
----Far Shot -- Halves ranged penalties and allows you to do anything you could do at 30' at the weapon's range increment instead. (Including the bonus from Marksman.)
----Precise Shot -- When you use the attack action to shoot, you deal the weapon's damage die twice. If you use a move action to aim first, you also add your BAB to damage.
----Trick Shot -- Lets you perform a Dirty Trick, Disarm, or Trip maneuver within 30'. (Or within the weapon's range increment with Far Shot.

Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization are rolled together, apply to groups of weapons, and come with an extra deal that comes online at BAB +4. (Such as any polearm threatening at both 5 and 10', or thrown weapons no longer provoking AoOs.)

[Cosi]

Time stop. No longer able to cast timestop while in time stop. (Let's just umm... ignore mythic augmented time stop.)

That was never even remotely a problem unless you had (close to) infinite slots, which already made the game broken.


Planar binding/greater (but not lesser) can call in creatures about equal in power to you, but is entirely subject to gm adjudication. My gms would seriously crush my character for abusing it.

"We made it easier for the DM to screw you" is not balance, no matter how much you apparently hate your players.


Monsters don't need dedicated non-combat abilities for much of anything. Trolls don't need Heal skill checks, Bandits aren't going to have much in the way of Diplomacy and Solars are hardly going to grab Profession. Most types of enemy have very narrow valid non-combat skills, and tying up a bunch of the statblock in stuff that's unneeded and often useless is counterproductive to a game.

We tried that. It made 4e. Also, I think it's funny that you think giving up Profession or Heal is enough to buy CR 5 (let alone CR 23) creatures any extra combat options even if you allow them to do it.


the big game warping spells that really should have lower level versions anyways.

Good god no. The entire point of having a level system is to put new things at high level. If you take that away, there is no reason to have a level system.


Scarcity does not have to equate to power. What has to equate to power is comparisons. It doesn't matter how powerful feats are as long as they are roughly equivalent. It doesn't matter how much of a character's power is tied into their class levels so long as that amount of power is nearly constant for all classes.

Balance isn't the only relevant metric. Experience also matters, and the experience of being told "every three levels you can get a forgettable bonus" is terrible.


Unless you want to give martials an immense pile of rider effects for feats. Because the only thing martials have is their weapon actions. Almost everything you can do with a weapon is going to add damage in some way.

Yes. Martials as designed are terrible and boring because you can give them very few things that aren't "more damage". The solution to that is to make them less terrible. Frankly, I'm not even as upset with e.g. Combat Reflexes or Rapid Shot. But stuff that just moves damage numbers up needs to die in a fire.


One is to let martials differentiate themselves in how they deal damage without forcing them to grab a specific class to do it, like being able to go sniper or backstab on a rogue.

It seems to me that insofar as "how you do damage" is a meaningful point of distinction, it should be made at the class level. Having damage come from class abilities like Sneak Attack, Favored Enemy, or fireball is much better than having it come from weapon styles like TWF or archery. Having fists v sword v two swords be a vital distinction only serves to lock martials into even narrower concepts when balance demands tha they broaden.


Because Lord of the Uttercold creates healing where there was only damage before. So, if you have level-appropriate damage, you now have level-appropriate damage and possibly level-appropriate healing for Undead. Greenbound Summoning should be pushing your damage/debuffing further into your summoned creatures, rather than focusing it on yourself, resulting in the same amount of damage overall with very different feels and potential utility.

Yes. This is good. Those feats give your character new, interesting abilities. Things you actively select (like your feats) should do that. Things you passively get (like BAB or Sneak Attack progression) should make your numbers work out. Your proposed solution is exactly backwards.

[Florian]

@Mendicant:

That sounds more like a Mythic rules Mythic Path and it´s ability to alter feats.

[Mendicant]

It seems to me that insofar as "how you do damage" is a meaningful point of distinction, it should be made at the class level. Having damage come from class abilities like Sneak Attack, Favored Enemy, or fireball is much better than having it come from weapon styles like TWF or archery. Having fists v sword v two swords be a vital distinction only serves to lock martials into even narrower concepts when balance demands tha they broaden.

Ehhhhh. This sounds backward to me. If differentiation by weapon or fighting style is a lower-order issue, it should use a lower-order resource. A feat is much less of an investment than picking a class.


That sounds more like a Mythic rules Mythic Path and it´s ability to alter feats.

What does?

[Florian]

What does?

Your suggestion on feats. PF uses the Mythic rules for high-powered games and things like "Perfect Arrow" from the Mythic Paths sound very similar to what you´re describing.

[Morphic tide]

You clearly missed the point of CR. Do you not DM? The point of CR is not to determine how much XP the players get, it's to tell the DM what encounters to face the PCs with in the first place. You can never be perfectly accurate with giving DM advice, that doesn't mean you don't do it. And anything that tells you CR based on how hard the fight was after the fact fails to do the one thing CR really needs to do, which is tell the DM what opponents and encounters are appropriate.

Okay, that bit was me mixing up the two functions of CR. One of the functions of CR is to determine appropriate rewards in XP and GP-equivalent, after all. But my earlier statment about CR needing to be judged according to precise measurements of what a creature has, with specific accounting of as many values as possible is still a thing. This itemized list of values also lets you better balance Wildshape and Polymorph by having a CR for the absence of what those abilities don't copy.


We tried that. It made 4e. Also, I think it's funny that you think giving up Profession or Heal is enough to buy CR 5 (let alone CR 23) creatures any extra combat options even if you allow them to do it.
Redistributing skill points can do a lot. That Epic Bard Lich surly would feel a lot from having anything less than maxed out Perform and Spellcraft, and in 3.5 needs Concentration, so half their skill points are eaten by necessities. They can rely on Bardic Knowledge for Knowledge checks, but having Diplomancy set up would eat away at their combat-relevant skills. As a matter of fact, as the number of skill points goes up, the value of dumping a fringe use skill goes up as well because you have to put more into it to keep it relevant for that fringe use.


Good god no. The entire point of having a level system is to put new things at high level. If you take that away, there is no reason to have a level system.
I'm talking having thematically similar and playstyle emulating effects of lower magnitude. Like having a 1st level Polymorph spell that only copies physical scores, then adding new things each spell level or two, or having more options for what to turn into open up. Or having a single-action Time Stop that essentially acts as "get a Standard Action that cannot be interrupted by any means" one or two spell levels lower than actual Time Stop. You know, letting you establish your playstyle for high level when you are low level and use it the whole way through, getting better tools for that playstyle as they level up.


Yes. Martials as designed are terrible and boring because you can give them very few things that aren't "more damage". The solution to that is to make them less terrible. Frankly, I'm not even as upset with e.g. Combat Reflexes or Rapid Shot. But stuff that just moves damage numbers up needs to die in a fire.
I specifically stated that the different options of dealing damage through feats should come with side benefits that apply to things other than damage.


It seems to me that insofar as "how you do damage" is a meaningful point of distinction, it should be made at the class level. Having damage come from class abilities like Sneak Attack, Favored Enemy, or fireball is much better than having it come from weapon styles like TWF or archery. Having fists v sword v two swords be a vital distinction only serves to lock martials into even narrower concepts when balance demands tha they broaden.
So, you want dedicated Archer classes, dedicated Mounted Melee classes and so on? What I'm suggesting is having part of the level-appropriate damage come from feats, specifically to free up class level power for more identity establishing utility effects. This reduces the number of classes needed, because you don't need a class like "Duskblade, but for bows!" if the original Duskblade can already work with bows because their mechanics work with ranged and melee weapons equally well, so their feats decide if they are melee or ranged.

Part of the damage comes from feats. Part of it comes from class level. Part of it comes from gear. Only when all are present do you have the appropriate damage. The class's damage says things about the character most strongly, but feats also play a significant part in the character's abilities and combat style. Gear is basically only ever numbers fixes and utility functions without


Yes. This is good. Those feats give your character new, interesting abilities. Things you actively select (like your feats) should do that. Things you passively get (like BAB or Sneak Attack progression) should make your numbers work out. Your proposed solution is exactly backwards.
Did you completely ignore the part that has me state that the two feats you brought up would be broken if all level-appropriate things were handled without feats? Because they would then grant power above the level-appropriate level. My point is that having feats fill in needed numbers gives you the ability to fill in those numbers in a lot of different ways, as well as ignore them when irrelevant. Like Lord of the Uttercold in an all-Undead party letting the dedicated healer focus less on healing.


I think the disconnect here is I consider "doing level appropriate damage with a bow" a sufficiently new tactic that it's ok to gate it with 1 feat. It's a lateral upgrade as well as a "numbers go up" upgrade. I might be misunderstanding Morphic's intent, but my impression was that the next two in the chain would open up new tactical choices and tricks.

TBH I'm probably overemphasizing our difference here, since in my own feat overhaul I still try to add new stuff even at the bottom of the chain, and almost no feat chain goes three deep.

Well, actually, the three-feat-chain would be getting your level-appropriate damage for different level brackets, with different riders on them. The biggest would be the first one, and the one that actually gives level appropriate damage. The next two would have damage involved, but as a matter of filling in whatever mechanical issues pop up at those levels, with their main point being the addition of doing more things within that theme. You can probably give a pass on one, as they are specifically filling in a gap in the mechanics when it comes to damage, not actually bringing you up to the approved damage value for the next bracket.

[Psyren]

No one here is claiming that PF is flawless and that everyone should abandon 3.5's rickety ship. But for the OP's specific complaints about the Fighter, short of throwing it out entirely and substituting for something else like a Warblade, I think using the PF fighter with its access to archetypes, traits, Master Craftsman, AWT and AAT is beneficial.

[Cosi]

Ehhhhh. This sounds backward to me. If differentiation by weapon or fighting style is a lower-order issue, it should use a lower-order resource. A feat is much less of an investment than picking a class.

I think buying the physical weapon is as much as you should be asked to invest in using any particular weapon.


I specifically stated that the different options of dealing damage through feats should come with side benefits that apply to things other than damage.

So then the entire difference between our positions is that you feel it is very important that people spend time and effort getting the numbers they need to do things. Why do you think that?


What I'm suggesting is having part of the level-appropriate damage come from feats, specifically to free up class level power for more identity establishing utility effects.

You shouldn't have to "free up" anything to justify having level appropriate numbers. You should just get that for being whatever level you are, and then pay for abilities.


Did you completely ignore the part that has me state that the two feats you brought up would be broken if all level-appropriate things were handled without feats?

Level appropriate numbers. Also, as you pointed out earlier, "level appropriate" is whatever we decide it is, and what ultimately matters is relative power.

[Morphic tide]

So then the entire difference between our positions is that you feel it is very important that people spend time and effort getting the numbers they need to do things. Why do you think that?
Because it lets the numbers be attached to interesting things. If you have level appropriate numbers without anything other than your level, there can be nothing that effects those numbers.

You can't get extra attacks off of a feat if you have level appropriate damage without that feat, unless you make using those extra attacks reduce your damage or accuracy enough to cancel the damage boost of having more attacks. Which then makes the only real use of extra attacks be crowd clearing and scratch damage. If you already have level appropriate disabling through attacks, then that also has to be made mechanically equivalent or else you are getting power beyond what your level should have.


You shouldn't have to "free up" anything to justify having level appropriate numbers. You should just get that for being whatever level you are, and then pay for abilities.
But those abilities can only ever be devorced from your main numbers supply and have no effects on it or actively reduce the numbers to get room for what they do.

Lord of the Uttercold gives you healing for certain Undead without reducing damage against non-Undead, non-Construct targets. It's adding numbers without taking any away in many situations.


Level appropriate numbers. Also, as you pointed out earlier, "level appropriate" is whatever we decide it is, and what ultimately matters is relative power.

And this goes right back to having the feats carry some of the level-appropriate numbers. Like, what's the problem with feats carrying some of the numbers you should have? They can do odd things with those numbers, like Lord of the Uttercold being able to tie your power there to the Undead support.

If you have all your needed numbers without getting feats involved, feats cannot effect those numbers at all without imbalancing things. Uttercold spells let you heal Undead, and the player can ensure they only hit friendly Undead targets. You've gained numbers in healing and lost friendly fire without losing numbers in harming most enemies.

Everyone gets the same number of feats, unless their class has bonus feats. So tying intended numbers to feats makes you able to have characters be more varied because modes of attack for martial classes are largely external to the class, allowing you to have the guys who mix magic with archery, the guys who mix magic with mounted combat and the guys who mix magic with duel wielding all be the same class, saving you from having to make a class for each of those things.

Another benefit of tying a bunch of the numbers to feats is multiclassing friendliness. If the feats are giving you a lot of your combat power, then a bad multiclass pick will be considerably less bad than it would be with your numbers being all tied to the classes. It can also lower the ceiling of optimization by making it so you don't have several classes focused on archery to mix together for crazy archery shenanigans.

Classes should be about what you do, not how you do it. Feats let you define how you do things without needing the class to do it. A class can define you as a guy who uses weapons to focus magic of some sort. Feats can then let you choose what kinds of weapons you use, like whether you use axes or bows, and how you use them, while also adjusting how you use magic.

By having needed numbers be shifted to feats, you let feats define how the numbers are applied, letting them be more interesting. A class built around summoning can't have feats that give the summons new combat abilities or let them summon stronger or more numerous things unless there's room for the increase in damage and health on the summons.

[Arbane]

A new spell level rarely alters playstyle severely past level 5. Once you hit 3rd level spells, you have something for almost every playstyle and your character's style of play from that point is altered by PRCs and feats, as well as the big game warping spells that really should have lower level versions anyways.


Teleport is a 5th level spell, and pretty much tells the GM "no overland encounters for us, plz".

[Cosi]

Because it lets the numbers be attached to interesting things. If you have level appropriate numbers without anything other than your level, there can be nothing that effects those numbers.

Yes. Your numbers should be something you can largely ignore, because spending a bunch of time moving numbers around is boring.


Lord of the Uttercold gives you healing for certain Undead without reducing damage against non-Undead, non-Construct targets. It's adding numbers without taking any away in many situations.

That's a very broad definition of "numbers". If I know cure light wounds, it seems to me that learning inflict light wounds is gaining an ability, not numbers.


Classes should be about what you do, not how you do it. Feats let you define how you do things without needing the class to do it. A class can define you as a guy who uses weapons to focus magic of some sort. Feats can then let you choose what kinds of weapons you use, like whether you use axes or bows, and how you use them, while also adjusting how you use magic.

Why should I commit to whether I use swords or spears in advance? That means if I pick wrong, I can't use the cool magic weapon I got mid-way through my career. That's terrible.


Teleport is a 5th level spell, and pretty much tells the GM "no overland encounters for us, plz".

Pretty much. You get big jumps in utility at 5th level spells (teleport, plane shift, fabricate, major creation), and then again at 9th (gate, shapechange), with other stuff in between.

[Morphic tide]

Yes. Your numbers should be something you can largely ignore, because spending a bunch of time moving numbers around is boring.
...do you not know what a game is? Because being able to ignore your numbers is insane **** that goes against being a game. Like, numbers in D&D 3.5 include AC, HP, XP, GP, damage, healing, range, area and speed, both movement speed and actions available.

You know, the stuff that makes D&D a game. All these numbers have to be considered in game balance. And utility abilities have to be considered in terms of how many problems they solve and how reliably they can be solved.


That's a very broad definition of "numbers". If I know cure light wounds, it seems to me that learning inflict light wounds is gaining an ability, not numbers.
Welcome to power budgeting 101, where everything needs to be defined as numbers, or else you get JaronK's tiers, which are nominally about number of problems solvable, with combat being a very small number of problems indeed because it's all solvable with direct HP damage.

In this case, learning Inflict Wounds gives you numbers in healing Undead and damaging other creatures, where Cure Wounds has you damage Undead and heal others.

Applying numbers in different ways is, itself, a matter of adding numbers. Gaining numbers in healing increases how long you can fight, letting you deal more damage overall, so healing has to be considered as having value akin to damage and thus gaining healing should cost potential damage and vice versa.


Why should I commit to whether I use swords or spears in advance? That means if I pick wrong, I can't use the cool magic weapon I got mid-way through my career. That's terrible.
Because it's a roleplaying game. You play a person, not a pile of numbers. People specialize. Generalists tend to need to mix tricks to keep up with specialists in reality.

And how nonsensically unrealistic does it sound for a person to be a master of literally every weapon in existence? You want to avoid specializing? Closest you'll get is the duel wielding focus, which'd let you use every one-handed weapon in the game. Like, you shouldn't specialize in spears. It should be polearms in general, with deeper specializing going into broad types of polearm.


Pretty much. You get big jumps in utility at 5th level spells (teleport, plane shift, fabricate, major creation), and then again at 9th (gate, shapechange), with other stuff in between.
Most of these are strategic level utilities rather than stuff you actually use in combat. And Teleport, in practical gameplay, is able to be considered an upgraded version of Fly, because both let you travel with fewer obstacles.

Also, Alter Self can be considered a 2nd level version of Shapechange's 9th level. This is what I mean by having similar effects to let you use a single playstyle all the way through. Gate is simply a 9th level Planar Binding.

[Hackulator]

Just like every one of these discussions, the real issue is that either most people in these discussions don't actually play D&D they just read the books and furiously <insert action I'm not sure I'm allowed to say here cause I don't know the forum culture yet> about characters they'll never actually get to play, or they have terrible, terrible DMs who don't understand that game balance in D&D is achieved through DM control and THAT IS HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE.

[Beheld]

Most of these are strategic level utilities rather than stuff you actually use in combat. And Teleport, in practical gameplay, is able to be considered an upgraded version of Fly, because both let you travel with fewer obstacles.

Also, Alter Self can be considered a 2nd level version of Shapechange's 9th level. This is what I mean by having similar effects to let you use a single playstyle all the way through. Gate is simply a 9th level Planar Binding.

That.... is so broadly wrong and non informational that it amounts to radical rejection of reality as a concept to be described.

[logic_error]

Just like every one of these discussions, the real issue is that either most people in these discussions don't actually play D&D they just read the books and furiously <insert action I'm not sure I'm allowed to say here cause I don't know the forum culture yet> about characters they'll never actually get to play, or they have terrible, terrible DMs who don't understand that game balance in D&D is achieved through DM control and THAT IS HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE.

Wow. A genius here! Please explain to me how you will balance a game with a party of four: Monk and three rogues. I want to hear how the Monk performs the same as the rogues. This is beginning level exercise. Next, explain to me how you balance when the three characters are duskblades instead of rogues.

I assume some minimal competence on the part of the players and CORE ONLY.

[Karl Aegis]

Wow. A genius here! Please explain to me how you will balance a game with a party of four: Monk and three rogues. I want to hear how the Monk performs the same as the rogues. This is beginning level exercise. Next, explain to me how you balance when the three characters are duskblades instead of rogues.

I assume some minimal competence on the part of the players and CORE ONLY.

CORE ONLY DUSKBLADES

But, yeah, Elven Archer Monk. Bam. Max Dexterity and Strength. Pew Pew and run around like you have a movement speed bonus. Dodge things like you have improved evasion. Don't get mind controlled like you have still mind.

[logic_error]

CORE ONLY DUSKBLADES

But, yeah, Elven Archer Monk. Bam. Max Dexterity and Strength. Pew Pew and run around like you have a movement speed bonus. Dodge things like you have improved evasion. Don't get mind controlled like you have still mind.


So basically just run around doing nothing while others actually get **** done. Great job. Next.

[Hackulator]

Wow. A genius here! Please explain to me how you will balance a game with a party of four: Monk and three rogues. I want to hear how the Monk performs the same as the rogues. This is beginning level exercise. Next, explain to me how you balance when the three characters are duskblades instead of rogues.

I assume some minimal competence on the part of the players and CORE ONLY.

With literally zero information about their builds, I can't give you specifics, but some easy answers that work in almost ANY game are:

1)tailor loot drops such that they are more helpful to the characters who lag in power level thus bringing everyone in line
2)tailor enemies and encounters such that the strengths of the overall "weaker" characters are able to shine
3)have enemies that are smart enough to realize that the more powerful characters are the greater danger and thus they focus fire those people and design strategies to counter them

And of course the most important thing: don't let your wizard cherry pick spells from every book in creation. In every game I've ever played, literally the most valuable treasure a wizard could find was a scroll for a spell he didn't know or, on SUPER rare occasions, a spellbook from an enemy caster we defeated.

[logic_error]

With literally zero information about their builds, I can't give you specifics, but some easy answers that work in almost ANY game are:

1)tailor loot drops such that they are more helpful to the characters who lag in power level thus bringing everyone in line
2)tailor enemies and encounters such that the strengths of the overall "weaker" characters are able to shine
3)have enemies that are smart enough to realize that the more powerful characters are the greater danger and thus they focus fire those people and design strategies to counter them

And of course the most important thing: don't let your wizard cherry pick spells from every book in creation. In every game I've ever played, literally the most valuable treasure a wizard could find was a scroll for a spell he didn't know or, on SUPER rare occasions, a spellbook from an enemy caster we defeated.

Of course if the DM hardrules that the enemy targets the Wizard/non-monk all the time, and only the Monk gets good gear, you *will* achieve some level of "equality". Except, it will happen at the expense of the other chars. Even then, the monk won't be able to keep up. No amount of belts and gloves are going to make the monk come close to the rogue with the UMD or the Druid with the spells + wildshape.

Why can't we all just admit that this is the case?

[noob]

You do not know the belt of monk wizardry?
Make the equipped monk get the spell-casting feature of a wizard of equal level.
I think it fills the gap between a monk and a wizard.

[Hackulator]

Of course if the DM hardrules that the enemy targets the Wizard/non-monk all the time, and only the Monk gets good gear, you *will* achieve some level of "equality". Except, it will happen at the expense of the other chars. Even then, the monk won't be able to keep up. No amount of belts and gloves are going to make the monk come close to the rogue with the UMD or the Druid with the spells + wildshape.

Why can't we all just admit that this is the case?

Do any of you actually know how to DM a game? You don't "hardrule" things (well, rarely), you guide the game in a way that keeps it fun for everyone. You allow the less powerful characters more leeway with builds because the more powerful characters have already used up that leeway by being more powerful. You use all the techniques I mentioned and many, many more to control the balance level and make sure nobody is getting pushed aside or not allowed to have fun. D&D is not a video game or a math problem, it is a roleplaying and collaborative storytelling game which uses rule systems to add an aspect of randomness and spontaneity and to resolve those situations where everyone can't just agree what should happen.

[logic_error]

Do any of you actually know how to DM a game?

Actually, I do a bit.



You don't "hardrule" things (well, rarely), you guide the game in a way that keeps it fun for everyone. You allow the less powerful characters more leeway with builds because the more powerful characters have already used up that leeway by being more powerful. You use all the techniques I mentioned and many, many more to control the balance level and make sure nobody is getting pushed aside or not allowed to have fun. D&D is not a video game or a math problem, it is a roleplaying and collaborative storytelling game which uses rule systems to add an aspect of randomness and spontaneity and to resolve those situations where everyone can't just agree what should happen.

Sure. And I employ these tactics as well. But, riddle me this, how are you going to stop an optmized Druid from outperforming the Monk no matter what? the Druid is already 3 people in one. Your suggestion seems to imply to me that the poor Druid guys should rein himself in when the combat is on just so that the Monk who can punch stuff badly or shoot at stuff badly can whittle away the HP of the mob.

[noob]

You forgot the belt of monk wizardry.
I mean if the gm is trying so hard he can probably start rewriting the class.

[Karl Aegis]

So basically just run around doing nothing while others actually get **** done. Great job. Next.

That's... exactly how traps work. Getting into sneak attack range is easier if you have something to hide behind and you have the enemy come to you.

Oh, wait. You aren't actually using your class features for literally anything. When you mean "Use Magic Device: The Class" actually say "Use Magic Device: The Class". Don't hide behind another word and try to call someone out because you lacked clarity.

[logic_error]

That's... exactly how traps work. Getting into sneak attack range is easier if you have something to hide behind and you have the enemy come to you.

Oh, wait. You aren't actually using your class features for literally anything. When you mean "Use Magic Device: The Class" actually say "Use Magic Device: The Class". Don't hide behind another word and try to call someone out because you lacked clarity.

On the contrary. The only implication here is that UMD is already better than Monk the Class. On top of that you add a guy with evasion and everything else that is cool a monk gets with less MAD *and* sneak attack. How is Monk supposed to compete? And that flanking you seem to imply monk will do? Do you realize that you have reduced Monk to a prop?

[Guizonde]

this thread got toxic fast. it went from "fighters suck and here's why" to "counterargument" to "wizards are better" to "pf has a fix for that" to "pf is for fools" to "wizards are better" to a grade-school shouting match.

fighters may "suck" (i don't know, i never played one), but it's a non-sequitur to say they shouldn't exist because a wizard can do it better. a druid has an animal companion, is that a reason to get rid of the ranger?

[Mendicant]

I think buying the physical weapon is as much as you should be asked to invest in using any particular weapon.

So then the entire difference between our positions is that you feel it is very important that people spend time and effort getting the numbers they need to do things. Why do you think that?

You shouldn't have to "free up" anything to justify having level appropriate numbers. You should just get that for being whatever level you are, and then pay for abilities.

What exactly do you mean by "numbers?" Where is the explicit difference between, say, level-appropriate blasting damage and level appropriate arrow damage, such that everyone who takes levels in ranger ought to get the latter but people who take levels in sorcerer don't automatically get the former?

What is the appropriate investment to be a good melee fighter or good archer? From where I'm standing, those are in fact distinct abilities, and ought to require that people "spend time and effort" getting them. I also can't see how it's possible to avoid investing in at *least* classes of weapons. Somebody who specced an AoO machine most likely invested in reach weapons whether any of his abilities say word one about glaives specifically. If he gets a +2 dagger in his loot he will be disappointed.

[ryu]

What exactly do you mean by "numbers?" Where is the explicit difference between, say, level-appropriate blasting damage and level appropriate arrow damage, such that everyone who takes levels in ranger ought to get the latter but people who take levels in sorcerer don't automatically get the former?

What is the appropriate investment to be a good melee fighter or good archer? From where I'm standing, those are in fact distinct abilities, and ought to require that people "spend time and effort" getting them. I also can't see how it's possible to avoid investing in at *least* classes of weapons. Somebody who specced an AoO machine most likely invested in reach weapons whether any of his abilities say word one about glaives specifically. If he gets a +2 dagger in his loot he will be disappointed.

Which is awful because both of those specialties are weaker than most other things in the game, yet require heftier resource expenditure to obtain on top of that. What you're proposing is a system where all weapon based combat is a trap even as compared to other forms of purely damage combat at similar ranges. A system where picking up a weapon will in most cases actually make you LESS deadly.

[Mendicant]

Which is awful because both of those specialties are weaker than most other things in the game, yet require heftier resource expenditure to obtain on top of that. What you're proposing is a system where all weapon based combat is a trap even as compared to other forms of purely damage combat at similar ranges. A system where picking up a weapon will in most cases actually make you LESS deadly.

What are you talking about? Blasting or weapon combat being weaker than other specialties *currently* has less than nothing to do with whether or not they should be specialties, and I honestly can't even tell what you think I'm proposing.

[ryu]

What are you talking about? Blasting or weapon combat being weaker than other specialties *currently* has less than nothing to do with whether or not they should be specialties, and I honestly can't even tell what you think I'm proposing.

Based on everything you've said in the thread? All weapon fighting trees are still forty-billion feats long, but at least we're putting a bunch of riders on to maybe make them slightly less awful. Weapon combat isn't just weak because of a lack of riders. It's weak because there are just less things you can do with it than literally any other combat plan in the game, and the few things you can do come online at a rate of everyone else getting a minimum of five to one on you for options.

[Mendicant]

Based on everything you've said in the thread? All weapon fighting trees are still forty-billion feats long, but at least we're putting a bunch of riders on to maybe make them slightly less awful.

lol


Weapon combat isn't just weak because of a lack of riders. It's weak because there are just less things you can do with it than literally any other combat plan in the game, and the few things you can do come online at a rate of everyone else getting a minimum of five to one on you for options.

That's a function of class, not feats. If the only way you buy class features is via feats, then yes, there is a problem. If the only way weapon combat is improved is via feats, then yes, there is a problem. That doesn't actually speak to the systemic value of letting people specialize in archery, which a very many of them want to do, by spending a resource below class choice.

[ryu]

lol



That's a function of class, not feats. If the only way you buy class features is via feats, then yes, there is a problem. If the only way weapon combat is improved is via feats, then yes, there is a problem. That doesn't actually speak to the systemic value of letting people specialize in archery, which a very many of them want to do, by spending a resource below class choice.

Except there exist plenty of actually good feats that are literally build defining, individually even on casters. Feats don't have to be, and shouldn't be, weak. They're rare and as such should be capable of individually changing how you operate regularly, or even serve as cornerstones. Save the piddly things that do sweet F.A. most of the time for cheap magical effects like low level permanency effects and similar.

[Mendicant]

Except there exist plenty of actually good feats that are literally build defining, individually even on casters. Feats don't have to be, and shouldn't be, weak. They're rare and as such should be capable of individually changing how you operate regularly, or even serve as cornerstones. Save the piddly things that do sweet F.A. most of the time for cheap magical effects like low level permanency effects and similar.

Great, neat.

If: Being an archer is build-defining.
If: Not everybody should be an archer by default.
If: Archery should be available to a wide range of classes without being written in as a class feature each time.

Then: Archery should at least largely come off an a-la-carte menu open to most everyone.
If: Skills are a bad resource to draw on for this.

Then: You should gate Archery with x number of feats.

The question then is how good the individual feats actually need to be. If they don't need to be so good that they make up for having bad or no class features, balancing them at about the level of Combat Reflexes or Improved Initiative is fine.

[ryu]

Great, neat.

If: Being an archer is build-defining.
If: Not everybody should be an archer by default.
If: Archery should be available to a wide range of classes without being written in as a class feature each time.

Then: Archery should at least largely come off an a-la-carte menu open to most everyone.
If: Skills are a bad resource to draw on for this.

Then: You should gate Archery with x number of feats.

The question then is how good the individual feats actually need to be. If they don't need to be so good that they make up for having bad or no class features, balancing them at about the level of Combat Reflexes or Improved Initiative is fine.

In order: No. Too specific. In order to be build defining it must either apply in all possible common combat and have noticeable effect, or be versatile enough to apply to a wide variety of situations in or out of combat that the person using it never feels they've chosen a useless ability. Archery is neither of those things. Nor is swording in something's general direction.

No: It's not sufficiently useful or hard to counter to be worth investment. You want ranged damage? There's dozens of ways of doing it with complex damage types, options to require a wide variety of counters to be truly safe, already having riders, AND costing less than feats. It also doesn't fit thematically as the most common use for bows in successful battle throughout history is literally handing a sufficiently long range bow to as many reasonably strong people as you can briefly train, then rain arrows in an impossible hellstorm that cares more for sheer quantity than accuracy.

No: If you buff archery such that it's actually worth something class features are a better way of going about it as the added granularity of twenty points of change allows a much more detailed and varied power set.

As your first then statement has no agreed state on supports I see no point in addressing the rest until such time as we've hashed out your presumptions.

[Morphic tide]

In order: No. Too specific. In order to be build defining it must either apply in all possible common combat and have noticeable effect, or be versatile enough to apply to a wide variety of situations in or out of combat that the person using it never feels they've chosen a useless ability. Archery is neither of those things. Nor is swording in something's general direction.
If you define the type of weapon you use is defined by class, then you are pigionholed even more because your class features support only one thing. And it's rather silly to have half a dozen classes that merge magic with weapon use because they each use a different weapon type. Lots of wasted pages on a lot of variations of the same class that can be better handled by having a single class for the general theme of "mage who channels spells through weapons" and have all needed generic weapon abilities be feats. And Archery is, mechanically, able to work in almost every combat situation already. You basically have only Protection from Arrows in the way, and that is solved by saying "ignore all hard counters because they suck to have being used no matter who's using them."


No: It's not sufficiently useful or hard to counter to be worth investment. You want ranged damage? There's dozens of ways of doing it with complex damage types, options to require a wide variety of counters to be truly safe, already having riders, AND costing less than feats. It also doesn't fit thematically as the most common use for bows in successful battle throughout history is literally handing a sufficiently long range bow to as many reasonably strong people as you can briefly train, then rain arrows in an impossible hellstorm that cares more for sheer quantity than accuracy.
Fun fact: You are specifically referring to casters. They are literally irrelevant to this conversation about weapon using classes, unless it's in the capacity of arguing about how Gishes should work. And we should be flagrantly ignoring how 3.5 is because we are talking about making Martials worth using, partly in the context of Fighter bonus feats due to the thread topic. Having easy counters is a statement that can be solved with "but what if we nerf casters to make them specialize enough to avoid stomping martials and remove those easy counters?"


No: If you buff archery such that it's actually worth something class features are a better way of going about it as the added granularity of twenty points of change allows a much more detailed and varied power set.
But this makes it so that you have to check each combination of classes for balance, which creates an unmanageable mess quickly. It's a lot easier to check one magic-and-weapon class mixing with a small set of weapon classes and magic classes than it is to do the same thing for each combination of weapon and magic class being made as it's own class combining with all the other weapon and magic class as well as all the weapon classes and magic classes.

See, you are caught up in how 3.5 is, not the design philosophy of how to use the systems it has to make a less broken system where going martial is just as valid as going caster. Like, I've thought about how to fix Druids and Clerics by altering the way their spell selection works, keeping the access to every spell they have available, but making it so that they choose subsets of the overall list they have now. Like, a Cleric of a God that has no domains relating to pain, death, necromancy or evil would be fundamentally incapable of having Inflict Wounds because it's not on any of the spell list segments they chose. A Druid might well not have access to Flamestrike because they decided to pick the list segments for going Uberbar on everything with self buffs and healing, which pick up utility spells like Goodberry as collateral due to fitting the theme.

So, ignore what currently exists in 3.5 beyond the base mechanics. Critical hits, damage types, weapon categorization, feats, skills, class levels and so on, but not what's actually done with them in 3.5 because let's be honest, 3.5 is a broken mess because some money hungry *******s decided to pump out options to combo with endlessly. Ignore 3.5 beyond it's basic mechanics. Ignore the metagame of full casters being the highest of ****, ignore the fact that martials are next to useless.

Unless you want to talk about how Fighters, specifically, fail at fighting and non-fighting activities, because that's the actual thread topic.

[ryu]

If you define the type of weapon you use is defined by class, then you are pigionholed even more because your class features support only one thing. And it's rather silly to have half a dozen classes that merge magic with weapon use because they each use a different weapon type. Lots of wasted pages on a lot of variations of the same class that can be better handled by having a single class for the general theme of "mage who channels spells through weapons" and have all needed generic weapon abilities be feats. And Archery is, mechanically, able to work in almost every combat situation already. You basically have only Protection from Arrows in the way, and that is solved by saying "ignore all hard counters because they suck to have being used no matter who's using them."


Fun fact: You are specifically referring to casters. They are literally irrelevant to this conversation about weapon using classes, unless it's in the capacity of arguing about how Gishes should work. And we should be flagrantly ignoring how 3.5 is because we are talking about making Martials worth using, partly in the context of Fighter bonus feats due to the thread topic. Having easy counters is a statement that can be solved with "but what if we nerf casters to make them specialize enough to avoid stomping martials and remove those easy counters?"


But this makes it so that you have to check each combination of classes for balance, which creates an unmanageable mess quickly. It's a lot easier to check one magic-and-weapon class mixing with a small set of weapon classes and magic classes than it is to do the same thing for each combination of weapon and magic class being made as it's own class combining with all the other weapon and magic class as well as all the weapon classes and magic classes.

See, you are caught up in how 3.5 is, not the design philosophy of how to use the systems it has to make a less broken system where going martial is just as valid as going caster. Like, I've thought about how to fix Druids and Clerics by altering the way their spell selection works, keeping the access to every spell they have available, but making it so that they choose subsets of the overall list they have now. Like, a Cleric of a God that has no domains relating to pain, death, necromancy or evil would be fundamentally incapable of having Inflict Wounds because it's not on any of the spell list segments they chose. A Druid might well not have access to Flamestrike because they decided to pick the list segments for going Uberbar on everything with self buffs and healing, which pick up utility spells like Goodberry as collateral due to fitting the theme.

So, ignore what currently exists in 3.5 beyond the base mechanics. Critical hits, damage types, weapon categorization, feats, skills, class levels and so on, but not what's actually done with them in 3.5 because let's be honest, 3.5 is a broken mess because some money hungry *******s decided to pump out options to combo with endlessly. Ignore 3.5 beyond it's basic mechanics. Ignore the metagame of full casters being the highest of ****, ignore the fact that martials are next to useless.

Unless you want to talk about how Fighters, specifically, fail at fighting and non-fighting activities, because that's the actual thread topic.

In a simple phrase: SCREW nerfing casters. They're the most interesting thing in the system and the only thing in it not regularly done better in other media. For that matter there is no discussion of how a class fails that doesn't involve casting in this system because as CR rises casters BECOME MORE COMMON. You want to see talk about a fighter specifically failing without being compared to a mage that would've succeeded? Fine. Fighter against oh..... let's say a mind flayer of CR such that the fight is supposed to be an even 50/50 chance. No? Perhaps some other suitably iconic opponent even more assumed to be a standard part of the game? Oh do you want a beholder duel?

[Mendicant]

In order: No. Too specific. In order to be build defining it must either apply in all possible common combat and have noticeable effect, or be versatile enough to apply to a wide variety of situations in or out of combat that the person using it never feels they've chosen a useless ability. Archery is neither of those things. Nor is swording in something's general direction.

Even if I accepted your definition of "build defining," which I don't, it's not actually relevent. ("Something isn't build defining unless the build gets to do its schtick in all possible combats" returns a divide by zero error in like, almost all melee builds. Something is build defining if it defines that particular build, not if it clears your arbitrary op threshold.)

We're talking about rewriting feats, so we're well out of the realm of what merely is, and talking about what ought to be. What ought to be is that archery, or charging with a lance, or any of a dozen other weapon-based fantasy tropes, should be meaningful, well-balanced choices that are key pillars of character concepts.


No: It's not sufficiently useful or hard to counter to be worth investment. You want ranged damage? There's dozens of ways of doing it with complex damage types, options to require a wide variety of counters to be truly safe, already having riders, AND costing less than feats.

Something is worth investment in a roleplaying game if it lets you tell the story and play the role you want to, not if it moves you to some arbitrary tranche of the power treadmill. Besides, see above.


It also doesn't fit thematically as the most common use for bows in successful battle throughout history is literally handing a sufficiently long range bow to as many reasonably strong people as you can briefly train, then rain arrows in an impossible hellstorm that cares more for sheer quantity than accuracy.

You did not just try to REALARZM at me. That isn't even historically accurate, since "briefly trained" doesn't describe almost any successful army using bows. Thematically, being a totally rad archer who is killing bad guys with arrows 90% of the time he's in combat is 100% something that a heroic fantasy game should support, so who even cares.


No: If you buff archery such that it's actually worth something class features are a better way of going about it as the added granularity of twenty points of change allows a much more detailed and varied power set.

This is just backwards. You don't need 20 levels of granularity for almost anything. Even spell levels on a wizard are still coming in every other level. It's especially hot garbage for anyone who doesn't want to take things to 20 or even 15.

Needing a bespoke class to be a shooty archer guy is bad. Having to write dozens of ACFs to get 20 levels worth of granularity for every class that could conceivably want to shoot a bow is probably worse. Modifying your mage-warrior and your ranger and your rogue to all be shooty by grabbing 1-3 tags is far better. It streamlines chargen and reduces the workload of rebalancing them against each other by standardizing a resource pool.

[Morphic tide]

In a simple phrase: SCREW nerfing casters. They're the most interesting thing in the system and the only thing in it not regularly done better in other media. For that matter there is no discussion of how a class fails that doesn't involve casting in this system because as CR rises casters BECOME MORE COMMON. You want to see talk about a fighter specifically failing without being compared to a mage that would've succeeded? Fine. Fighter against oh..... let's say a mind flayer of CR such that the fight is supposed to be an even 50/50 chance. No? Perhaps some other suitably iconic opponent even more assumed to be a standard part of the game? Oh do you want a beholder duel?

Okay, it is now clear that you are powergaming trash, because casters in 3.5 are walking plot devices by the standards of almost every other example of media in existence and you say that's "doing it good." I specifically told you to ignore how 3.5 is because of this ****.

D&D is made to be a group game. It's meant to be about a group of players doing things and covering eachother. The issue with casters as-is is that they don't need a group in quite a few cases. A Druid can almost solo their entire progression from 1-20 without slowing down, and for several entire levels straight they can do it without using a single combat spell thanks to Wildshape and Animal Companions.

This is a game. One that is supposed to have a believable world you play in. It's flagrantly impossible to have a nominally mundane character compete with the **** casters do in 3.5, so casters have to be brought down for the game to be playable. This particular game system is intended to support a group covering eachother's weaknesses and inabilities, so we should rework it around this. Again, casters are a serious problem due to being able to do practically everything. It is supposed to have challenges where characters have to deal with actual difficulties. Casters in 3.5 are nigh-totipotent and thus able to solve practically every problem if they are prepared for it, so they need nerfing to have the game actually work and force a party to work together to get through basic encounters of combat and skill types.

So, in terms of game design, the only option for a reasonable world that doesn't have Elder Scrolls or Exalted style bull**** in it using the system of 3.5 is to nerf the **** out of casting and put so much buffing into martial characters and non-magic solutions.

[ryu]

Build defining as in: You could have literally only this feat and the various options required to make it work (either prerequisites, the minions, the spells, or whatever the feat is effecting) and your build would function to a reasonable degree for the level range of play. Anything additional to that is improved effectiveness of the trick, or alternative situation options to make you more rounded.

If the feat isn't capable of meeting that standard for at least the earliest level it can reasonably be obtained, it's not worth the page space on the grounds that it's a pure trap option. Similarly I can tell any of a dozen different stories a dozen different ways in a dozen different systems. This system does not suit martials as they are most commonly imagined from the design of the classes to the enemies you fight to the equipment system to even something as simple as how random encounters interact with overland travel. I've watched friends of mine play martials and every single time it wasn't done out of intentional self hamstringing for the challenge of it they ran into problems at every turn. That is the failure of fighters. Any game that isn't specifically tailored to them will make them feel useless. At least if the game isn't catered to tier ones they can have the simple freerange fun that comes with something like minecraft creative mode. And no this doesn't necessarily mean only tier ones are valid. A nice, simple, hard to screw up tier three is excellent for a learning player or someone who just doesn't want to put in effort. It's classes that seem literally designed to be incapable I take issue with.

[Morphic tide]

Build defining as in: You could have literally only this feat and the various options required to make it work (either prerequisites, the minions, the spells, or whatever the feat is effecting) and your build would function to a reasonable degree for the level range of play. Anything additional to that is improved effectiveness of the trick, or alternative situation options to make you more rounded.
Okay, that's a fairly worthless definition of "build defining" because it means every single feat at the root of a tree needs to be able to make an effective character. You get 7 feats in 3.5, so this means that your character can have 7 fundamentally different options for combat that makes it so that you have literally no ability to be in a combat situation where you can't roll over the encounter by mixing multiple level-appropriate combat methods. "Build defining" defines the character build, which can mean anything from "this makes the character function to begin with" like you are pushing for, which doesn't work with having feats that you only need meet prerequisites to get and having proper feat chains in the first place because you leave basically no power budget for later feats in the chain, or it can mean "this defines what my character does," like Lord of the Uttercold making it so that you are a Cold damage user who has Undead they want to support. You don't need it to function as someone using Cold damage and supporting Undead, but it defines you as someone who does it by actively tossing Cold damage AoEs that have the usually-Cold-immune Undead you support in them.

It also means that any non-combat feat is an absolute "have it and pass" or else it doesn't pass your insane definition.


If the feat isn't capable of meeting that standard for at least the earliest level it can reasonably be obtained, it's not worth the page space on the grounds that it's a pure trap option.
You know, a character has things other than feats. Like their class or race. You really fail to understand the idea of power budgets. The feat can be made practical with things that it does not act upon directly. A weapon-based feat can require weapon-based class features to work with it to result in level appropriate abilities. Like applying extra damage on hits. These are not part of what the feat acts upon, but rather are things that act upon the same functions as the feat. An adapted Lord of the Uttercold might be ineffective without class features or other party members actively supporting Undead use. If you have another party member that's gone all in on Undead, then you can function with going all in on Cold damage and use Lord of the Uttercold to support your undead-making ally for a stronger team by splitting the build requirements among multiple party members to make a party with a coherent strategy.


Similarly I can tell any of a dozen different stories a dozen different ways in a dozen different systems. This system does not suit martials as they are most commonly imagined from the design of the classes to the enemies you fight to the equipment system to even something as simple as how random encounters interact with overland travel.
Correction: D&D 3.5 doesn't suite martials. The D20 system doesn't fail martials at all. It's like saying "Vampire: the Requiem" is a game system that fails to support mundane characters. It isn't, it's a game in the Storyteller system, which very much can support mundane people gameplay but largely lacks the mechanics to do so in the games for it.


I've watched friends of mine play martials and every single time it wasn't done out of intentional self hamstringing for the challenge of it they ran into problems at every turn. That is the failure of fighters. Any game that isn't specifically tailored to them will make them feel useless.
Ignore. D&D. 3.5. This is about the mechanics framework. Vancian casting, the stuff used by D&D casters, is not part of that framework, given that most of it is spelled out on the character building options. Spells? Their existence is part of the system. The way their uses per day are structured in the core casters is only part of the system as far as there's two or three tables about them in the 3.5 core rulebook, and as such is technically part of the base system, even if you discard all classes that use it.


At least if the game isn't catered to tier ones they can have the simple freerange fun that comes with something like minecraft creative mode. And no this doesn't necessarily mean only tier ones are valid. A nice, simple, hard to screw up tier three is excellent for a learning player or someone who just doesn't want to put in effort. It's classes that seem literally designed to be incapable I take issue with.
You haven't DM'd for a t1 party going full plot breaker mode, have you? Because it's stressful as hell because you have to be constantly coming up with setting details and NPC reactions and track the things the party has already done and so on. Or you aren't doing 3.5 correctly because you are ignoring character roles, and it is a game about playing as characters with personalities, and these personalities typically involve in-game histories and developments that make the world need continuity.

So, again, you are a disgusting powergaming fool who should not speak on anything relating to game design until you abandon the ideas of having single characters and single build components perform all gameplay needs.

[Mendicant]

Build defining as in: You could have literally only this feat and the various options required to make it work (either prerequisites, the minions, the spells, or whatever the feat is effecting) and your build would function to a reasonable degree for the level range of play. Anything additional to that is improved effectiveness of the trick, or alternative situation options to make you more rounded.

If the feat isn't capable of meeting that standard for at least the earliest level it can reasonably be obtained, it's not worth the page space on the grounds that it's a pure trap option.

That's a wide swing between build defining and total trap option, but ok, it's usable.

There's zero reason archery can't meet that standard.


Similarly I can tell any of a dozen different stories a dozen different ways in a dozen different systems.

Yeah, well, we're not talking about a dozen different systems. Throw Dungeons and Dragons into google images and count the number of sword dudes. Hell, look at the 3e logo. The system should support said dudes, and to the extent that it doesn't it should be fixed. "Just play a caster, bro" isn't an adequate answer.


This system does not suit martials as they are most commonly imagined from the design of the classes to the enemies you fight to the equipment system to even something as simple as how random encounters interact with overland travel.

This is true but only to a point. The gap between challenges and martials isn't as extreme as the gap between martials and full casters, and it isn't even that serious for really long periods of play. Managing encounters for a rogue or barbarian for the first 8 levels isn't really that hard if you're not stingy with gear and they're accompanied by the casters the game expects them to be. You can get even more mileage out of ToB martials, some decent optimization and the good manners to really think about the stuff you're throwing at them and any gaps in their equipment.

[ryu]

That's a wide swing between build defining and total trap option, but ok, it's usable.

There's zero reason archery can't meet that standard.



Yeah, well, we're not talking about a dozen different systems. Throw Dungeons and Dragons into google images and count the number of sword dudes. Hell, look at the 3e logo. The system should support said dudes, and to the extent that it doesn't it should be fixed. "Just play a caster, bro" isn't an adequate answer.



This is true but only to a point. The gap between challenges and martials isn't as extreme as the gap between martials and full casters, and it isn't even that serious for really long periods of play. Managing encounters for a rogue or barbarian for the first 8 levels isn't really that hard if you're not stingy with gear and they're accompanied by the casters the game expects them to be. You can get even more mileage out of ToB martials, some decent optimization and the good manners to really think about the stuff you're throwing at them and any gaps in their equipment.

Few things indeed have trouble surviving standard encounters with a caster doing a lot of heavy lifting. A level one commoner has a reasonable chance of surviving being in the same room as a level twenty encounter even if he's being targeted if a level twenty wizard is trying to make sure he doesn't die. For this reason I think bringing casters up at all in response to the game not being suited to martials rather misses the point being made in that it actually directly illustrates the problem.

The baseline competent feat rule was designed such that SOME build could reasonably take it and justifiably say it was a good choice for them even if that situation was limited to the low level of play where the feat was obtainable. A truly harsh limit on design space would be to further rule that the feat should be capable of existing as something the builder either doesn't later regret taking or at least took for the purposes of increasing play effectiveness at low level. The first would be akin to a powerful feat available early that isn't useless later, but doesn't necessarily have any interesting synergy attached. The second would be something like precocious apprentice. Useful early on, but almost meaningless later. The general goal of this was to eliminate all the piddly little situational numerical bonuses that don't even involve the core competency of what the person is likely taking the feat as prerequisite for. Well that and feats that just don't really do much of anything.

This last point may be considered a bit contentious but I actually think of initiators as casters and not even in a derogatory sense. They do a lot of things that look almost exactly like standard spellcasting. Standard spellcasting off a less powerful list granted, but still spellcasting. They fit into that niche I was talking about of simple hard as hell to screw up tier 3 a beginner can learn with. Particularly because they can literally pick maneuvers at random even on a turn by turn basis and still contribute meaningfully a fair portion of the time. With actual thought and agency they become reasonable party mates if not strongest in party.

[Arbane]

Yeah, well, we're not talking about a dozen different systems. Throw Dungeons and Dragons into google images and count the number of sword dudes. Hell, look at the 3e logo. The system should support said dudes, and to the extent that it doesn't it should be fixed. "Just play a caster, bro" isn't an adequate answer.


That reminds me - back in the AD&D days, Dragon Magazine printed a writeup of Conan the Barbarian for D&D. IIRC, he was a game-breaking multiclassed monstrosity with psionic powers, because even back then D&D couldn't handle the concept of a Fighter being as cool as Conan.

[Cosi]

And how nonsensically unrealistic does it sound for a person to be a master of literally every weapon in existence?

Hey, you see the guy who can bend reality to his whims? As long as he's running around, "realism" is not a complaint you should make with a straight face.


3)have enemies that are smart enough to realize that the more powerful characters are the greater danger and thus they focus fire those people and design strategies to counter them

So having the entire campaign tailored to make my abilities matter and have enemies challenge me is making other characters feel important?


What exactly do you mean by "numbers?" Where is the explicit difference between, say, level-appropriate blasting damage and level appropriate arrow damage, such that everyone who takes levels in ranger ought to get the latter but people who take levels in sorcerer don't automatically get the former?

Mostly I mean AC, saves, damage, attack bonuses, and things like that. What new abilities should do is give you new options, like making multiple attacks, or dealing AoE damage, or debuffing.


What is the appropriate investment to be a good melee fighter or good archer? From where I'm standing, those are in fact distinct abilities, and ought to require that people "spend time and effort" getting them.

I think being able to do numerically appropriate damage in melee and at range (or at least at range) is something you have to be able to do to be a meaningful character. I don't think it should matter if you use a bow or a dart or a hammer or a lance to do so.


I also can't see how it's possible to avoid investing in at *least* classes of weapons.

If you define the type of weapon you use is defined by class, then you are pigionholed even more because your class features support only one thing.

Unless you count strength buffs as investing in melee weapons, the DMM Cleric doesn't invest in particular weapons. He lays on some buffs, picks up a weapon, and gets to hitting. No need to commit to that weapon being a sword rather than a spear at 1st level (unless you go War Domain).


And it's rather silly to have half a dozen classes that merge magic with weapon use because they each use a different weapon type.

Of course. That's why you have one Gish class and no abilities that lock you into using swords or spears or daggers or dire flails.


In a simple phrase: SCREW nerfing casters. They're the most interesting thing in the system and the only thing in it not regularly done better in other media. For that matter there is no discussion of how a class fails that doesn't involve casting in this system because as CR rises casters BECOME MORE COMMON. You want to see talk about a fighter specifically failing without being compared to a mage that would've succeeded? Fine. Fighter against oh..... let's say a mind flayer of CR such that the fight is supposed to be an even 50/50 chance. No? Perhaps some other suitably iconic opponent even more assumed to be a standard part of the game? Oh do you want a beholder duel?

Pretty much exactly this.


Okay, it is now clear that you are powergaming trash, because casters in 3.5 are walking plot devices by the standards of almost every other example of media in existence and you say that's "doing it good." I specifically told you to ignore how 3.5 is because of this ****.

This is not an attitude that makes talking to you seem productive. Some people want to do crazy Lord of Light type stuff in their games, and calling those people "powergaming trash" just makes you sound like a child. Certainly, some things should be cleaned up (e.g. planar binding should not be insane), but there's like one spell I think is flat inappropriate (ice assassin letting you make a copy of you).


This is a game. One that is supposed to have a believable world you play in. It's flagrantly impossible to have a nominally mundane character compete with the **** casters do in 3.5, so casters have to be brought down for the game to be playable.

There's a solution you're not counting here. Namely, tell the mundane guy that he needs to get it together and show up with some superpowers. Like how Bruce Banner turns into a giant green rage monster when it comes time to beat up the aliens, robots, or gods.

[Mendicant]

Mostly I mean AC, saves, damage, attack bonuses, and things like that. What new abilities should do is give you new options, like making multiple attacks, or dealing AoE damage, or debuffing.

I think damage and attack bonuses are qualitatively different from defenses in this case.


I think being able to do numerically appropriate damage in melee and at range (or at least at range) is something you have to be able to do to be a meaningful character. I don't think it should matter if you use a bow or a dart or a hammer or a lance to do so.

Maybe if your class is as conceptually barren as being a "fighter," it's ok to just get "hits things pretty well forever." Honestly, a fighter having to "pay" for this with feats barely counts as a meaningful cost right now. Producing big enough damage numbers is not the problem with fighters or most other martial classes.

However, a wizard should have to spend some time and resources before she can wade into melee reliably. A bard should natively produce most of his "numerically appropriate damage" indirectly and only achieve top billing in the personal melee damage sweepstakes if he spends some time and effort getting there. A cleric who produces his "melee damage" with an army of undead should have had to make a tradeoff where he's inferior in one-on-one combat with a cleric who didn't invest in minionmancy.

If all of those characters (and all other characters) all perform equally well by default in dealing melee damage (or ranged, it doesn't matter for the argument), then either the melee combat or the other abilities are just set dressing, which is bad.


Unless you count strength buffs as investing in melee weapons, the DMM Cleric doesn't invest in particular weapons. He lays on some buffs, picks up a weapon, and gets to hitting. No need to commit to that weapon being a sword rather than a spear at 1st level (unless you go War Domain).

Aside from DMM Cleric not being a super great balance point, "weapon choice is purely aesthetic" is always going to be profoundly unsatisfying to a large portion of the player base. At a minimum it should be an interesting choice in the first third of the game, and there's no good reason that weapon choice can't be a thematic anchor for higher level abilities as well other than an insistence on random treasure tables and highly restricted wealth usage. And yes, strength buffs, especially items, obviously count as investing in melee weapons.

Also this didn't really answer my point. If you make a AoO build, you've probably defacto invested in reach weapons whether or not any of your abilities has that term in it.