Stuff fighters should get

[Hackulator]

Ignore all penalties for wearing armor. Interesting bonuses for wearing medium and light armor to encourage different builds. Because in a world where you could have learned ****ING MAGIC, if you spend your time learning to wear plate mail instead you better be damn good at it.

Resistance to magic. Because in a world with magic, if you're gonna go out and get into fights you better have magic or be resistant to it.

A feat every level. Because fighters get feats and even with a feat every level they still probably wouldn't break into a meaningful tier.

More skills. Because are you really telling me learning to use weapons and armor took as much time as learning to basically break the laws of reality with math so casters and fighters had the same time to learn skills?

please feel free to be humorous, this is not a super cereal thread

[Cosi]

Spells.

Only like 60% kidding. Fighters need abilities that matter, not more abilities that don't matter. To make "sword guy" good, you need to give him abilities that are good, and that means "spells", or some spell-equivalent (here meaning selectable, scalable, and not artificial constrained by "realism") thing with a sword guy-ish name.

[Mendicant]

A class name that isn't so self-limiting.

[Seerow]

Spells.

Only like 60% kidding. Fighters need abilities that matter, not more abilities that don't matter. To make "sword guy" good, you need to give him abilities that are good, and that means "spells", or some spell-equivalent (here meaning selectable, scalable, and not artificial constrained by "realism") thing with a sword guy-ish name.

My long standing belief has been that all player characters should have magic, with the main difference being how it gets used.

Imagine if a wizard and fighter both had the same amount of essence/mana at any given level, but the wizard invests his into being able to cast spells.

Magic items might use this same Mana to get power. Or even the fighter could invest his Mana to make a magic item. You might have feats and skill tricks that can use Mana for supernatural effects.

But basically yeah. Magic for everyone. What changes is what you use it on and how you use it.

[DeTess]

Spells.

Only like 60% kidding. Fighters need abilities that matter, not more abilities that don't matter. To make "sword guy" good, you need to give him abilities that are good, and that means "spells", or some spell-equivalent (here meaning selectable, scalable, and not artificial constrained by "realism") thing with a sword guy-ish name.

So, have you taken a look at ToB? It basically does what you describe here. It still doesn't make "Guy with a sword" tier 1, but it puts them at the more balanced point of tier 3-4. Personally, if I wanted to make a martial character, and ToB is on the table, I'd pick one of those classes. If you don't like the 'wuxia' feel of the abilities, it isn't hard to refluff them.

[Anymage]

First, you need to break from D&D convention. Either broaden the class or can it. Just in core you have the angry fighting guy, nature fighting guy, and holy fighting guy. Either use generic classes so "generic fighting guy" fits in, or split off concepts like knight and pick-your-gish class so every fighting guy can be flavorful.

Second, as mentioned, fighters need spells. More accurately, they need moves that specifically and explicitly allow them to do cool stuff. If you could go back 20 years and work with WotC playtesters to make feats into that instead of the things that they actually are, that'd be great. Failing that, taking a pre-existing system like ToB is probably the best fix.

[Florian]

A scaling mount animal companion. Or a way to quickly convert fireballed horses to sausage.

[flappeercraft]

Good iteratives, without some optimization they can't hit anything after the second iterative and even with the second iterative it's not uncommon to miss.

[atemu1234]

Class features.

[Prime32]

Remove items like wands and staves with powers that are cheap but can only be used if you're good at magic. Instead have magic weapons with powers that are cheap but can only be used if you're good at fighting.

[Tainted_Scholar]

They should get a military equivalent of Bardic Knowledge.

[Jormengand]

Nonexistence or assimilation into other classes. "Fighter" is a class concept which should apply to EVERYONE in D&D. Now what ELSE are you that actually defines who you are as a character?

[torrasque666]

Nonexistence or assimilation into other classes. "Fighter" is a class concept which should apply to EVERYONE in D&D. Now what ELSE are you that actually defines who you are as a character?
True, the class should be named "Weapon Master"

[Jormengand]

True, the class should be named "Weapon Master"

Well, no. Barbarians, rangers and paladins are all masters of weapons, and fighter doesn't really bear out the "I am the master of my chosen weapon" archetype very well. "I fight good" isn't a real character concept, neither is "I use weapons good".

[Red Fel]

My long standing belief has been that all player characters should have magic, with the main difference being how it gets used.

Imagine if a wizard and fighter both had the same amount of essence/mana at any given level, but the wizard invests his into being able to cast spells.

Magic items might use this same Mana to get power. Or even the fighter could invest his Mana to make a magic item. You might have feats and skill tricks that can use Mana for supernatural effects.

But basically yeah. Magic for everyone. What changes is what you use it on and how you use it.

I really like this interpretation. I mean, implementing it basically requires a brand new system (or subsystem, see PF's Spheres of Power (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/variant-magic-rules/spheres-of-power/)), but this is great. I mean, you have people who channel magic into their surroundings (Wizards), people who channel magic into their equipment (Fighters), people who channel magic into their actions (Bards), people who channel magic into themselves (Monks, Barbarians). Anyone can do any of the above. It works great and frankly streamlines a whole lot of this confounded class-based crap.

It's not D&D, but it's great.

[Akisa]

Spells.

Only like 60% kidding. Fighters need abilities that matter, not more abilities that don't matter. To make "sword guy" good, you need to give him abilities that are good, and that means "spells", or some spell-equivalent (here meaning selectable, scalable, and not artificial constrained by "realism") thing with a sword guy-ish name.

So 4e fighter where they cast spells? :tongue:

[Mendicant]

So 4e fighter where they cast spells? :tongue:

Yeah, basically. 4e had a lot of problems, but fighters were not one of them.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Vigilante got close but was too caught up in failing to be Batman. What would a Rogue/Fighter/Vigilante fusion look like?

d10 HD, 6+Int skills, good Fort/Reflex saves, full BAB or Sneak Attack based on specialization.

A Social Talent (or certain Rogue Talents) every odd level and a Combat Talent (or Fighter bonus feat) every even level. Either keep the alter ego stuff as an optional social talent chain or change it to let the user switch into armor more quickly and get bonuses when "geared up."

Evasion and Bravery buffing your saves, Uncanny Dodge helps against other sneak attackers.

Rogue's Edge to make your skills competitive despite losing 2 ranks from the Rogue, and Debilitating Injury as a Combat Talent to provide some martial battlefield control.

Merge Armor/Weapon/Finesse/etc Training into one feature that you pick from a la carte, with Advanced options requiring a certain number of ranks in the appropriate option (Dex to damage requires one previous rank in FT for instance). Mastery requires 4 ranks.

So what do we have? A solid chassis with as much magic as you want via Minor Magic and baked-in Weapon Master shenanigans capable of being the street thug or an armored leader of men, incredibly customizable (as the Fighter was meant to be), and actually effective in both combat and social situations. The Vigilante's appearance features can either be an archetype or talents.

[Goaty14]

More health.
If you give fighters less feats, a loaded d12 sounds good for health.
----------
Stuff Fighters should get:
+Add Fighter Archetype classes
-Archer
-Tank
-TWF
-Swordsman
-The Generalist (Something around the Exotic weapons master)

[Dr_Dinosaur]

More health.
If you give fighters less feats, a loaded d12 sounds good for health.
----------
Stuff Fighters should get:
+Add Fighter Archetype classes
-Archer
-Tank
-TWF
-Swordsman
-The Generalist (Something around the Exotic weapons master)

Splitting the Fighter up and taking its feats is the opposite of what it needs. Even if you don't go as extreme as my fix above boosting its combat numbers at the expense of options is exactly what got it where it is todau

[Gruftzwerg]

Stuff a fighter should get

Up to 19 lvls in another class!

Just simple as that. Playing a pure base class is imho not the intention of 3.5. Maybe for beginners, or to showcase how powerful T1 classes are even just in core. But besides from that, 3.5 does everything to make you want to either multiclass or go for a PRC or both.

Once you changed you point of view upon the 3.5 class system as it's intended, "Fighter" is just that what it needs to be in 3.5. A class to get the extra feats that your build needs/wants. Or the 1 lvl dip to get access to all martial weapons and shields (incl tower shields).

Imho the fighter does what he is supposed to do. I don't get all the QQ about fighters. Really.., classnames aren't plates on the forehead of your character.
They are just "stat-blocks" which you add at each lvl of your character, to get the abilities/improvements you want.

I mean, look at most of the more optimized builds here in the forum. Most of em can even bring a PRC to lvl 10. And people make these fighter threads (in the past weeks/months), as if classes are something set into stone (lvl 1-20) as in WoW.

Am I the only one here who gets a headache from this?^^

[Telonius]

Well, no. Barbarians, rangers and paladins are all masters of weapons, and fighter doesn't really bear out the "I am the master of my chosen weapon" archetype very well. "I fight good" isn't a real character concept, neither is "I use weapons good".

The mechanics tried to nudge people in the direction of the "Master of my chosen weapon" archetype by making Specialization and company Fighter-Only. They just did a really horrible job with giving small and non-scaling bonuses. If you could tack on the features of something like Kensai, or make a halfway-decent rewrite of legacy weapons and Legacy Champion, and just give them the Focus/Specialization/Supremacy line as class features, that would go a long way to making them fit into an archetype.

[Eldariel]

Bonuses to AC and saves.

Double Con bonus as HP (same for all martial classes so there's a meaningful durability difference).

Great base saves.

Magic resistance abilities like mind blank, mettle, evasion and eventual magic immunity baked into the class.

Combat bonuses on weapon use and maneuvers. The ability to protect nearby allies with shield or defensive sword.

Mobility and movement buffs plus extra immediate/swift/standard actions (experienced warrior is quick and reacts quick).

Always full attack and the ability to block moving enemies with readied move actions instead of moving oneself. Thus able to hold the line without having to wield reach weapons.

Bonuses to the threatened area due to swift movement: extra squares so melee weapons are able to contribute too, not just reach.

Tons more skills and stuff to do with skills.

EDIT: Oh yeah and raw Strength should reduce your armor check penalties, increase your max dex and improve your movement speed since compared to other physical stats it's kind of lackluster and movement speed is mostly a factor of raw muscle.


Much of that (HP, move + attack/block, antimagic abilities, skills, extra actions) applies to all martials. Since casters have so many monopolies, noncasters should at least get speed, combat and mobility.

[weckar]

I honestly believe they really don't need anything. Adding magic or poppable abilities of any sort will complicate the class, and some people LIKE to play the every round is pick a target and smash game.

[Eldariel]

I honestly believe they really don't need anything. Adding magic or poppable abilities of any sort will complicate the class, and some people LIKE to play the every round is pick a target and smash game.

That does not preclude adding passive bonuses and improving stuff they already do. Plus Barb is better for pick'n'smash.

[Yondu]

Stuff that should be add to Fighters is better resistance and versatility.
Better Resistance : Build-in RD for wearing armors, Better saves in general and better protection if wearing a shield, resistance to fear and intimidation...
Versatility : damage improvement of weapons as they progress in level, removal of iteratives penalties, proficiencies with all weapons and armors, better skills and numbers of skill points, Build-in leadership feat...
A fighter is a mundane, not a magic-user, he should get improved mundane stuff.
PF has done an improvement with Advanced Weapon Techniques and Advanced Armor Techniques, but it will need further improvement to bring the Fighters in front of the scene

[Knaight]

I honestly believe they really don't need anything. Adding magic or poppable abilities of any sort will complicate the class, and some people LIKE to play the every round is pick a target and smash game.

At the very least they could see a d12 hit die, 4+int skill points, and another good save, none of which make the class any more complicated.

[DMVerdandi]

For me, three different options exist.

1. Go mundane, but give them
-Expert's Skills
-Rolling feats
-Ferocity rage variant.


2. Invocations
Ala, warlock, but instead with spells like jump, Magic Weapon Bull's Strength etc. All with a range of personal.

3.TOB
2 maneuvers known at level 1, but no set maneuvers known table. Instead can learn maneuvers from martial scrolls, and practice with other martial adepts.
Still prepares maneuvers as warblade .

Warblade skills. Bonus feats.

[Sayt]

A few things, if you want the fighter to be the generalist it is:
Some form of supernatural ability by the time they hit 10th level. Spells, PF uMonk styles Qi powers, by this point you outperform normal humans, you' re superhuman, might as well admit it. Maybe call them Heroic Acts instea of spells and make them "martially" oriented (5- ft. step half your move speed instead of five feet, negate attacks, autocrit if you hit on an attack as a full round action, sift action to make dex mod 5ft steps per round, etc)
Change the bonus feats to wildcard feats, you can swap them all out as a full, half of them as amove, a third as a swift action. This emphasises the fighter's ability to use any weapon, adapt to any situation.
Good Will as well as Fortitude, hard-headed as well as tough.
Give it the PF fighter chasis+Weapon and Armor Mastery for good measure
4+int class skills, sure, just QoL,


That said, the fighter needs an actual...concept. It's kind of a relic of older editions magic user/theif/fighter. Most of the other classes have some thematics in their class features (which helps inform their class features:Paladins are empowered by their dedication to good, monks are fast and good at unarmed combat (in theory, thematics don't make good power, it just guides class design).

[Jormengand]

The mechanics tried to nudge people in the direction of the "Master of my chosen weapon" archetype by making Specialization and company Fighter-Only. They just did a really horrible job with giving small and non-scaling bonuses. If you could tack on the features of something like Kensai, or make a halfway-decent rewrite of legacy weapons and Legacy Champion, and just give them the Focus/Specialization/Supremacy line as class features, that would go a long way to making them fit into an archetype.

Yeah, but "I am good at wielding this weapon" still suffers from not-a-real-concept syndrome. Yes, you're good at wielding one weapon instead of good at wielding nearly any weapon, but that still doesn't really say anything about who you are.

[weckar]

Yeah, but "I am good at wielding this weapon" still suffers from not-a-real-concept syndrome. Yes, you're good at wielding one weapon instead of good at wielding nearly any weapon, but that still doesn't really say anything about who you are.Should a class say anything about who you are, though? Personally I kind of dislike the classes that impose too much of a background.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

A few things, if you want the fighter to be the generalist it is:

Some form of supernatural ability by the time they hit 10th level. Spells, PF uMonk styles Qi powers, by this point you outperform normal humans, you' re superhuman, might as well admit it. Maybe call them Heroic Acts instea of spells and make them "martially" oriented (5- ft. step half your move speed instead of five feet, negate attacks, autocrit if you hit on an attack as a full round action, sift action to make dex mod 5ft steps per round, etc)
Change the bonus feats to wildcard feats, you can swap them all out as a full, half of them as amove, a third as a swift action. This emphasises the fighter's ability to use any weapon, adapt to any situation.
Good Will as well as Fortitude, hard-headed as well as tough.
Give it the PF fighter chasis+Weapon and Armor Mastery for good measure
4+int class skills, sure, just QoL,


That said, the fighter needs an actual...concept. It's kind of a relic of older editions magic user/theif/fighter. Most of the other classes have some thematics in their class features (which helps inform their class features:Paladins are empowered by their dedication to good, monks are fast and good at unarmed combat (in theory, thematics don't make good power, it just guides class design).
So the Pathfinder Fighter with a good Will save, +2 skill points, and Martial Flexibility and Deeds/Martial Initiating added on?

[Sayt]

So the Pathfinder Fighter with a good Will save, +2 skill points, and Martial Flexibility and Deeds/Martial Initiating added on?

Not quite martial flexibility, as that gives you a few temporary feats, closer to the Master of Many Style's (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/monk/archetypes/paizo-monk-archetypes/master-of-many-styles/) wildcard feat slots.

And yeah, deeds could be a decent way to implement it.

[Jormengand]

Should a class say anything about who you are, though? Personally I kind of dislike the classes that impose too much of a background.

The 3.5 paradigm is at least somewhat to have a class say something about who you are or what you do with yourself. A ranger is a scout, a competent fighter, a survivalist, they have a role, they have a defined job. A fighter just hits certain things with certain sticks for certain reasons and doesn't give you much to build on.

[weckar]

I guess we'll have to disagree, then. For reference, in my group the Ranger is mostly treated as a specialised combateer to the Fighter's more general approach. Say, the Fighter is to the Rogue as the Ranger is to the Expert.

[Florian]

The 3.5 paradigm is at least somewhat to have a class say something about who you are or what you do with yourself. A ranger is a scout, a competent fighter, a survivalist, they have a role, they have a defined job. A fighter just hits certain things with certain sticks for certain reasons and doesn't give you much to build on.

Hm... Jorm, I can´t fully get on the line of your argument.

3E class design also follows the pattern of pure martial > partial caster > half-caster > full caster.
This in turn is keyed to how an "adventuring day" should look like, how many encounters in a row without rest. Let´s start with the random number of 13 basic encounters and start compressing that down to 4, than to one. In this, we should see the problem here.

[Telonius]

Yeah, but "I am good at wielding this weapon" still suffers from not-a-real-concept syndrome. Yes, you're good at wielding one weapon instead of good at wielding nearly any weapon, but that still doesn't really say anything about who you are.

I don't see how this is a problem. "I turn into a bear" or "I use prepared magic" doesn't say anything about who you are either; it says what you do. That's all a class ought to be. The players can fill in the fluff details.

[Florian]

I don't see how this is a problem. "I turn into a bear" or "I use prepared magic" doesn't say anything about who you are either; it says what you do. That's all a class ought to be. The players can fill in the fluff details.

Expanding on this, we´d have to focus on "archetypical" actions for each class, overlooking what might not be typical.

[ranagrande]

Fighters need better feats. I like to use Weapon Supremacy as an example. It gives +1AC, +4 to resist being disarmed, the ability to take 10 on one attack per round, add +5 to one iterative attack per full attack, and the ability to use that one weapon without penalty while being grappled. And it only requires an 18th level Fighter with 5 prerequisite feats. Yes, when Sorcerers are getting 9th level spells, the Fighter can get a small assortment of mostly useless situational bonuses.

The Fighter just needs better feats. I'd like to see feat chains that allow Fighters to wear light armor under medium armor under heavy armor with all of the bonuses stacking. Or to dual-wield two two-handed weapons in each hand. Or to make a full attack as a move action.

These represent a drastic escalation of power for the Fighter ( and other mundane melee types) but will still be far behind what magic can do.

[Hal0Badger]

Spheres of Might. They need Spheres of Might.

[AnimeTheCat]

I've done a lot of thought and I can think of:

- Better skills and Skill Points. --If fighters are trained professionals, they should be adept at various different methods of combat and that should be reflected in the skills available. Skills like Tumble, Use Rope, Balance, Spot, Listen, Search, Knowledge (Nobility/Royalty), Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (History), Knowledge (Geography), Knowledge (Architecture/Engineering), Gather Information, and Sense Motive should all be on the fighter's list and they should get 6+ skill points imo. Not every fighter will be the same or trained the same way, but that will be reflected in the skills chosen. If a fighter is trained in full plate to be a mounted combatant, they likely won't have ranks in tumble or balance but they would likely get teaching in a few knowledge skills.

- Better Will Save. -- I think that through rigorous training fighters have "honed their minds" so to speak. They should be able to resist others trying to influence their minds.

- More/Better Fighter only feats. -- This is the hardest one. Because "Fighter" is so broad, there should be a broad range of feats that you can only get as a fighter. Feats that enable you to be better at fighting a certain way or against certain enemies. The key being that they are only open to fighters. It makes the class something of a "build it yourself" class where you pick what your class features are.

So yeah... Basically what everyone has already said...

[Florian]

*Sigh*

Not even a month yet?

Personally, I´m still waiting for an answer how many encounters in a row a Fighter should last.
This, and only this, should give a hint at what Fighters should "get".

[Raz Dazzle]

Didn't Fighters in early editions get a keep and a small army as they leveled up? There's your niche: the Fighter isn't just a warrior, they're someone who leads others, through inspiration and example.

They don't really need to have the leadership feat; maybe just give them choice of abilities that buff allies (or debuff enemies through demoralizing). Give them a resource called "heroism" or something they can dip into like mana to perform awe-inspiring feats, like running so fast it's basically teleporting or jumping so high it's pretty much flying. Their impressive charisma would also lend well to social encounters, giving them something to do outside of combat. Then just rename them "Captain" to reflect their position as leaders.

[Goaty14]

Up to 19 lvls in another class!

Just simple as that. Playing a pure base class is imho not the intention of 3.5. Maybe for beginners, or to showcase how powerful T1 classes are even just in core. But besides from that, 3.5 does everything to make you want to either multiclass or go for a PRC or both.


Except if you're a druid, there isn't much better than druid 20.

[Psyren]

So the Pathfinder Fighter with a good Will save, +2 skill points, and Martial Flexibility and Deeds/Martial Initiating added on?

So Lore Warden/Martial Master + Stamina + Armed Bravery?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Unique abilities, and stuff to do out of combat.

Beyond that, it's pretty dependent on the optimization level of your table. If people regularly trot out Batman Wizards and nightstick-stacking Clerics, then the Fighter needs a heck of a lot of superpowers, or his own version of magic. If, on the other hand, the group tends more towards blaster Wizards and healbot Clerics, then you probably don't need more than a few tweaks to skills and features. If ToB classes are commonly used, it might be worth buffing your easily-achieved numbers to match. It's all relative.

(Whatever happens, "merged with Barbarian" is a pretty good answer. Rage-instead-of-bonus-feats is a fine ACF setup, and everything else in terms of strength and determination is about the same for both classes)

[Hackulator]

Unique abilities, and stuff to do out of combat.

Beyond that, it's pretty dependent on the optimization level of your table. If people regularly trot out Batman Wizards and nightstick-stacking Clerics, then the Fighter needs a heck of a lot of superpowers, or his own version of magic. If, on the other hand, the group tends more towards blaster Wizards and healbot Clerics, then you probably don't need more than a few tweaks to skills and features. If ToB classes are commonly used, it might be worth buffing your easily-achieved numbers to match. It's all relative.

(Whatever happens, "merged with Barbarian" is a pretty good answer. Rage-instead-of-bonus-feats is a fine ACF setup, and everything else in terms of strength and determination is about the same for both classes)

Do you think gestalt fighter/barbarian would be a fair base class? I could see that working, still not as good as casters but way better than either on their own, maybe even enough to move up tier.

[Karl Aegis]

The ability to interact with the core part of the system. Skills, saves, conditions, AC, Hit points, etc.

[zlefin]

free gear!
since op said thread should be humorous and/or light-hearted.
let fighters get free gear and gear upgrades. a whole bunch of it.

[Hackulator]

free gear!
since op said thread should be humorous and/or light-hearted.
let fighters get free gear and gear upgrades. a whole bunch of it.

Honestly, you could probably do some good balance by giving Fighters a set of "signature gear", armor and weapons they have used and trained with for so long that, in THEIR hands, they function as magic items.

[Cosi]

A class name that isn't so self-limiting.

Yes. The biggest problem with the Fighter is that their name is dumb and the concept it implies is dumb. It's a game about exploring dungeons and killing their inhabitants. Everyone fights.

Classes like Barbarian or Paladin are fine because you can envision how they scale to high levels and what they do outside combat. Fighter? Not so much.


True, the class should be named "Weapon Master"

Okay, how does a "Weapon Master" fight? Does he want long fights or short ones? One enemy or many? Long range or short? What does he do outside combat? What does he do at 15th level?


My long standing belief has been that all player characters should have magic, with the main difference being how it gets used.

So 4e fighter where they cast spells? :tongue:

Yeah, basically. 4e's problem wasn't giving everyone abilities, it was giving everyone the same abilities. You should have different resource management paradigms for different classes. Give the Barbarian a Rage Meter. Give the Warlock powers that Drain him. And so on.

For a decent example of this, take a look at the Traveler's Gate series. Different Wizards Travelers have different magical abilities, that work in different ways. So the Endross Travelers (Lightning Mages) have powers that ramp up as used, and other Travelers have Power Points or whatever.


So, have you taken a look at ToB? It basically does what you describe here. It still doesn't make "Guy with a sword" tier 1, but it puts them at the more balanced point of tier 3-4. Personally, if I wanted to make a martial character, and ToB is on the table, I'd pick one of those classes. If you don't like the 'wuxia' feel of the abilities, it isn't hard to refluff them.

ToB is an improvement, but it fails to deliver enough of a power boost, and it fails to deliver non-combat abilities. ToB characters still don't have much to bring to the table when the combat music isn't playing, and that's not good.


I don't see how this is a problem. "I turn into a bear" or "I use prepared magic" doesn't say anything about who you are either; it says what you do. That's all a class ought to be. The players can fill in the fluff details.

Druid and Wizard are clearly more loaded than that. You could have a system where the abilities you had were totally divorced from your character's flavor, but D&D doesn't do that, and given that, Fighter should be as strong a signal as any other class as to what your character is.


*Sigh*

Not even a month yet?

Personally, I´m still waiting for an answer how many encounters in a row a Fighter should last.
This, and only this, should give a hint at what Fighters should "get".

Would you care to actually make your argument, or are you just going to gesture at your argument and act superior and put out when people don't read your mind?

In any case, being less effective over a longer period is only balanced if you assume all adventurers are under time constraints. This is bad design for the same reason only balancing to the Wizard/Rogue/Cleric/Fighter party and not the Wizard/Wizard/Wizard/Cleric party is bad design -- it makes the game's balance more fragile for no reason.


Didn't Fighters in early editions get a keep and a small army as they leveled up? There's your niche: the Fighter isn't just a warrior, they're someone who leads others, through inspiration and example.

But there are clearly Wizards with armies. If your game reserves "has an army" for Fighters, how are you representing Sauron who has an army and is also a Wizard?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Do you think gestalt fighter/barbarian would be a fair base class? I could see that working, still not as good as casters but way better than either on their own, maybe even enough to move up tier.
Meh. Barbarian is a reasonably serviceable T4 brawler. Adding Fighter stuff in there-- especially ACFs like Zhentrim Soldier-- certainly doesn't hurt, but doesn't really do a tremendous amount of new stuff either. It arguably frees up feats for the Barbarian to take noncombat stuff, but in practice you're just sort of doubling down on face-smashing.

If you want to do some gestalts to move up a tier, I personally like Fighter//Marshal. The Fighter gets good social stuff and the option to pump up their physical skills, while the Marshal gets the BAB and feats to acquire an effective combat schtick, and the thematics are spot-on for both. Fighter//Factotum is pretty good too; the Fighter acquires excellent non-combat abilities and (in later stages) the sort of magic you need to stay competative, and the Factotum gets the combat muscle it so desperately needs before it starts having enough spells/day to rely on those.

[Hackulator]

Meh. Barbarian is a reasonably serviceable T4 brawler. Adding Fighter stuff in there-- especially ACFs like Zhentrim Soldier-- certainly doesn't hurt, but doesn't really do a tremendous amount of new stuff either. It arguably frees up feats for the Barbarian to take noncombat stuff, but in practice you're just sort of doubling down on face-smashing.

If you want to do some gestalts to move up a tier, I personally like Fighter//Marshal. The Fighter gets good social stuff and the option to pump up their physical skills, while the Marshal gets the BAB and feats to acquire an effective combat schtick, and the thematics are spot-on for both. Fighter//Factotum is pretty good too; the Fighter acquires excellent non-combat abilities and (in later stages) the sort of magic you need to stay competative, and the Factotum gets the combat muscle it so desperately needs before it starts having enough spells/day to rely on those.

Actually the fighter//marshal does sound like a good idea, it makes a lot of sense for the fighter to be an expert tactician.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Actually the fighter//marshal does sound like a good idea, it makes a lot of sense for the fighter to be an expert tactician.
It's basically doubling down on the Fighter-as-a-warlord idea that we saw in earlier editions. The Barbarian is the brute, the Ranger the scout, the Paladin the holy warrior and the Fighter is the leader of men.


Yeah, basically. 4e's problem wasn't giving everyone abilities, it was giving everyone the same abilities. You should have different resource management paradigms for different classes. Give the Barbarian a Rage Meter. Give the Warlock powers that Drain him. And so on.
Very much agreed-- at one point I was starting to work on a backwards-compatible heartbreaker that worked sort of like that. Everyone was vaguely similar to a ToB initiator, but had different ways of recovering maneuvers. (And maneuvers that would do noncombat stuff, natch-- the Strength school would have things like lifting huge weights and replacing entire labor forces alongside knocking enemies around and hitting dudes with other dudes).

The trick is that you also have to keep everyone on a roughly comparable rate of resource drain (including ability to nova). 5e kind of screwed that up with their long rest/short rest division-- I think 90% of the balance complaints I've seen boil down to "this class doesn't work right when we don't have the expected number of rests/encounter."

[Telonius]

Druid and Wizard are clearly more loaded than that. You could have a system where the abilities you had were totally divorced from your character's flavor, but D&D doesn't do that, and given that, Fighter should be as strong a signal as any other class as to what your character is.


Druid, I'll give you, because of the code. Paladin too, for the same reason. But Wizard? Smart guy who casts spells. Other than that, it's essentially fluff-free. Just having the class tells you practically nothing about the character, their goals, or how they go about solving problems (other than "cast spells at them"). Same with Sorcerer (Charismatic guy who looks good while casting spells). Cleric (Wise guy who casts spells) too, to an extent. Just "Cleric" tells you that they care about their deity or cause, but not much else; there's more flavors of Cleric than there are deities. Those classes are customizable based on whatever angle you want to take, and the mechanics themselves encourage customization (selecting your own spells, domains giving you various powers, and so on). Fighter (strong guy who hits things with their favorite pointy or blunt object) has about as much fluff baked in as those three pretty iconic classes. The Fighter Feats are an attempt at similar customization; unfortunately most of them fell flat on their face.

[Jormengand]

I don't see how this is a problem. "I turn into a bear" or "I use prepared magic" doesn't say anything about who you are either; it says what you do. That's all a class ought to be. The players can fill in the fluff details.

"Druid" tells you a lot about who you are just in the name, and while "Wizard" doesn't, I don't think that's a selling point for the wizard. The fact that it's to some extent about magical research as opposed to the sorcerer's power-in-the-blood at least gives you a starting point, though, whereas "Fighter" is just something which is true of everyone in D&D.

EDIT: Similarly "Cleric" tells you that you're some kind of, well, cleric, and bard tells you that you're a kind of performer, which again is more informative than "One of the very very many people who is able to deal damage with a weapon".

[Cisturn]

This is a super interesting thread.

A fighter in DnD is a guy who decided to not use magic. Maybe magic wasn't an option for them, or what have you, but whatever reason they decided to hit things with swords. I respect that. So let's make them really effing good at hitting stuff and making sure they stay down.

I agree with giving them better saves and higher hp, but I think a better solution might be to give them SR and Spell Turning x times per day. Let's have these guys be the kings of anti-magic. Maybe they could get this stuff in addition to the saves and the higher HP.

I also think they could use a scaling system for Power Attack. I'm probably going to get the names wrong, but I think Frenzied Berserker get's access to Greater Power Attack and Supreme Attack, which allows a x3 and x4 return on power attack respectively.


As far as flavor goes, the Fighter is pretty severely lacking. I think it actually has the least amount of built in fluff of any of the classes. Someone in this thread said wizards and clerics had about the same level of missing fluff, but I don't agree at all. For example, wizards typically go to wizarding schools which one did the go to? How did they get in? Or maybe they're self-taught, was magic school not an option, did they apprentice with someone? How did they first learn they could even do magic? How did they get their first spell book? Was it a gift or did they steal it? What was the first spell? Why did they choose it? Are they going to specialize?

It goes similarly with Clerics, why did they choose their patron? Is there a particular order they've joined? Was their family religious? What made them want to devote their life to this particular cause? Why did they opt to be an adventurer over tending to a church? Hell, even barbarians get to figure out where their anger issues come from, were they part of a barbarian clan? Do they have any different customs? Where is that clan now? Are they not from a barbarian clan? What was it like being a barbarian growing up in a merchant family?

Meanwhile a fighter is just kind of a tough guy. I mean, they don't have to be boring by any means, but I just don't get the same number of immediate background questions with a fighter as I do with the other classes. Which isn't to say that aren't any questions like that to ask. But I think the fighter may have been left intentionally left vague to allow the player more versatility with their build and background.

[Florian]

Yeah, basically. 4e's problem wasn't giving everyone abilities, it was giving everyone the same abilities. You should have different resource management paradigms for different classes. Give the Barbarian a Rage Meter. Give the Warlock powers that Drain him. And so on.

Would you care to actually make your argument, or are you just going to gesture at your argument and act superior and put out when people don't read your mind?

In any case, being less effective over a longer period is only balanced if you assume all adventurers are under time constraints. This is bad design for the same reason only balancing to the Wizard/Rogue/Cleric/Fighter party and not the Wizard/Wizard/Wizard/Cleric party is bad design -- it makes the game's balance more fragile for no reason.

Nah, acting superior suits me!

Ok, fun aside, one of the core concepts of D&D and the underlying balance is resource attrition and managing that. That means to metrics were used and they should even out, being "balanced": The Encounter and the Adventuring Day.
You´re right in that it is a problem as the later is variable and the players have a huge influence on how and when they take a rest, which in turn alters the balance point of the "at will"/"low resources" classes like Fighter and Rogue quite a lot.

That touches on your above point: Rebalancing that would mean either ditching the Adventuring Day completely and only work with The Encounter, or at least provide incentive mechanics to keep on going. The result is known. Performance becomes part of the underlying system and you actually need some kind of mechanics to support the illusion that class choice and build actually mattered at any point, especially once you also start "siloing" class abilities, so each class can equally contribute in combat, exploring, in social scenes, and so on.

That begets the question if this is really the wanted result?

[prufock]

My "quick fix" for fighters is

- 4+int skill points qith some added skills
- free Martial Study or Martial Stance at each odd level that doesn't count against the normal limit, with full initiator level
- first level feat becomes a floating feat he can change with 10 minutes practice

[Grod_The_Giant]

That touches on your above point: Rebalancing that would mean either ditching the Adventuring Day completely and only work with The Encounter, or at least provide incentive mechanics to keep on going. The result is known. Performance becomes part of the underlying system and you actually need some kind of mechanics to support the illusion that class choice and build actually mattered at any point, especially once you also start "siloing" class abilities, so each class can equally contribute in combat, exploring, in social scenes, and so on.

That begets the question if this is really the wanted result?
4e may have wound up with homogenous classes, but that doesn't mean that's the only possible result of putting every character on the same sort of resource paradigm.

Speaking of, the "Fighters can keep going" thing is a poor balance point. Not only will groups generally stop before everyone runs out of resources, Fighters aren't resource-independent-- their hit points will be depleted faster than just about any other measure, and it's only other people's magic that keeps them going.

[Psyren]

Speaking of, the "Fighters can keep going" thing is a poor balance point. Not only will groups generally stop before everyone runs out of resources, Fighters aren't resource-independent-- their hit points will be depleted faster than just about any other measure, and it's only other people's magic that keeps them going.

Groups don't always get to choose where and when to stop though. Nor should they, I would argue.

I wouldn't mind some kind of "short rest" or "second wind" mechanic to extend the longevity of hit points, but even without that, potions aren't that expensive. And the fighter doesn't have to solo the entire adventuring day on his hit point total, he just needs enough in case the party has a couple of encounters after the casters have run empty.

[ijon]

yeah, the whole "high health only matters for one fight a day" thing makes me sad

healing surges were a good idea in that regard, and gave you some real staying power, something the fighter *should* have but doesn't. they don't jive well in a setting where every nick and scrape matters (and a sword to the gut doesn't leave you with an angry guy at the hilt of your sword), but what is this, dark heresy?

also yes, you should be able to disrupt magic just as a consequence of being a Really Good Fightman. dunno how often, or how potently, but it'd make a good thematic counterpart to wizards and sorcerers; wizards make magic, and fighters break magic.

while we're at it, throw in a maneuver system that doesn't have cooldowns. if I want to use charging minotaur five times in a row, let me. if I'm level 17 or 18 and have strike of righteous vitality (or an equivalent), screw it, let me basically heal half my health every single round; it'd certainly make the guy more scary. counters would probably still have a countdown, if they'd still exist.

the idea of hot-swappable feats is nice, but I dunno what to say about them. I'd like to have each fighter have an immutable archetype at the very least, which would probably absorb classes like the samurai, knight, and barbarian. probably the warblade and crusader too.

this is in general, but for fighters moreso; cut down the damn christmas tree. if characters are heroes past level 5/6, and superhuman past level 9/10, their intrinsic stats really should reflect that. it bugs me so much when I need to deck out my crusader/paladin dude in a small kingdom's worth of magical gear just to keep him competitive. I don't want to give him a bunch of stat boost items; I want his stats to raise naturally. and no, 1 ASI/4 levels isn't enough.

and for the love of god, cut out all the weapon focus/shield specialization tier feats. it hurts my soul when I have to take them for things like shield ward. replace them with more impressive bonuses, or more interesting things (like the DotF improved shield bash!). or make them feats that upgrade as your BAB goes up - TWF needs that so badly.

there's probably 50 more things I could complain about, but those are the first things that came to mind. in the end, I just want my fighter to be the best at fighting.

I'll be back in a month, just in time to say basically this again in the next "give fighters nice things" thread

[Dr_Dinosaur]

So Lore Warden/Martial Master + Stamina + Armed Bravery?

Seems like, except they probably shouldn't need to trade anything for the archetypes. I'd also still combine Armor/Weapon Training even in a minimalist fix just for customizability's sake. A character with Stamina, Bonus Feats, potential early AWT, and Martial Flexibility is in a pretty good spot combat-wise, and those bonus skill points are pretty nice.

But yeah: Automatic Bonus Progression and Feat Tax rules massively improve the Fighter.

[Mendicant]

There's this really interesting trend in fighter discussions where a sizeable group of people are advocating a concept that is less "guy who fights" and more "generic hero-protagonist."
I think it's an inevitable consequence of the fighter class being a scaffold with no strong theme.

Among people who want to fix the fighter, you basically have three schools of thought:

Improve combat ability and leave other things more or less alone. The things he does out of combat are train for more combat or possibly train his buddies for combat.

Turn him into something else with a stronger theme--gestalt him with marshal, for instance.

Give him a collection of cool abilities with fairly tenuous links to being fighty--for instance, I can't really see an argument for why a "fighter" should get good will saves that wouldn't be equally applicable to, say, a ranger or a ninja.

[unseenmage]

To have been called an NPC class alongside the Expert and Commoner where it belongs.
Am not really kidding either. It's only superpower is feats. And since every creature with enough Int gets those (and some without Int get them as Bonus besides) it's not super nor powerful by comparison.

Fighters are that thing PCs kill while on their way to fight the real BBEG. That's not to say the BBEG can't ever be a fighter, it'll just be a bbeg, disappointing and lowercase.


I've mentioned before though that I really appreciate fighter optimization threads. They help me know how to buff my Constructs who otherwise wouldn't be able to be as useful otherwise. They're still awful but hey, utilizing magic robots is just my own personal method for bringing tier 1 classes down a tier or two.

[rel]

How about this

magic syphon
Fighter doesn't like magic. Fighter hates magic so much he refuses to use it. Fighter hates magic so much he refuses to have any around. If a magical effect (Any spell, SP, Su or anything else that people would say a normal fighter shouldn't get because it is clearly magic*) occurs or is occuring anywhere within fighters level X 10 ft. This power goes off with the following effects:

The fighter is instantly aware of the magic, its approximate effects and its source.
Approximate effects means something like the room you just stepped into has a field that turns people into frogs for a short time. Or a spying spell capturing light and sound has appeared.
Source is where when and how the magic came to be. That wizard over there threw the fireball. The scrying sensor came from a cleric in an evil temple this is what he looks like and this is about where you can find him if you want a word.

The fighter can have the magic affect him instead of the normal targets (only him if it is an AOE) assuming he could be in some way a valid target for the effect.
A fireball hits the party, looks like it just hit fightguy.
Enemy wizard cast a buff. Thanks. Mine now.
If the spell has controlable effects the fighter chooses what those are.
So a teleport results in the fighter choosing where to go, resist energy results in the fighter choosing the energy type.

The fighter can substitute whatever the magical effect was with one of the following options:

1) Fighter heals effects caster level x 5 HP or Fighters own level if the effect has no CL. Or removes a harmfull effect curently affecting him.
Dragon breathes fire on the party. Fighter gets a heal.
party walk into magical trap. fighter heals.

2) Effects creator takes fighter level D6 in damage. Wizard tried wiggling his fingers within 100 ft. of a 10th level fighter. That spell didn't happen, take 10D6 damage for trying.

3) fighter is moved adjacent to the effects creator or backtraces to where he was before if he used this effect to travel at some point in the last day.
Wizard in his extraplanar fortress makes the mistake of trying to hit fighter with loves curse via a mind raped commoner. Say hello to fighter! (Then every magical effect within range is magic syphoned).


Note that since the previous effect was substituted it no longer exists. Fighter comes within range of a permanent wall of fire and decides to consume it for a healing. No more fire wall. riverine weapon? enjoy your puddle of seawater. etc.

*magic syphon obviously doesn't count

[Lans]

They should get the appropriate class abilities and chasis to be inline with most of the other classes and opponents

[Zanos]

Groups don't always get to choose where and when to stop though. Nor should they, I would argue.

I wouldn't mind some kind of "short rest" or "second wind" mechanic to extend the longevity of hit points, but even without that, potions aren't that expensive. And the fighter doesn't have to solo the entire adventuring day on his hit point total, he just needs enough in case the party has a couple of encounters after the casters have run empty.
CLW potions provide the best ratio that I can recall, and cost about 9gp per HP, which is non-trivial. Potions of lesser vigor are twice as efficient if you can swig those instead, but it's still not a fantastic cost to HP ratio.


How about this

magic syphon
"I project an aura that makes entire classes not work at all with no roll" isn't exactly fantastic game design, as poorly designed as some spells are aside.

It also doesn't do anything to necromancers and other instantaneous effects.

[AnimeTheCat]

Could introduce a feat line similar to the Combat Focus feat line where you enter a state of combat focus and gain X or are able to do X as long as you remain in said focus. For instance:

Trained Mind [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Fighter Level 1
Benefit: When you are the target of a spell or spell-like effect from a hostile creature in combat for the first time, you enter a trance-like state. You automatically succeed on the save against this spell or spell-like effect (if it has no save, it affects you normally). When in this state you gain a +4 bonus to your wisdom score and a +2 bonus to all saves against spells or spell-like abilities. This trance lasts for 10 turns plus 1 for each [Mental Training] feat you have, including this one. You may only enter a trance once per combat.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

Shake the Spell [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Trained Mind, Fighter Level 2
Benefit: While you are in your trance and fail a save against a spell or spell-like ability, you may willingly end your trance to end the effect or any spell or spell-like ability on you. If you choose not to end your trance you may make another saving throw each round you are under the effect as a free action.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

Quell the Caster [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Trained Mind, Fighter Level 4
Benefit: You gain an untyped bonus equal to 1/2 your character level on attacks, damage, skill checks, ability checks, and saves against the hostile creature that targeted you with a spell or spell-like ability to make you enter your trance. If you threaten the hostile creature, it must succeed on a concentration check DC 10+your character level+caster level of any spell or spell-like ability they try to use while you threaten them. A hostile creature so threatened by you treats all spaces within your reach +5 feet as treacherous terrain.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

Mental Expansion [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Trained Mind, Fighter Level 8
Benefit: Your trance state and all [Mental Training] feats apply to Supernatural abilities in addition to spells and spell-like abilities.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

Deny the Spell [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Trained Mind, Fighter Level 2
Benefit: You gain an untyped bonus to your AC equal to 1/2 your character level against attack rolls from spells and spell-like abilities while in your trance.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

Turn the Spell [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Trained Mind, Deny the Spell, Shake the Spell, Fighter Level 6
Benefit: If you are targeted by a spell while in your trance and succeed your save against it, you gain fast healing for a number of rounds equal to the spell level. The value of the fast healing is equal to 1/2 the spell level, round up. For instance, if a character with this feat is in a trance and is targeted by an insanity spell and succeeds on the will save to negate the spell, that character gains Fast Healing 3 for 7 rounds. If another spell is cast on the character and the character succeeds on their will save, they can choose to have fast healing of the new spell or the old one.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

[Raz Dazzle]

But there are clearly Wizards with armies. If your game reserves "has an army" for Fighters, how are you representing Sauron who has an army and is also a Wizard?

Armies aren't "reserved" for Fighters, just as spellcasting isn't "reserved" for Wizards. A hero-warrior-type like the Fighter would simply be better at inspiring and leading other warriors than a Wizard, just like a Wizard is better at spellcasting than a Hexblade.

And Sauron is no Wizard - he's probably some sort of Artificer/Cleric of Morgoth gestalt with the Leadership feat. No self-respecting Wizard would make a phylactery that needs to stay on your finger to work!

[Zanos]

Armies are usually the province of Evil wizards in my experience, and usually created or enthralled with magic, rather than led by example and with charisma.

[zergling.exe]

Armies aren't "reserved" for Fighters, just as spellcasting isn't "reserved" for Wizards. A hero-warrior-type like the Fighter would simply be better at inspiring and leading other warriors than a Wizard, just like a Wizard is better at spellcasting than a Hexblade.

And Sauron is no Wizard - he's probably some sort of Artificer/Cleric of Morgoth gestalt with the Leadership feat. No self-respecting Wizard would make a phylactery that needs to stay on your finger to work!

Sauron is actually a deity as well (well, actually an angel, but that's because Tolkien's work is Christian, deity represents the Maiar's power better), so likely a cleric of themself, and the ring is less a phylactery and more a way to manipulate the wearers of the other rings Sauron made. Unfortunately Sauron put so much of their self into the ring that without it they were little more than an empty husk. Fun fact: Sauron wasn't actually destroyed when the ring was, just reduced to the same state as the Witch King. Formless and in agony.

[Telonius]

Sauron is actually a deity as well (well, actually an angel, but that's because Tolkien's work is Christian, deity represents the Maiar's power better), so likely a cleric of themself, and the ring is less a phylactery and more a way to manipulate the wearers of the other rings Sauron made. Unfortunately Sauron put so much of their self into the ring that without it they were little more than an empty husk. Fun fact: Sauron wasn't actually destroyed when the ring was, just reduced to the same state as the Witch King. Formless and in agony.


I think which version of Sauron you're talking about is going to matter. Werewolf/Vampire thing fighting Huan, Smooth prisoner of Ar Pharazon, Evil Warlord going one on one with Elendil and Isildur, formless shadow, Necromancer, giant fiery eyeball thing. You could probably make a case for him being an epically-advanced Phasm, with all that shapeshifting.

The One Ring is definitely an Item Familiar, if you're putting it in D&D terms.

[zlefin]

5/4 BAB! yes, that's even higher than normally possible. mwahahahaha.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

5/4 BAB! yes, that's even higher than normally possible. mwahahahaha.
Funny thing is, that's basically what 5e gave them, along with self-healing, Action Surge, and an archetype that makes them the only class allowed to use most combat maneuvers for some reason. The Fighter gets an extra attack by level 20 compared to all the other traditionally full-BAB classes.

Actually, that brings up an interesting question. What if we just combined PF and 5e's Fighter (Base and Champion to keep it simple) and gave it Combat Stamina? Probably need to move Action Surge down a few levels to keep Wizards from dipping two levels to get a once-per-day bonus spell...

At level 20, they have
*Five iterative attacks
*Weapon and Armor Mastery
*+5 to saves against Fear (and Will in general with Armed Bravery) and 3/day saving throw reroll
*22 Feats (11 of which must be combat feats and one of which is Combat Stamina)
*Two small bonuses based on Fighting Style choice (Possibly give ability to ignore prereqs for related feats like a Ranger?)
*Self-healing once per day and passive Fast Healing when below 1/2 HP
*Two uses of Action Surge per day (or Short Rest equivalent)
*+2 to all critical hit ranges
*A scaling bonus to all physical ability checks (including Initiative)
*Pool of points to augment the effects of all those feats

Is this a good class? Does it have an identity?

I'm not suggesting this as an actual fix, just interested in what people think of it.

[AOKost]

My long standing belief has been that all player characters should have magic, with the main difference being how it gets used.

Imagine if a wizard and fighter both had the same amount of essence/mana at any given level, but the wizard invests his into being able to cast spells.

Magic items might use this same Mana to get power. Or even the fighter could invest his Mana to make a magic item. You might have feats and skill tricks that can use Mana for supernatural effects.

But basically yeah. Magic for everyone. What changes is what you use it on and how you use it.

In the system I use called Custom Characters, every character has the opportunity to learn magic. I've broken Magic down into it's schools under Spellcraft, where Spellcraft itself acts as the "General" or "Universal" school, and a rank must be put in Spellcraft before it can be put in any other school. When a point is put into it, they learn how to manipulate magic and form spells. The level of spell that is castable is determined by 1/2 the ranks in a given school. A character must have an equivelent number of ranks in a school to be able to cast a spell that is under that school and spells that are part of multiple schools require the appropriate ranks in a particular school.

In this system, there isn't a 'divine' magic as all magic is condensed primarily into the Spellcraft skills. "Caster Level" is determined by the number of ranks you have in a particular school, plus any additional bonuses to caster level from feats or class abilities.

This system uses Spell Points or Mana to cast spells almost exactly like Psionics, with the exception that Cantrips/Orisons cost 0, and every spell level costs 1 point. Metamagic feats cost an extra 1 point for every spell level they add. Still, the normal limit on spell level castable is in place.

The character learns spells like a Wizard, but can have a number equal to their highest mental modifier 'memorized' of each level they can cast and spells are cast as a sorcerer. No daily memorization is necessary, and memorized spells can be replaced with 15 minutes of study or meditation per spell level. Feats like Spell Mastery increase the number of spell you can have memorized by the appropriate number.

Each point of Spellcraft and school gives a Spell Point/Mana Point.

I've broken Psionics up too similarly.

I realize this is overly convoluted for most groups, but it's always worked out very well for my groups and they come to love the openness of the system.

[Uckleverry]

I don't see why some of you keep talking about the features of an edition (4e) you obviously know very little of.

Fixing the 3.5 fighter is a fool's errand. Certain core resolution systems of the game are too intrinsically limited to allow for a proper update. The entire skill system is too narrow in what it encompasses, and changing it would require far reaching alterations to the rules. Same with feats. It's just too much work, and much of that work has already been done in subsequent editions.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

I don't see why some of you keep talking about the features of an edition (4e) you obviously know very little of.

Fixing the 3.5 fighter is a fool's errand. Certain core resolution systems of the game are too intrinsically limited to allow for a proper update. The entire skill system is too narrow in what it encompasses, and changing it would require far reaching alterations to the rules. Same with feats. It's just too much work, and much of that work has already been done in subsequent editions.

If you're talking about 5th edition, I doubt many people in this discussion about 3.5/PF that are happier with how that turned out

[Nightcanon]

Could introduce a feat line similar to the Combat Focus feat line where you enter a state of combat focus and gain X or are able to do X as long as you remain in said focus. For instance:

Trained Mind [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Fighter Level 1
Benefit: When you are the target of a spell or spell-like effect from a hostile creature in combat for the first time, you enter a trance-like state. You automatically succeed on the save against this spell or spell-like effect (if it has no save, it affects you normally). When in this state you gain a +4 bonus to your wisdom score and a +2 bonus to all saves against spells or spell-like abilities. This trance lasts for 10 turns plus 1 for each [Mental Training] feat you have, including this one. You may only enter a trance once per combat.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

Shake the Spell [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Trained Mind, Fighter Level 2
Benefit: While you are in your trance and fail a save against a spell or spell-like ability, you may willingly end your trance to end the effect or any spell or spell-like ability on you. If you choose not to end your trance you may make another saving throw each round you are under the effect as a free action.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

Quell the Caster [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Trained Mind, Fighter Level 4
Benefit: You gain an untyped bonus equal to 1/2 your character level on attacks, damage, skill checks, ability checks, and saves against the hostile creature that targeted you with a spell or spell-like ability to make you enter your trance. If you threaten the hostile creature, it must succeed on a concentration check DC 10+your character level+caster level of any spell or spell-like ability they try to use while you threaten them. A hostile creature so threatened by you treats all spaces within your reach +5 feet as treacherous terrain.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

Mental Expansion [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Trained Mind, Fighter Level 8
Benefit: Your trance state and all [Mental Training] feats apply to Supernatural abilities in addition to spells and spell-like abilities.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

Deny the Spell [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Trained Mind, Fighter Level 2
Benefit: You gain an untyped bonus to your AC equal to 1/2 your character level against attack rolls from spells and spell-like abilities while in your trance.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

Turn the Spell [Mental Training]
Prerequisites: Wis 13, Trained Mind, Deny the Spell, Shake the Spell, Fighter Level 6
Benefit: If you are targeted by a spell while in your trance and succeed your save against it, you gain fast healing for a number of rounds equal to the spell level. The value of the fast healing is equal to 1/2 the spell level, round up. For instance, if a character with this feat is in a trance and is targeted by an insanity spell and succeeds on the will save to negate the spell, that character gains Fast Healing 3 for 7 rounds. If another spell is cast on the character and the character succeeds on their will save, they can choose to have fast healing of the new spell or the old one.
Special: A fighter may select this as a fighter bonus feat.

That's a lot of Feat Tax to avail oneself of the benefits. If a character has WIS of 13 at character creation, and you want to play a plate-armoured fighting machine, Cleric and put your ability enhancements into WIS is probably a more effective way to go (you can cast Divine Power and Righteous Might as soon as those spells become available to you).

[AnimeTheCat]

That's a lot of Feat Tax to avail oneself of the benefits. If a character has WIS of 13 at character creation, and you want to play a plate-armoured fighting machine, Cleric and put your ability enhancements into WIS is probably a more effective way to go (you can cast Divine Power and Righteous Might as soon as those spells become available to you).

I totally see what you mean, I was trying g to make something that only fighters get that would allow them to perform well against casters. Being able to have a free successful save against a save or suck spell at level 1 is pretty great. These feats also could be useful if one wished to multiclass monk.

It's true though, if you want to be a T1, you should play a T1.

[ericgrau]

Inb4 this balloons to 37 pages.


Spells.

Only like 60% kidding. Fighters need abilities that matter, not more abilities that don't matter. To make "sword guy" good, you need to give him abilities that are good, and that means "spells", or some spell-equivalent (here meaning selectable, scalable, and not artificial constrained by "realism") thing with a sword guy-ish name.

Actually they should get magic items and they do. Everyone should get magic. Casters get more, but you get quite a lot from WBL too. I think the big issue is that people don't expect WBL to be such a huge part of a character's power and don't consider that an explanation. Yet it is a huge part. I came up with a low magic item system that basically amounts to "Spend points instead of gold to grant the same abilities that magic items grant." It's in my sig but that old version is limited to static abilities. Really it should also include SLAs and almost every magic item ability that doesn't break the versimilitude of an internal ability.


Ignore all penalties for wearing armor. Interesting bonuses for wearing medium and light armor to encourage different builds. Because in a world where you could have learned ****ING MAGIC, if you spend your time learning to wear plate mail instead you better be damn good at it.

Resistance to magic. Because in a world with magic, if you're gonna go out and get into fights you better have magic or be resistant to it.

A feat every level. Because fighters get feats and even with a feat every level they still probably wouldn't break into a meaningful tier.

More skills. Because are you really telling me learning to use weapons and armor took as much time as learning to basically break the laws of reality with math so casters and fighters had the same time to learn skills?

please feel free to be humorous, this is not a super cereal thread
The problem with even more armor and even more feats is that it doesn't really address the above issue at all. You can easily end up with too many feats to make the choices meaningful, unhittable AC, etc. simultaneously breaking the game in one way yet failing to accomplish anything in another way.

[Florian]

I'm not suggesting this as an actual fix, just interested in what people think of it.

That´s more or less the PF Unchained Monk.

[Cosi]

The trick is that you also have to keep everyone on a roughly comparable rate of resource drain (including ability to nova). 5e kind of screwed that up with their long rest/short rest division-- I think 90% of the balance complaints I've seen boil down to "this class doesn't work right when we don't have the expected number of rests/encounter."

Yep. This is why you should balance everything around the encounter, as that is the most robust balance point.


But Wizard? Smart guy who casts spells. Other than that, it's essentially fluff-free.

Wizard's have the spellbook, which is a pretty strong push towards academic flavor, and in a more abstract way towards caution and defensiveness.


That begets the question if this is really the wanted result?

You mean, do people actually want their characters to make effective contributions to solving the encounters they face? Because, "yes" and also "duh".


4e may have wound up with homogenous classes, but that doesn't mean that's the only possible result of putting every character on the same sort of resource paradigm.

I think I can name a dozen different resource management paradigms without using any of the ones 4e used (at-will, daily, encounter):

1. Drain -- you have really big nukes that inflict some kind of nasty status condition on you when used.
2. Aspects -- you have a bunch of different ability sets which grant passive buffs, and you can focus one at a time for active abilities.
3. Rage -- you have a meter that ticks up as you make attacks, better abilities require a higher value on the meter.
4. Momentum -- your abilities have tags, and each one gives you a buff that improves abilities with a certain tag next round.
5. Winds of Fate I -- every round you roll a die that determines which abilities you can choose from.
6. Recharge -- your abilities take a certain number of rounds to refresh.
7. Focus -- you have to spend actions to prepare more powerful abilities in combat.
8. Winds of Fate II -- you draw abilities from a deck, re-draw when you've used all of them.
9. Stances -- you have a bunch of stances you can switch between with an action, each of which grants a set of abilities you can use once each time you enter a stance.
10. Reversibility -- your abilities have "reversed" versions, which you have to use to recharge the original ability.
11. Triggers -- your abilities have conditions that have to be met for them to be used, with more powerful ones having more onerous conditions.
12. Reserve -- you prepare a selection of powerful abilities, each of which comes with minor offensive options and defensive buffs.

If professional game designers release a game where every class works the same, they have failed miserably at doing their jobs.


At level 20, they have
*Five iterative attacks
*Weapon and Armor Mastery
*+5 to saves against Fear (and Will in general with Armed Bravery) and 3/day saving throw reroll
*22 Feats (11 of which must be combat feats and one of which is Combat Stamina)
*Two small bonuses based on Fighting Style choice (Possibly give ability to ignore prereqs for related feats like a Ranger?)
*Self-healing once per day and passive Fast Healing when below 1/2 HP
*Two uses of Action Surge per day (or Short Rest equivalent)
*+2 to all critical hit ranges
*A scaling bonus to all physical ability checks (including Initiative)
*Pool of points to augment the effects of all those feats

So obviously a lot of stuff is hiding behind "feats", but what is this guy doing to compete with, like, 5th level utility spells? A Wizard has been able to cast teleport for more than half the game at this point, what do they have that is close to that useful?

[Dr_Dinosaur]

That´s more or less the PF Unchained Monk.

It's nothing like it aside from being a Martial with actual class features though?


So obviously a lot of stuff is hiding behind "feats", but what is this guy doing to compete with, like, 5th level utility spells? A Wizard has been able to cast teleport for more than half the game at this point, what do they have that is close to that useful?

Exactly what the Iron Caster does now but better. The only way to make the Fighter relevant without rewriting/nerfing how magic works (hello Spheres of Power) is giving them casting or an equivalent, so building the Fighter around the Iron Caster build is the best route I can think of at the moment. Action Surge means more uses of Martial Flexibility and Item Mastery, Indomitable helps at high level agains SoD spells, and merging the Training features together nets AWT two levels early.

[Arbane]

And Sauron is no Wizard - he's probably some sort of Artificer/Cleric of Morgoth gestalt with the Leadership feat. No self-respecting Wizard would make a phylactery that needs to stay on your finger to work!

Sauron was a Fallen Angel, IIRC.

Anyway, Things Fighters Need:

A lot less dependence on feats to do anything more interesting in fights beyond 'sword them in the hitpoints'.

A lot less dependency on magical gizmos for survivability.

A way to keep up with the spellcasters. Unfortunately, given the frankly ludicrous power of high-level spells, this will turn high-level fighters into something in the range between 'big-budget Wuxia movie hero' and 'Dawn Caste Solar Exalted'.

A way to strangle ghosts. More generally, there are a LOT of things in D&D that a fighter can't even REACH, much less hope to defeat, without spellcasters doing the heavy lifting first.

Things they're competent at OUTSIDE of combat.

Edit: One thing I'd personally like to see is a way to trade hitpoints for saving-throw bonuses. Hitpoints are _supposed_ to be a general 'ability to avoid harm', but Save-or-Cry stuff goes right past that, because MAGIC.

[Cosi]

Exactly what the Iron Caster does now but better. The only way to make the Fighter relevant without rewriting/nerfing how magic works (hello Spheres of Power) is giving them casting or an equivalent, so building the Fighter around the Iron Caster build is the best route I can think of at the moment. Action Surge means more uses of Martial Flexibility and Item Mastery, Indomitable helps at high level agains SoD spells, and merging the Training features together nets AWT two levels early.

First, the abilities seem kind of weak. Like, there's stuff there, but you're not getting even the 5th level utility spells, and you're not getting anywhere near the selection of a real character (e.g. casters).

Second, if your plan was to diddle magic items until level appropriate options fell out, why were you not just an Artificer? Like, there is already a totally acceptable "magic item guy", and if you're willing to accept "magic item guy" as the Fighter's niche, why not just change the Artificer's name?

[Dr_Dinosaur]

First, the abilities seem kind of weak. Like, there's stuff there, but you're not getting even the 5th level utility spells, and you're not getting anywhere near the selection of a real character (e.g. casters).

Second, if your plan was to diddle magic items until level appropriate options fell out, why were you not just an Artificer? Like, there is already a totally acceptable "magic item guy", and if you're willing to accept "magic item guy" as the Fighter's niche, why not just change the Artificer's name?

Because you aren't "diddling" with multiple magic items or even making them. You're using Warrior Spirit to have your one weapon count for every one of the feats and then flexing the relevant one to fly or whatever. I agree it's hardly equivalent to a caster, but every time someone proposes "nerf casters to a reasonable level" a flame war starts

[Florian]

YYou mean, do people actually want their characters to make effective contributions to solving the encounters they face? Because, "yes" and also "duh".

There´s difference between "effective contribution" and "equal contribution". The point being that using The Encounter as the only balance point, we´ll end up with basically one hard-coded class and "power" framework with each class only being a minor variation thereof, the different "power sources" (or recharge mechanics or whatever) just adding to the illusion that all participants play different and individual characters.

Maybe you remember the old Earthdawn RPG? That was fun in the beginning because all "Adepts" use the same core mechanics and are pretty near each other in performance levels, but it got boring pretty quickly when the differences between "Swordmaster Strike", "Skypirate Charge" and "Netherlance" are only marginal.

Edit: Or, for a more extreme example, play D&D with Fate Core mechanics.

[Cosi]

Because you aren't "diddling" with multiple magic items or even making them. You're using Warrior Spirit to have your one weapon count for every one of the feats and then flexing the relevant one to fly or whatever. I agree it's hardly equivalent to a caster, but every time someone proposes "nerf casters to a reasonable level" a flame war starts

I'll confess to skimming it and assuming it was a UMD deal. That does sound reasonable, but it still has the fundamental problem of not being good enough.


There´s difference between "effective contribution" and "equal contribution". The point being that using The Encounter as the only balance point, we´ll end up with basically one hard-coded class and "power" framework with each class only being a minor variation thereof, the different "power sources" (or recharge mechanics or whatever) just adding to the illusion that all participants play different and individual characters.

You mean, if we try to balance classes, we will end up with balanced classes? Uh, yeah, that's the point, and I don't understand how you haven't figured out that's a good thing.

The idea that you can't make diverse archetypes that are still balanced is absurd. The exact same company that makes D&D manages to do that several times a year with MTG. This is not a hard problem, people are just unwilling to demand that designers do their jobs effectively.

Do you really think that a Warblade, a Binder, a Warmage, and a Totemist are all secretly the same character because they are (roughly) balanced? Because that seems obviously false to me.

[Florian]

You mean, if we try to balance classes, we will end up with balanced classes? Uh, yeah, that's the point, and I don't understand how you haven't figured out that's a good thing.

The idea that you can't make diverse archetypes that are still balanced is absurd. The exact same company that makes D&D manages to do that several times a year with MTG. This is not a hard problem, people are just unwilling to demand that designers do their jobs effectively.

Do you really think that a Warblade, a Binder, a Warmage, and a Totemist are all secretly the same character because they are (roughly) balanced? Because that seems obviously false to me.

You don´t even notice how absurd using MtG as an example is, right?

But tell you what, if I were to mention Fate Core and Dungeon World, you´d not understand it.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You don´t even notice how absurd using MtG as an example is, right?

But tell you what, if I were to mention Fate Core and Dungeon World, you´d not understand it.
It's equally absurd to asset that "equvilent resource recovery rates" must translate to "equivalent characters," just because... that happened with 4e, I guess? I dunno. But just looking at 3.5 here, we can see that it can work out fine. Look at full casters-- Wizards, Druids, and Clerics all have the same resource scheme, and they play pretty differently. Ditto Beguilers, Dread Necromancers, and Warmages-- they have pretty much exactly the same arrangement of special powers, but I don't think you could call them the same character.

Fate puts all characters on an equal scheme too; everyone operates according to the Fate Point economy, generally speaking. Characters still manage to differentiate themselves by skills and aspects. Exalted has everyone operate by Essence, but the Charm customization is such that you can get wildly different characters without trouble.

[Cosi]

You don´t even notice how absurd using MtG as an example is, right?

It's not absurd. The question is "can you create rules that make pursuing a narrow goal under fixed constraints possible in a variety of balanced but distinct ways", and MTG proves the answer to that is yes.

[Florian]

It's not absurd. The question is "can you create rules that make pursuing a narrow goal under fixed constraints possible in a variety of balanced but distinct ways", and MTG proves the answer to that is yes.

MtG is just a very complicated way to resolve a yes-no-answer: Win or Lose. Every element in this game is geared towards resolving this one question.

Yes, you could create the equivalent of a "Fighter" deck and a "Wizard" deck, but neither the name, image or descriptive text on any of the cards have an actual meaning beyond the pure mechanics and how they contribute towards the overarching goal.

That´s why I said you can already have that when using Fate. Everyone has equal task resolution mechanics and it´s just a matter of "fluffing" them to represent class and character.

But, in both cases, what you don´t get is character advancement, real difference between the levels, "from zero to hero" and all that, but that is meaningless then.

[Cosi]

MtG is just a very complicated way to resolve a yes-no-answer: Win or Lose. Every element in this game is geared towards resolving this one question.

Which is also how encounters work?

Also, there's no terribly strong reason MTG has to have binary results. You could run X turns, then do something based on difference in life totals.


But, in both cases, what you don´t get is character advancement, real difference between the levels, "from zero to hero" and all that, but that is meaningless then.

So you can't have character advancement and different resource management systems?

Are you not aware that Tome of Battle exists? Did you just miss the thing where Binders do, in fact, gain levels despite not being spellcasters?

You aren't very coherent at the best of times, but when you say stuff like this its very hard to see it as anything but trolling.

[Florian]

@Cosi:

I´m talking about something very simple, but you seem to expect an complex answer. That´s why what I try to say doesn´t seem to be "coherent" to you.

Let´s take the 1-20 class framework, divide it into 9 power levels, ranging from "Sword" to "Wish".

Now let´s add different resource management mechanic to model different classes, from spell slots, rage to ki pool and connect that to the power levels.

At that point, it should become obvious that this will lead to an illusion, as long as the point of balance is intra-party vs. The Encounter.

That´s because the resource mechanics must be equal and the difficulty for the encounter is always equal to the actual power level, "sword" to "sword", "wish" to "wish".
(That is, unless you often use your level 17 wizard to re-visit the goblin swamps and wipe out some tribes of CR 1/2 critters, which is frankly uninteresting to talk about).

So, what´s the gain of actually keeping the 1-20 framework then and progression through the different power levels?

Edit: I don´t know if you ever have played EVE Online, that that´s very similar to progressing thru the different ship types. All you really gain is the "joy" when you reach a new level and get to use some new ship modules (healing, stealth, etc.), then you progress on. As each class of ship is equal to its contemporaries, superior to the former classes and inferior to the upper classes, that´s more or less the same.

[Grod_The_Giant]

That´s why I said you can already have that when using Fate. Everyone has equal task resolution mechanics and it´s just a matter of "fluffing" them to represent class and character.

But, in both cases, what you don´t get is character advancement, real difference between the levels, "from zero to hero" and all that, but that is meaningless then.

Firstly, you can't call out Fate for not having levels and a zero-to-hero progression when it's intentionally trying to be something else.
Secondly, characters in Fate do have differing abilities to resolve situations. The guy with +3 Fight and Athletics and a "Thog Smash!" Aspect will be much better at killing things than the Bard who has +0 Fight, +1 Athletics, and a "Brave Until the Swords Come Out" Aspect.
Thirdly, task resolution mechanics are not the same as resource management systems; again, you're comparing two different things.


You have to remember that 3.5's breadth of mechanics is practically unique among RPGs. I've never seen another game with such mechanical variation among characters-- even equally crunchy things like White Wolf games tend to have more unified central mechanics. And I've pretty much never seen any complaint that "these characters are all the same, just fluffed differently!"*


*I mean, maybe Mutants and Masterminds, a bit, but that's partially intentional, partially because the system has a lot of conceptual breadth (you can play anything you imagine) but much less depth (there are only so many ways to build a given power), and partially because the power stunt system means your exact power loadout is less important.

EDIT:

@Cosi:

I´m talking about something very simple, but you seem to expect an complex answer. That´s why what I try to say doesn´t seem to be "coherent" to you.

Let´s take the 1-20 class framework, divide it into 9 power levels, ranging from "Sword" to "Wish".
Okay.


Now let´s add different resource management mechanic to model different classes, from spell slots, rage to ki pool and connect that to the power levels.
Sure. So we have a unified framework for how many and how powerful abilities you have, and different ways to pay for them. Sounds good so far.


At that point, it should become obvious that this will lead to an illusion, as long as the point of balance is intra-party vs. The Encounter.
And here's where you start losing us, because it's here you seem to start taking leaps of logic. "Balanced per encounter" basically just means you've taken away resource attrition as a factor; you start every fight at full power. It doesn't mean that everyone has to contribute in the same way.

You can also keep a per-day balance, if you prefer. It's not my preference, but it keeps attrition a thing.


That´s because the resource mechanics must be equal and the difficulty for the encounter is always equal to the actual power level, "sword" to "sword", "wish" to "wish".
(That is, unless you often use your level 17 wizard to re-visit the goblin swamps and wipe out some tribes of CR 1/2 critters, which is frankly uninteresting to talk about).
And here's where I think Cosi and I are getting totally lost, because this doesn't follow at all. You can run D&D this way, sure. You can do that in any version of any game. Alternately, you can run any version of any game to include unequal encounters too, where sometimes you run into weak things and sometimes you run into strong things, and sometimes you have to fight and sometimes you have to run.


So, what´s the gain of actually keeping the 1-20 framework then and progression through the different power levels?
What's the point of having it at all? It's that you start off killing goblins in Newbsville with Burning Hands/Sword, and progress to killing dragons at the Heart of the Cosmos with Wail of the Banshee/Wish. Nothing we're talking about means changing that.

[Cosi]

So, what´s the gain of actually keeping the 1-20 framework then and progression through the different power levels?

Uh, different abilities? A Wizard with cloudkill, teleport, and lesser planar binding plays differently from one forced to rely on sleep, silent image, and burning hands, and both play differently from one empowered to deploy shapechange, weird, and gate in pursuit of his aims. The point of levels is to segregate playstyles. All characters should contribute (roughly) equally against encounters at all levels, but neither those encounters nor those contributions should be the same.

I literally do not understand what the point here is. Do you not see the difference between casting color spray in a fight against some goblins and using a battery of divinations to track down the locations of an Archmage's dozen soulstones?

[Florian]

@Grod:

It´s not a leap of logic, but just an abstraction for the intended balance point. You actually leap ahead be taking the concept of "resource attrition" into it, as a differentiating factor between different kinds of resource management and the player skill to do so.

That is touching on the core of the balance problems with d20. If we declare the balance point to be "one dungeon level" and model resource management and attrition to fit with that, it breaks down when one or more classes has regain mechanics that would favor breaking down that "one dungeon level" into "3 combats after a nights rest".

So I actually think that it´s doubtful that with a real balance in mind, anything more involved as "1 combat" can be used as the balancing point.

@Cosi:

Genosse, you´re still thinking too concrete in 3E spells, even while trying to advocate a high-magic, high-power game that is inclusive for all class archetypes.

Spells are an expression of what can be possible at what level and with what cost attached.

[Uckleverry]

I love how the same folks who defend unified resource recovery mechanics badmouth 4e in the same breath. From what I'm gathering, other games can have characters that feel different from one another, using similar recovery cooldowns across the board, yet 4e's characters are all the same... Interesting.

As far as 3.5 is concerned, there's very little point in trying to "fix" fighters and other classes. The power levels are way too deeply ingrained in the entire system -- if you actually did "fix" it, you'd change the fundamentals. At that point, it'd be a different edition. And see, that's what happened -- they did fix the issues in various ways, and thus we have both 4e and 5e.

If you really want fighters and other similar classes on the same level with the magical ones, you have to switch editions (or systems altogether). I suspect the folks who prefer 3.5 ultimately want the differing power levels ingrained in the rules.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Oh boy where do I start? We are on the 3.5 subforum, so most people here like 3.5/PF, but we also want the bad classes to be good. Crazy, right?

Yes, playing an edition of the games where these problems don't exist but everything we like about 3.5 is still present would be great, but that doesn't exist, so we discuss ways to move closer to that ideal. You aren't contributing.

Yes, OTHER games have classes that all use the same resource mechanic and manage to make them distinct. The general consensus is that 4e fell short of this however. Bad implementations of good ideas can coexist with good implementations.

Was that all your points?

[Florian]

Oh boy where do I start? We are on the 3.5 subforum, so most people here like 3.5/PF, but we also want the bad classes to be good. Crazy, right?

It´s only "crazy" if we want them to be "good", and at the same time cater to the concept that we want to have a martial-caster-divide because of verisimilitude.

[Uckleverry]

There have been countless attempts at "fixing" 3.5. It's 2017. Pathfinder is doing its thing. It's not really fixing it to the extent that some would like, but it's there, as the next best thing.

I'm saying that the extensive fixes would result in a game that's not the 3.5 that most people like. It's been almost 15 years since the edition was released, and by this point there's a general understanding of what's wrong with 3.5, balance-wise, and what its strong points are. There's no way around it -- the power levels are too deeply tied to how the edition fundamentally operates (skills, feats, enemy creation + CR, magic items, wealth, spell/power system, what spells can do, what abilities that are not spells can do, etc.).

And as far as this "general consensus" of 4e -- it's based on an imaginary version of the game that only exists in the ether, created by folks who have little to no experience with the game. Any time people start detailing the criticism with regards to the 4e class structure and ability system, it becomes clear that the folks in question don't actually know the rules.

[Cosi]

Genosse, you´re still thinking too concrete in 3E spells, even while trying to advocate a high-magic, high-power game that is inclusive for all class archetypes.

You mean like ... playing 3e with only full casters? I don't understand how "you talk about teleport, but more classes might get teleport" is supposed to be a gotcha. It does not seem at all difficult to divide up non-combat (let alone combat) abilities into enough different combinations to support at least as many classes as 3e does.


Spells are an expression of what can be possible at what level and with what cost attached.

Is this even an argument? What is Florian trying to say here?


I love how the same folks who defend unified resource recovery mechanics badmouth 4e in the same breath.

Man isn't it weird how people want phones, but they don't like the Samsung Galaxy Note 7?

Also, I'm not calling for unified resource recovery mechanics. I'm calling for unified resource recovery timescales. Drain and Aspects work differently, but they both have characters starting each encounter at full strength (potentially).


If you really want fighters and other similar classes on the same level with the magical ones, you have to switch editions (or systems altogether). I suspect the folks who prefer 3.5 ultimately want the differing power levels ingrained in the rules.

No, I just want everyone on the power level of the Wizard, which neither 4e nor 5e does.

[Florian]

@Cosi:

Do you actually know what you´re saying? "No, I just want everyone on the power level of the Wizard"

Enough said with that.

[Uckleverry]

No, I just want everyone on the power level of the Wizard, which neither 4e nor 5e does.

That's a pipe dream. I bet you that most folks who prefer 3.5 would argue that it'd change the so called mundanes into magic-users. For example, 4e places every class roughly on the same power and versatility level -- and what do people accuse the edition of? That everyone's a spellcaster (because everyone has abilities that aren't usable at-will).

Obviously that's not true. Even if you gave fighters and monks powers roughly equal to that of wizards and druids, it wouldn't automatically lead to them using spells, or even the same abilities. But a lot of 3.5 fans won't see it that way -- to them, it'll be spells. Look at what they think of 4e.

If you bring everyone to tier 1 or something along those lines, you'll make the system too different for most 3.5 players and DMs. Besides, the system would be too dense and complex for a big portion of the player base that needs the mechanically simple options.

[Grod_The_Giant]

@Cosi:

Do you actually know what you´re saying? "No, I just want everyone on the power level of the Wizard"

Enough said with that.
Cosi is in a minority who prefer T1 play. For the rest of us, I think the argument is "I want everyone in the power level of the Bard."

[Florian]

Cosi is in a minority who prefer T1 play. For the rest of us, I think the argument is "I want everyone in the power level of the Bard."

Same difference.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

No, because there are tier 3 mundane already, so we know it's possible. Why are you even here if your response to the question "What do Fighters need to be good" is "A different game, stop trying lol?"

[Mendicant]

One of my absolute favorite innovations from the Tomes is "Edge," where you just check who has the higher BAB, and then the superior warrior can do things like initiate a grapple without needing a feat to avoid an AoO, and a variety of other bonus effects via feats and class features. It is a fairly simple intervention that turns BAB into a much more robust mechanic. If people want to improve fighters, I think more of that sort of thinking is necessary.

[Metahuman1]

Here's my whack at it, in no particular order.



d12 Hit Die.

All good Saves.

6+int mod skills per level.

All skills as Class skills.

Trap Finding (Possibly call it something else like Ambush Detection. After all, Guerilla Warfare is a thing and isn't entirely a new invention or a post gun powder invention either.)

1 bonus feat every level.

Any feat you otherwise qualify for can be a bonus feat.

Proficiency with All weapons, All Armors, All Shield's, period, at the start of the game. Further, you can bash with all shields (Just assign tower shield and buckler and the like a damage die and move on.) and if you have a shield that can be used to grant full cover or partial cover, you can use that ability with out giving up other actions of bonuses. (Gives shield users something kind of nice.)

Supply Man. (You can carry 8x as much weight on you as a normal person, same with push/drag/pick up weights. A minor tid bit but a nice little novelty and convenience item.)

An ability to allow you to move as a swift action, or trade your swift action for a move action.

Pounce.

Ambidexterity. (When you TWF with the TWF feat and either the Oversized TWF feat or a light off hand weapon, or when your shield bashing with the appropriate feats, you ignore the -2 penalty, apply your full Str mod to attacks with both weapons, and may make your first 2 attacks, the one's using your highest iterative, as a standard action. I recommend this be a first level power since it's designed to allow TWF to have something nice.)

Decisive Strike. Make it compatible with Ambidexterity, and perhaps scale it's action investment up a bit faster, I'd say by 9th level having it fully online wouldn't be a bad thing at the latest maybe even as early as level 7.

Uncanny Dodge.

Evasion.

Slippery Mind.

Defensive roll.

Metal.

Improved versions were applicable.

A mastery ability for armor and shields. Reduces what you treat the weight as for wearing/using them, reduces the ACP down to nothing, the spell failure down to nothing (For gestalt games.), the dex cap while wearing the armor down to nothing. Maybe also let's you use a weapon of some kind in the shield hand, like the Scottish were famous for doing with there Basket hilt Broadswords, Targe Shield's and Dirk Daggers. Open up Multy-weapon Fighting, which would also then benefit from Ambidexterity.

Psuedo Size. You gain some small increases in your effective base reach as you level. Enough that with out buffs by 20th level you should be treated as having comparable reach to, say, an NPC warrior with a pole arm who just drank a potion of enlarge person. Further, you gain bonuses to your combat maneuver checks as though you were bigger then you are, and are treated as being bigger and bigger size category's for things like susceptibility to being swallowed whole, or if you can, say, initiate that grapple or trip check. (Like, your later treated as large, then hugh, then so on, to determine if you can even try to trip an Ancient Red Dragon or a Roc or what have you. And then if you can your treated as large then hugh then so on for the check. )

Small bonuses: Over the class progression, gain enchantment and inherent bonuses to stats (Equivalent of a +6 Item and a +5 book.) resistance bonuses to saves (Total that up at +5 or +6) and the ability to treat any weapon, armor and shield as having a +x enchantment bonus on it (Scaling at the rate of a full caster with no lost caster levels using Magic vestments and greater magic weapon as appropriate.).

Bonded items. 1-3 weapons and a suit of armor and shield can be given special property's, as the Pathfinder Paladin ability, except for more then 1 weapon the higher level you get, and for armor and a shield as you go along as well. This and the above small bonuses ability will vastly reduce gear dependence and make the class less about spending money optimally all the time.

As class features they should also aquire

A progression of the fortification ability that eventually, by no later then 16th level, get's them Heavy Fortification.

Mind Blank.

Freedom of Movement.

Some manner or protection for Scrying.

Most of the benefits one would get from Soulfire armor, with a tweak to the death immunity (Can't make EVERYTHING a class feature after all.). Instead of Death Effect immunity, they get to make the DC for any save they make against and effect that would automatically kill them on a failed save 1/2. So, if the Save DC is 20, they get to pass on a 10. If it's 25, they get to pass on a 13, ext.

Lastly, Skill Bonuses. Big ones. Once they've selected what skills they are going to focus on for the given character for the given game, they should have those skills get hugh bonuses so that by 8th-10th level or so, they can start reliably using epic level skill uses for those skills. This and the defensive bonuses should go a looooooooong way toward evening them out with casters.

[Cosi]

Cosi is in a minority who prefer T1 play. For the rest of us, I think the argument is "I want everyone in the power level of the Bard."

That's not really right. I understand how you'd get there, but I think JaronK's Tiers are really terrible, and are especially terrible for designing new content. The definition of Tier One is very explicit about how those characters are able to break the game, and that's not something you should (or even really can) have as a goal.

When I say "like a Wizard" I mean in terms of getting abilities like fabricate or plane shift or scrying that allow direct influence on the plot, and in terms of being able to compete with level appropriate opposition without extreme levels of optimization. I don't mean having abilities like planar binding that break the game, or abilities like polymorph that are a nightmare to adjudicate.

Overall, I think looking at existing power levels is unhelpful, because the ideal is a system that is balanced, and the actual power level matters relatively less there. If you made everyone equally strong, whether those characters are "as strong as the Wizard" or "as strong as the Bard" or "as strong as the Sorcerer" is sort of irrelevant. The concerns are more about scope. The game should go up to Planeswalkers or Malazan or Pretender Gods or whatever your touchstone for "crazy powerful" is, but what you target to get there is of fairly fringe relevance.

What are relevant are secondary characteristics. For example, the non-combat capabilities of "Tier One" characters are important for player agency. Those should stay. But the variety of resources management available in "Tier Three" is also good. If you look at things from the perspective of JaronK's Tiers, you'd think you had to pick one or the other, but that's obviously stupid. You should have both. Characters should play differently, but they should all have meaningful options on the strategic layer.

But apparently that's impossible, because teleport is a spell on the Wizard list. Or whatever Florian thinks he is saying.

[Psyren]

@Cosi:

Do you actually know what you´re saying? "No, I just want everyone on the power level of the Wizard"

Enough said with that.

Indeed, I gave up trying to comprehend this mentality some time ago.


I suspect the folks who prefer 3.5 ultimately want the differing power levels ingrained in the rules.

*raises hand*

I do want differing power levels. I think the gap is far too wide in 3.5, and while PF made great strides to narrowing it, I think there is still more that can be done. I think above all that one of the larger drawbacks to being a spellcaster should be resource management, as that would naturally lead them to wanting martials around even if they are weaker. 5e took the nuclear approach of abolishing bonus spells, drastically reducing concurrent buffs, and eliminating automatic spell scaling; I think they may have gone a touch too far personally, but they have the right idea all the same.

[Hackulator]

Indeed, I gave up trying to comprehend this mentality some time ago.



*raises hand*

I do want differing power levels. I think the gap is far too wide in 3.5, and while PF made great strides to narrowing it, I think there is still more that can be done. I think above all that one of the larger drawbacks to being a spellcaster should be resource management, as that would naturally lead them to wanting martials around even if they are weaker. 5e took the nuclear approach of abolishing bonus spells, drastically reducing concurrent buffs, and eliminating automatic spell scaling; I think they may have gone a touch too far personally, but they have the right idea all the same.

I think if what you want is a balanced game, then 5e didn't go too far, as casters still eventually outpace noncasters, and are much better at lower levels than before.

If what you want is crazy magic users who can do super cool stuff, 5e went too far.

Neither of these views is wrong, I like both things so I play both games.

[Psyren]

I think if what you want is a balanced game, then 5e didn't go too far, as casters still eventually outpace noncasters, and are much better at lower levels than before.

If what you want is crazy magic users who can do super cool stuff, 5e went too far.

Neither of these views is wrong, I like both things so I play both games.

Don't get me wrong, I like 5e too. But I dislike the concentration mechanic, and needing to use higher level slots to get lower level spells to scale at all. I like the conc mechanic in relation to the caster themselves (i.e. keeping Gandalf from just buffing up, sprouting claws and taking the fighter's job again) but I might want to buff multiple members of the party who aren't me too, and in 5e my capacity to do that is pretty limited. Similarly, I like the idea of needing higher level slots to scale powers up, but I feel like you're forced to do that to get any scaling at all in too many cases.

Eliminating bonus spells though and making cantrips more useful than a crossbow - well, I see that as a clear win.

[Zanos]

5e at least made it such that all of the classes are operating in the same dimension power wise. For now, anyway.

Some of the balance decisions were bad, I agree. There's pretty much no reason to cast a lower level spell out of a higher level slot for more scaling. The higher level spells on their own are better in 99.9% of circumstances.

[Florian]

Don't get me wrong, I like 5e too. But I dislike the concentration mechanic, and needing to use higher level slots to get lower level spells to scale at all. I like the conc mechanic in relation to the caster themselves (i.e. keeping Gandalf from just buffing up, sprouting claws and taking the fighter's job again) but I might want to buff multiple members of the party who aren't me too, and in 5e my capacity to do that is pretty limited. Similarly, I like the idea of needing higher level slots to scale powers up, but I feel like you're forced to do that to get any scaling at all in too many cases.

Eliminating bonus spells though and making cantrips more useful than a crossbow - well, I see that as a clear win.

The game Splittermond got some of the basics right. Characters have a rather limited "Focus Pool" that they can chose to either "spend" or "deplete". Things like buffs and summons "deplete" their focus cost for the rest of the day but can be active for the whole time. Focus "spend" in combat will automatically refresh after combat, similar to Bo9S martial maneuvers. Lastly, spells and effects do not auto-scale, unless you "deplete" the appropriate focus cost to enable that feature.

[Grod_The_Giant]

When I say "like a Wizard" I mean in terms of getting abilities like fabricate or plane shift or scrying that allow direct influence on the plot, and in terms of being able to compete with level appropriate opposition without extreme levels of optimization. I don't mean having abilities like planar binding that break the game, or abilities like polymorph that are a nightmare to adjudicate.
Okay, that's fair. A game where everyone has campaign-changing power, but no-one has game-breaking power. And, ideally, everyone has their own sorts of campaign-changers, without too much overlap.


I think if what you want is a balanced game, then 5e didn't go too far, as casters still eventually outpace noncasters, and are much better at lower levels than before.

If what you want is crazy magic users who can do super cool stuff, 5e went too far.
5e combat is decently balanced; it's mostly utility stuff where casters tend to show up noncasters. Largely because they forgot to finish writing a skill system.

[Zanos]

Largely because they forgot to finish writing a skill system.
They didn't really start, either.

[Grod_The_Giant]

They didn't really start, either.
They wrote a pretty decent list of skills and thought to split off backround/RP skills from adventuring-relevant ones; that's a good start. They just gave up before giving good guidance on DCs, or thinking about an optional system of skill unlocks. Or noticing that the default probabilities of success suck.

[Psyren]

5e at least made it such that all of the classes are operating in the same dimension power wise. For now, anyway.

Some of the balance decisions were bad, I agree. There's pretty much no reason to cast a lower level spell out of a higher level slot for more scaling. The higher level spells on their own are better in 99.9% of circumstances.

For the record, I don't mind that concept (needing to effectively heighten spells for their full effect.) I just dislike the idea that not heightening should effectively stick you with minimum CL on everything.


The game Splittermond got some of the basics right. Characters have a rather limited "Focus Pool" that they can chose to either "spend" or "deplete". Things like buffs and summons "deplete" their focus cost for the rest of the day but can be active for the whole time. Focus "spend" in combat will automatically refresh after combat, similar to Bo9S martial maneuvers. Lastly, spells and effects do not auto-scale, unless you "deplete" the appropriate focus cost to enable that feature.

Yeah, that sounds better.


Okay, that's fair. A game where everyone has campaign-changing power, but no-one has game-breaking power. And, ideally, everyone has their own sorts of campaign-changers, without too much overlap.

I'd much rather that the "campaign changers" had clauses built in that lets the GM keep them from changing the campaign for dramatic reasons sometimes - which is more or less what they did. I don't think everyone needs campaign changers regardless of class.


They didn't really start, either.

I agree, or rather they started in the sense that writing down your grocery list means you've started making a three-course meal.

[Cosi]

Okay, that's fair. A game where everyone has campaign-changing power, but no-one has game-breaking power. And, ideally, everyone has their own sorts of campaign-changers, without too much overlap.

Pretty much. Obviously, there are other changes I would make. For example, currently it's quite possible for characters to scale up to a fairly high power level, it just requires an extraordinary level of complexity. That's bad. The game should totally give you a world-conquering demon army at some point. It should just give you that army because you have reached the level where that is appropriate, not because the authors forgot to check if the sets "things you can summon with planar binding" and "things that can cast planar binding" overlapped.


5e combat is decently balanced; it's mostly utility stuff where casters tend to show up noncasters. Largely because they forgot to finish writing a skill system.

5e combat works okay until you realize that bounded accuracy means nothing in the world can stand up to a large enough force of chaff, so the correct answer to every problem is "throw animate dead at it until it goes away".

I don't think there's anything in 5e that another game doesn't do better, usually another version of D&D.


I'd much rather that the "campaign changers" had clauses built in that lets the GM keep them from changing the campaign for dramatic reasons sometimes - which is more or less what they did. I don't think everyone needs campaign changers regardless of class.

Having an ability that functions to only the degree that the DM wants it to is exactly like not having that ability. If I wanted to interact with someone else's story in ways they had okayed ahead of time, I would play Skyrim or read a book. The point of table top games is to take the plot into your own hands. People should spend less time thinking of creative ways to screw over the use of meaningful abilities and more time writing plots where those abilities are just one part of the solution to the puzzle.

teleport got you down? Don't declare that the BBEG's base is arbitrarily teleport-proof to force people to fight your set-piece encounters. Instead, give people real reasons to fight those encounters. Maybe the PCs have to capture the canopic jars that hold the organs of the Black Pharoh before they can storm his pyramid. Maybe they have a personal grudge against the Lich King's vampire minions. Maybe the goal is to explore an area. This is not hard, and the fact that you apparently think "lol no screw u" is a better solution reflects quite poorly on your intellect.

speak with dead ruining your murder mystery? Maybe the victim was assassinated from behind, or while sleeping. Maybe the assassin was just a cut-out for the real enemy. Maybe the assassin was a shape-shifter or invisible. Seriously, I don't think this solves all of the plots on TV shows like Person of Interest.

If you have to resort to the kinds of blunt road-blocks Psyren wants abilities to have, you should probably not be DMing.

[Arbane]

Note that the only thing fighters can do that even comes CLOSE to that sort of plot-breaking is Ubercharging the boss, and there's plenty of ways to avoid that.

[Rendenward]

The first step that I would take would probably to offer more options. I'd likely allow all of the Dragon Mag fighter variant special abilities as options to take in place of feats. Maybe a bonus special ability every few levels. A fighter is usually boring, but, say, an exoticist, targeteer, survivalist fighter might be a little more interesting.

[Mendicant]

teleport got you down? Don't declare that the BBEG's base is arbitrarily teleport-proof to force people to fight your set-piece encounters. Instead, give people real reasons to fight those encounters. Maybe the PCs have to capture the canopic jars that hold the organs of the Black Pharoh before they can storm his pyramid. Maybe they have a personal grudge against the Lich King's vampire minions. Maybe the goal is to explore an area. This is not hard, and the fact that you apparently think "lol no screw u" is a better solution reflects quite poorly on your intellect.

speak with dead ruining your murder mystery? Maybe the victim was assassinated from behind, or while sleeping. Maybe the assassin was just a cut-out for the real enemy. Maybe the assassin was a shape-shifter or invisible. Seriously, I don't think this solves all of the plots on TV shows like Person of Interest.

The distiniction between "bbeg base is warded against teleportation" and "speak with dead is a dead end because the attacker stabbed the victim in the back" seems pretty arbitrary to me here.

I also think you're underselling how much "plot breaking" spells constrain campaign design. Baking toggles into some of the real game-changers would make the system more flexible.

[Grod_The_Giant]

If you have to resort to the kinds of blunt road-blocks Psyren wants abilities to have, you should probably not be DMing.
At the very least, our hypothetical D&D 3.75 should have more extensive advice about how to deal with game-changing spells. A few paragraphs on how things like Teleport change campaigns, on how to keep things mysterious when divinations exist, how to keep up the pressure and danger when the party can just hide in a Rope Trick.

I do disagree that such features are important to prevent railroading and provide agency. Agency is largely a system-neutral thing; you can have everyone's-a-kobold level games with total agency, and you can have superheroes-and-gods level games where the GM is still a tyrannical railroader. When big setting-changing spells and abilities are good for is providing a sense of progression. They make the game play very differently when the come online, making once-difficult challenges trivial and opening up new avenues for adventure. That's a critical part of a level-based system.

[ShurikVch]

Stuff fighters should getStaff of Power:
The staff is also a +2 quarterstaff, and its wielder may use it to smite opponents. If 1 charge is expended (as a free action), the staff causes double damage (×3 on a critical hit) for 1 round.Oh, it says "Stuff"...

[Cosi]

The first step that I would take would probably to offer more options. I'd likely allow all of the Dragon Mag fighter variant special abilities as options to take in place of feats. Maybe a bonus special ability every few levels. A fighter is usually boring, but, say, an exoticist, targeteer, survivalist fighter might be a little more interesting.

Giving the Fighter more things to do with his feats seems like a bad solution. Part of the problem is that while there are okay-ish things to do, they are buried so deep that most people can't hope to find them.


The distiniction between "bbeg base is warded against teleportation" and "speak with dead is a dead end because the attacker stabbed the victim in the back" seems pretty arbitrary to me here.

Disagree. The speak with dead ability still allows you to use your ability. The better analogy is "the BBEG blanketed a room in illusions so you teleported in somewhere different from where you thought you were going".


I also think you're underselling how much "plot breaking" spells constrain campaign design. Baking toggles into some of the real game-changers would make the system more flexible.

That's the point. High level abilities exist to make high level play different from low level play. You want to tell stories with no teleport? Fine. You have levels 1 to 8 to do it. In the same way that we should not demand loopholes in fly so that we can throw bears against 15th level characters, we should not demand loopholes in teleport so we can throw desert treks at 15th level characters.


At the very least, our hypothetical D&D 3.75 should have more extensive advice about how to deal with game-changing spells. A few paragraphs on how things like Teleport change campaigns, on how to keep things mysterious when divinations exist, how to keep up the pressure and danger when the party can just hide in a Rope Trick.

Yes. In general, much more effort should have been made to make the expectations for the kinds of abilities people will get at various levels explicit. Then you wouldn't have had 15th level see the Monk get 1/Week Save Or Die, the Wizard get greater planar binding and polymorph any object, and the Fighter get an extra point of BAB.


I do disagree that such features are important to prevent railroading and provide agency. Agency is largely a system-neutral thing; you can have everyone's-a-kobold level games with total agency, and you can have superheroes-and-gods level games where the GM is still a tyrannical railroader.

I agree that those abilities aren't a panacea, but I think they are important. Obviously the roles possess no power to force your DM to do any particular thing. But having the default be "yes" rather than "no" is an important step. The point of the rules is to adjudicate disputes, and the point of these abilities is to adjudicate plot disputes in the player's favor. Giving the DM pushback is missing the point.


When big setting-changing spells and abilities are good for is providing a sense of progression. They make the game play very differently when the come online, making once-difficult challenges trivial and opening up new avenues for adventure. That's a critical part of a level-based system.

Entirely agree.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

To the people saying that game-changing magic should be a bit more explicitly labeled as such for DMs, I'll point you to Spheres of Power. Along with nerfing magic (though mundanes could still use some help in the narrative/utility department even with SoP) it divides the magical effects it allows into Basic and Advanced, with a note telling the DM to only allow Advanced magic at all if it fits the world and story, and to be careful of just handing it out to every Wizard.

[Psyren]

At the very least, our hypothetical D&D 3.75 should have more extensive advice about how to deal with game-changing spells. A few paragraphs on how things like Teleport change campaigns, on how to keep things mysterious when divinations exist, how to keep up the pressure and danger when the party can just hide in a Rope Trick.

I do disagree that such features are important to prevent railroading and provide agency. Agency is largely a system-neutral thing; you can have everyone's-a-kobold level games with total agency, and you can have superheroes-and-gods level games where the GM is still a tyrannical railroader. When big setting-changing spells and abilities are good for is providing a sense of progression. They make the game play very differently when the come online, making once-difficult challenges trivial and opening up new avenues for adventure. That's a critical part of a level-based system.

Eh, Cosi hurls his toys out of the pram at terminal velocity every time the limits the designers intentionally built into those spells are even brought up. I'm both used to it, and extremely happy that I'll never have to DM for or play with him.

Pathfinder did include paragraphs exactly like the ones you describe, in books like Ultimate Intrigue, Ultimate Campaign, and Gamemastery Guide. But I don't think you need the entire game world to be fixed to a single power level ("everyone is a kobold" or "everyone is a superhero") for these spells to function. Having specific locations in the world where teleporting is unwise while allowing it to function nearly everywhere else is not bad design, particularly when the spell itself warns you of that fact well in advance of you selecting it. I see it as no different than, say, a bad guy lining the walls of his ritual chamber with lead so rivals and heroes can't see what he's doing in there.

[Mars Ultor]

Monster Lore: Fighters should be able to know a monster's abilities to one degree or another. It's Bardic Knowledge of creatures.

More Skill points: Right now you can't make a Knight or a Spartan soldier, two of the historical warrior archetypes.

Feats that scale: Cleave and Great Cleave are almost the same thing, one should replace the other. If you take a feat you should get the next feat in the chain free as you qualify by level or BAB.

The entire Weapon Focus/Weapon Specialization Feat Chain as a class feature. Half of those bonuses apply if using a related weapon.

Leadership as a class feature.

Strength bonus as a substitute for Charisma in Charisma-based skills when appropriate.

If your BAB is higher than your opponent's you don't provoke Attacks of Opportunity.

Size: At 5th level or so a Fighter should be able to act as if he is a creature of one size larger. This applies to Tripping, Grappling, Bull Rush, reach, etc. At a higher level this applies to his weapons as well; they do damage as if they were one size larger. A Fighter doesn't actually grow in size so he suffers no AC or Dex penalties.

Great Strength: A Fighter can add BAB/2 to his Strength score a number of rounds a day equal to his Constitution bonus.

Decreasing Armor Check Penalties: You can subtract one point of ACP for each point of BAB. A 4th-level Fighter in a Breastplate has no Armor Check Penalty.

Fighters get an additional +1 to AC every three levels when using a shield.

Parry: As a Full Round Action a Fighter can attempt to parry any weapon attack and some spell or other attacks. Use the rules for Disarm. If using a shield, a Fighter can add his shield bonus to his Parry attempt, or Saving Throw, whichever is applicable. (A Fighter would be able to use his shield to defend against a Dragon's breath weapon.)

[Cosi]

Eh, Cosi hurls his toys out of the pram at terminal velocity every time the limits the designers intentionally built into those spells are even brought up. I'm both used to it, and extremely happy that I'll never have to DM for or play with him.

It's nice to see Psyren continue in his proud tradition of never making good arguments for anything ever. These days, too many people waver from their beliefs and principles, so it's nice to see someone sticking with theirs.

In any case, let's break down exactly what's wrong with this post.

First, ad hominem. "hurls his toys out of the pram" and " I'm ... extremely happy that I'll never have to DM for or play with him" both have literally no bearing on the validity of any of the arguments presented. Presupposing the notion that I am in fact an infant, that would not make any of the points I've raised wrong.

Second, non sequitor. The discussion in question is, to a very large degree, about how these abilities should work, not how they do work. The question of "the limits the designers intentionally built into those spells" is irrelevant if we're discussing whether or not there should be DM escape clauses in e.g. teleport.

Third, appeal to authority. This is, admittedly, a less glaring issue, but it should be raised nonetheless. Psyren's sole justification for why limits should exist on these spells appears to be "designers did it that way". But that's not really a compelling argument, particularly when it's not even accompanied by his usual "people still play it, therefore it's perfect" line. The choices of the designers of one game are very rarely correct for all games. D&D's use of a d20 does not, in any sense, imply that Shadowrun is wrong to use dicepools.

Now, this is not a fallacy, but to achieve an accurate understanding of what's going on here, we should consider some broader context. Psyren himself has said that he would refuse to play a game where the paradigm he prefers at all levels for casters and mundanes was not totally preserved. He apparently does not notice the hypocrisy in demanding that the entire game system bow to his views, while simultaneously claiming that someone who prefers that abilities be limited in a different way than he does is a baby.

So we have on one side, an avalanche of personal insults in the defense of the position that the whole game should always and in all ways contort itself around one particular play paradigm, and on the other side the position that the game should support different paradigms at different levels even if not every group enjoys every paradigm. And apparently the position that says "you can exclude concepts you don't like from your games, but in exchange you will sometimes be told your concept isn't appropriate for a given game" is less mature than the position "the whole game is mine and only mine and anyone who wants to do things any way but mine is a baby".


But I don't think you need the entire game world to be fixed to a single power level ("everyone is a kobold" or "everyone is a superhero") for these spells to function.

Again, non sequitur. Can someone point to the place where I said that everyone should have teleport? Because I don't remember saying that. I remember being pretty explicit about the possibility of games where you don't have teleport. Or where you have a form of teleportation that is somehow limited (for example, LOS only or unable to travel through more than 40ft of stone).


Having specific locations in the world where teleporting is unwise while allowing it to function nearly everywhere else is not bad design, particularly when the spell itself warns you of that fact well in advance of you selecting it. I see it as no different than, say, a bad guy lining the walls of his ritual chamber with lead so rivals and heroes can't see what he's doing in there.

It is different because it is determined by the DM, and players therefore have no way of determining beforehand whether teleport will work. Having line-lined rooms is fine. Having forbiddance blocking teleportation is fine. What is not fine is having rooms retroactively declared to be lead-lined when you scry them, or having your DM announce that the base was always already a "high energy" destination when you finally cast teleport.

For what it's worth, I'm not even opposed to having abilities where the DM determines how effective your action is. That's fine, even if it's something I don't like especially much. What's not fine is taking an ability like that, and pretending it's an ability that really lets you influence the plot. If teleport is going to be presented as a meaningful ability, it needs to really be a meaningful ability. If you want teleport to not be a meaningful ability, that's fine, but there's no cause to lie about it.


More Skill points: Right now you can't make a Knight or a Spartan soldier, two of the historical warrior archetypes.

Nitpick: you'd also need to give them more class skills, as they lack e.g. Diplomacy and Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty) which are probably skills Knights have.
Serious: this is basically fluff text after sixth level or so. I don't really care how big your jump modifier is if I can cast fly, and I certainly don't care if I can cast overland flight.


Feats that scale: Cleave and Great Cleave are almost the same thing, one should replace the other. If you take a feat you should get the next feat in the chain free as you qualify by level or BAB.

This is fine, but it has some issues. For example, some feat trees have dramatically higher branching factors than others. Also, increases the complexity of a class that is already pretty complex to build.


The entire Weapon Focus/Weapon Specialization Feat Chain as a class feature. Half of those bonuses apply if using a related weapon.

I don't like this. Those bonuses are tiny and fiddly -- tracking them is annoying. Also, this is likely to encourage people not to use cool weapons they find, which is bad.


Strength bonus as a substitute for Charisma in Charisma-based skills when appropriate.

Is there a reason this couldn't be "all skills" and "always"?


Great Strength: A Fighter can add BAB/2 to his Strength score a number of rounds a day equal to his Constitution bonus.

This seems fiddly for no reason other than being fiddly. Is +2 STR/4 levels really breaking anything if it is just on all the time?


Fighters get an additional +1 to AC every three levels when using a shield.

I don't think this is enough to overcome the equity you lose from using a shield instead of some better option.


Parry: As a Full Round Action a Fighter can attempt to parry any weapon attack and some spell or other attacks. Use the rules for Disarm. If using a shield, a Fighter can add his shield bonus to his Parry attempt, or Saving Throw, whichever is applicable. (A Fighter would be able to use his shield to defend against a Dragon's breath weapon.)

How is this different from a disarm?

There are some interesting ideas here, but I'm not seeing answers to serious issues like "what does a Fighter do when it is not combat" or "the Fighter is a nightmare to build". I suppose Leadership helps with the first, but I'm not super happy with "pet Wizard" as a solution to that issue.

[Triskavanski]

Pathfinder has recently done some good stuff for Fighters

If I was to do up fighter more, it would be some heavy restructuring of feats.

There would start of "Proficiency" feats

1/2 bab + less than simple would start with 1 prof slot
1/2 bab + simple would start with 2 prof slots
3/4 bab + less than simple would start with 3 prof slots
3/4 bab + simple would start with 4 prof slots
3/4 bab + martial would start with 5 prof slots
Full bab + simple would start with 6
Full bab + Martial would start with 7.

give or take a few slots on some of them.

Each time the BAB goes up by 1, a new prof slot is gained.


Prof slots would be used to buy
Simple weapons = 1/2 a slot
Martial weapons = 1 slot
Exotic weapons = 2 slots.


Any class could buy Weapon focus for 1 slot.
Fighter can buy weapon focus/specilizations for 1 slot

In addition basic Fighting styles can be purchased for a slot each

1 Weapon
2h weapons
Sword and Board
Dual Weapon
Bow/Crossbow
Thrown
etc.

Each of these feats function more like Equipment tricks, becoming bigger and more powerful as you meet new pre-reqs.

Advance Fighting styles then can be learned as well that rely on a basic style or two, again pretty expansive stuff here.




That'll clear up a lot of the fiddly bits with fighter, leaving his combat feats open to develop his own methods of fighting while having a lot of the basics. None of this Human fighter prof with Kobold butt spikes even though he was suppose to be a dude who was just really good with a whip because he trained and learned how to use a whip.


From there, Particuarly after level 10, the fighter should totally start getting feats/abillites/etc to deal with magic. Course the problem with them is people start going off on how weeaboo it is. Mostly cause we don't see a lot of western movies/shows/etc where the main character doesn't have magic to deal with magic.

[Mars Ultor]

Nitpick: you'd also need to give them more class skills, as they lack e.g. Diplomacy and Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty) which are probably skills Knights have.
Serious: this is basically fluff text after sixth level or so. I don't really care how big your jump modifier is if I can cast fly, and I certainly don't care if I can cast overland flight.


Getting suitable class skills was assumed. It's crazy that Knowledge: Nobility and Royalty isn't already a class skill for fighters. A spell caster is always going to be able to fly and a fighter isn't. I suppose there are ToB maneuvers that let you run across the treetops or jump like the Hulk, but a wizard is always going to outclass a fighter in many ways. These changes would make the fighter more useful for a few more levels, but you'll never be able to get your jump modifier high enough to compete with flight, and you shouldn't be able to. It's a whole new game if you want some skills compete with spells.




I don't like this. Those bonuses are tiny and fiddly -- tracking them is annoying. Also, this is likely to encourage people not to use cool weapons they find, which is bad.


The issue here is that just giving them a flat +2/+2 becomes meaningless after a while. Some graduated scale would be good but it's just adding complexity. I agree that it would discourage the use of different weapons, so whatever the modifier it should apply to all weapons. Perhaps +2/+2 in general and +3/+3 for a particular weapon.

Here's a suggestion, standard +2/+2 to start and then as they increase in level Fighters get to use the next higher die for weapon damage. A longsword is 1d10 in the hands of a Fighter, at a higher level it's 1d12.



Is there a reason this couldn't be "all skills" and "always"?

I can see Strength being applied to Intimidate and even Perform, but Disguise?



This seems fiddly for no reason other than being fiddly. Is +2 STR/4 levels really breaking anything if it is just on all the time?

I'd actually prefer one of the earlier edition rules where Fighters got higher Strength and Constitution bonuses than other classes, but that's adding more complexity. You could adjust the bonus per level, but then the other Fighter classes (Barbarian, Paladin, Ranger) should get the same benefit. Upping your Strength is the Barbarian thing, you don't want to invalidate that class by giving better bonuses to the Fighter.

Actually, I'd give the Strength bonuses to all the Fighter classes, but restrict the increased weapon die damage to Fighters.



I don't think this is enough to overcome the equity you lose from using a shield instead of some better option.

My preference would be Damage Reduction, but who's going to keep track of that? Historically the shield is the most important (and affordable) defense a warrior ever had. For some reason D&D makes them virtually worthless.

They always get double their normal shield bonus as well as an additional +1 to AC per 2 levels?



How is this different from a disarm?

It's allowing you to block an attack and it's applicable to more than just a melee attack. You can parry a thrown rock from a giant, a crossbow bolt, a Scorching Ray, etc.




There are some interesting ideas here, but I'm not seeing answers to serious issues like "what does a Fighter do when it is not combat" or "the Fighter is a nightmare to build". I suppose Leadership helps with the first, but I'm not super happy with "pet Wizard" as a solution to that issue.

The great range of skills and skill points would make some difference, and Monster Lore would be useful if you knew what you were going to fight. If you give Fighters access to Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering, they might know if secret doors are common in certain style castles, or the weak points of fortresses. Diplomacy should be a class skill with Strength as the relevant ability.

Some of making yourself useful out of combat is finding ways to be useful.

There's no real way that a Fighter is ever going to compete with a Druid, and after a while the abilities you'd need to give Fighter to keep them competitive turn them into something that's not a fighter. Letting them act is if they're larger and giving them the increased weapon damage (through size and as a class skill) makes a difference for several levels.

I suppose you could require spell casters to roll to hit with their spells in addition to saving throws, but that's not making a Fighter more useful, it's just crippling magic-users. The game is inherently out of balance and there's only so much you can do to keep martial characters useful when Wizards can do pretty much anything. The game is essentially broken, you can make the Fighter a class on par or superior to Barbarians, but after a while a DM has to adjust the encounters so Fighters can continue to participate. Of just do it the old way, the game essentially stops at 10th Level and you become a feudal lord or open Hogwarts depending on your class.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Getting suitable class skills was assumed. It's crazy that Knowledge: Nobility and Royalty isn't already a class skill for fighters. A spell caster is always going to be able to fly and a fighter isn't. I suppose there are ToB maneuvers that let you run across the treetops or jump like the Hulk, but a wizard is always going to outclass a fighter in many ways. These changes would make the fighter more useful for a few more levels, but you'll never be able to get your jump modifier high enough to compete with flight, and you shouldn't be able to. It's a whole new game if you want some skills compete with spells.
A whole new game, but arguably a necessary one.

A less extreme approach, which I took with my most recent Fighter fix, is to make it easier for melee fighters to dabble in ranged combat. I accomplished it by granting multiple sets of bonus feats (so you could have one set dedicated to archery), making any weapon he wields count as a magic weapon with a minor attack and damage boost, and granting an Inspiration-style renewable resource that can be spent to make up for a lower ability score, but there are plenty of ways to get it done.


The issue here is that just giving them a flat +2/+2 becomes meaningless after a while. Some graduated scale would be good but it's just adding complexity. I agree that it would discourage the use of different weapons, so whatever the modifier it should apply to all weapons. Perhaps +2/+2 in general and +3/+3 for a particular weapon.
Make it work like the Warblade's Weapon Aptitude, where they can switch the chosen weapon with an hour of training? Weapon damage dice aren't very important in 3.5 past the first couple levels, though, so that's probably less worthwhile.


I can see Strength being applied to Intimidate and even Perform, but Disguise?
Some sort of skill boost isn't bad, but yeah, Str to everything is odd. I saw someone suggest double-Str/Dex/Con to checks, though, which I thought was kind of neat.


I'd actually prefer one of the earlier edition rules where Fighters got higher Strength and Constitution bonuses than other classes, but that's adding more complexity. You could adjust the bonus per level, but then the other Fighter classes (Barbarian, Paladin, Ranger) should get the same benefit. Upping your Strength is the Barbarian thing, you don't want to invalidate that class by giving better bonuses to the Fighter.
If you're significantly tweaking the Fighter, you kind of need to do the others too. At least the Barbarian.


My preference would be Damage Reduction, but who's going to keep track of that? Historically the shield is the most important (and affordable) defense a warrior ever had. For some reason D&D makes them virtually worthless.
Miss chance. Shields should give a miss chance.


It's allowing you to block an attack and it's applicable to more than just a melee attack. You can parry a thrown rock from a giant, a crossbow bolt, a Scorching Ray, etc.
The problem is that it's a full-round action. No-one's going to take a full-round action to sit there and defend. It should be immediate, with increasing numbers of uses/round as you level up. Also, not sure what "use the rules for disarm" mean here-- I took it to mean "you make a disarm attempt against any attacker until your next turn," but that won't help against things like thrown rocks and spells, so, uh...


Some of making yourself useful out of combat is finding ways to be useful.
And some of it is having unique abilities that actually do things.

[Mars Ultor]

A whole new game, but arguably a necessary one.

I haven't played 5th Edition, but I hear it's pretty good.



If you're significantly tweaking the Fighter, you kind of need to do the others too. At least the Barbarian.

Part of the issue with the Fighter is that many of the class features you'd give him could also apply to the other martial classes. Why should a Fighter be able to "fight big," but not a Barbarian? Why should a Fighter get an expanded skill list, but not the Ranger? BTW, why on earth do Rangers not get Knowledge: Local?

Weapons and general leadership should be the niche of a Fighter, the other stuff applies to the other classes. A Paladin should get any kind of shied bonus a Fighter gets, but rallying men and waging war should be a Fighter's purview.



Miss chance. Shields should give a miss chance.

What percentage? 20% for a heavy shield? 30%? How helpful is a buckler?



The problem is that [parrying] it's a full-round action. No-one's going to take a full-round action to sit there and defend. It should be immediate, with increasing numbers of uses/round as you level up. Also, not sure what "use the rules for disarm" mean here-- I took it to mean "you make a disarm attempt against any attacker until your next turn," but that won't help against things like thrown rocks and spells, so, uh...

An extra action the only Fighters get? Paladin can do it as a Move action?

The rules for Disarm in the sense that you're trying to hit the thing that's hitting you. You have to make an attack roll against the attack. A Hill Giant throws a rock at you, he gets a 22 and would normally hit you. You get an attack against the Hill Giant's attack; if your attack roll is 23 or higher you've deflected it.

[Jormengand]

A shield shouldn't provide +AC or miss chance. A shield-user doesn't need protection from fighter because fighter isn't a real threat. A shield should provide protection from wizard, and to the tower shield's credit, it actually can. The next step is to make that good enough to be worth doing.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Or maybe this hypothetical 3.75 should nerf the Wizard (so magic in general) so the Fighter doesn't *have to* have anti-Wizard measures just to be a worthwhile class, and *then* talk about buffing the Fighter?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I haven't played 5th Edition, but I hear it's pretty good.
Doesn't do a lot for noncombat utility, mind. See earlier posts about "forgot to include a skill system."



Part of the issue with the Fighter is that many of the class features you'd give him could also apply to the other martial classes. Why should a Fighter be able to "fight big," but not a Barbarian? Why should a Fighter get an expanded skill list, but not the Ranger? BTW, why on earth do Rangers not get Knowledge: Local?
Well, yeah. The Fighter and Barbarian should proooobably be combined, because both are very much "be strong and hit things" classes. The Ranger and the Paladin have more unique conceptual space to hang useful abilities. (Incidentally: because Rangers already have a good skill list, and because they're about the wilderness, not cities)


What percentage? 20% for a heavy shield? 30%? How helpful is a buckler?
In my G&G houserules, I went with 10% for a heavy or light shield, +5%/iterative attack. -5% for a buckler, +10% for a tower shield.


An extra action the only Fighters get? Paladin can do it as a Move action?

The rules for Disarm in the sense that you're trying to hit the thing that's hitting you. You have to make an attack roll against the attack. A Hill Giant throws a rock at you, he gets a 22 and would normally hit you. You get an attack against the Hill Giant's attack; if your attack roll is 23 or higher you've deflected it.
That doesn't have tremendous amount to do with the Disarm rules; "substitute a melee attack for your AC" is easier and clearer.


A shield shouldn't provide +AC or miss chance. A shield-user doesn't need protection from fighter because fighter isn't a real threat. A shield should provide protection from wizard, and to the tower shield's credit, it actually can. The next step is to make that good enough to be worth doing.
To be fair, a miss chance helps against rays and touches considerably. I suppose you could also rule that the miss chance from shields applies even to targeted spells like Slow; there's a whatever% chance that you interpose your shield in just the right way to block line-of-effect.

[Wiwaxia]

I've always been a fan of the LotFP approach wherein fighters, and only fighters, get a to-hit bonus that increases as they level up.
Take away everyone else's iterative attacks and manyshot, while you're at it.
Won't make fighters balanced, but will make them distinctive!

[mabriss lethe]

Something I've toyed with as a potential idea, is to roll in NPC classes as gestalt-like "Backgrounds" for every character. I still haven't figured out quite how I'd implement it. It would work easily with a Fighter, gestalt with expert or aristocrat for different skills, or with adept for some magic. It gets significantly clunkier when applied to other classes. It's a starting place, though, one that probably needs to be reworked from the ground up.

[Cosi]

A spell caster is always going to be able to fly and a fighter isn't. I suppose there are ToB maneuvers that let you run across the treetops or jump like the Hulk, but a wizard is always going to outclass a fighter in many ways. These changes would make the fighter more useful for a few more levels, but you'll never be able to get your jump modifier high enough to compete with flight, and you shouldn't be able to. It's a whole new game if you want some skills compete with spells.

There's no real way that a Fighter is ever going to compete with a Druid, and after a while the abilities you'd need to give Fighter to keep them competitive turn them into something that's not a fighter. Letting them act is if they're larger and giving them the increased weapon damage (through size and as a class skill) makes a difference for several levels.

This seems pretty fatalist. What do you see the concept of "Fighter" meaning that would preclude it from leveling up to match a Wizard of whatever level you think it can't match?


Here's a suggestion, standard +2/+2 to start and then as they increase in level Fighters get to use the next higher die for weapon damage. A longsword is 1d10 in the hands of a Fighter, at a higher level it's 1d12.

This is almost always roughly +1 damage, except you have to look up (or memorize) the weapon die size scaling table. Why not just +1 damage?


I can see Strength being applied to Intimidate and even Perform, but Disguise?

Why not? You can already add your DEX bonus to Fort saves, your INT bonus to disarm, or your CHA bonus to concentration (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?125732-3-x-X-stat-to-Y-bonus). If you imagine it as focusing on the physical rather than social aspects of impersonation, that seems fine.


My preference would be Damage Reduction, but who's going to keep track of that? Historically the shield is the most important (and affordable) defense a warrior ever had. For some reason D&D makes them virtually worthless.

People will keep track of damage reduction if it's big enough to matter. The Barbarian's DR 1/- is pointless, but DR 25/- would allow you to shrug off full attacks from huge dragons pretty trivially. Obviously you don't have to go that high, but DR isn't automatically meaningless.


Or maybe this hypothetical 3.75 should nerf the Wizard (so magic in general) so the Fighter doesn't *have to* have anti-Wizard measures just to be a worthwhile class, and *then* talk about buffing the Fighter?

What steps do you think need to be taken? "Nerf the Wizard" could mean anything from "fix planar binding" to "make it worse than the Bard". The point of this thread is to be explicit about ideas, so be explicit about what form you think nerfing the Wizard should take.


I've always been a fan of the LotFP approach wherein fighters, and only fighters, get a to-hit bonus that increases as they level up.
Take away everyone else's iterative attacks and manyshot, while you're at it.
Won't make fighters balanced, but will make them distinctive!

A game with the variety of classes 3e has can't afford to have "makes attacks" be the purview of a single class. Any fix for the Fighter needs to leave room for the Druids, Duskblades, Paladins, and Rogues of the world to serve as combatants to at least some degree.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

I don't necessarily think the Wizard specifically should be nerfed (it's as pointless/bland as the Fighter and both should be removed or merged with other classes imo), so much as fixing magic in general.

Ideally this would start with removing Vancian magic from the game entirely, replaced with something similar to Spheres of Power, or Psionics if you want to keep "Spell lists" as a thing.

But it mostly depends on what kind of game you want D&D to be overall. I prefer my games to only have moderate magical power levels, but have fairly common, interesting magic

[Uckleverry]

What exactly of 3.5 would you folks want to retain?

You're talking about all these big changes, and at the same time saying that both 4e and 5e are too different from the ideal you're looking for. Those two editions have solved many of the issues brought up in the thread -- in various ways, to various degrees -- but the rest of their rules systems seem to run counter to what you want from these fixes.

[Vaz]

What exactly of 3.5 would you folks want to retain?

You're talking about all these big changes, and at the same time saying that both 4e and 5e are too different from the ideal you're looking for. Those two editions have solved many of the issues brought up in the thread -- in various ways, to various degrees -- but the rest of their rules systems seem to run counter to what you want from these fixes.
So... your complaint is?

[Uckleverry]

You misunderstood. I'm asking what the essential features of 3.5 are in the minds of people who want to see the system changed. What will keep the edition still more or less the same edition, yet with pretty drastic changes added to the mechanics?

There are editions, namely 4e and 5e, which did implement large changes, but those changes have also ended up making the systems too different for the people who want 3.5. But what exactly is "D&D 3.5" and how much can it be changed before it essentially turns into another edition -- and how do you prevent it changing into something resembling 4e/5e if you do adjust the rules in the manner suggested here?

[Cosi]

Ideally this would start with removing Vancian magic from the game entirely, replaced with something similar to Spheres of Power, or Psionics if you want to keep "Spell lists" as a thing.

How does going from Spell Slots to Spell Points make any of the parts of magic that are broken less broken? If all you did was convert every spell's cost to spell points (with the 2 * level - 1 formula), then you would end up with the exact same spells being broken in the exact same ways. Probably worse actually, because if you can cash in your burning hands slots for more planar binding that is totally something you would do. I assume you also want to apply some of the nerfs involved in Spheres of Power -- which, to be clear, is fine, but be explicit about what changes you like -- but couldn't you apply the nerfs to spell effects without changing spellcasting's resource management? What are you getting by changing from "people have Spell Slots" to "people do whatever Spheres of Power does"?


What exactly of 3.5 would you folks want to retain?

It depends on what you mean. If you're doing 3.75 I think the target is to keep on being able to use the Monster Manuals. The advantage of 3e over "some other system" is that it has a big pile of monsters you can use. If you change that, I think you're better off writing a new system. If you're doing D&D 6e, that's more complicated. I think one of the big ones is spells like fabricate and teleport which give people big and useful non-combat options. There's also a bunch of subtler mechanical stuff -- for example, a unified task resolution system.


You're talking about all these big changes, and at the same time saying that both 4e and 5e are too different from the ideal you're looking for. Those two editions have solved many of the issues brought up in the thread -- in various ways, to various degrees -- but the rest of their rules systems seem to run counter to what you want from these fixes.

4e and 5e are bad games. 4e has badly implemented versions of a variety of good ideas, and 5e is unfinished and crippled by Bounded Accuracy.

[Uckleverry]

It depends on what you mean. If you're doing 3.75 I think the target is to keep on being able to use the Monster Manuals. The advantage of 3e over "some other system" is that it has a big pile of monsters you can use. If you change that, I think you're better off writing a new system. If you're doing D&D 6e, that's more complicated. I think one of the big ones is spells like fabricate and teleport which give people big and useful non-combat options. There's also a bunch of subtler mechanical stuff -- for example, a unified task resolution system.
But there's gotta be more than that though. What about 3e style multi-classing? Do you keep feats? Skills as a separate sub-system from combat resolution? Hit points and how you gain them? Ability scores? Can monsters keep all of that, but PCs use something different? Do monsters have to play by the same rules as PCs, like 3.5 more or less does? If monsters are kept as is, how do you resolve their spells and spell-like abilities?


4e and 5e are bad games. 4e has badly implemented versions of a variety of good ideas, and 5e is unfinished and crippled by Bounded Accuracy.
But if those two are badly designed games, where does that leave 3.5? Better designed? Really? Why do you want to change it so drastically then?

[Eldariel]

But if those two are badly designed games, where does that leave 3.5? Better designed? Really? Why do you want to change it so drastically then?

All of them have errors, just different ones. The route to creating a solid design is to start working on the problems in any given system and weed them out until you reach the point where the whole is solid. None of the D&D editions have done that but 3.X is at least full of material, good ideas, and has a decent baseline. It's a good starting point for working out the issues. 4e is way too restricted and structured for meaningful improvement without a complete redesign and 5e requires a complete rebuild if you don't like bounded accuracy.

3e is the truly open system where one level is supposedly worth the other, you can multiclass as you like, there are tons of different subsystems, etc. Just, then there are classes like the PHB warrior classes that really don't get anything, and many of the classes aren't worth taking all the way (PF is a superior baseline in this regard). Then there are silly goofs like the concept of a single attack, warriors lacking all the exclusive stuff, many spells being too easy/having too few downsides/being too low level, etc. Those are just individual issues though, and fixing them is far less of a hassle than fixing everything in the other editions. And AD&D just has a way more restrictive framework, meaning perfect AD&D has less to offer than perfect 3E. WotC made many goofs in each of their attempts.

[Uckleverry]

3e is the truly open system where one level is supposedly worth the other, you can multiclass as you like, there are tons of different subsystems, etc. Just, then there are classes like the PHB warrior classes that really don't get anything, and many of the classes aren't worth taking all the way (PF is a superior baseline in this regard). Then there are silly goofs like the concept of a single attack, warriors lacking all the exclusive stuff, many spells being too easy/having too few downsides/being too low level, etc. Those are just individual issues though, and fixing them is far less of a hassle than fixing everything in the other editions.

Ok, so free, essentially unrestricted multi-classing is one of the core principles of what makes 3.5 the game it is. Every level should be equal (I assume, lvl 7 of class X should be as valuable as lvl 7 of class Y). Different subsystems that also feel and play differently.

How do keep all of those, yet remove the class discrepancies? Give warrior-type classes new abilities? Do you use the spell system as a basis (much like Tome of Battle did), or something else? The skill subsystem? The feat subsystem?

If you use the spell subsystem as the basis, how do you prevent it from feeling like spells (like the critics of ToB and 4e claim it to feel)?

If you use the skill subsystem, how do you expand it so that it covers the wide-reaching abilities of magic? That's a massive task, with repercussions throughout the entire 3.5 rules system. Same applies for using the feat subsystem.

4e fixes the discrepancies through what you'd call the spell subsystem, through the skill subsystem, but also through altering what the rules themselves represent (world physics vs. story/genre assumptions). 5e fixes it to a lesser degree than 4e, primarily by restricting the spell subsystem (what 4e also does) and by expanding it to cover more classes (and does very little with the skill subsystem).

[Grod_The_Giant]

Ideally this would start with removing Vancian magic from the game entirely, replaced with something similar to Spheres of Power, or Psionics if you want to keep "Spell lists" as a thing.
Vancian magic is a major part of the D&D "feel," I think. There's nothing that makes it inherently more imbalanced than something like psionics (you could even argue the opposite, that slot-based magic is easier to DM for because it forces you to still use low-level powers and makes going nova harder and less effective). The reason psionics are more balanced than vancean magic in 3.5 are all external-- conventional magic has more material to interact in unexpected ways, disciplines do a better job of restricting access to powerful spells than schools, the writers knew more about what to avoid by the time psionics rolled around, psionics were written with a more limited outlook on what they should be able to do, etc.


You misunderstood. I'm asking what the essential features of 3.5 are in the minds of people who want to see the system changed. What will keep the edition still more or less the same edition, yet with pretty drastic changes added to the mechanics?

There are editions, namely 4e and 5e, which did implement large changes, but those changes have also ended up making the systems too different for the people who want 3.5. But what exactly is "D&D 3.5" and how much can it be changed before it essentially turns into another edition -- and how do you prevent it changing into something resembling 4e/5e if you do adjust the rules in the manner suggested here?
I think the keys to 3.5 D&D are:

Vancean Casting: I'm sorry, it just doesn't feel like D&D if the default isn't spell slots. It's fun to have other options, but... this was one of the reasons 4e feels weird, and 5e feels right.
Mechanical variety: Definitely the biggest strength of 3.5 is the sheer weight of options available. Not just the list of PrCs and the like, but the numerous subsystems and quirky classes. That's why maximizing compatability is so important
Zero-to-hero growth: More than any other edition, 3.5 characters start off being vulnerable to kobolds, and finish up killing gods. It's a great, gonzo, kitchen-sink power grab, and that's part of the fun. Compare that to 5e, where you're always at least a little vulnerable to kobolds.
Noncombat abilities: 3.5 mostly limits these to casters, but... like Cosi said, the presence of things like Teleport and Fabricate, the ability to raise armies with Animate Dead and Leadership, building castles with Wall of Stone, divinations and more, all give players the ability to interact with the world in new and exciting ways that other games frequently don't stop to think about.
Game-changing abilities: A subset of the previous two points, 3.5 isn't afraid to give abilities that change the way the game is played. Rope Trick means that "nervously camping and keeping watch" is no longer an issue. Teleport means that travel simply isn't a major thing anymore. Plane Shift opens huge new visages for exploration. The sorts of adventures and challenges you can send a 3.5 party on change significantly from levels 1-20.



4e is way too restricted and structured for meaningful improvement without a complete redesign and 5e requires a complete rebuild if you don't like bounded accuracy.
Minor quibble: Bounded Accuracy is actually pretty easy to mitigate. Just double your Proficiency bonus*, then add half the value to AC and nonproficient saving throws. (And probably do something else with Expertise-- rerolls are an easy option). Keeps the math about the same for things at around your level, but makes the level gap start to matter a lot more. An kobold swinging for +4 still has a decent shot (~25%) at hitting a level 20 character with 20 AC, but +6 vs AC 26 is a whole different story (down to 5%/crits only).

*And probably edit the progression so it scales slightly more nicely)

[Beheld]

How does going from Spell Slots to Spell Points make any of the parts of magic that are broken less broken? If all you did was convert every spell's cost to spell points (with the 2 * level - 1 formula), then you would end up with the exact same spells being broken in the exact same ways. Probably worse actually, because if you can cash in your burning hands slots for more planar binding that is totally something you would do. I assume you also want to apply some of the nerfs involved in Spheres of Power -- which, to be clear, is fine, but be explicit about what changes you like -- but couldn't you apply the nerfs to spell effects without changing spellcasting's resource management? What are you getting by changing from "people have Spell Slots" to "people do whatever Spheres of Power does"?

Spheres of Power vastly punishes actually trying to be able to do lots of different cool things and vastly rewards being able to do one super OP broken thing.

Now, I hear you saying "But that sounds stupid and bad and not what we want to do in game design?" and the answer is "Yes, yes it does."

[Uckleverry]

I think the keys to 3.5 D&D are:

Vancean Casting: I'm sorry, it just doesn't feel like D&D if the default isn't spell slots. It's fun to have other options, but... this was one of the reasons 4e feels weird, and 5e feels right.
Mechanical variety: Definitely the biggest strength of 3.5 is the sheer weight of options available. Not just the list of PrCs and the like, but the numerous subsystems and quirky classes. That's why maximizing compatability is so important
Zero-to-hero growth: More than any other edition, 3.5 characters start off being vulnerable to kobolds, and finish up killing gods. It's a great, gonzo, kitchen-sink power grab, and that's part of the fun. Compare that to 5e, where you're always at least a little vulnerable to kobolds.
Noncombat abilities: 3.5 mostly limits these to casters, but... like Cosi said, the presence of things like Teleport and Fabricate, the ability to raise armies with Animate Dead and Leadership, building castles with Wall of Stone, divinations and more, all give players the ability to interact with the world in new and exciting ways that other games frequently don't stop to think about.
Game-changing abilities: A subset of the previous two points, 3.5 isn't afraid to give abilities that change the way the game is played. Rope Trick means that "nervously camping and keeping watch" is no longer an issue. Teleport means that travel simply isn't a major thing anymore. Plane Shift opens huge new visages for exploration. The sorts of adventures and challenges you can send a 3.5 party on change significantly from levels 1-20.


I largely agree with your points. And I also claim that you can't retain all of that while balancing the classes. It's a fool's errand.

Consider three desired features of an improved 3.5:

1. Unrestricted multi-classing.
2. Different subsystems (magic, psionics, incarnum... you name it).
3. Balanced classes.

Pick two, cause you cannot get all three.

If you have unrestricted multi-classing and different subsystems, balancing the classes -- especially multi-class combinations -- is impossible. You have to give in somewhere, either by restricting multi-classing or by unifying the class subsystems. You could balance the classes and use different subsystems, but how on earth do you then balance all the various multi-class combinations that unrestricted multi-classing can produce? Impossible, and you would have to restrict multi-class combinations in some manner to ensure balance.

From what I gather, a lot of folks here want all three. It's not happening. It's 2017, and 3.5 was released about 15 years ago. If it could be done with the system staying intact and recognizable, it would've happened already.

[Grod_The_Giant]

"Multiclassing ruins balance" fears are generally overblown. Look at decently-written classes like the Binder, Totemist, and Crusader: you can pick up some useful stuff if you dip around, but there's also a strong incentive to stay in the class, and if you do dip you're slowing your access to more powerful abilities. Like, you're not going to get immaculately perfect 4e balance, but things aren't going to explode. Even in 3.5-as-written, multiclassing isn't really what makes things explode-- it tends to be more "this feat/PrC/spell is bonkers" than "dipping this, that, and the other thing give me ultimate power from class abilities."

[Uckleverry]

But class balance also means preventing you from becoming too weak. If you're a cleric 2/wizard 3/sorcerer 4, you're MUCH weaker than a single-classed level 8 character. As is, 3.5 has unrestricted multi-classing and various class subsystems, but you definitely do not have balanced classes, especially balanced multi-class combinations.

[Florian]

Some pages back I mentioned that it would be easier and way more productive to remove spellcasting as an integrated feature of a class framework and make it available to all via feat.

That would leave the comparatively well balanced (and interesting) martial classes as a base to chose from and each player can decide on how deep to go into magic, if at all.

[Cosi]

But there's gotta be more than that though. What about 3e style multi-classing?

God no. 3e multiclassing delivers on very little for the amount of complexity it adds to the game. Better to have a Gish class in core, and some kind of subclassing system.


Do you keep feats?

Yes, but I would probably make them more common and lower impact. Less Persistent Spell, more Tomb-Tainted Soul.


Skills as a separate sub-system from combat resolution?

Is this a 3e thing? I'm pretty sure every edition (certainly all the ones after 3e) has had this.


Hit points and how you gain them? Ability scores?

Probably? I can see arguments for changing those things, but I don't think you particularly need to.


Can monsters keep all of that, but PCs use something different? Do monsters have to play by the same rules as PCs, like 3.5 more or less does?

I think one of the best features of 3e is the transparency between PCs and monsters. That should be kept, and in some ways made stronger. For example, HD = CR = Level should be universal.


If monsters are kept as is, how do you resolve their spells and spell-like abilities?

Depends. If you're doing 3.75, I think you just keep them. Monsters generally don't have problem spells as SLAs. If you're going 6e, you're writing new monsters anyway, so you can write those with as many or as few of the new PC abilities you write as you wish.


But if those two are badly designed games, where does that leave 3.5? Better designed? Really? Why do you want to change it so drastically then?

Yes, it's better designed. But it's not perfect, so there exist changes which would make it better.


Vancean Casting: I'm sorry, it just doesn't feel like D&D if the default isn't spell slots. It's fun to have other options, but... this was one of the reasons 4e feels weird, and 5e feels right.

I kind of disagree. There should be Vancian casting, but there should also be other kinds of casting. Make Wizards Vancian, make other classes something else that fits them better. So a Rage Meter for the Barbarian for example.


I largely agree with your points. And I also claim that you can't retain all of that while balancing the classes. It's a fool's errand.

Consider three desired features of an improved 3.5:

1. Unrestricted multi-classing.
2. Different subsystems (magic, psionics, incarnum... you name it).
3. Balanced classes.

Pick two, cause you cannot get all three.

Nitpick: won't, not can't. The problem is solvable, it's just intractable. You could balance each combination, it's just that there are N^M combinations where N is the number of classes and M is the number of levels.


"Multiclassing ruins balance" fears are generally overblown. Look at decently-written classes like the Binder, Totemist, and Crusader: you can pick up some useful stuff if you dip around, but there's also a strong incentive to stay in the class, and if you do dip you're slowing your access to more powerful abilities. Like, you're not going to get immaculately perfect 4e balance, but things aren't going to explode. Even in 3.5-as-written, multiclassing isn't really what makes things explode-- it tends to be more "this feat/PrC/spell is bonkers" than "dipping this, that, and the other thing give me ultimate power from class abilities."

I guess my question is what the defense of open multi-classing is. What is that adding to the system that you don't get with something like subclassing?

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Spheres of Power vastly punishes actually trying to be able to do lots of different cool things and vastly rewards being able to do one super OP broken thing.

Now, I hear you saying "But that sounds stupid and bad and not what we want to do in game design?" and the answer is "Yes, yes it does."

Clearly you've never actually played with Spheres of Power

The actual reason it works is because magic now works in feat chains, essentially. The Vancian spells are gone and instead you take "talents" from multiple different categories of magic that all build on the one or two base powers of their category, gained when you first take access to it as a talent. Most of these base powers are decent (and free) abilities, like Warlock invocations almost, and then you can augment them with talents from the same category, generally by spending additional points or taking longer actions upon casting.

What Beheld seems to think is that this allows someone to go "all-in" on one category and become a god there at the expense of all else. But really all it does is let you either dabble in many categories for a generalist wizard feel (and indeed, Sphere Wizards are the best at this style thanks to their additional talents) or specialize into Weather manipulation, blasting, illusions, etc. All the really OP/world-changing powers are locked behind a DM-permission wall.

Basically, it makes magic work like the rest of the game. Casters still have higher utility potential, but since the Fighter can get access to talents though feats it's a little more even.

[Cosi]

The actual reason it works is because magic now works in feat chains, essentially.

Those have the exact problem Beheld is describing where you either go all in on one thing (boring) or spread out your abilities and fail to keep up to spec.

[Beheld]

Clearly you've never actually played with Spheres of Power

The actual reason it works is because magic now works in feat chains, essentially. The Vancian spells are gone and instead you take "talents" from multiple different categories of magic that all build on the one or two base powers of their category, gained when you first take access to it as a talent. Most of these base powers are decent (and free) abilities, like Warlock invocations almost, and then you can augment them with talents from the same category, generally by spending additional points or taking longer actions upon casting.

What Beheld seems to think is that this allows someone to go "all-in" on one category and become a god there at the expense of all else. But really all it does is let you either dabble in many categories for a generalist wizard feel (and indeed, Sphere Wizards are the best at this style thanks to their additional talents) or specialize into Weather manipulation, blasting, illusions, etc. All the really OP/world-changing powers are locked behind a DM-permission wall.

Basically, it makes magic work like the rest of the game. Casters still have higher utility potential, but since the Fighter can get access to talents though feats it's a little more even.

No, what happens is, you either spread your things out, in which case you have non level appropriate abilities of lots of different kinds of things, and you can't keep up with CR or

You invest all your talents into the limited ones that stack into even betterness and you keep up with and in some cases even exceed CR in your abilities (IE, long range multiple target save or die at level 2).

Things like Teleport and Fabricate and granting energy immunity with shapeshift aren't broken. That's the problem. Those things are just mostly completely unbroken things that you want in your game. Broken things are the things you create by stacking giant piles of synergy on top of each other, when that's allowed and there are synergizing options.

[Hackulator]

why is there a debate about spheres of magic in a thread about Fighters....

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Explain your level 2 multi-target save or die ability? Because I've never seen anything like that, except Color Spray and a charging Barbarian

[Arbane]

why is there a debate about spheres of magic in a thread about Fighters....

Because in D&D, Magic is the Only Thing That Matters.

I really wish I thought i was joking.

[Cosi]

why is there a debate about spheres of magic in a thread about Fighters....

Because Dinosaur really likes it, and thinks that instead of fixing Fighters you should replace Wizards.

[Beheld]

Explain your level 2 multi-target save or die ability? Because I've never seen anything like that, except Color Spray and a charging Barbarian

You want:

Alteration, Object Transformation 1 and 2, Mass Alteration, Ranged Alteration 1, 2, and 3. An Incantar with the Beast Soul Drawback in their tradition gets 6 Alteration selections. I suppose technically my math was off and you can only have a Medium Range multi-target save or die and then you get to level 3, you go to long range, and you probably take Lingering Augmentation as well.

Like all characters, you try to get Easy Focus on your tradition if your DM lets you, and then just pile as many non-meaningful drawbacks as they will let you take to claim bonus spell points.

Then of course, you are incentivized to spend every future point on taking more alteration bonuses since you already have lingering and multitarget, and polymorphing the entire party with a bunch of bonuses is pretty good, but investing in something like conjuration would be pathetic because you'd start from scratch.

Other versions of this problem exist in all the strong schools, like Conjuration, where you spend two talents to give yourself day long summons, and then you just keep stacking bonuses on your form to make them stronger, and then grab other companions with your day long durations that get further bonuses from the fact that you invested in Conjuration from the beginning.

Basically, you invest every talent into one school to get something cool and level appropriate, and then you realize that you can either start again at level 1 like a chump, or you can keep stacking abilities on your single super powerful trick.

[Dragonexx]

Combat: Something to contribute to combat.

Problem Solving: Something beyond "thumbs" that can face out of combat problems.

World-Building: Something that can leave their mark on the world.

[Triskavanski]

Because in D&D, Magic is the Only Thing That Matters.

I really wish I thought i was joking.

Yeah. Its one big beef I have where they don't really work on creating a lot of things that could be done mundanely through creative measures because "a spell could do it already."

Like the Healers handbook for Pathfinder which included really just a bunch more options for magic spell casters and little to nothing for people using the Heal Skill.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Beheld, the difference is that you have essentially made an Ubercharger. You have one trick and if/when that trick is not appropriate you have no other magic.

[Psyren]

Yeah. Its one big beef I have where they don't really work on creating a lot of things that could be done mundanely through creative measures because "a spell could do it already."

Like the Healers handbook for Pathfinder which included really just a bunch more options for magic spell casters and little to nothing for people using the Heal Skill.

You don't need to be a spellcaster to use Alchemy in Pathfinder though, or to create wondrous items. That opens up the options for muggle healing considerably.

[Beheld]

Beheld, the difference is that you have essentially made an Ubercharger. You have one trick and if/when that trick is not appropriate you have no other magic.

Uh yes. That's the point. Sphere's of Power gives you a choice, either be broken, like an Uber charger, or be a pile of garbage, like another fighter who is picking level 1 abilities at level 7 instead of level 7 abilities.

That's specifically the reason it's terrible.

(Although, you know, you are literally a level 2 character with a multitarget save or die that works on everything except constructs, undead, plants, and oozes and at level 3 you can make it effect constructs and undead, and every level after this you put 100% of your talents into your ability to AoE polymorph either your entire party, or a pile of objects into more advanced and more additional traits.)

But really that's the point. Just like being a level 10 Wizard, and being asked if you want to take a level of Cleric and learn to cast Bless is bad, so too is being asked if you want to learn how to cast light instead of spending your talents on being the Polymorph master who in addition to save or dies, also gives himself huge enhancement bonuses to stats, and a variety of defense and effects, and then also turns a bunch of rocks into frogs are also increasingly powerful.

[digiman619]

You know, I was going to keep out of this SoP debate, but I've gotta speak my piece

The "SoP makes you focus your magic into only a few choices and that makes you boring" argument is bunk. You know who else has to focus their magic into only a few choices? Sorcerers and Psions. Where's your anger towards them? Besides, the flexibility of Wizards that you clearly enjoy over other subsystems is literally the reason they are T1. It's been proven that the ability to completely alter you load from day to day is incredibly powerful and easily abusable.

Besides, as has been mentioned, if you want the flexibility to do that in Spheres of Power, you still can. Rituals (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/rituals) let you directly import some of the fancier effects that SoP doesn't cover really easily, and the Spell Dabbler (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/general-feats#toc49) and Spell Adept (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/general-feats#toc48) make using them as spells again really simple.

Oh and as for:

Uh yes. That's the point. Sphere's of Power gives you a choice, either be broken, like an Uber charger, or be a pile of garbage, like another fighter who is picking level 1 abilities at level 7 instead of level 7 abilities.

That's specifically the reason it's terrible.
That explicitly isn't how SoP works! You can be a 20th level Incanter who never took a single Destruction talent in their career and only buys it at 20th level. If you do, your unmodified destructive blast will do the exact same damage as it would have if you took it at level 1! The only way this wouldn't be true would be if you use the Multiple Traditions rule (which is explicitly optional), and rather than go Incanter 20 you went Incanter 19/Elementalist 1 for some reason.

So you don't have to use or even like SoP, but don't lie about it.

[Cosi]

I still don't see why having casters manage their resources under a Spheres of Power-ish set of rules is more balanced than having them prepare them. I get that Spheres of Power made changes to how spells work, and what powers you get by default, but all of that sounds like stuff you could do without having to touch spell preparation.


That explicitly isn't how SoP works! You can be a 20th level Incanter who never took a single Destruction talent in their career and only buys it at 20th level. If you do, your unmodified destructive blast will do the exact same damage as it would have if you took it at level 1! The only way this wouldn't be true would be if you use the Multiple Traditions rule (which is explicitly optional), and rather than go Incanter 20 you went Incanter 19/Elementalist 1 for some reason.

CL 20 burning hands is not a 20th level ability.

[Triskavanski]

Oh and as for:

That explicitly isn't how SoP works! You can be a 20th level Incanter who never took a single Destruction talent in their career and only buys it at 20th level. If you do, your unmodified destructive blast will do the exact same damage as it would have if you took it at level 1! The only way this wouldn't be true would be if you use the Multiple Traditions rule (which is explicitly optional), and rather than go Incanter 20 you went Incanter 19/Elementalist 1 for some reason.

So you don't have to use or even like SoP, but don't lie about it.

So.. you get the ability to use the warlock's blast, but at close range to do 10d6 points of damage. Okay maybe it really isn't a "level 1" but Like Cosi says with the burning hands thing, just cause you got a caster level 20 on something doesn't make it a level 20 ability.

Like a fighter who spent all of his feats to be the bestest as hitting really hard with a great sword, who picks up a non-magical shortbow without any other modifiers to it, would be able to do the same amount of damage as if they picked up that short bow at level 1. But 1d6 damage an attack, even with four attacks (Many would likely miss due to low dex and lack of supporting feats) is hardly a level 20 thing to do.

[Beheld]

You know, I was going to keep out of this SoP debate, but I've gotta speak my piece

The "SoP makes you focus your magic into only a few choices and that makes you boring" argument is bunk. You know who else has to focus their magic into only a few choices? Sorcerers and Psions. Where's your anger towards them? Besides, the flexibility of Wizards that you clearly enjoy over other subsystems is literally the reason they are T1. It's been proven that the ability to completely alter you load from day to day is incredibly powerful and easily abusable.

I think you misunderstood the point entirely. It has nothing to do with changing abilities between days. It's about being level appropriate and being able to do that diversely. When a Sorcerer levels up from level 8 to level 10, they don't have to choose between either upgrading their Dimension Door to Teleport as a level 5 spell known or alternatively, taking Mage Armor as a level 5 spell known. They can just pick "Castigous Mageus Armoreus" the level 5 Mage Armor spell as a spell known. Because it's a level 10 ability, and they are a level 10 character.

Spheres of power characters choose whether to upgrade some spell they already have to a level appropriate ability, or to start all over again at level 1.


That explicitly isn't how SoP works! You can be a 20th level Incanter who never took a single Destruction talent in their career and only buys it at 20th level. If you do, your unmodified destructive blast will do the exact same damage as it would have if you took it at level 1! The only way this wouldn't be true would be if you use the Multiple Traditions rule (which is explicitly optional), and rather than go Incanter 20 you went Incanter 19/Elementalist 1 for some reason.

So you don't have to use or even like SoP, but don't lie about it.

A single talent in Destruction doing 20d6 damage as a ranged touch attack in close range is not level appropriate at level 20. If you had instead taken all sorts of talents and invested them in your destruction for several levels, you would be shooting for 20d6, and you could change it different energy types, and you would have two different save or lose action abilities attached, and you can shoot it as a fireball or chained spell. That's a level appropriate Destruction ability (I mean, kind of, not really because evokers get screwed, but way more so than touch attack for 20d6 damage.)

Like wise the ability to give someone an entire GORE attack my GOD MAN and even some claw attacks!~ for a whole minute! is not in fact a level appropriate level 20 alteration ability, it's a like a level 3 ability. The level 20 Alteration ability is a wide ranging save or die and also permanent party buffs.

[Knaight]

Or maybe this hypothetical 3.75 should nerf the Wizard (so magic in general) so the Fighter doesn't *have to* have anti-Wizard measures just to be a worthwhile class, and *then* talk about buffing the Fighter?

I'm all for nerfing the Wizard, but that doesn't mean that the Fighter (and other martial classes) shouldn't have magic counters. D&D as a game has a very wide variety of threats - there's a reason one of the core books is the Monster Manual and has been from extremely early on, where most games don't have an equivalent. The different classes getting at least something for a lot of these different threats, or at least an option for a lot of these different threats can make the game better, and right now the Fighter defenses against more magical threats consists of two really bad saves, one fairly good save, and a decent but not great pile of HP. More options along the lines of getting an opportunity attack at range with a thrown weapon that cancels an incoming spell (to fit the swords and sorcery trope of knifing someone in the hand from 40' away when they try to start casting) or the feats that basically counter Power Attack and that give bonuses fighting larger creatures can be fun.

Take Turn Undead. It's a situational power very much of the "screw you in particular" school of thought, and it's particularly fun to deploy as a result. Having more of those around and having them incorporated into defenses more than the current meat-wall HP gain strategy can be fun regardless of whether or not magic is overpowered.

[DMVerdandi]

On the subject of fighters natively having counters for spellcaster's, I would say no. Not such as there should be no counters for spell casters, But nothing about the fighter says the above every other classit should be a mage Hunter.

If anything, going the route of Pathfinder, mage slayer should simply be a fighter archetype. Furthermore, spell resistance should be a skill.

Making the fighter anything but what it is, which is a peerless martial artist, is insincere.

[SirNibbles]

Fighters (and Barbarians, Monks, and Rogues) need spells unless you're running a low-magic campaign.

Fighter- Arcane, Int to DC/Max Spell level, Con to Bonus spells, Spontaneous, limited spells known, CL = 1/2
Barbarian- Divine, Wis to DC/Max Spell level, Con to Bonus spells, Spontaneous, limited spells known, CL = 1/2
Monk- Divine, Wis to DC/Max Spell level, Wis to Bonus spells, Prepared, limited spells known, CL = 1/2
Rogue- Arcane, Int to DC/Max Spell level, Int to Bonus spells, Prepared, all spells known, CL = 1/2

Steal some spells from Sorc/Wiz/Cleric/Paladin/Ranger lists and come up with a few unique spells for each class. Spells should be verbal-only swift actions, ranging from level 0 to level 2.
Examples:
Fighter- Bull's Strength, Magic Weapon
Barbarian- Bull's Strength, Enlarge Person, Expeditious Retreat
Monk- Cat's Grace, Gust of Wind
Rogue- Knock, Invisibility, Disguise Self, etc. (pretty much the Assassin spell list)

__

Fighter bonus feats need to not suck.

__

Fighter needs more skill points so it can do things outside of combat.

___

An aside: don't try to fix Fighter by making it as powerful as an overpowered class, like Wizard.

[AnimeTheCat]

Fighters (and Barbarians, Monks, and Rogues) need spells unless you're running a low-magic campaign.

Fighter- Arcane, Int to DC/Max Spell level, Con to Bonus spells, Spontaneous, limited spells known, CL = 1/2
Barbarian- Divine, Wis to DC/Max Spell level, Con to Bonus spells, Spontaneous, limited spells known, CL = 1/2
Monk- Divine, Wis to DC/Max Spell level, Wis to Bonus spells, Prepared, limited spells known, CL = 1/2
Rogue- Arcane, Int to DC/Max Spell level, Int to Bonus spells, Prepared, all spells known, CL = 1/2

Steal some spells from Sorc/Wiz/Cleric/Paladin/Ranger lists and come up with a few unique spells for each class. Spells should be verbal-only swift actions, ranging from level 0 to level 2.
Examples:
Fighter- Bull's Strength, Magic Weapon
Barbarian- Bull's Strength, Enlarge Person, Expeditious Retreat
Monk- Cat's Grace, Gust of Wind
Rogue- Knock, Invisibility, Disguise Self, etc. (pretty much the Assassin spell list)


I actually don't mind this idea as much as I thought I would. I would, however, make it something of an archetype that the player should pick instead of a flat based caster progression. Similar to how 5e has it's archetypes, you combine spells that are thematically similar. E.x. Cats Grace, Expeditious Retreat, Feather Fall, Blur, spider climb for a "swift" focused build or Magic Weapon, Bull's Strength, Enlarge Person, Bear's Endurance for a stong melee combatant. Thematically make the lists based on archetypes. Now that you've reduced the number of spells known have them be like a beguiler and not prepare their spells, but have access to all of them. Lastly, allow the duration to be based on the CL like you have broken down above. Give them progression like a bard starting at level 3 when they pick their archetype.

[Elkad]

Besides other stuff mentioned here, Fighters need a huge discount on Weapons&Armor magic gear.
Half-price for their primary gear. (Greatsword and Platemail or whatever)
And their backup gear needs to be even cheaper. Their axe, mace, lance, longbow, shortsword, dagger, shield, chain shirt (for dinner parties, naval adventures, and as pajamas), barding for their war griffon, and all those other things need to stay relevant to their level, at nearly no cost.

Maybe just make basic plusses free, or nearly so. No more begging for Chain Extended Greater Magic Weapon. And then pay the "normal" price for Keen Shocking Vorpal addons.
"Improved Equipment Attunement" or something. With 15 minutes of daily maintenance per magic item, for every day in your possession, the enhancement bonus increases by +1, capping at fighterlevel/3.
Every round of use by someone other than yourself or your mount drops it by +1 (floor of it's true bonus).

Speaking of their War Griffon, Mounted Combat should let you dodge attacks on your Mount at least a number of times equal to your iteratives per round. Or maybe infinite, but with scaling difficulty like dodging a lot of guys with Tumble.
And Fighters probably need a (optional) Paladin Mount-like feature, so that Griffon gets Evasion, more speed, save bonuses, etc.

[Eldariel]

Besides other stuff mentioned here, Fighters need a huge discount on Weapons&Armor magic gear.
Half-price for their primary gear. (Greatsword and Platemail or whatever)
And their backup gear needs to be even cheaper. Their axe, mace, lance, longbow, shortsword, dagger, shield, chain shirt (for dinner parties, naval adventures, and as pajamas), barding for their war griffon, and all those other things need to stay relevant to their level, at nearly no cost.

Maybe just make basic plusses free, or nearly so. No more begging for Chain Extended Greater Magic Weapon. And then pay the "normal" price for Keen Shocking Vorpal addons.
"Improved Equipment Attunement" or something. With 15 minutes of daily maintenance per magic item, for every day in your possession, the enhancement bonus increases by +1, capping at fighterlevel/3.
Every round of use by someone other than yourself or your mount drops it by +1 (floor of it's true bonus).

Speaking of their War Griffon, Mounted Combat should let you dodge attacks on your Mount at least a number of times equal to your iteratives per round. Or maybe infinite, but with scaling difficulty like dodging a lot of guys with Tumble.
And Fighters probably need a (optional) Paladin Mount-like feature, so that Griffon gets Evasion, more speed, save bonuses, etc.

It's easy to buy your caster Pearls of Power in exchange for GMW. Just increases the reliance tho. Tho yeah, more functional Legacy-weapons and armor would be nice. No penalties, BAB prereqs, more bonuses, etc. One personal magic sword that takes effort to unlock, no christmas tree.

[AnimeTheCat]

What about an inborn class ability that the fighter can use as a free action or no action to treat any weapon they weild as a +1 weapon starting at level 3 and increasing by 1 every 3 levels to a max of +6 at 18th level. That makes sticking with fighter a little better and gives them a scaling class ability that functions with ANY weapon and stacks with weapon focuses etc. If they are weilding a magic weapon they just use the better enhancement score like a 9th level fighter weilding a +1 weapon treats it as a +3 weapon.

[digiman619]

CL 20 burning hands is not a 20th level ability.


I think you misunderstood the point entirely. It has nothing to do with changing abilities between days. It's about being level appropriate and being able to do that diversely. When a Sorcerer levels up from level 8 to level 10, they don't have to choose between either upgrading their Dimension Door to Teleport as a level 5 spell known or alternatively, taking Mage Armor as a level 5 spell known. They can just pick "Castigous Mageus Armoreus" the level 5 Mage Armor spell as a spell known. Because it's a level 10 ability, and they are a level 10 character.

Spheres of power characters choose whether to upgrade some spell they already have to a level appropriate ability or to start all over again at level 1.



A single talent in Destruction doing 20d6 damage as a ranged touch attack in close range is not level appropriate at level 20. If you had instead taken all sorts of talents and invested them in your destruction for several levels, you would be shooting for 20d6, and you could change it different energy types, and you would have two different save or lose action abilities attached, and you can shoot it as a fireball or chained spell. That's a level appropriate Destruction ability (I mean, kind of, not really because evokers get screwed, but way more so than touch attack for 20d6 damage.)

Like wise the ability to give someone an entire GORE attack my GOD MAN and even some claw attacks!~ for a whole minute! is not in fact a level appropriate level 20 alteration ability, it's a like a level 3 ability. The level 20 Alteration ability is a wide ranging save or die and also permanent party buffs.

I think I see what you're aiming at and I understand it; You're telling me that due to SoP's design philosophy of building up a power piece by piece as opposed to regular Vancian's pick and choose philosophy make getting any one component less of a big deal at high levels because other than theme or other priorities, there was nothing from stopping you from picking it X levels ago. And that's a valid way to view it.

In my opinion, though, you're looking at it with the wrong criteria. You're right in that SoP will never be as powerful or as flexible in a day-to-day basis as Vancian is, but I honestly think that it's not a bug, it's a feature. As noted in countless C/MD threads, early wizard careers lead to wasting your 2-3 spells before being relegated to crossbow duty, while mid-to-late levels render the supposed limit (i.e., spell slots) moot, as you will, in practice, almost never run out of them.

Moreover, where SoP shines, in my opinion at least, isn't at the top, but at the middle and bottom. As I've said before, this is where the focused, thematic casters live, as well as the "martial with one magic ability" like a berserker who literally turns into a bear. This is where the Vancian model fails as you can't do the type of magic found in virtually any medium not directly inspired by D&D; heck even Vance's work doesn't work like D&D's "Vancian" magic.

And literary-style magic is what we should be aiming for, because everyone has, at one point, decided to make a character/NPC as "<Character> in D&D/Pathfinder" or "Like <Character>, but...", and the storytelling is always one of the major selling points of any RPG. I can't tell you how many times I've seen new players want to be "cool guy who can do X" only to be told that only wizards can do X and only as a 2nd/3rd/4th level spell, so if they want their cool concept, they will have to go into a class that doesn't remotely do what they want for the beginning of their career to one day earn the right to play "cool guy who can do X", as well as having the fact they can do Y,Z, i, π, Ω, etc, being more important to the story that the concept they built him for.

But, that's just my opinion, which as stated, is just as valid as yours.

[Beheld]

In my opinion, though, you're looking at it with the wrong criteria. You're right in that SoP will never be as powerful or as flexible in a day-to-day basis as Vancian is, but I honestly think that it's not a bug, it's a feature.

Again, I cannot stress this enough. It is not per day flexibility that is the issue, it is that you either get better at one thing, or you go back to level 1, those are your options in SoP.

The Sorcerer who at level 10 (or should be level 9 because the even level casters should all be odd level casters) picks up Teleport, and Wall of Force, because those are level appropriate abilities that fit his theme (whatever he decides that is) rather than with magic missile and entropic field because those are the level 1 abilities and he hasn't bought the level 1-4 abilities so he can't buy the level 5 abilities, that Sorcerer is the point that I'm shooting for.


And literary-style magic is what we should be aiming for, because everyone has, at one point, decided to make a character/NPC as "<Character> in D&D/Pathfinder" or "Like <Character>, but...", and the storytelling is always one of the major selling points of any RPG. I can't tell you how many times I've seen new players want to be "cool guy who can do X" only to be told that only wizards can do X and only as a 2nd/3rd/4th level spell, so if they want their cool concept, they will have to go into a class that doesn't remotely do what they want for the beginning of their career to one day earn the right to play "cool guy who can do X", as well as having the fact they can do Y,Z, i, π, Ω, etc, being more important to the story that the concept they built him for.

1) We should aim for magic that makes a good cooperative storytelling game, not good single author fiction. That isn't SoP.

2) I write classes, I'm not saying that Vancian magic is perfect, and I personally use homebrewed different Wizards, Clerics, and Druids that are not traditional 3.5 vancian, along with other classes with other resource management systems. But none of the failings of Vancian system are actually addressed by SoP, which just makes people really good at one thing, and then not branching out. It was never the ability of a Wizard to cast both Fireball and invisibili

[Dr_Dinosaur]

The problem with your argument, Beheld, is that SoP abilities scale with level. Most Talents are an increase in versatility, not direct power, though some do actually just make things better.

Taking Destructive Blast, Fire Blast, and the Talents for Invisibility doesn't make you weaker than just taking Destruction talents. It makes you less able to deal various types of damage and more able to deal damage (fire/bludgeoning only) and use illusions equally as well. You aren't "starting at level 1."

[Triskavanski]

One of the things I'm adamantly against is this suggestion by a few people that "Fighter just needs to go away" because its bland, since it lacks the flavors of the three other martial classes in the core book (Namely Paladin, Barbarian, and Ranger), because I believe that flavor should come from the player and the character and not be something forcefully baked into the class (to a degree)

Otherwise you start getting things like Paladins who have to do this..


He may never own more than ten magic items. Further, he is restricted to owning a single suit of armor, a single shield, four weapons, and only four items which do not fit into these categories. In counting weapons, weapons which intrinsically must work together--such as bows and batches of arrows--are counted as a single weapon.

They are required to give away excessive wealth, keeping only that which is necessary to meet personal expenses and maintain his troops and fortifications. However much he receives, he will automatically give away 10% of all wealth as it comes in. This will be given to non-player clerical institutions.

The paladin is restricted in the alignments of characters with whom he may associate. All of his henchmen must be lawful good, and his other associates must all be good. He may participate in an adventure in which he is working with non-evil neutrals only if it is limited to a single expedition, and only if it will further a lawful good cause.

In addition to the stricture that they may only associate long-term with lawful good characters, they will only form alliances with fighters, clerics, and cavaliers, of noble birth or status.

Things like that is the reason I don't play paladins. Granted, some of that over seasoning has been toned down though the years, but back in 2nd edition, it was baked into the class to force every other party member to become lawful good or stop partying with them if it goes on too long. Everyone also has to be fighters, clerics or a cavalier, and noble on top of that.

Then you had barbarians that functioned like


Barbarians fear and oppose all magic except the simplest of clerical magics (ministrations of the gods). They cannot use magic items of any sort at low levels, and will always gain experience points for destroying any magic item. They will not knowingly work with magic-users at low levels, and at even the highest levels will view such wizards with suspicion even if well known to them. This chart shows the degree to which magic will be tolerated by barbarians:

Level Actions and Abilities

2: May associate freely with clerics.
3: May use potions.
4: May use magic weapons.
5: May use magic armor.
6: May associate with magic-users (and their sub-classes) if the need is great.
7: May use weapon-like miscellaneous magic items.
8: May associate with magic-users occasionally.
9: May use protection scrolls.
10: May use most magic items available to fighters

So with a barbarian in the party back then, you couldn't play a wizard. Or if a wizard was in a party you couldn't play a barbarian. But really at level one, the barbarian could easily break the wizard over his knee. Same problem with clerics early early on, but later it becomes more trustful. The Barb also is actively encouraged to smash magic things to gain more exp.


But hey, both of those classes become more /flavored/ when you put that stuff in there don't they? Like Arthur and Uther Penndragon, while you're playing Merlin. Except you don't have plot armor.


The original versions of the two classes punish your party Members more than they punish you, cause you and you alone got bonuses for invoking your will on the rest of the party. Its why I like that the flavor has been gone through, and now its more player oriented, cause I tend to make fighters now like Adlet Mayer or Bronn. But other people like to make people like Gregor or Sandor, or maybe even The Man in Black or inigo montoya

[Cosi]

Also, completely aside whether Spheres of Power is mechanically sound, it seems clear to me that if your goal is "emulate fantasy", you should not have any one resource management system as a basis for all of magic. Avatar magic is clearly very different from Harry Potter magic which is different in its turn from Dresden Files magic. Hell, series like Traveler's Gate have a whole bunch of different ways of doing magic at once.

[digiman619]

Again, I cannot stress this enough. It is not per day flexibility that is the issue, it is that you either get better at one thing, or you go back to level 1, those are your options in SoP.

The Sorcerer who at level 10 (or should be level 9 because the even level casters should all be odd level casters) picks up Teleport, and Wall of Force, because those are level appropriate abilities that fit his theme (whatever he decides that is) rather than with magic missile and entropic field because those are the level 1 abilities and he hasn't bought the level 1-4 abilities so he can't buy the level 5 abilities, that Sorcerer is the point that I'm shooting for.
Great idea. Where's the fighter's plane shift, teleport, gate, etc, etc, etc? Why are you balancing what a "level appropriate ability" is based on what wizards (and Clerics/Druids) get? It's generally accepted that they are overpowered compared to everything else.


1) We should aim for magic that makes a good cooperative storytelling game, not good single author fiction. That isn't SoP.

2) I write classes, I'm not saying that Vancian magic is perfect, and I personally use homebrewed different Wizards, Clerics, and Druids that are not traditional 3.5 vancian, along with other classes with other resource management systems. But none of the failings of Vancian system are actually addressed by SoP, which just makes people really good at one thing, and then not branching out. It was never the ability of a Wizard to cast both Fireball and invisibili
With respect, a sorcerer can go their entire career without knowing a single transmutation spell, but pick up polymorph any object at 20th. This has never made sense and has lead to cherry picking abilities that kill thematic builds (I'm a pyromancer, why would I take fly or summon monster?) as well as the aforementioned "earn your right to play your concept" has always a problem some (including me) have had with Vancian magic.

[Grod_The_Giant]

One of the things I'm adamantly against is this suggestion by a few people that "Fighter just needs to go away" because its bland, since it lacks the flavors of the three other martial classes in the core book (Namely Paladin, Barbarian, and Ranger), because I believe that flavor should come from the player and the character and not be something forcefully baked into the class (to a degree)
While I agree with you that classes shouldn't have enforced codes of behavior, or too much baked-in fluff, there's a difference between "fluff" and "identity." The Barbarian's fluff of "savage tribal warrior" can easily be dispensed with, but it has an identity as a "warrior who relies on physical power more than skill." The issue with the Fighter isn't so much the lack of fluff as the lack of identity. Without an identity, it becomes hard to write class features. The problem is worsened by the fact that, insofar as the Fighter has an identity, it's all about, well, fighting-- where do you hang noncombat interactions on that?

If the Fighter was the "unstoppable juggernaut who takes a licking and keeps on ticking," we could create class features for it-- reducing status conditions, temporary hit points, dealing with traps by just tanking them, etc.
If the Fighter was the "paragon of physical might and perfection," we could create class features for it-- boosted Str and Dex skills, jumping/climbing movement powers, ways to throw enemies around the battlefield, etc.
If the Fighter was the "long-time veteran who's seen it all before," we could create class features for it-- ways to adopt their combat style on the fly, Bardic Knowledge type abilities, recognizing and taking advantage of/helping party members resist monster abilities, etc.
If the Fighter was the "champion and leader of men," we could create class features for it-- buffing allies, recruiting minions, social bonuses due to reputation, etc.

But if the Fighter is just the guy who "fights good," where do you go from there?

You pretty much have to start by picking an identity to emphasize how they "fight good," and that's where you start to lose people whose vision is different from yours.

[Cosi]

Great idea. Where's the fighter's plane shift, teleport, gate, etc, etc, etc? Why are you balancing what a "level appropriate ability" is based on what wizards (and Clerics/Druids) get? It's generally accepted that they are overpowered compared to everything else.

I don't know, let's write some. Also, in general the thing that is broken is not "casters", but "stupid and abusable spells". A Wizard that is not e.g. using planar binding to recruit several minions who are personally more dangerous than his entire party is about fair per the CR system. People don't understand that for ... some reason.

But it doesn't really matter. Sure. Make Sorcerers worse. But fundamentally, 1st level abilities are not 10th level abilities. Maybe a 10th level ability should be fireball instead of cloudkill. But it still shouldn't be burning hands.


With respect, a sorcerer can go their entire career without knowing a single transmutation spell, but pick up polymorph any object at 20th. This has never made sense and has lead to cherry picking abilities that kill thematic builds (I'm a pyromancer, why would I take fly or summon monster?) as well as the aforementioned "earn your right to play your concept" has always a problem some (including me) have had with Vancian magic.

How does having the choice to do something kill your ability to make a thematic build? You could take 19 levels of fire spells, then pick up only ice spells at 20th. But if your goal is to make a fire mage you can just not do that. If you compelled to do that even though you want to make a fire mage, the power of fire and ice magic is out of balance, and the balance should be fixed.

I still don't see what you are supposed to be getting from Spheres of Power other than "the people who wrote Spheres of Power wrote it at a power level I like more". That's certainly something you're free to like, but it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not magic is Vancian. You could make a Beguiler that prepared spells. It would be Vancian, and it would avoid 100% of your complaint here.

[digiman619]

I don't know, let's write some.
Funny, last time we got into this argument, you only gave weak "it's not enough" and gave no solutions. This is clearly another handwave.

Also, in general the thing that is broken is not "casters", but "stupid and abusable spells". A Wizard that is not e.g. using planar binding to recruit several minions who are personally more dangerous than his entire party is about fair per the CR system. People don't understand that for ... some reason.

But it doesn't really matter. Sure. Make Sorcerers worse. But fundamentally, 1st level abilities are not 10th level abilities. Maybe a 10th level ability should be fireball instead of cloudkill. But it still shouldn't be burning hands.
I can respect that. I still think that the problem is endemic to 3.5/Pathfinder and to get rid of it would require a total remake, but I can respect your thought her regardless.


How does having the choice to do something kill your ability to make a thematic build? You could take 19 levels of fire spells, then pick up only ice spells at 20th. But if your goal is to make a fire mage you can just not do that. If you compelled to do that even though you want to make a fire mage, the power of fire and ice magic is out of balance, and the balance should be fixed.

I still don't see what you are supposed to be getting from Spheres of Power other than "the people who wrote Spheres of Power wrote it at a power level I like more". That's certainly something you're free to like, but it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not magic is Vancian. You could make a Beguiler that prepared spells. It would be Vancian, and it would avoid 100% of your complaint here.

Let's say you have an ally who is themaitcally about fire. They cast fireballs and flame strikes and are generally a pyromantic blast. Then one day, while fighting, he just turns into a T-Rex. Because magic. See the disconnect? Now I know it's not the best example, but the cherry picking aspect kills build not just becasue "you could choose not to", but because they are in no way incentivized to keep with their theme.

I suppose you could take a fixed-list spontaneous caster like a beguiler and make custom spell lists, but a) you 'd have to do that for every single character with a similar focused theme (i.e., the pyromancer is going to need a different list from the guy trying to who's trying to make Elsa from Frozen), b) chances are you will have to dig through multiple splats to find enough thematic spells to make such a list, and c) you've officially entered the realm of homebrew at that point, which is a whole nother bundle of eggs.

There are tons of concepts that aren't overpowered or "too anime" that would be great for a level 1 character that simply cannot be made with the main Vancian system, or at least not without waiting a significant chunk of your career and also getting a slew of other extraneous abilites that don't define your concept. That's just the way the standard game works, and I personally don't think that's acceptable. Is SoP flawless? Of course not. But if the goal is "interesting concepts that are balanced with ach other", which is what the game seems to be wanting to do (it does it poorly, but whatever), SoP does the job better than Vancian does, and it does it with far less fuss.

[Triskavanski]

While I agree with you that classes shouldn't have enforced codes of behavior, or too much baked-in fluff, there's a difference between "fluff" and "identity." The Barbarian's fluff of "savage tribal warrior" can easily be dispensed with, but it has an identity as a "warrior who relies on physical power more than skill." The issue with the Fighter isn't so much the lack of fluff as the lack of identity. Without an identity, it becomes hard to write class features. The problem is worsened by the fact that, insofar as the Fighter has an identity, it's all about, well, fighting-- where do you hang noncombat interactions on that?

If the Fighter was the "unstoppable juggernaut who takes a licking and keeps on ticking," we could create class features for it-- reducing status conditions, temporary hit points, dealing with traps by just tanking them, etc.
If the Fighter was the "paragon of physical might and perfection," we could create class features for it-- boosted Str and Dex skills, jumping/climbing movement powers, ways to throw enemies around the battlefield, etc.
If the Fighter was the "long-time veteran who's seen it all before," we could create class features for it-- ways to adopt their combat style on the fly, Bardic Knowledge type abilities, recognizing and taking advantage of/helping party members resist monster abilities, etc.
If the Fighter was the "champion and leader of men," we could create class features for it-- buffing allies, recruiting minions, social bonuses due to reputation, etc.

But if the Fighter is just the guy who "fights good," where do you go from there?

You pretty much have to start by picking an identity to emphasize how they "fight good," and that's where you start to lose people whose vision is different from yours.

And see that is where Archetypes and Alternate class features, as well as fighter specific feats go.

That is a lot like Rogue, Vigilante, Wizard, Cleric.. Or really many classes that don't have a code built into them.

A Rogue could be a suave, smuggler who can make a run in 10 parsecs. He could be a professional hitman. He could be even something like a muscle booned goon. A dirty fighter. An explorer of ruins... Pieces of each of these concepts are built into the base of a Rogue, but then Archetypes accent specific ideas over others ideas.


Its one of the first problems that fighters have, in that archetypes seem to try and avoid using feats to give the fighter options. Some of archetypes seem they don't have an understanding of how the game works. Some archetypes change absolutly everything just a little, just enough that they don't work with others.



This is one of the reasons why Armor Master And Weapon Master's guide should have been made into the core of the game.

The first one for example, you could have an advance armor training that gives a lot of those options. Perhaps an Archetype that gives you access to special feats for it.

Could have a Fighter Only feat that gives +1 to all knowledge checks to ID monsters for every Combat feat the fighter has for the Vet. Could have ones that run off the bravery bonus of the fighter to give boosts and bonuses to allies.

One of the best feat designs that Paizo has come up with imo (and to an extent Wizards with their tactical feats) was the Equipment Trick feats that Have a base thing they do, and as you gain more pre-reqs, they become bigger and better. Fighters need more feats like that, in which are more expansive.

[Cosi]

Funny, last time we got into this argument, you only gave weak "it's not enough" and gave no solutions. This is clearly another handwave.

I still don't get what your point is here. Yes, I don't think there's printed material that produces martial characters who are effective enough. Just like there's not a printed class that is "like the Warmage, but with Abjuration and Divination spells". Some problems don't have solutions in the game system, but that doesn't make identifying them as problems not legitimate.

If you mean that I haven't outlined what a solution should look like, I disagree. Saying "this doesn't provide quite enough combat power, and does next to nothing out of combat" seems like a pretty good roadmap towards something that would be a solution, particularly when other responses are "too anime". I've even occasionally suggested things that (I think) get passably far by combining existing content. For example, I think a Warblade with access to Infusions as an Artificer, a Warblade // Factotum gestalt, or a Warblade that got Chameleon progression stapled on somewhere between fifth and seventh would be passable solutions to "sword guy isn't good enough".

What would satisfy you in this area? What sort of a thing should I present to you for you to say "okay, that's a solution"? Because it sounds to me like you're saying that the only complaints I should voice are ones that can be resolved by content that already exists in the system, which seems obviously stupid to me.


I can respect that. I still think that the problem is endemic to 3.5/Pathfinder and to get rid of it would require a total remake, but I can respect your thought her regardless.

I don't see that, and in fact I think that if you agree with the premise it implies the exact opposite conclusion. If the problem is that Wizards are systemically too good, then the Wizard class as a whole needs to be taken apart, examined, and put back together in a fashion that is not systemically too good (whatever that ends up meaning). On the other hand, if the problem is simply that there is some particular list of spells that are broken, you can simply remove or alter those spells and continue quite happily without any need to remake anything.


Let's say you have an ally who is themaitcally about fire. They cast fireballs and flame strikes and are generally a pyromantic blast. Then one day, while fighting, he just turns into a T-Rex. Because magic. See the disconnect? Now I know it's not the best example, but the cherry picking aspect kills build not just becasue "you could choose not to", but because they are in no way incentivized to keep with their theme.

Who are you to say what their theme is? Maybe he wants to be the guy who shoots fireballs and also turns into a giant lizard. Why should your understanding of what he is limit him?


I suppose you could take a fixed-list spontaneous caster like a beguiler and make custom spell lists, but a) you 'd have to do that for every single character with a similar focused theme (i.e., the pyromancer is going to need a different list from the guy trying to who's trying to make Elsa from Frozen), b) chances are you will have to dig through multiple splats to find enough thematic spells to make such a list, and c) you've officially entered the realm of homebrew at that point, which is a whole nother bundle of eggs.

I agree that in practice, "use Spheres of Power" is less work than "write fixed list casters for all desired themes". That said, at some point the people who made Spheres of Power sat down and had to decide what to write. At that point "a bunch of classes that use existing mechanics" and "a bunch of classes that use new mechanics" seem of at least comparable difficulty, which makes the question worth considering.


There are tons of concepts that aren't overpowered or "too anime" that would be great for a level 1 character that simply cannot be made with the main Vancian system, or at least not without waiting a significant chunk of your career and also getting a slew of other extraneous abilites that don't define your concept.

What does the resource management have to do with this? Maybe you want to play Nightcrawler at 1st level. I agree that you're going to have some difficulty doing that if the game doesn't include a teleport effect at 1st level. But how is the inclusion or exclusion of that effect dependent on whether or not magic is "Vancian"? Couldn't you just as easily have a 1st level teleportation spell on the Wizard list, or a version of Spheres of Power where no teleportation effects existed before 9th level? Couldn't you have a non-Vancian system where you could select new high level abilities without having to first take lower level abilities?

I agree that if you want a system that does the things Spheres of Power does (weaker casters, more thematic casters), it's easier to use the existing Spheres of Power system to do that than write Vancian systems to do it. But that's not really what I'm asking. What I asking is what design reasons you have for the overall system that Spheres of Power offers. You could make weaker Vancian casters. For example, the Bard. You could make more thematic Vancian casters. For example, the Dread Necromancer. Why is it better to use the Spheres of Power system to implement those design targets?

[Beheld]

Great idea. Where's the fighter's plane shift, teleport, gate, etc, etc, etc? Why are you balancing what a "level appropriate ability" is based on what wizards (and Clerics/Druids) get? It's generally accepted that they are overpowered compared to everything else.

1) Well, I use classes with some of that stuff written by others. because you know, martials need that.

2) If you spot me in pretty much any random thread, I will mostly be arguing that Wizards and Clerics and Druids are mostly well balanced around CR, and most other classes aren't. There are certainly specific spells that are problematic, like anything that creates or controls minions of anywhere close to your CR can be used to blow the guidelines apart, but just a Wizard casting the best control and save or lose spells is very much just a guy who balanced well with CR.

[digiman619]

I still don't get what your point is here. Yes, I don't think there's printed material that produces martial characters who are effective enough. Just like there's not a printed class that is "like the Warmage, but with Abjuration and Divination spells". Some problems don't have solutions in the game system, but that doesn't make identifying them as problems not legitimate.

If you mean that I haven't outlined what a solution should look like, I disagree. Saying "this doesn't provide quite enough combat power, and does next to nothing out of combat" seems like a pretty good roadmap towards something that would be a solution, particularly when other responses are "too anime". I've even occasionally suggested things that (I think) get passably far by combining existing content. For example, I think a Warblade with access to Infusions as an Artificer, a Warblade // Factotum gestalt, or a Warblade that got Chameleon progression stapled on somewhere between fifth and seventh would be passable solutions to "sword guy isn't good enough".

What would satisfy you in this area? What sort of a thing should I present to you for you to say "okay, that's a solution"? Because it sounds to me like you're saying that the only complaints I should voice are ones that can be resolved by content that already exists in the system, which seems obviously stupid to me.
You know what? I'm going to abandon this arguement, If you can hobble existing stuff together to get the character you want, more power to you. I think differently, but maybe that's my problem.


I don't see that, and in fact I think that if you agree with the premise it implies the exact opposite conclusion. If the problem is that Wizards are systemically too good, then the Wizard class as a whole needs to be taken apart, examined, and put back together in a fashion that is not systemically too good (whatever that ends up meaning). On the other hand, if the problem is simply that there is some particular list of spells that are broken, you can simply remove or alter those spells and continue quite happily without any need to remake anything.
I agree that, in theory, that could work. I just don't think that it's worth the effort to keep constantly updating it.


Who are you to say what their theme is? Maybe he wants to be the guy who shoots fireballs and also turns into a giant lizard. Why should your understanding of what he is limit him?
Because then we open up the door to "guy who shoots fireballs and turns into a T-Rex and summons monsters", and "guy who shoots fireballs and turns into a T-Rex and summons monsters and teleports" and "guy who shoots fireballs and turns into a T-Rex and summons monsters and teleports and scries" until we get Silver Age Superman who invents new powers from whole cloth. That kinda kills the whole theme that we were aiming at in the first place.


I agree that in practice, "use Spheres of Power" is less work than "write fixed list casters for all desired themes". That said, at some point the people who made Spheres of Power sat down and had to decide what to write. At that point "a bunch of classes that use existing mechanics" and "a bunch of classes that use new mechanics" seem of at least comparable difficulty, which makes the question worth considering.
With respect, that's the reason Pathfinder has got a lot of problems that it does. They were too afraid to make something completely new, so they inherited a ton of legacy problems from 3.5. Sometimes, you have to leave the old designs behind in order to advance as a product. Otherwise, we'd all be driving Model Ts.


What does the resource management have to do with this? Maybe you want to play Nightcrawler at 1st level. I agree that you're going to have some difficulty doing that if the game doesn't include a teleport effect at 1st level. But how is the inclusion or exclusion of that effect dependent on whether or not magic is "Vancian"? Couldn't you just as easily have a 1st level teleportation spell on the Wizard list, or a version of Spheres of Power where no teleportation effects existed before 9th level? Couldn't you have a non-Vancian system where you could select new high level abilities without having to first take lower level abilities?
Because, and stick with me here, as it;s kinda difficult: Teleporting is what Nightcrawler is all about; he might need to do it more than 2-3 times per day. and yes, I could imagine a Vancian system with a teleport effect that early, or an Advanced talent to unlock the Warp sphere. But guess what. Neither of those are reality. You can be Nightcrawler from level 1 in SoP, and you can't in standard vancian. I'm still not seeing why this is a strike against SoP.


I agree that if you want a system that does the things Spheres of Power does (weaker casters, more thematic casters), it's easier to use the existing Spheres of Power system to do that than write Vancian systems to do it. But that's not really what I'm asking. What I asking is what design reasons you have for the overall system that Spheres of Power offers. You could make weaker Vancian casters. For example, the Bard. You could make more thematic Vancian casters. For example, the Dread Necromancer. Why is it better to use the Spheres of Power system to implement those design targets?

Customization. Vancian magic being stadardized takes the, well, magic out of it. Berry the Bloodrager, Clark the Cleric (assuming he has the lightning subdomain), Mike the Magus, Sam the Sorcerer, Wanda the Witch, & Wally the Wizard can all cast lightning bolt as a 3rd level spell. And it's identical from each and every one of them. even though they are getting their power from vastly different sources. With SoP, I can build a character with the exact powers I want and still be an effective memeber of the party and not wait a half dozen levels to get the one power I want.

Now yeah, without the advanced talents, their ability to stand next to standard casters vastly drops around level 10 or so, and even then, yeah, they will have to pick only one to three areas of competence and not be a great at everything. But "being great at everything" is the whole problem with wizards in the first place.

At least, that's my opinion.

[Cosi]

I agree that, in theory, that could work. I just don't think that it's worth the effort to keep constantly updating it.

I think if you are competent enough to identify and fix problem spells, you can probably avoid writing new ones.


Because then we open up the door to "guy who shoots fireballs and turns into a T-Rex and summons monsters", and "guy who shoots fireballs and turns into a T-Rex and summons monsters and teleports" and "guy who shoots fireballs and turns into a T-Rex and summons monsters and teleports and scries" until we get Silver Age Superman who invents new powers from whole cloth. That kinda kills the whole theme that we were aiming at in the first place.

Why should he beholden to your desire for his character to have a theme? Why is "grab bag of powers" inherently not a concept the game should support?


With respect, that's the reason Pathfinder has got a lot of problems that it does. They were too afraid to make something completely new, so they inherited a ton of legacy problems from 3.5. Sometimes, you have to leave the old designs behind in order to advance as a product. Otherwise, we'd all be driving Model Ts.

I think making something new to make something new is missing the point. Also, there are compelling reasons to keep Vancian magic to at least some degree. It works really well for a Wizard or other intelligent and planning focused caster, for example.


Because, and stick with me here, as it;s kinda difficult: Teleporting is what Nightcrawler is all about; he might need to do it more than 2-3 times per day. and yes, I could imagine a Vancian system with a teleport effect that early, or an Advanced talent to unlock the Warp sphere. But guess what. Neither of those are reality. You can be Nightcrawler from level 1 in SoP, and you can't in standard vancian. I'm still not seeing why this is a strike against SoP.

It's not a strike against Spheres of Power. it's a strike against the notion that Vancian casting is the problem, rather than you liking the specific abilities in Spheres of Power more.


Customization. Vancian magic being stadardized takes the, well, magic out of it. Berry the Bloodrager, Clark the Cleric (assuming he has the lightning subdomain), Mike the Magus, Sam the Sorcerer, Wanda the Witch, & Wally the Wizard can all cast lightning bolt as a 3rd level spell. And it's identical from each and every one of them. even though they are getting their power from vastly different sources. With SoP, I can build a character with the exact powers I want and still be an effective memeber of the party and not wait a half dozen levels to get the one power I want.

Not sure what your complaint here is, and even insofar as I think I get it, it still seems more like an implementation concern. Also, the fact that every lightning bolt works the same way is a good thing. Can you imagine having to remember eight different versions of "electricity damage, line shape"? "Does this one bounce? Does this one do extra damage against metal armor? Does this one have a dispel rider?" That's a nightmare.

[digiman619]

I think if you are competent enough to identify and fix problem spells, you can probably avoid writing new ones.
I think you are operating under a false impression. I'm not saying that that you couldn't concievably come up with a Vancain system that was able to make all the various "SoP lets you do this at level 1, but Vancian doesn't" concepts and make them fun, viable, and level appropriate (i.e., core concepts don't fall off becuase there is nothing to support them). What I am saying is that such a system would be a bloated mess. The spheres from the base SoP book, including the Advanced talents, takes up a grand total of 65 pages. The Core Rulebook's spell section alone takes up 169. And it's actually worse than it first appears as take a look:http://i.imgur.com/LtYa2UF.jpg The CRB is written in a notably smaller print. If it was written in the same format as SoP (or vice versa), the proportion would be even more apparent. There is no way you can convince me that an ideal Vancian system will have the uncluttered, easy-to-understand elegance that SoP does.


Why should he beholden to your desire for his character to have a theme? Why is "grab bag of powers" inherently not a concept the game should support? Because then we get the omnimancer, who can do everybody's job. You know, that thing that (practically) everyone admits is the problem with the wizard in the first place?


I think making something new to make something new is missing the point. Also, there are compelling reasons to keep Vancian magic to at least some degree. It works really well for a Wizard or other intelligent and planning focused caster, for example.
You remember when I talked about rituals and linked a pair of feats a few posts back? Yeah, that.


It's not a strike against Spheres of Power. it's a strike against the notion that Vancian casting is the problem, rather than you liking the specific abilities in Spheres of Power more.See above about how such a Vancian system that could accomplish that would be a bloated mess.


Not sure what your complaint here is, and even insofar as I think I get it, it still seems more like an implementation concern. Also, the fact that every lightning bolt works the same way is a good thing. Can you imagine having to remember eight different versions of "electricity damage, line shape"? "Does this one bounce? Does this one do extra damage against metal armor? Does this one have a dispel rider?" That's a nightmare.
I suppose I focused on the wrong end of the spell. What I like about SoP is that everyone gets to be cool. Teleporting or turning invisible or throwing lightning bolts or whatever concept you want is doable by anyone. Will Mike the Monk ever be as good at it at turning into a bear as Ian the Incanter? No, because he's more focused on magic than Mike is, but he still won't be as good at it as Sam the Shifter, as he's the specialist. Specialists should always trump generalists and dilatants. You know, as opposed to the knock and polymorph problem of Vancian that makes it the other way around.

[Florian]

I think it´s an interesting argument.
A lot of things in d20 are build up in "chains", from classes to feats, item sets, scaling/legacy items, shadowcasters mysteries or domain spells.
Spells really break the pattern by being the only thing that doesn´t come in chains or uses prerequisites. You just don´t progress from Burning Hands > Fiery Ray > Fireball.

[Zanos]

Why should he beholden to your desire for his character to have a theme? Why is "grab bag of powers" inherently not a concept the game should support?
Because grab bags of powers are only okay in Pathfinder when you select them as a class feature every other level.

I was never a huge fan of tightly themed casters. That's a trope from other media, D&D/Pathfinder casters had themes but they were very broad and the characters function outside of them. Szass Tam is a necromancer but he's also an extremely skilled wizard in every school except his banned ones. Elminster, Rary, Mordenkainen, Melf, and Evard, pretty much any original D&D wizard you can think of isn't a "pyromancer" or "aeromancer" or whatever, they're wizards. They have favored spells like Evard's tentacle obsession, but they're minor. Evard only has 3 researched tentacle spells, his entire suite of prepared spells doesn't involve tentacles. Even the pathfinder iconic wizard has GSF(Evocation), but also has prepared spells from every school of magic.

SoP seems to be a big fan of letting people model their favorite media characters which isn't really what any of the d20 systems are built to do and it suffers for it. Letting people play clones of their favorite characters from level 1 isn't what I look for in a spellcasting system.


Because then we get the omnimancer, who can do everybody's job. You know, that thing that (practically) everyone admits is the problem with the wizard in the first place?
You can fix this on paper by rewarding specializing. I.E. a specialist Evoker can cast up to 9th level evocations, up to 7th level in other schools with slower progression, and no spells from banned schools. Or 3rds from restricted schools, I know pathfinder changed it to just cost double slots which is a laughable penalty in the first place.

Anyway, then a generalist might be able to cast 7/8ths from all schools. It's not unworkable.

And the problem with wizards has very little to do with their ability to cast every spell. It's the spells themselves. If you say that a wizard can only take one school of magic, they can still just take conjuration or transmutation and wreck stuff. Arguably any school if you dive deep enough into splats. There are amazingly powerful spells in literally every school of magic. That is the problem with wizard in the first place: the power of individual spells.

[digiman619]

First things first, I missed this one:

Also, completely aside whether Spheres of Power is mechanically sound, it seems clear to me that if your goal is "emulate fantasy", you should not have any one resource management system as a basis for all of magic. Avatar magic is clearly very different from Harry Potter magic which is different in its turn from Dresden Files magic. Hell, series like Traveler's Gate have a whole bunch of different ways of doing magic at once.

If you'd actually bothered to read the book, you'd know this is already built into the system as Casting Traditions (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/casting-traditions) so that you can have one group of mages use wands and can't wear armor and another where must use runes and make them ahead of time or practically any other way one style of magic (and since you brought up A: TLA, it's used (in a Lawyer-friendly Cameo (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LawyerFriendlyCameo)sort of way) as an example of using the casting traditions and other restrictions to define magic in your setting)


You can fix this on paper by rewarding specializing. I.E. a specialist Evoker can cast up to 9th level evocations, up to 7th level in other schools with slower progression, and no spells from banned schools. Or 3rds from restricted schools, I know pathfinder changed it to just cost double slots which is a laughable penalty in the first place.

Anyway, then a generalist might be able to cast 7/8ths from all schools. It's not unworkable.

And the problem with wizards has very little to do with their ability to cast every spell. It's the spells themselves. If you say that a wizard can only take one school of magic, they can still just take conjuration or transmutation and wreck stuff. Arguably any school if you dive deep enough into splats. There are amazingly powerful spells in literally every school of magic. That is the problem with wizard in the first place: the power of individual spells.

When I'm talking "generalist vs specialist", I'm not talking about wizards who specialize in a given school vs wizards who didn't specialize, I'm talking about when the wizard (and the cleric and druid as well) get one aspect of their class that makes them better at said aspect than the martial who's primary identity is doing that task. I'm talking about how all the magical infiltration abilities (invisibility, alter self, passwall, etc) went not to the infiltration specialists (i.e., rogues), but the magic specialists (wizards), or how the fighter and barbarian are supposed to be the best at fighting, only to have the druid's animal companion outperform them. That's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about how the generalists are better than the specialists in Vancian and it's dumb.

[InvisibleBison]

When I'm talking "generalist vs specialist", I'm not talking about wizards who specialize in a given school vs wizards who didn't specialize, I'm talking about when the wizard (and the cleric and druid as well) get one aspect of their class that makes them better at said aspect than the martial who's primary identity is doing that task. I'm talking about how all the magical infiltration abilities (invisibility, alter self, passwall, etc) went not to the infiltration specialists (i.e., rogues), but the magic specialists (wizards), or how the fighter and barbarian are supposed to be the best at fighting, only to have the druid's animal companion outperform them. That's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about how the generalists are better than the specialists in Vancian and it's dumb.

But those problems you're mentioning aren't problems with the Vancian magic system, they're problems with the individual spells. Vancian magic is a resource management system; the resources that are being managed are irrelevant to the system itself. A Vancian system would still be Vancian if the only spells available were light, mage hand, and acid splash, or if the only spells available were wish, astral projection, and shapechange.

[Beheld]

If you'd actually bothered to read the book, you'd know this is already built into the system as Casting Traditions (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/casting-traditions) so that you can have one group of mages use wands and can't wear armor and another where must use runes and make them ahead of time or practically any other way one style of magic (and since you brought up A: TLA, it's used (in a Lawyer-friendly Cameo (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LawyerFriendlyCameo)sort of way) as an example of using the casting traditions and other restrictions to define magic in your setting)

These are not different resource management systems. If we for example, looked at just and only Brandon Sanderson books, you could plausibly use Spheres of power with any possible casting traditions (in this case prepared casting) to mimic Metal Burning and Light Burning. But you'd have to invent a readily available cheap consumable item that restores spell points (at which point, you've drastically changed the system) but you wouldn't be able to mimic Feuruchemy, Elantris Rune drawing, Emporer's whatever Stamping, Any of the magic in the reckoners series, or souls from Warbreaker, or I guess we count late term Wheel of Time, you couldn't do any of the magic in that system either.

It's almost like strict daily recharge isn't the most literature friendly theme.

[Zanos]

When I'm talking "generalist vs specialist", I'm not talking about wizards who specialize in a given school vs wizards who didn't specialize, I'm talking about when the wizard (and the cleric and druid as well) get one aspect of their class that makes them better at said aspect than the martial who's primary identity is doing that task. I'm talking about how all the magical infiltration abilities (invisibility, alter self, passwall, etc) went not to the infiltration specialists (i.e., rogues), but the magic specialists (wizards), or how the fighter and barbarian are supposed to be the best at fighting, only to have the druid's animal companion outperform them. That's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about how the generalists are better than the specialists in Vancian and it's dumb.
SoP doesn't cleanly solve that either. Spheres are grouped into thematic niches, not mechanical ones, same as spell schools. They're the closest analogue.

And as InvisibleBison mentioned, that has everything to do with the spells themselves and not vancian casting as a system. The problem is that rogues can't cast spells and wizards can, not that wizards are generalists.

[Psyren]

I was never a huge fan of tightly themed casters. That's a trope from other media, D&D/Pathfinder casters had themes but they were very broad and the characters function outside of them. Szass Tam is a necromancer but he's also an extremely skilled wizard in every school except his banned ones. Elminster, Rary, Mordenkainen, Melf, and Evard, pretty much any original D&D wizard you can think of isn't a "pyromancer" or "aeromancer" or whatever, they're wizards. They have favored spells like Evard's tentacle obsession, but they're minor. Evard only has 3 researched tentacle spells, his entire suite of prepared spells doesn't involve tentacles. Even the pathfinder iconic wizard has GSF(Evocation), but also has prepared spells from every school of magic.

I don't think tight themes should be the be-all and end-all either, but some tradeoffs would be nice. When you have a caster capable of easily raining meteor apocalypse down on entire armies, and you finally get up in his face only to find out that surprise, he's a dragon now, and that's not even the only copy of him you have to deal with, and oh by the way he's reanimated all the dead folks from your own army to join his own, then the question of why that guy would even bother having a party around is a pretty legitimate one. Outside of very specific campaigns (read: Epic/Mythic), no one spellcaster should be adept at all of that.



SoP seems to be a big fan of letting people model their favorite media characters which isn't really what any of the d20 systems are built to do and it suffers for it. Letting people play clones of their favorite characters from level 1 isn't what I look for in a spellcasting system.

But it is clearly something that other people want, and your standard vancian I-have-a-variety-of-things-to-stick-in-my-spellbook isn't going anywhere. So I'm glad SoP exists, even if it's not always what I'm looking for either, because there are times when it is.

[Zanos]

I don't think tight themes should be the be-all and end-all either, but some tradeoffs would be nice. When you have a caster capable of easily raining meteor apocalypse down on entire armies, and you finally get up in his face only to find out that surprise, he's a dragon now, and that's not even the only copy of him you have to deal with, and oh by the way he's reanimated all the dead folks from your own army to join his own, then the question of why that guy would even bother having a party around is a pretty legitimate one. Outside of very specific campaigns (read: Epic/Mythic), no one spellcaster should be adept at all of that.
Casting is definitely broken, I agree. That's obvious. But each individual school is also broken on its own. And it has very little to do with Vancian spell preparation.


But it is clearly something that other people want, and your standard vancian I-have-a-variety-of-things-to-stick-in-my-spellbook isn't going anywhere. So I'm glad SoP exists, even if it's not always what I'm looking for either, because there are times when it is.
Regardless of whether or not SoP is good, people wanting it isn't a valid defense of it's quality. People want things that are garbage all the time.

[AnimeTheCat]

Casting is definitely broken, I agree. That's obvious. But each individual school is also broken on its own. And it has very little to do with Vancian spell preparation.

Perhaps if there were requirements, similar to ToB Maneuvers/Stances where you need a certain number of a certain level of spell to be able to learn the spell in question?



Regardless of whether or not SoP is good, people wanting it isn't a valid defense of it's quality. People want things that are garbage all the time.

Well, truth be told 3.5 is a lot of garbage (as is evidence by the many threads of "how to fix X" or "Homebrew for X") as well, which supports your claim that people want garbage all the time. From what I understand of SoP, I think it is a pretty good system. I can't say I think it's any better or worse than the magic systems of 3.5 as it accomplishes a different goal. It's like comparing apples to diapers. They are both useful and good at what they do, but they do different things.

[digiman619]

But those problems you're mentioning aren't problems with the Vancian magic system, they're problems with the individual spells. Vancian magic is a resource management system; the resources that are being managed are irrelevant to the system itself. A Vancian system would still be Vancian if the only spells available were light, mage hand, and acid splash, or if the only spells available were wish, astral projection, and shapechange.
See above about how a Vancian system that included none of the broken stuff, but enough spells so that players' concepts didn't stop being relevant would be a bloated mess.

These are not different resource management systems. If we for example, looked at just and only Brandon Sanderson books, you could plausibly use Spheres of power with any possible casting traditions (in this case prepared casting) to mimic Metal Burning and Light Burning. But you'd have to invent a readily available cheap consumable item that restores spell points (at which point, you've drastically changed the system) but you wouldn't be able to mimic Feuruchemy, Elantris Rune drawing, Emporer's whatever Stamping, Any of the magic in the reckoners series, or souls from Warbreaker, or I guess we count late term Wheel of Time, you couldn't do any of the magic in that system either.

It's almost like strict daily recharge isn't the most literature friendly theme.
You know what, you're right. SoP can't model perfectly to every fantasy story out there. You know what's an even worse fit? Vancian. Vancian models itself solely from sources that are inspired by it; even Vance's works don't work like Vancian casting. So why is this a strike against SoP again?

SoP doesn't cleanly solve that either. Spheres are grouped into thematic niches, not mechanical ones, same as spell schools. They're the closest analogue.
Umm, no, they're not? I mean, what sphere are you using to teleport if not the Warp sphere? How are you shapeshifting using SoP if you aren't using the Alteration sphere? Sure, there are some that are oddballs like the Weather sphere, but no, the spheres are generally group by mechanics, not theme.


And as InvisibleBison mentioned, that has everything to do with the spells themselves and not vancian casting as a system. The problem is that rogues can't cast spells and wizards can, not that wizards are generalists.
That's a fair point, and that's one of the things I like about SoP, it's easily dippable by everyone, and most classes (Only Barbarians, Cavaliers Slayers, Swashbucklers, Vigilantes, and the Occult classes save the Medium don't) have an archetype that lets them get in on the fun. I mean, yeah, you could slap a beguiler-style fixed casting to the martial classes and it'd be a major boon to them. But as I previously mentioned, every separate concept would need its own list, and you've officially hit homebrewing at that point.

[Zanos]

Perhaps if there were requirements, similar to ToB Maneuvers/Stances where you need a certain number of a certain level of spell to be able to learn the spell in question?
Shapechange isn't any less broken because you had to take polymorph any object, draconic polymorph, polymorph, and alter self first.


Well, truth be told 3.5 is a lot of garbage (as is evidence by the many threads of "how to fix X" or "Homebrew for X") as well, which supports your claim that people want garbage all the time. From what I understand of SoP, I think it is a pretty good system. I can't say I think it's any better or worse than the magic systems of 3.5 as it accomplishes a different goal. It's like comparing apples to diapers. They are both useful and good at what they do, but they do different things.
True. But at least if people wanted to apply to my games with anime character clones without SoP they had to suffer to try to make it work.


Umm, no, they're not? I mean, what sphere are you using to teleport if not the Warp sphere? How are you shape****ing using SoP if you aren't using the Alteration sphere? Sure, there are some that are oddballs like the Weather sphere, but no, the spheres are generally group by mechanics, not theme.
What spell school are you using to teleport if not the Conjuration school? How are you shapechanging if you aren't using the transmutation school?

Teleporting serves multiple mechanical niches, in that it can both bypass physical obstacles, party-taxi, and BFC. Shapechanging has the obvious melee benefits but also can allow pretty much any abilities you can imagine depending on implementation.

If you teleport to bypass a trap, you're still messing with the rogue's mechanical niche.


That's a fair point, and that's one of the things I like about SoP, it's easily dippable by everyone, and most classes (Only Barbarians, Cavaliers Slayers, Swashbucklers, Vigilantes, and the Occult classes save the Medium don't) have an archetype that lets them get in on the fun. I mean, yeah, you could slap a beguiler-style fixed casting to the martial classes and it'd be a major boon to them. But as I previously mentioned, every separate concept would need its own list, and you've officially hit homebrewing at that point.
Pretend those classes don't exist and use ToB or PoW. :smalltongue:

I actually think pathfinder Barbarians were good, especially with unchained. Slayer is okay. Vigilante was cooked up by someone who thought you needed an entire class to be batman, for some reason, instead of just points in disguise and intimidate.

[digiman619]

What spell school are you using to teleport if not the Conjuration school? How are you shapechanging if you aren't using the transmutation school?
Except Conjuration also includes calling/summoning, creation, and healing as well, for which you'd need the Conjuration, Creation and Life Spheres. See how that makes SoP more mechanically conected than Vancian?


Teleporting serves multiple mechanical niches, in that it can both bypass physical obstacles, party-taxi, and BFC. Shapechanging has the obvious melee benefits but also can allow pretty much any abilities you can imagine depending on implementation.

If you teleport to bypass a trap, you're still messing with the rogue's mechanical niche.
That's true regardless of what system you're using to teleport of shape change, so laying that as a problem on SoP's feet seems a tad mean.


Pretend those classes don't exist and use ToB or PoW. :smalltongue:

I actually think pathfinder Barbarians were good, especially with unchained. Slayer is okay. Vigilante was cooked up by someone who thought you needed an entire class to be batman, for some reason, instead of just points in disguise and intimidate.

Oh, believe me, I also PoW too, but since it wasn't the topic of discssion, I didn't bring it up. For what it's worth, I'm with you on the unnecessity of the Vigilante.

[AnimeTheCat]

Shapechange isn't any less broken because you had to take polymorph any object, draconic polymorph, polymorph, and alter self first.

True. But at least if people wanted to apply to my games with anime character clones without SoP they had to suffer to try to make it work.

Right, but just like the ToB classes, you will need to limit the number of spells you can know. Ultimately, this limit should be instituted for wizards period. For instance, Wizards should only have 1 spell book, Spell Books should have 250 pages, and each spell should take up 1 page for each level of the spell, all cantrips on the inside cover so a they don't count towards this total. This means that the wizard can have every granted spell and still have 33 pages left over for additional spells. They still get the versatility bonus over the sorcerer, but they have a hard limit. They also are better at metamagic since the casting time doesn't increase they don't have to take a feat to change that.

Now that there are limits, the player must select where they want to be in the end. If that is to use shapechange, then so be it. They must have X spells of levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of the transmutation school to qualify for the spell. We'll say 2 each. That means that at every level, half of the spells the wizard learns has to be a transmutation spell.

Another limiting factor, since conjuration, transmutation, and illusion are the three best schools, why not say "If you're an X specialist, you automatically lose access to Y and Z" instead of "You can specialize in X, still have access to Y and Z, and drop A and B." where A and B are probably evocation and enchantment or necromancy. Then, if you're an enchanter, you automatically lose access to two set schools, one of which will be conjuration, illusion, or transmutation. It places a hard limit on the acceptable power of the wizard.

BTW though... What's wrong with an anime style character? :smalltongue: I realize it's not everyone's cup of tea but there are plenty of anime style characters that aren't outrageous.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Right, but just like the ToB classes, you will need to limit the number of spells you can know. Ultimately, this limit should be instituted for wizards period. For instance, Wizards should only have 1 spell book, Spell Books should have 250 pages, and each spell should take up 1 page for each level of the spell, all cantrips on the inside cover so a they don't count towards this total. This means that the wizard can have every granted spell and still have 33 pages left over for additional spells. They still get the versatility bonus over the sorcerer, but they have a hard limit. They also are better at metamagic since the casting time doesn't increase they don't have to take a feat to change that.
I agree that open-ended "spells known" lists are bad (for all sorts of reasons), but this approach needs refining-- you have to plan waaay far ahead to keep from accidentally filling up your book too much to fit in new spells. A flat limit of "a spellbook can fit a maximum of 6 spells per spell level" is a little more gamey to say, but much more practical to use.


BTW though... What's wrong with an anime style character? :smalltongue: I realize it's not everyone's cup of tea but there are plenty of anime style characters that aren't outrageous.
It's an easy grognardy way to categorically dismiss players who want to have powerful and competent characters instead of muddling along sticking their heads into statues' mouths?

[Zanos]

Right, but just like the ToB classes, you will need to limit the number of spells you can know. Ultimately, this limit should be instituted for wizards period. For instance, Wizards should only have 1 spell book, Spell Books should have 250 pages, and each spell should take up 1 page for each level of the spell, all cantrips on the inside cover so a they don't count towards this total. This means that the wizard can have every granted spell and still have 33 pages left over for additional spells. They still get the versatility bonus over the sorcerer, but they have a hard limit. They also are better at metamagic since the casting time doesn't increase they don't have to take a feat to change that.

Now that there are limits, the player must select where they want to be in the end. If that is to use shapechange, then so be it. They must have X spells of levels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of the transmutation school to qualify for the spell. We'll say 2 each. That means that at every level, half of the spells the wizard learns has to be a transmutation spell.

Another limiting factor, since conjuration, transmutation, and illusion are the three best schools, why not say "If you're an X specialist, you automatically lose access to Y and Z" instead of "You can specialize in X, still have access to Y and Z, and drop A and B." where A and B are probably evocation and enchantment or necromancy. Then, if you're an enchanter, you automatically lose access to two set schools, one of which will be conjuration, illusion, or transmutation. It places a hard limit on the acceptable power of the wizard.
That's all a nice idea, but at the end of the day that wizard still has shapechange, which makes him more powerful than anyone without shapechange by default.


BTW though... What's wrong with an anime style character? :smalltongue: I realize it's not everyone's cup of tea but there are plenty of anime style characters that aren't outrageous.
I don't run a settings where most "anime style" characters would fit, which people who are adamant on playing never really seem to catch. More to the point though isn't "anime style" as much as literal outright clones. Some people don't even both to scramble the name.


It's an easy grognardy way to categorically dismiss players who want to have powerful and competent characters instead of muddling along sticking their heads into statues' mouths?
I know this is blue but it's not really power(I'm defending vancian casting, after all), it's theming.

[Beheld]

You know what, you're right. SoP can't model perfectly to every fantasy story out there. You know what's an even worse fit? Vancian. Vancian models itself solely from sources that are inspired by it; even Vance's works don't work like Vancian casting. So why is this a strike against SoP again?

So what you are saying is you agree whole heartedly with what Cosi said, and that Cosi was completely right when he said:


Also, completely aside whether Spheres of Power is mechanically sound, it seems clear to me that if your goal is "emulate fantasy", you should not have any one resource management system as a basis for all of magic. Avatar magic is clearly very different from Harry Potter magic which is different in its turn from Dresden Files magic. Hell, series like Traveler's Gate have a whole bunch of different ways of doing magic at once.

[digiman619]

I don't run a settings where most "anime style" characters would fit, which people who are adamant on playing never really seem to catch. More to the point though isn't "anime style" as much as literal outright clones. Some people don't even both to scramble the name.
Yeah, because the game totally never supported Bruce Lee and Conan clones.

Also, "is too useful in making character archetypes, so my players make anime-style characters" is a weird complaint to have about a system

[Zanos]

Yeah, because the game totally never supported Bruce Lee and Conan clones.

I mean, I wouldn't accept Rubce Eel or Nacon either, but I don't actually see those things.


Also, "is too useful in making character archetypes, so my players make anime-style characters" is a weird complaint to have about a system
I've noticed that certain systems attract a certain type of player that I don't usually enjoy playing with. That seems a valid complaint.

[digiman619]

So what you are saying is you agree whole heartedly with what Cosi said, and that Cosi was completely right when he said:

You realize your argument here is "Spheres of Power only works on modeling 95% of fantasy magic systems, so it's clearly insufficient. We should head back to the old system that was only worked for 1% of systems", right?

[digiman619]

Forgive the double-post, but I was swordsage'd


I mean, I wouldn't accept Rubce Eel or Nacon either, but I don't actually see those things.
You do realize I was describing two core classes (Monk and Barbarian), right?


I've noticed that certain systems attract a certain type of player that I don't usually enjoy playing with. That seems a valid complaint.
Fair point, that's a problem with your players, not the system. There is nothing in the system that incentivizes doing this or punishes them for not doing it, That's clearly not the system's fault.

[Zanos]

You realize your argument here is "Spheres of Power only works on modeling 95% of fantasy magic systems, so it's clearly insufficient. We should head back to the old system that was only worked for 1% of systems", right?
That only seems ridiculous if you're assuming that capacity to model other settings magic system is an inherent good. D&D/PF settings are D&D/PF settings, so I enjoy the unique magical identity that those settings have. There's no reason for Faerun or Golarion to use a magic system that has Mana Points or Spell Fatigue, and it wouldn't fit into the setting anyway.

I suppose the options are nice, but a lot of cool lore is built around those magic systems.


Forgive the double-post, but I was swordsage'd


You do realize I was describing two core classes (Monk and Barbarian), right?
Yeah, I see less of those fitting the mold I describe.



Fair point, that's a problem with your players, not the system. There is nothing in the system that incentivizes doing this or punishes them for not doing it, That's clearly not the system's fault.
If the system excels at building a certain type of character, then it has something to do with the system.

[digiman619]

That only seems ridiculous if you're assuming that capacity to model other settings magic system is an inherent good. D&D/PF settings are D&D/PF settings, so I enjoy the unique magical identity that those settings have. There's no reason for Faerun or Golarion to use a magic system that has Mana Points or Spell Fatigue, and it wouldn't fit into the setting anyway.

I suppose the options are nice, but a lot of cool lore is built around those magic systems.

If we're working solely on the lore of established D&D/PF settings, you are absolutely correct. However, that assumes that the game's lore on any given table is inviolable; it assumes that when new books with new spells and new classes are written that they never existed in the setting until that very moment,

It also ignores the possibility of anything from a 3rd party source ever existing, because as far as the lore of Golarion is concerned, psionics never existed. That doesn't mean I can never roll a soulknife, just that some adaption is needed. And if you're willing to adapt the lore to that, you can adapt it to include spherecasting, Remember, SoP can exist side by side with Vancian casting. It's just many prefer to have it replace it instead.

[Cosi]

The spheres from the base SoP book, including the Advanced talents, takes up a grand total of 65 pages. The Core Rulebook's spell section alone takes up 169.

The spells in D&D are written pretty badly, and you could gain a lot of ground by having a more powerful defaulting system, and writing more efficiently. Consider, because you linked it, animate dead. Here is the current 3e text of animate dead:


This spell turns the bones or bodies of dead creatures into undead skeletons or zombies that follow your spoken commands.

The undead can follow you, or they can remain in an area and attack any creature (or just a specific kind of creature) entering the place. They remain animated until they are destroyed. (A destroyed skeleton or zombie can’t be animated again.)

Regardless of the type of undead you create with this spell, you can’t create more HD of undead than twice your caster level with a single casting of animate dead. (The desecrate spell doubles this limit)

The undead you create remain under your control indefinitely. No matter how many times you use this spell, however, you can control only 4 HD worth of undead creatures per caster level. If you exceed this number, all the newly created creatures fall under your control, and any excess undead from previous castings become uncontrolled. (You choose which creatures are released.) If you are a cleric, any undead you might command by virtue of your power to command or rebuke undead do not count toward the limit.
Skeletons

A skeleton can be created only from a mostly intact corpse or skeleton. The corpse must have bones. If a skeleton is made from a corpse, the flesh falls off the bones.
Zombies

A zombie can be created only from a mostly intact corpse. The corpse must be that of a creature with a true anatomy.
Material Component

You must place a black onyx gem worth at least 25 gp per Hit Die of the undead into the mouth or eye socket of each corpse you intend to animate. The magic of the spell turns these gems into worthless, burned-out shells.

That's 287 words. Here's a simplified version:


This spell animates bodies as either skeletons or zombies. Undead created by this spell follow simple commands, such as following and defending the caster or attacking creatures that enter some area and/or meet some condition.
You can control any number of undead creatures so long as their total HD is equal to or less than four times your caster level. However, no single casting of this spell can create undead with total HD greater than twice your caster level. Once created, undead remain under your control indefinitely. If you create undead in excess of this limit, ones of your choice are released from your control until the total undead you control is less than the limit.
Material Component: a black onyx gem worth 25 GP per Hit Die of the undead you create must be placed in each corpse’s mouth or eye socket.

That's a fairly rough pass, and it's 144 words. It's also talking about stuff that should go other places, like your undead control pool or the instructions you can give zombies and skeletons. Ideally, you'd put those in a section on necromancy and the appropriate MM entry, respectively, and get something like this:


This spell animates bodies as either skeletons or zombies under your control. Undead created in this way count against your undead control pool (page XX).
Material Component: a black onyx gem worth 25 GP per Hit Die of the undead you create must be placed in each corpse’s mouth or eye socket.

That's only 52 words, and it's a better approach to the rules because it avoids duplicating discussions of undead control.

You can also cut out some these lines:


Level: Clr 3, Death 3, Sor/Wiz 4
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Targets: One or more corpses touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

For example, the casting time, duration, saving throw, and spell resistance could all be defaults and thereby not included, saving an additional four lines.


Because then we get the omnimancer, who can do everybody's job. You know, that thing that (practically) everyone admits is the problem with the wizard in the first place?

Again, you're confusing what is contingently truths about 3e with fundamental traits of Vancian casting. A caster who knows every 1st level spell has a massively wider variety of abilities than one who knows only meteor swarm, but I think most people would freely admit that the second character is by far the more powerful.


You remember when I talked about rituals and linked a pair of feats a few posts back? Yeah, that.

I'm confused as to how you think this is responsive. Vancian Magic is good for a Wizard because it structure inherently favors people who research and prepare for their opponents.


You know, as opposed to the knock and polymorph problem of Vancian that makes it the other way around.

knock is not problematic. It costs much more than Open Lock, and the daily limit is a real cost. You can keep out a party relying on the Wizard casting knock by locking the doors at both ends of a hallway. Yes, it's worse out of an item, but then you've decoupled it from the class. Also, that is not a problem with Vancian magic. Nothing about how Spheres of Power works stops you from writing a talent for some sphere that has the same effect as knock.


I was never a huge fan of tightly themed casters.

I think themed casters have advantages, but those advantages have very little to do with mechanics. Being able to say "I'm a Necromancer" is a good conceptual shortcut that makes it easier to grok what the character does quickly, but it isn't necessary or sufficient for producing balanced casters.


If you'd actually bothered to read the book, you'd know this is already built into the system as Casting Traditions (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/casting-traditions) so that you can have one group of mages use wands and can't wear armor and another where must use runes and make them ahead of time or practically any other way one style of magic (and since you brought up A: TLA, it's used (in a Lawyer-friendly Cameo (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LawyerFriendlyCameo)sort of way) as an example of using the casting traditions and other restrictions to define magic in your setting)

In the Traveler's Gate series, there exist a variety of magical traditions, each tied to a specific plane casters draw power from. For example, the setting's lightning mages are attuned to Endross, an endless desert dominated by permanent storm systems. Endross Travelers can summon creatures from Endross, or invoke powerful lightning blasts from portals they open to Endross. As these portals stay open, they grow larger and more powerful. Effectively, each ability an Endross Traveler uses powers up their later abilities. How would you suggest emulating this resource management mechanic (roughly analogous to a Rage Meter) using the existing rules present in Spheres of Power?


why that guy would even bother having a party around is a pretty legitimate one.

Because that party is also competent? Superman hangs out with Wonder Woman, Green Latern, and Martian Manhunter and they all contribute. Sure, he can do anything you or I can do, but that's why he doesn't adventure with us.


You realize your argument here is "Spheres of Power only works on modeling 95% of fantasy magic systems, so it's clearly insufficient. We should head back to the old system that was only worked for 1% of systems", right?

The point is not that Vancian is better. The point is that fantasy magic systems are diverse, and insisting that one system be used to model all of them is wrong. If your goal is to model the maximum number of fantasy magic users maximally well, you should have Spheres of Power for the people who work like that, a Rage Meter for the people who work like that, Vancian Magic for the people who work like that, and so on for all of the various magic systems.

[Zanos]

If we're working solely on the lore of established D&D/PF settings, you are absolutely correct. However, that assumes that the game's lore on any given table is inviolable; it assumes that when new books with new spells and new classes are written that they never existed in the setting until that very moment.

It also ignores the possibility of anything from a 3rd party source ever existing, because as far as the lore of Golarion is concerned, psionics never existed.
That's an insolvable problem with regards to setting. Building a consistent and interesting setting that can flawlessly take into account that it will have to retcon abilities into existing is impossible.


That doesn't mean I can never roll a soulknife, just that some adaption is needed. And if you're willing to adapt the lore to that, you can adapt it to include spherecasting, Remember, SoP can exist side by side with Vancian casting. It's just many prefer to have it replace it instead.
I would be fine with it side by side. More options is a good thing. Usually.

[digiman619]

~The standard magic rules text format is wordy and could be fixed~
Forgive me for snipping your quote, but I do believe I got the basic gist of that part right? Correct me if I'm wrong.

But you're right that the Ideal Vancian SystemTM would be better worded and more condense that the current one is. A few thoughts, a) since the Ideal Vancian SystemTM doesn't exist, making guesses about its length (and therefore its comparitive length to SoP) are moot, and b) it will still not be as convenient for quickly building a character, as the sphere's thematic and mechanical likns make knowing what to avoid way, way easier (If I'm making a Jedi, I can ignore the creation and weather spheres, for eample, because they don't fit my concept).


Again, you're confusing what is contingently truths about 3e with fundamental traits of Vancian casting. A caster who knows every 1st level spell has a massively wider variety of abilities than one who knows only meteor swarm, but I think most people would freely admit that the second character is by far the more powerful.
That's a fair point. If we were talking about Arcana Unearthed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcana_Unearthed) Monte Cook's side version of D&D, it still uses a Vancian system with totally different spells, so it would fall under a different metric. But until you produce the Ideal Vancian SystemTM, I only have the one that exists to work off of.


I'm confused as to how you think this is responsive. Vancian Magic is good for a Wizard because it structure inherently favors people who research and prepare for their opponents.
...And you think that it is impossble to a SoP caster to have a character who does research and preparation for their opponents? The links were talking about Rituals, which let you import specific spells back into SoP, so if you need, say, animal messenger, or whatever spell that SoP doesn't really have, you can. That's what I was trying to convey.


knock is not problematic. It costs much more than Open Lock, and the daily limit is a real cost. You can keep out a party relying on the Wizard casting knock by locking the doors at both ends of a hallway. Yes, it's worse out of an item, but then you've decoupled it from the class. Also, that is not a problem with Vancian magic. Nothing about how Spheres of Power works stops you from writing a talent for some sphere that has the same effect as knock.
First things first, just as the Ideal Vancian SystemTM doesn't exist in real life, the "Trivialize Another Character Sphere" exists only in your head. This is another thing that Pathfinder balalnced, as you need to make a caster level check to open the lock, but 3.5 knock (which is the one most peple think of) just magically opened any lock. A 3.5 rogue with a Dex-boosing race, 18 rolled/bought Dexterity (+5), max ranks in Open Lock (+6), Skill Focus: Open Lock (+3) and masterwok thieves tools (+2) still can't open an Amazing (DC 40) lock (20+5+6+3+2=36), but knock can. The rogue in this example spent every possible resource into making this check and they are still casually one-uped by a second level spell. Even 4 levels from now where they can Take 20 and open that lock, it's still useless in opening the deadbolt from the other side, which knock also does.


In the Traveler's Gate series, there exist a variety of magical traditions, each tied to a specific plane casters draw power from. For example, the setting's lightning mages are attuned to Endross, an endless desert dominated by permanent storm systems. Endross Travelers can summon creatures from Endross, or invoke powerful lightning blasts from portals they open to Endross. As these portals stay open, they grow larger and more powerful. Effectively, each ability an Endross Traveler uses powers up their later abilities. How would you suggest emulating this resource management mechanic (roughly analogous to a Rage Meter) using the existing rules present in Spheres of Power?

The point is not that Vancian is better. The point is that fantasy magic systems are diverse, and insisting that one system be used to model all of them is wrong. If your goal is to model the maximum number of fantasy magic users maximally well, you should have Spheres of Power for the people who work like that, a Rage Meter for the people who work like that, Vancian Magic for the people who work like that, and so on for all of the various magic systems.
Did you, at any point in this conversation, see me say that SoP, and SoP alone was The Right Way to GameTM? You can toally have SoP, psionics, ethermagic and whatever other systems you want, I just think until Vancian can become the Ideal Vancian SystemTM and not the broken, theme-killing one we have now, it can let other sytems have a turn.

[Cosi]

Ideal Vancian SystemTM

You've made a bunch of points related to this topic, but rather than rebutting them individually, I'm going to disagree with this central premise.

You seem to be coming at this with the goal of developing the maximally functional system from the pieces that exist. Hence your opposition to questions like "what if you put broken Talents in Spheres of Power", or your claim that saying ToB doesn't go far enough is "failing to offer a solution". And I agree that, given that perspective, and given the design targets you have, Spheres of Power is a potentially defensible choice.

But that's not the position I'm interested in. I'm interested in which design choices are best for creating new material. And given that, objections to Vancian magic on the grounds that existing implementations are bad don't make any sense. If your goal is to understand how abilities should work on the high level of Spell Slots versus Spell Points versus Recharge versus Drain, arguments about how the powers written for Spell Slots are less balanced than the ones written for Spell Points are just ... bad. The existence of planar binding doesn't reflect on Vancian magic in the abstract, because there's nothing inherently Vancian about the spell -- let alone its balance problems.

For me to take your arguments seriously, you need to explain why you think there's some fundamental link between "is Vancian" and "has these flaws". As far as I can tell, the only defense you have of Spheres of Power in the abstract is that it emulates a wider range of characters, but as far as I can tell that's a defense of having lots of resource management paradigms not one resource management paradigm that is Spheres of Power instead of Vancian.


...And you think that it is impossble to a SoP caster to have a character who does research and preparation for their opponents? The links were talking about Rituals, which let you import specific spells back into SoP, so if you need, say, animal messenger, or whatever spell that SoP doesn't really have, you can. That's what I was trying to convey.

You can do research but the ability to choose between high risk/high reward spells like command undead over low risk/low reward spells like scorching ray is something inherent to Vancian Magic, and it encourages you to research enemies (so you can take the right risks).

[Beheld]

You realize your argument here is "Spheres of Power only works on modeling 95% of fantasy magic systems, so it's clearly insufficient. We should head back to the old system that was only worked for 1% of systems", right?

So you can't read what was provided at all? Is it like literally invisible to you?

1) I demonstrated that is actually represents literally zero % of Sanderson's magic systems as a sample. It also doesn't represent, literally any other system?

2) Could you point to some place in the presented quote or in my arguments where I argued that Vancian only was somehow what should be the case? Hell, I'm pretty sure I specifically pointed out that I use homebrewed Wizards/Clerics/Druid types that aren't vancian.

Like, you can in fact, just agree that the statement Cosi made is correct, and you agree with it. The Flip Flop Mafia won't hunt you down to punish you.

You don't have to get all offended that Sphere's of Power doesn't actually represent... basically any literature, and you can just say "yeah I guess different resources systems for different characters makes sense, I guess I don't have a leg to stand on when I tell other people they have to use Sphere's of Power." Or you could say "It doesn't matter that Sphere's of Power doesn't represent literature characters, because what should matter is what makes a good game." or you could make some kind of complex argument that actually secretly every character in every literature that clearly doesn't work on a daily power schedule actually is working on a daily power schedule after all.

All of those would be better than just lying about what I said.

[Arbane]

as well as the aforementioned "earn your right to play your concept" has always a problem some (including me) have had with Vancian magic.

I'd argue that's less a problem with D&D's magic, and more a problem with a class&level system that assumes every character starts out 1 step above 'hapless peasant'.


Because that party is also competent? Superman hangs out with Wonder Woman, Green Latern, and Martian Manhunter and they all contribute. Sure, he can do anything you or I can do, but that's why he doesn't adventure with us.


He also hangs out with Green Arrow, Vibe and Jimmy Olsen sometimes. Just sayin'.

[SirNibbles]

I think we should stick to the topic of 'things fighters should get'. I don't think 'we need a complete overhaul of the most basic 3.5 rules for all classes' is something within that scope.

[Beheld]

I think we should stick to the topic of 'things fighters should get'. I don't think 'we need a complete overhaul of the most basic 3.5 rules for all classes' is something within that scope.

"We need a complete overhaul of the most basic 3.5 rules for [Fighter Barbarian Monk, probably Ranger/Paladin/Rogue]" is the only acceptable conclusion to the question asked by the title. Not sure why adding three more classes is outside the scope.

[Psyren]

Casting is definitely broken, I agree. That's obvious. But each individual school is also broken on its own. And it has very little to do with Vancian spell preparation.

I was using "Vancian" there as shorthand for "D&D-style multi-purpose toolbox spellcasting." Not the preparation method specifically. I'll try to be clearer going forward.

As for the individual schools preventing tradeoffs, I would argue that it's specific spells in those schools that are broken, not the schools themselves - and that's not as difficult a fix as it seems. PF for instance managed to tone down the entire polymorph line*, taking away a lot of Transmutation's brokenness without making it useless, and similar limits could be imposed on Conjuration. The Calling spells in particular have a lot of limits built in that are just enforced inconsistently, like the "unreasonable commands" clause in Planar Binding.

*With the sole exception of PAO, but that can simply be banned or made a Ritual.


Regardless of whether or not SoP is good, people wanting it isn't a valid defense of it's quality. People want things that are garbage all the time.

But I could just as easily turn that back around on you, and argue that the generalist mages you want are garbage, rather than the specialized casters found throughout non-D&D media. The problem with terms like "garbage" is that it almost always just means "thing I personally don't like." The "that doesn't denote quality" argument cuts both ways.

[Zanos]

I was using "Vancian" there as shorthand for "D&D-style multi-purpose toolbox spellcasting." Not the preparation method specifically. I'll try to be clearer going forward.

As for the individual schools preventing tradeoffs, I would argue that it's specific spells in those schools that are broken, not the schools themselves - and that's not as difficult a fix as it seems. PF for instance managed to tone down the entire polymorph line*, taking away a lot of Transmutation's brokenness without making it useless, and similar limits could be imposed on Conjuration. The Calling spells in particular have a lot of limits built in that are just enforced inconsistently, like the "unreasonable commands" clause in Planar Binding.

*With the sole exception of PAO, but that can simply be banned or made a Ritual.
Yeah, and that's the core of the issue. Toolbox casting isn't that bad if you have thirty different kind of wrenches, it's bad when you have 29 kinds of wrenches and a nuke.


But I could just as easily turn that back around on you, and argue that the generalist mages you want are garbage, rather than the specialized casters found throughout non-D&D media. The problem with terms like "garbage" is that it almost always just means "thing I personally don't like." The "that doesn't denote quality" argument cuts both ways.
Sure. I wasn't trying to argue anything more than taste on that point.

[Psyren]

Yeah, and that's the core of the issue. Toolbox casting isn't that bad if you have thirty different kind of wrenches, it's bad when you have 29 kinds of wrenches and a nuke.

I wouldn't mind, however, giving up 29 wrenches for something that is less than a nuke yet more than a wrench, in certain situations. In other words, I do want a system where a mage can shapeshift and outfight a fighter if he wants to, or outsneak a rogue, or even both. The issue is that in D&D, you can do both of those things, and then also fire doomlasers, or mind control the king, or raise a skeletal army, all on the same wizard - and even in the same day much of the time.


Sure. I wasn't trying to argue anything more than taste on that point.

Right - but if you agree that it's not for your tastes, an objective remark like "SoP suffers for letting people model their favorite media characters in a d20 system from level 1" doesn't make much sense. It clearly doesn't suffer for doing that, because its target audience likes it. Rather, you are simply not part of that audience, because it's not for you.

[Zanos]

I wouldn't mind, however, giving up 29 wrenches for something that is less than a nuke yet more than a wrench, in certain situations. In other words, I do want a system where a mage can shapeshift and outfight a fighter if he wants to, or outsneak a rogue, or even both. The issue is that in D&D, you can do both of those things, and then also fire doomlasers, or mind control the king, or raise a skeletal army, all on the same wizard - and even in the same day much of the time.
But a wizard with shapechange or gate can do all of those things on the same day with one spell.

I'm also going to say that you're going to have to narrow your scale. A wizard specialized in necromancy might be able to raise an army's worth of undead but 80 human skeletons at level 20 is certainly not an army and not much of a threat. 20d6 on "stock" damage spells is also decent but I wouldn't call it a doom laser. Mind controlling a king is achievable by level 1 if he's woefully under-prepared for magical threats, so I'm not even sure why it's in there. You need to specialize with feats/PrCs/Archetypes and such if you want to really hit that scale.


Right - but if you agree that it's not for your tastes, an objective remark like "SoP suffers for letting people model their favorite media characters in a d20 system from level 1" doesn't make much sense. It clearly doesn't suffer for doing that, because its target audience likes it. Rather, you are simply not part of that audience, because it's not for you.
When you're discussing whether or not you enjoy something you really shouldn't have to qualify every single statement.

We're discussing system preferences. Everything is subjective by default. You can't like something and be wrong. If you like it you like it. If you don't you don't. In this case I can justify it by saying that it lacks any identity; if I want to say that spell-casters in my system work like X, SoP loses most of that by being too open; with the assumption that every approach to magic in a setting can be valid. The DM can pare that down, sure, but then it loses some of it's ability to model stuff. If, for example, I'm running a setting where magic is based on power words, like truenaming or something. If I run that with SoP, I have to restrict people to always take the Verbal drawback. If someone wants to model a caster with non-verbal magic I either have to rewrite my lore for my magic system to accommodate, which I think is a bit of a loss, or tell that person that they can't role that, in which case SoP loses it's strength.

Basically SoP only functions in a setting manner if your setting assumes that any approach to magic is a valid one, and I think that's a pretty major loss when it comes to defining magic systems in fantasy settings. A completely open system is a double edge sword.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Important note that many seem to have missed: the DM is supposed to define casting traditions in SoP. The system is only as "wide open" as the DM's vision for magic in the setting allows for.

[Psyren]

But a wizard with shapechange or gate can do all of those things on the same day with one spell.

That's precisely the problem.

Also, no, not with PF Shapechange. Well, you can, but you do need some skin in the game via stats and gear to keep up with a dedicated martial or sneak. You can't just show up with your 8 Str 14 Dex and no equipment and expect to match them like you can in 3.5.

Gate I agree is still a problem, though they did nerf the cap considerably.


I'm also going to say that you're going to have to narrow your scale. A wizard specialized in necromancy might be able to raise an army's worth of undead but 80 human skeletons at level 20 is certainly not an army and not much of a threat. 20d6 on "stock" damage spells is also decent but I wouldn't call it a doom laser. Mind controlling a king is achievable by level 1 if he's woefully under-prepared for magical threats, so I'm not even sure why it's in there. You need to specialize with feats/PrCs/Archetypes and such if you want to really hit that scale.

I'm really not sure what point you're trying to make here. First, you're vastly understating the problem. 20 skeletons to make an army? Try a single wight or shadow instead. 20d6 damage? Try hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, endless winter - each from a single spell. Then you veer into mind controlling the king being easy as if that isn't the very problem I'm complaining about. So I really am having trouble parsing where you're coming from. I'm saying that these are problems with 3.5, and I can't tell if you agree or disagree. I won't call the system "garbage", but...


When you're discussing whether or not you enjoy something you really shouldn't have to qualify every single statement.

The word you used wasn't that you disliked it. You said the system "suffers," which I took to be an evaluation of its design, not of your preferences.



We're discussing system preferences. Everything is subjective by default. You can't like something and be wrong. If you like it you like it. If you don't you don't. In this case I can justify it by saying that it lacks any identity; if I want to say that spell-casters in my system work like X, SoP loses most of that by being too open; with the assumption that every approach to magic in a setting can be valid. The DM can pare that down, sure, but then it loses some of it's ability to model stuff. If, for example, I'm running a setting where magic is based on power words, like truenaming or something. If I run that with SoP, I have to restrict people to always take the Verbal drawback. If someone wants to model a caster with non-verbal magic I either have to rewrite my lore for my magic system to accommodate, which I think is a bit of a loss, or tell that person that they can't role that, in which case SoP loses it's strength.

Basically SoP only functions in a setting manner if your setting assumes that any approach to magic is a valid one, and I think that's a pretty major loss when it comes to defining magic systems in fantasy settings. A completely open system is a double edge sword.

For the record, I'm fine with toolbox style magic. I'm also fine with "Airbendeer" style at-will but limited focus magic. Both have their place, and thanks to SoP, now both exist.

[digiman619]

You've made a bunch of points related to this topic, but rather than rebutting them individually, I'm going to disagree with this central premise.

You seem to be coming at this with the goal of developing the maximally functional system from the pieces that exist. Hence your opposition to questions like "what if you put broken Talents in Spheres of Power", or your claim that saying ToB doesn't go far enough is "failing to offer a solution". And I agree that, given that perspective, and given the design targets you have, Spheres of Power is a potentially defensible choice.

But that's not the position I'm interested in. I'm interested in which design choices are best for creating new material. And given that, objections to Vancian magic on the grounds that existing implementations are bad don't make any sense. If your goal is to understand how abilities should work on the high level of Spell Slots versus Spell Points versus Recharge versus Drain, arguments about how the powers written for Spell Slots are less balanced than the ones written for Spell Points are just ... bad. The existence of planar binding doesn't reflect on Vancian magic in the abstract, because there's nothing inherently Vancian about the spell -- let alone its balance problems.

For me to take your arguments seriously, you need to explain why you think there's some fundamental link between "is Vancian" and "has these flaws". As far as I can tell, the only defense you have of Spheres of Power in the abstract is that it emulates a wider range of characters, but as far as I can tell that's a defense of having lots of resource management paradigms not one resource management paradigm that is Spheres of Power instead of Vancian.
Fair point, I was being facetious. My point is that none of you defenses of the Vancian are telling me why "X spell slots of X levels" are a better way to do things than "weak at-will abilities that can be augmented" or "abilities that build up to a finisher" or "recharging mana bar" any other way to do a magic system. All you've been saying is "Spheres of Power is a bad system, because reasons"


You can do research but the ability to choose between high risk/high reward spells like command undead over low risk/low reward spells like scorching ray is something inherent to Vancian Magic, and it encourages you to research enemies (so you can take the right risks).
How are you determining what is "high risk"spells? Do you mean situational ones that are really helpful in specific situations and worthless in others? Yeah, those only are worth it if you can swap new spells in from day to day (which Beheld swears up one side and down the other isn't what makes Vancian "good"), so there's no way a sorcerer or oracle would risk one of thier precious spells known on it.

Besides, if you rarely use a given spell, why is making it a ritual and not "effect that fits into an X level slot" a bad thing? It also makes big effects more important, as there are some really dumb 5th level cleric spells that are apparently just as powerful as raising someone from the dead. Like the one that turns items into embroidery for easy transport. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/t/treasure-stitching) Because, as a 9th level Cleric, there's apparently no way you can afford a bag of holding.


So you can't read what was provided at all? Is it like literally invisible to you?

1) I demonstrated that is actually represents literally zero % of Sanderson's magic systems as a sample. It also doesn't represent, literally any other system?[

2) Could you point to some place in the presented quote or in my arguments where I argued that Vancian only was somehow what should be the case? Hell, I'm pretty sure I specifically pointed out that I use homebrewed Wizards/Clerics/Druid types that aren't vancian.
Good point. That's clearly in the 5-10% or so of fantasy systems that SoP can't model accurately. I already said that. There are, however, a ton of systems it does model quite well, Avatar:The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra was famously used as an example on how to shape your game to more accurately represent how you want magic to work in your setting. Have you, on the other hand, given one system that can accurately model that setting? Go on, I'll wait.


Like, you can in fact, just agree that the statement Cosi made is correct, and you agree with it. The Flip Flop Mafia won't hunt you down to punish you.

You don't have to get all offended that Sphere's of Power doesn't actually represent... basically any literature,
See above about the A:TLA/TLoK example

and you can just say "yeah I guess different resources systems for different characters makes sense, I guess I don't have a leg to stand on when I tell other people they have to use Sphere's of Power." Or you could say "It doesn't matter that Sphere's of Power doesn't represent literature characters,

Oh, so only literature is an acceptable source for inspiration? Do graphic novels count, or are only books acceptable? I know that something being "too anime" is a bit of a meme on these boards for "things that I don't like becasue they seem OP", but there are tons of anime that don't have over the top action, and there are plenty of literary source of OP magic systems. The Will of the Belgariad series would be insanely broken in an RPG because you can do almost anything with it. But at least it's a literary source, right?


because what should matter is what makes a good game." or you could make some kind of complex argument that actually secretly every character in every literature that clearly doesn't work on a daily power schedule actually is working on a daily power schedule after all.

All of those would be better than just lying about what I said.
That's a valid point. There are tons of fictional magic systems where "per day" abilities are a horrible fit. I get that. What I don't understand is why you're blaming SoP for that. How is the current Vancian system in any way a better fit than SoP? If this is something you care about, what system do you use to model it? Or do you have no system and are tearing down SoP just because other people like it?

[Morphic tide]

In regards to nerfing casters, I think that restricting Wizards to a limited amount of spells as a hard thing is good. What I disagree with is having them locked to one spellbook. Instead, picking one spellbook each day to prepare spells from, with a feat for Spirit Shaman style partial-spontaneous casting from their daily spellbook rather than their entire list, would enable them to keep their potential for having their entire list as one character, but would also give them a hard limit of spells available per day. It'd also make staple spells more expensive, as you have to copy them into each spellbook.

Extending this to the Divine casters by making them pick their list-segments to prepare spells from as massively-expanded Domains, with Clerics having penalties for Domains their Deity doesn't have along the lines of "cast as one/two spell level/s higher/use an extra spell slot" and Druids being able to just pick whatever Domain they please on the Druid Domain list, which would then force Divine casters to be thematic on at least a daily basis.

As for daily recharge in general being bad for modelling literary magic systems, either 3e or 2e Psionics was actually PP/hour recharge. That sort of thing would be easy to staple onto Spheres of Power, because it's just X quanta of resource per Y time. An alternative could be direct cooldown time, like breath weapons, where you have to wait between magic uses. Infinite low-power spam, but busting out the major bull**** leaves you unable to do anything magical for a significant amount of time.

Although Spheres of Power is really hung up on Spell Points and balances a lot around them, so

---

In regards to things Fighters should get, if they are going to be generic Fighting Man, they should own it. Core functionality being just "I fight things good with weapon," with the mechanics fully ignoring what weapon is in use. So a high-level Fighter who's been a swordsman their entire carrier can just pick up a crossbow and assassinate a dude half a mile away because their basic features include ranged weapons support that, on a swordsman, makes them good at tossing their sword and making it count. But the wording cares not whether it's an improvised throwing weapon, a regular throwing weapon, a bow, crossbow, catapult, whatever. It's just flat ranged buffs, applied to all ranged attacks.

Being a swordsman their entire carrier, they won't be able to just grab a bow and murder level-appropriate encounters with it. But they should be able to use any weapon nearby, even if it's just a stick, to slaughter mooks aplenty. As for staying coherent in character theme, that's what feats and feat-like class features are for. And subclasses, for early-on needs. In more detail, Generic Bonuses would be the big thing. Reduction of all penalties inherent to the weapon, as in nonproficiency, over/undersize and improvized weapon penalties, increasing any range increment by a flat amount per-level, being able to do attacks on the move without mention of which kind, just bundles of highly generic bonuses worded specifically to make them work for lots of different kinds of combat.

For non-combat, being Generic Fighting Man means that they need to be able to get any skill any direct Fighting Man archetype could need. So they need to work as a regular guard, noble knight, mercenary leader, highway mugger, callus butcher and more. They need to have all combat-relevant skills as well. They also need ability score dependencies to support non-combat roles. Perhaps having Intelligence scaling would work well, given the mechanical "niche" of User Of All Weapons For All Weapon Things, which would allow 4+Int skill points to cover every needed skill due to rarely having less than a +2 bonus.

If we make Fighter a massive pile of "use literally any weapon to non-useless extent and having stupidly-broad so-called specialization," on the level of "I specialize in two-handed weapons that deal Slashing damage," then the other classes need to be altered to keep up. But that is beyond the scope of this thread. In general, they need similar versatility mechanically. For Barbarians, this is pretty easy, because having a goddamn mountain of Strength and Constitution enables some options. Including having scaling be much more heavily based on ability scores than level.

[Beheld]

Good point. That's clearly in the 5-10% or so of fantasy systems that SoP can't model accurately. I already said that. There are, however, a ton of systems it does model quite well, Avatar:The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra was famously used as an example on how to shape your game to more accurately represent how you want magic to work in your setting. Have you, on the other hand, given one system that can accurately model that setting? Go on, I'll wait.

Again, SoP doesn't model any fantasy literature systems. Saying "Those are just part of the 5%" when I pull out 8 magic systems and SoP fails all of them, and you haven't presented a single fantasy literature system SoP does emulate, I have to question why you felt it necessary to lie about what I said twice now?

Avatar is another example of a system that isn't on a daily power recharge schedule at all. I think Winds of Fate would probably be the best Avatar based system, Also potentially momentum, at will or encounter recharge systems. But a daily recharge schedule doesn't model Avatar.

So yeah, there are lots of magic systems that can totally model the magics of assorted Sanderson magic systems, off the top of my head, at will for Elantris, Probably something essentia based for WoT, Feruchemy would use reversibility. Which specific literature did you need me to explain to you how to model, since SoP doesn't model any of them.


Oh, so only literature is an acceptable source for inspiration? Do graphic novels count, or are only books acceptable? I know that something being "too anime" is a bit of a meme on these boards for "things that I don't like becasue they seem OP", but there are tons of anime that don't have over the top action, and there are plenty of literary source of OP magic systems. The Will of the Belgariad series would be insanely broken in an RPG because you can do almost anything with it. But at least it's a literary source, right?

At least remember your own arguments? Cosi never said we should be trying to emulate literature in our magic systems. I never said we should be trying to emulate literature in our magic systems. That was you. You are literally the only person who has argued that we should choose our magic systems to emulate fantasy literature:


And literary-style magic is what we should be aiming for, because everyone has, at one point, decided to make a character/NPC as "<Character> in D&D/Pathfinder" or "Like <Character>, but...", and the storytelling is always one of the major selling points of any RPG.



That's a valid point. There are tons of fictional magic systems where "per day" abilities are a horrible fit. I get that. What I don't understand is why you're blaming SoP for that. How is the current Vancian system in any way a better fit than SoP? If this is something you care about, what system do you use to model it? Or do you have no system and are tearing down SoP just because other people like it?

"We need to model literature!"

"I personally don't use per day systems much in my games, I do it for better gameplay reasons, but if you cared about modelling literature, you wouldn't use per days systems for that either."

"You are arguing that we need to use vancian to model literature!"

"Could you point to any part where I said people should only use Vancian? I was specifically arguing in favor of multiple resource systems."

"You are arguing that we need to use vancian to model literature!"

.......................

Can you read the things I type? I keep saying that I'm not arguing that everyone needs to use vancian spellcasting, and that in fact I hardly use it at all in my games, and you keep responding my complaining that we have to use SoP for it's daily recharge schedule OR ELSE, but you don't seem to be noticing that I'm talking about something else?

[digiman619]

Again, SoP doesn't model any fantasy literature systems. Saying "Those are just part of the 5%" when I pull out 8 magic systems and SoP fails all of them, and you haven't presented a single fantasy literature system SoP does emulate, I have to question why you felt it necessary to lie about what I said twice now?

Avatar is another example of a system that isn't on a daily power recharge schedule at all. I think Winds of Fate would probably be the best Avatar based system, Also potentially momentum, at will or encounter recharge systems. But a daily recharge schedule doesn't model Avatar.

So yeah, there are lots of magic systems that can totally model the magics of assorted Sanderson magic systems, off the top of my head, at will for Elantris, Probably something essentia based for WoT, Feruchemy would use reversibility. Which specific literature did you need me to explain to you how to model, since SoP doesn't model any of them.
I don't think I know this Winds of Fate system, so I can't comment about its veracity as a ATLA system. That said, I suppose I really ought to have been more clear, as I meant "SoP is the best way to buld a <practioner of X magical system> in Pathfinder I know" rather than "SoP can make a perfect model of every fantasy magic system ever, and if it can't, that's the fantasy's fault becasue SoP is perfect" that I apparently came off as.


At least remember your own arguments? Cosi never said we should be trying to emulate literature in our magic systems. I never said we should be trying to emulate literature in our magic systems. That was you. You are literally the only person who has argued that we should choose our magic systems to emulate fantasy literature:

"We need to model literature!"

"I personally don't use per day systems much in my games, I do it for better gameplay reasons, but if you cared about modelling literature, you wouldn't use per days systems for that either."

"You are arguing that we need to use vancian to model literature!"

"Could you point to any part where I said people should only use Vancian? I was specifically arguing in favor of multiple resource systems."

"You are arguing that we need to use vancian to model literature!"

.......................
Can you read the things I type? I keep saying that I'm not arguing that everyone needs to use vancian spellcasting, and that in fact I hardly use it at all in my games, and you keep responding my complaining that we have to use SoP for it's daily recharge schedule OR ELSE, but you don't seem to be noticing that I'm talking about something else?
That's a fair cop. I brought up literary sourses a a point of inspiration, so I have no right to b***h about you using it later. I still honeslty believe that SoP is the best way to fulfill the "I want to play as <character>-like character in Pathfinder" desire, and that it works in modeling magic using characters from any other media (literature or otherwise) then any other magic system I know.

And I use other magic systems; I'm not "SoP or nothing!" as I may have come off as.I've rolled Psychic Warriors and Gurus before and in my current games am playing a Truenamer fix, and a Pathfider version of a Binder. And I've played Vancian casters, too. I've played many magic systems, and I'll admit that some concepts are better fit for one system over another and SoP isn't the perfect fit for every concept. I just believe it's a better fit for a larger swath of concepts that pretty much any other ruleset in 3.P.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Not sure this is really the right place for a Vancean-vs-Spheres argument....


In regards to nerfing casters, I think that restricting Wizards to a limited amount of spells as a hard thing is good. What I disagree with is having them locked to one spellbook. Instead, picking one spellbook each day to prepare spells from, with a feat for Spirit Shaman style partial-spontaneous casting from their daily spellbook rather than their entire list, would enable them to keep their potential for having their entire list as one character, but would also give them a hard limit of spells available per day. It'd also make staple spells more expensive, as you have to copy them into each spellbook.
Extending this to the Divine casters by making them pick their list-segments to prepare spells from as massively-expanded Domains, with Clerics having penalties for Domains their Deity doesn't have along the lines of "cast as one/two spell level/s higher/use an extra spell slot" and Druids being able to just pick whatever Domain they please on the Druid Domain list, which would then force Divine casters to be thematic on at least a daily basis.
That... still sounds pretty tier 1. Like, on Monday you can be a Beguiler, on Tuesday a Dread Necromancer, on Wednesday a diviner... that's still insane versatility. Slightly easier for the player to manage, perhaps, but you're still accessing a massive variety of spells. What you need to do is force a hard limit on their spells known (more than a spontaneous caster, of course).

Or better yet, write complete thematic lists and make them stick to one, in the vein of the Beguiler. Doing so helps strengthen character identity, caps their versatility, and-- perhaps best of all-- when you write the thematic list, you can deliberately exclude or re-level inappropriate spells. You can even turn problematic archetypes like summon spells into class features. That's what I did for my fixed-list caster project (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?317861-Fixed-List-Caster-Project-(3-5))


In regards to things Fighters should get, if they are going to be generic Fighting Man, they should own it. Core functionality being just "I fight things good with weapon," with the mechanics fully ignoring what weapon is in use....
Being a swordsman their entire carrier, they won't be able to just grab a bow and murder level-appropriate encounters with it.
I'm not sure what you're saying here-- are they meant to be equally good with all weapons or not?

[Jormengand]

Not sure this is really the right place for a Vancean-vs-Spheres argument...

Yeah, but certain people will show up to sing the praises of SoP and its derivatives in literally every thread they can reasonably get it in, and are definitely not paid to do that at all.

[Psyren]

Yeah, but certain people will show up to sing the praises of SoP and its derivatives in literally every thread they can reasonably get it in, and are definitely not paid to do that at all.

Oh come off it, I'm not even a Spheres aficionado and I know that's horsecrap in this instance. The guy currently defending the system is not even the guy who brought it up in the first place, he was just replying to the usual hyperbolic vitriol anytime someone proposes anything that tones spellcasters down around here.

[Zanos]

Yeah, but certain people will show up to sing the praises of SoP and its derivatives in literally every thread they can reasonably get it in, and are definitely not paid to do that at all.
I wish I could say that people being paid to shill a free product is the craziest conspiracy theory I heard today.

Seriously though, what?


usual hyperbolic vitriol
I didn't think I was coming off that way.

But hey, good to know that I have fans.

[Florian]

Not sure this is really the right place for a Vancean-vs-Spheres argument...

In a sense, it is. It´s rather surprising that no one came to the conclusion that a "Fighter" sphere could actually be a good thing.


Yeah, but certain people will show up to sing the praises of SoP and its derivatives in literally every thread they can reasonably get it in, and are definitely not paid to do that at all.

So you open your mouth only when you´re paid for it? Good to know.

[Jormengand]

So you open your mouth only when you´re paid for it? Good to know.

Given that you're one of the people who believes that evil outsiders can't melt steel fighters, the moon astral projections were faked and we need tinfoil commoners to protect against mind control, I'm not surprised you think I'm working for Big Wizard to fool you all.

[Grod_The_Giant]

In a sense, it is. It´s rather surprising that no one came to the conclusion that a "Fighter" sphere could actually be a good thing.
I don't think Spheres of Might has been released yet, but it's on its way... Mix that with Spheres of Power for casters and you've got pretty good balance and symmetry.

[Florian]

Given that you're one of the people who believes that evil outsiders can't melt steel fighters, the moon astral projections were faked and we need tinfoil commoners to protect against mind control, I'm not surprised you think I'm working for Big Wizard to fool you all.

Genosse, it would help when you´d work on your reading comprehension and maybe work on your prejudices.

I´ve always said that I´m a PF player and some major things are different there. If you can´t accept that some martial classes get access to "Power Word: Nope" in regards to magic, say so. Yes, the BMX guy can shut down a gate and prevent some angel summoning.

You´ve still up to prove that the moon is on a different plane. But I guess you´ll go on and on with it, ´cause it´s "common tactic" here.

And no, having enthusiasts of a system chime in is a good sign, even if it´s annoying. Shows that the creators hit a nerve and the fans want to propagate that system because they think it´s good. That said, I´m rather annoyed by someone propagating SoD or some other dreamscared stuff than someone stuck with 3,5E knowledge.


I don't think Spheres of Might has been released yet, but it's on its way... Mix that with Spheres of Power for casters and you've got pretty good balance and symmetry.

Let´s wait and see.

[Jormengand]

You´ve still up to prove that the moon is on a different plane. But I guess you´ll go on and on with it, ´cause it´s "common tactic" here.

I... never said it was, so the whole "Prove this thing you never said" argument can go and do one. You can astral project from the moon (the material) to the moon (the astral) ("You project your astral self onto the Astral Plane, leaving your physical body behind on the Material Plane in a state of suspended animation") and then, while on the astral, go back to the material ("Since the Astral Plane touches upon other planes, you can travel astrally to any of these other planes as you will. To enter one, you leave the Astral Plane, forming a new physical body (and equipment) on the plane of existence you have chosen to enter.") So the moon never needed not to be on the material.

[zergling.exe]

And no, having enthusiasts of a system chime in is a good sign, even if it´s annoying. Shows that the creators hit a nerve and the fans want to propagate that system because they think it´s good. That said, I´m rather annoyed by someone propagating SoD or some other dreamscared stuff than someone stuck with 3,5E knowledge.

Some of those enthusiasts take it too far though. A few months back some were pushing SoP even after OP said it wasn't on the table and said it was OP's fault for not using "the perfect fit for what they wanted". Some were even adamant on pushing SoM when it was only recently announced to be a thing...

[Psyren]

I didn't think I was coming off that way.

But hey, good to know that I have fans.

What? Who said I was talking about you? :smallconfused:

[Zanos]

What? Who said I was talking about you? :smallconfused:
I assumed you meant me since I was the one of the ones "against" SoP, but if not disregard.


Some of those enthusiasts take it too far though. A few months back some were pushing SoP even after OP said it wasn't on the table and said it was OP's fault for not using "the perfect fit for what they wanted". Some were even adamant on pushing SoM when it was only recently announced to be a thing...
Yeah, I've seen that before, but people do that with a lot of stuff. OP: "I don't want to play a wizard." Response: "Have you tried playing a wizard?"

Paid shills is a bit too far into crazytown for me.

[Florian]

Some of those enthusiasts take it too far though. A few months back some were pushing SoP even after OP said it wasn't on the table and said it was OP's fault for not using "the perfect fit for what they wanted". Some were even adamant on pushing SoM when it was only recently announced to be a thing...

Somewhat understandable, tho. The d20 system provides a more or less solid framework to go with, so purely sticking with WotC/Paizo material and trying to combine stuff to the point that you gain your result by using "official material" seems a little futile.

[Morphic tide]

That... still sounds pretty tier 1. Like, on Monday you can be a Beguiler, on Tuesday a Dread Necromancer, on Wednesday a diviner... that's still insane versatility. Slightly easier for the player to manage, perhaps, but you're still accessing a massive variety of spells. What you need to do is force a hard limit on their spells known (more than a spontaneous caster, of course).

Or better yet, write complete thematic lists and make them stick to one, in the vein of the Beguiler. Doing so helps strengthen character identity, caps their versatility, and-- perhaps best of all-- when you write the thematic list, you can deliberately exclude or re-level inappropriate spells. You can even turn problematic archetypes like summon spells into class features. That's what I did for my fixed-list caster project (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?317861-Fixed-List-Caster-Project-(3-5))
Well, personally, I'd have there be layers of preperation. On another of these "how to fix Fighters" threads that got derailed to "how to nerf casters," I actually typed out an extended concept for making Clerics and Druids keep their full-list access, but they have to pick Domains to get them from. Partial, but thematic, lists.

Generally, I'd like to keep the idea of being able to pull out incoherent theme bull****. Batman Wizard is a good concept, but the problem with it is how powerful and easy it is. There's enough "generally good" spells to make it so that Batmaning doesn't take a massive amount of work. Keeping the ability for Wizards to be Batman is something I'd prefer, but you have to make it hard to Batman. You have to make it so it takes a lot of system understanding and knowing what's coming up in-game to pull it off for Batman Wizard to be okay.


I'm not sure what you're saying here-- are they meant to be equally good with all weapons or not?
Not equally good with all weapons, but having their minimum competence be appropriate for, say, three or four levels lower than them. Like a level 20 Fighter being able to deal with CR 16 fights with any weapon they can find, thereby making proper mooks a non-threat. A generalist could instead be able to use any weapon to deal with CR 18 encounters, and be able to deal with CR 20 encounters by mixing different weapon uses. Like adding thrown daggers to a Charge coming from their iteratives. Or using thrown weapons alongside a Crossbow to get off full iteratives, even though they don't have the crossbow-specific things needed to Full Attack with them.

Basically, a specialist Fighter can deal with all fights with their one weapon of choice. If it's a melee weapon, they have Generic Ranged Bonuses that let them throw it effectively. If it's a ranged weapon, they have Generic Anti-AoO capabilities to let them fire when in melee. A generalist Fighter, meanwhile, has to use several separate weapons to effectively handle level-appropriate encounters. Heavy Crossbow for the first ranged attack, thrown daggers for the rest of them. On Charges, they have to be tossing a dagger or two to make it work properly, or stack a Bull Rush or Trip attempt on it. Generalist Fighter attack spams level-appropriate encounters and uses whatever they feel like for anything remotely mook-like.

Really, a pure Generalist Fighter would be close to non-functional due to lacking any of the stuff needed to keep up. Stuff like getting throwing weapon attacks for iteratives on charges wouldn't be pure generalist. It'd be multi-weapon Charge, which is useful to a "whatever I get my hands on" build because it lets them have Charges be a useful option. A Fighter splitting between Charge and Thrown would then be able to pick this thing to have almost as much capacity with Charging as a dedicated Charge build at the cost of splitting the damage between attacks with varying amounts of accuracy.


In a sense, it is. It´s rather surprising that no one came to the conclusion that a "Fighter" sphere could actually be a good thing.
...Trying to think of what to do for a Sphere of Magic that'd be all assistance to Gishes, but not require being a Gish to benefit. Time? Phasing? Time would actually be a good one. Low-level temporal manipulation has always been about enhancing aspects of actions, rather than granting additional ones. Sticking all the time shenanigans into a single Sphere would also force action economy abuse to be a serious character choice because Spheres are not cheap, and splitting character resources between Spheres can cause issues.

Mechanically, the two powers for Time would be action-shifting, as on-the-spot action economy manipulation in the form of manipulating what abilities take which actions, and then a Haste-alike that starts off weak and can be boosted through SP sinks and CL additions that acts as an enduring buff to boost capabilities for multiple turns.

In more detail, the Haste based ability could Talent into stuff like lowering Iterative penalties, followed by gaining more Iteratives based on the new penalty. So -4 penalty per Iterative means 5 of them at 20 BAB. Or you Talent into bonuses like extending 5 ft. step range and number, getting you to become extremely mobile and attack-spammy by stacking up attacks and movement chances. With Talents for stuff like Spring Attack, growing into a mass of rapid attacks and movements that let you pull a rather impressive Flash impression.

The action-expansion could talent into action-contraction, having what would normally be a Standard Action become a thing you use Move Actions for, thereby being more useful for action-granting effects, which get rolled into this side of things by having action-contraction become action-creation. Then a different set of talents applies action-expansion to more abstract "actions" like AoOs and 5 ft. steps, having you get to use actual actions in place of non-action events. Looping inwards to make you be able to burn all your SP on action shuffling to let loose massive numbers of rounds limited only by your SP at a better rate than just making the actions from nothing.

Sure, making the CL requirements and SP spending big enough to balance it would be hard, but there's some nice tricks to be done with having Time be a Sphere.

---

Personally, though, when it comes to making Magic part of Fighters, my preference is to make them Swift Action casting and use an attack action for the somatic component. So you get enhanced movement speed and increased Strength for the turn, but you have to be performing a Charge while/after casting. Still Spell then removes this odd limiter, letting more general Gish use occur. Like using it for Bull Rush instead.

This plays with the idea of ToB being too Vancian by giving a subset of outright Vancian prepared casting that uses martial combat actions as the somatic component of the literal spell, with a school, descriptors, spell level and everything. Like how Tenser's Transformation uses a Potion of Bull's Strength as a material component and goes bull**** with basically the single exact thing that Bull's Strength does.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Well, personally, I'd have there be layers of preperation. On another of these "how to fix Fighters" threads that got derailed to "how to nerf casters," I actually typed out an extended concept for making Clerics and Druids keep their full-list access, but they have to pick Domains to get them from. Partial, but thematic, lists.
Do you have a link? I'm thinking I'm not quite following you here-- are you saying that they should be fixed-list casters with customizable fixed lists (something like (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?319556-The-Cleric-(Fixed-List-Caster-Project)-3-5-PEACH) so (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?321588-The-Druid-(Fixed-list-Caster-Project)-3-5-PEACH)), or are you saying that you'd split the entire Cleric and Druid lists up into a discreet number of domains, and you'd somehow switch between which you could access day-to-day?


Generally, I'd like to keep the idea of being able to pull out incoherent theme bull****. Batman Wizard is a good concept, but the problem with it is how powerful and easy it is. There's enough "generally good" spells to make it so that Batmaning doesn't take a massive amount of work. Keeping the ability for Wizards to be Batman is something I'd prefer, but you have to make it hard to Batman. You have to make it so it takes a lot of system understanding and knowing what's coming up in-game to pull it off for Batman Wizard to be okay.
You have to make it so that the generalist has less power, to be sure. Dropping a spell level or two vs full casters, so you only go up to, say, 7ths is a decent solution. You could also potential shift more of the preparation aspect to crafting and similar long-term stuff. (I used a combination (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?325646-The-Ritualist-A-tier-3-crafter-spellbook-user-maybe-(3-5-PEACH))of the two)


Not equally good with all weapons, but having their minimum competence be appropriate for, say, three or four levels lower than them. Like a level 20 Fighter being able to deal with CR 16 fights with any weapon they can find, thereby making proper mooks a non-threat. A generalist could instead be able to use any weapon to deal with CR 18 encounters, and be able to deal with CR 20 encounters by mixing different weapon uses. Like adding thrown daggers to a Charge coming from their iteratives. Or using thrown weapons alongside a Crossbow to get off full iteratives, even though they don't have the crossbow-specific things needed to Full Attack with them.
Hmm... a lot of that could be addressed simply by streamlining the base system-- remove stuff like Improved Unarmed Strike, Rapid Reload, and AoOs-for-attempting-combat-maneuvers that entirely wall off combat styles if you don't have the right feats. And giving the Fighters an auto-weapon-enchant thing, live I've mentioned before, so their secondary weapons can still be useful.

The problem with the "Generic Man at Arms" identify is still that there's nothing to hang non-weapon/armor-based abilities on, tho. Which sort of circles back to the original problem-- it's not hard to slap some extra damage and passive sense/movement boosts onto the Fighter's chassis to make it stand up number-wise, it's going beyond that where you run into problems.